MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

Please look at the section about copyright tags at the bottom. --Suki Brits 04:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I got Ben Yee's permision to use some of his texts via E-mail Ben Yee said... "Please use only certain text (not say, entire episode reviews or anything like that) and credit my site accordingly. Thanks!" X-BoB58

Do we know who has administrative powers on this Wiki? --User:ItsWalky

There's been a vandal who's screwed around with a few pages, and this is probably going to come up fairly often. The wikipedia page on reverting[1] is something that most people should read, so you know how to put things back to how they were, when something like that happens aggain. --Suki Brits 03:04, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I reverted the Main Page after someone replaced it with a message insulting the intelligence of this Wiki.-Shadow Mask Prime

Contact in case of problems

As you haven't an active admin at the moment, I've left contact information on my user page and will call in regularly to see if you need any help. If anyone knows why someone is blanking pages, that would be useful. Are there copyright issues? Has stuff been copied without full (and GFDL compatible) permission? If so, we may have to remove and rewrite the pages. I'll pop back tomorrow to see if there has been more blanking. -- sannse (talk) 16:12, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That awful picture and the name

Although secondary to the vandalism, we have an admin-type who can deal with the problems left by the creator. There's a couple locked things that we can't change:

• The title is misspelled. The computer's name is "Teletraan-1", and we should really have the title reflect a name that 'isn't' the wrong spelling. We fixed it on the main page, but it still shows up in the titles of every page.
• The wiki symbol in the top left is horrendously ugly and kinda embarassing. And not only is it hideous, but it also reflects the same problem as the title: Teletraan-1 is spelled incorrectly. I made a new image for it, but it's not too great either, and I'd like to invite any artist to do something better.

We should get some other people's thoughts on both these matters. If we can get some sort of consensus going, we can probably get both of these matters fixed. --Suki Brits 18:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Besides the spelling, I don't see anything wrong with the logo. Heck, I'd be downright surprised to see anything else. Well, with the possible exception of the Decepticon logo.--Octopus Prime- King of the Road! 22:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

What about that spinning logo that goes from bot to con to max to pred to blendtron etc. etc. etc. X-BoB58

For the title issue - I'll contact our one of our technical support staff. It's not something that can be changed on-wiki (he should be on-line soon). For the logo - I've unprotected the logo for a while, so you can chose what should go there and upload. All you need to do is upload to Image:wiki.png. It does have to be a .png image, so the animated logo idea is out I'm afraid. If you want to try changing your favicon (Image:favicon.ico: File:Favicon.ico) then I can unprotect that too for a while.

I definitely fall in the "don't like the logo" camp, so here's one proposal for a change: new logo proposal. Aurax 16:59, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose an Art Contest or something similar. -X-boB58

• Well, anyone is welcome to and definitely encouraged to make a new logo to replace the old one; just upload it and post it here if you do. If we get any more people proposing replacements, we can just put it to a vote. Although I do personally like Aurax's a lot. --Suki Brits 00:09, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I also like the logo Aurax made, although probably we should pick between "Teletraan-1" and "Teletraan One". The logo spells out the number, whereas it's written elsewhere with the digit.

--Steve-o 03:10, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

• Since it's likely easier to change the text in the logo than it is to change the name of the wiki (again), I made a new version of the graphic file. It fixes the spelling and addresses some text readability issues that I had with the original, stuff that I was gonna fix anyway. For your renewed consideration. Aurax 03:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I've replaced the old logo with yours, as there weren't objections; but if anyone opposes it now, please feel free to post to that effect. --Suki Brits 03:06, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

While were on the topic of apearances what about a new skin, Idunno something more "transformery"

To be utterly and stupednously anal, the computer's name is actually spelled "Teletraan I," with a roman numeral and no hyphen. - Chris McFeely, 17th March 2006

Nobody has further commented on this, but Chris appears to be right. I would personally prefer that the site name match the canonical spelling. Is there support for changing the name again? --Steve-o 00:52, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

• As with the last correction, making a new graphic for the wiki's name is easy enough to do. I'm personally ambivalent about changing it though. A part of me yearns for complete accuracy, but the other part reminds that first part that we're not trying to be Teletraan I here, and as such I should be perfectly content with whatever we decide to call ourselves. Whatever the verdict, I stand ready with PSD in hand. Aurax 06:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody has objected, I suggest that we go ahead with this name change. "Teletraan I" with a roman numeral and no hyphen. Aurax can provide a new logo, assuming he's still reading.  :) Suki, can you take care of this? --Steve-o 04:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

New Admins

The other thing to consider is who should be your new admin(s). You all know your wiki better than I, so any suggestions? Who has experience of admin buttons (not vital, they are pretty easy to follow), is active on this wiki, and knows the subject well enough to know what is valid and what is vandalism? The main criteria as far as I'm concerned are some good sense and a lot of enthusiasm :) -- sannse (talk) 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I fit most of the requirements, but don't know wiki's particular admin setup. If you say they're easy to follow, then I suppose they can't be much different from admin-ing elsewhere. If anything, I just want to keep that one guy from deleting whole pages. I also think User:Suki Brits would make a good Admin, if she would want to be. --User:ItsWalky

I had just typed up that I'd also nominate Walky as an admin when he edited his post-- oops, I guess that seems sorta hollow now. Regardless, he's probably the best choice for an admin here, as he certainly knows what he's doing, and has put lot of time into this already; definitely fits the requirements.

And I wouldn't mind myself, either. --Suki Brits 18:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Having seen Walky's posts and conversations thus far, I'd trust him to be a fair and enthusiastic admin --User:G.B. Blackrock (talk)

I think that Suki seems to know the system better --X-BoB58

"NO The Constructicons Form DEVESTATOR! The Most Powerful Robot! They Should Rule!"

I honestly can't believe I'm the first one to use that quote here. I mean, come on, really. Get your heads in the game.

That Said: In all honesty, I agree with the mutual respect goin to'ard Walky or Suki being Admin. Since Walky's added more to the Wiki then everyone else put together, and Suki seems to have done much of the admin-lite duties round here.

Heck, I vote for Suki.--Octopus Prime- King of the Road! 22:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I would gladly put my support behind Walky and/or Suki Brits as admins. --Steve-o 06:09, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Walky and "Suki Brits" would be fine mods. FOR ME TO OVERTHROW. Hooper X 20:34, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A nice bit of agreement here :) Walky and Suki Brits are now your admins. Let me know if you need any help at all -- sannse (talk) 12:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, thanks, everyone. Hopefully I won't actually need to do many admin type functions, but I'll be glad to whenever I can. --Suki Brits 17:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Deletion policy

One thing that I'd really rather not happen to this is we get bogged down by too many policies and rules, since that's distracting from the real purpose of the whole thing. We're all big kids, if someone's not doing things right, we don't need to redirect them to endless piles of policy pages. But with that said, there are a couple things we do need to deal with: like deleting crap. There's a lot of garbage that needs to go, but I don't want to delete something accidentally that others think should be kept.

My proposal: we make a page for listing pages that should be deleted, with dates appended beside each nominee for deletion, and a {{tobedeleted}} tag put at the top of the page to be deleted itself. If nobody objects after three days, the page'll be deleted. Obviously, anyone can nominate a page to be deleted.

Does this sound like a good idea? --Suki Brits 17:36, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fair to me.--G.B. Blackrock 18:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Whats the advantage of a catagory over a list?

I liked the lists

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION IS IMPORTANT

As some might have noticed, we've had an image removed due to copyright issues; if at all possible, I'd like to avoid that sort of thing happening again. I've drafted up two additional copyright templates, Template:Comiccover and Template:Comicinterior, the uses of which should be fairly obvious. I'd like for people to overview these to make sure they're acceptable, and after that, please start putting them on any applicable pages.

As Wikipedia demonstrates, fair use is a pretty neat blanket that we can fit under, but we need to actually start labeling these images appropriately, or we're going to get more issues coming up. --Suki Brits 04:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The Image Copyright template is... incomplete. Not all images are the sole domain of Hasbro. This is sufficient for, say, stills from most cartoons- but IIRC part of the reason The Ultimate guide couldn't cover riD properly was the visual was co-owned by Disney because they bought out Saban. Do we have a general 'copyrighted image, fair use' template that DOESN'T say Hasbro? (That'd be sufficient so long as the image source is attributed correctly in the text. the problem, legally speaking, arises if you cite a template saying hasbro owns somethign they do not- like a picture of Pepsiman. Plus yhere's some stuff hasbro DOESN'T own that Takara does that we'll have/do have snaps of.) -D-rok

I agree, which is why I didn't mention Template:Image Copyright in that post; it's not particularly good. I have, however, drafted up two additional tags which should be used for everything else, providing they're acceptable: Template:Hastak and Template:Fairuse, which should cover virtually all images. The "this image belongs to Hasbro" template should definitely be depreciated. Any comments? --Suki Brits 20:13, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

From an organizational standpoint this is good, but the language of the first is too passive, and the section too loose and confusing. but that's the kind of thing easy to work with later. LEGALLY speaking, they say the right things they need to. -Derik

What is the Community Portal?

We seem to be using this Community Portal as a talk page. That... probably isn't for the best. I would think that the Community Portal should hold announcements that are relevant to all or a large portion of the editors. It would be useful to have a "central" place for editors to discuss site-wide issues, but I think that this page's Talk page would be much more appropriate for that. I propose moving all this discussion to the talk page and writing a new Community Portal which can list "current" initiatives or news about the Wiki. --Steve-o 00:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a lot to add to this, but I think that sounds like a good idea. Something I'll try to look into, however, is seeing if the sidebar to the left can be changed at all. We probably will never use the "Current events" bit, but if we have a different general talk page from the Community Portal, it could be good to have a link there. --Suki Brits 01:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I checked, and we can indeed replace the "Current events" link with one to a general talk page. --Suki Brits 01:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Cool. So... what do we want to do, then? Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal is a reasonable place to put general talk. Creating a new page for general talk doesn't seem necessary to me. Removing the link to "current events" make sense, but I don't know that we need anything else in its place. --Steve-o 01:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Er, yeah, Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal is what I meant. Sorry if that wasn't clear. --Suki Brits 05:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

The Golden Disk/Disc

I have recently begun an entry for the Golden Disc in Beast Wars. It has come to my attention, though, that there are two spelling being used: "disc" and "disk." This is becoming a problem in making sure pages link to the entry on the Golden Disc. I am not sure how to get "Golden Disk" to forward to "Golden Disc." In fact, I have yet to find anything that confirms how the word "disk/disc" should be spelled. Any help would rock. --Sontair

Everything recently spells it "Golden Disk," including Beast Wars 10th Anniversary packaging copy and the upcoming BotCon set. --ItsWalky 18:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I started typing this trying to insist that we stick with disc, since that's clearly the sensical spelling despite what official media might call it; unfortunately, I haven't really managed to find much to support that. In general, disc is supposed to refer to the round type, whereas a disk is something else. For example, compact disc and digital versatile disc are indisputably the correct spellings. The problem is the Golden Disc in question is a record, and nobody really ever called records "discs", so there isn't enough precedent. I was only able to find one source indicating which convention a record would be subject to. It sure would be nice if the Botcon set just spelled it properly and removed any doubt as to how it should be, but that sure isn't happening. --Suki Brits 21:08, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Someone else goes by the "disc=round" thing? Oh, thank God. I told Steve-o this and he looked at me as if I were from Mars. All the "Golden Disk" stuff recently had been setting me on edge. --ItsWalky 21:16, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

From the dictionary I keep in my office....

-disc: 1 A phonograph record. 2 DISK [Var. of DISK]

-disk: 1 A flat, more or less circular plate of any material. 2 Any surface that is flat and circular. 3 A quoit or discus. 4 A phonograph record.

Obviously, language is a fluid thing, but it seems to me that a) the two terms are pretty much interchangable, and b) if one HAS to choose a spelling, the evidence is (oddly) in favor of "disk", between the official packaging, and the fact that BOTH definitions of "disc" connect with "disk".--G.B. Blackrock 22:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Original toy prices?

A project I'd been working on for a long time has been assembling a list of the orignal retail prices for G1/G2 Transformers, since they varied pretty wildly back in the day, plus it's interesting to compare prices (especially after you adjust them for inflation). I think this would be GREAT info to put on the wiki... just where? I'm thinking on the actual character pages next to the relevant toys... chart, perhaps? --M Sipher 22:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Appearances listing

It would probably be useful to have a list of appearances on character pages, but some characters will have colossal lists. I've got some prototype appearance charts on my User Page, so check them out. - RolonBolon 20:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

While I like the format (it's clear and easy to read), it would seem that to use these would require a whole new page just for "Appearances" for each character.... I'm not sure we're up for that....--G.B. Blackrock 21:37, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

For the major characters, sure. But post-1986 G1? Most of Beast Wars/Machines? The vast majority of Mini-Cons? - RolonBolon 21:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I've been fonderign this myself. This si awfully... comprehensive. I was thinking more like a Major Appearances entry. For instance, Nightscream's might read-

Nightscream first appeared in the Beast Machines episode Forbidden Fruit, he played a major part in the entire series after that. Major episodes are: Forbidden Fruit, Savage Noble and A Wolf in the Fold

Only better oganized than that. Just somethign to give an idea of the... range of the TFU across which a character has appeared, but less formalized than your appearances list.

Rav appears in the first two issues of the Wreckers comic book during Beast Machines. Prior to that his backstory ties him to the rebellion agains the Quintessons 9 million years ago. Major episodes are: Wreckers #1 (activated by Nightscream) Wreckers #2 (dies)

-Derik 22:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

While I'm certainly up for considering other formats, I really do think that the format should be formalized. It should easily stand out to anyone who's looking for "appearances."--G.B. Blackrock 03:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I should note that an easy way to find appearances, given proper documentation, is to click the "What links here" bit on the left menu. It's not the best solution, but at the moment, I find it vastly preferable to such a large and cumbersome menu system. --ItsWalky 03:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Franchise/line designations

Long post follows.

A number of questions have been raised recently about use of the franchise/line/continuity designations that we place after Transformer character article titles. Most recently M Sipher made a post about the issue on Category talk:Robot Masters. Some of these issues are raised in my proposed style guide which has gotten very little feedback. Within the last few days, a number of pages for Japanese Beast Wars characters were moved back and forth as part of this confusion. It's something that we need to come to a consensus on and begin enforcing.

It appears to me that this is the primary question:

• Is the designation in a character's article title a FRANCHISE designation or a CONTINUITY designation (or more broadly, a continuity family designation)?

Currently the answer to that question is unclear. Some examples:

• Japanese Beast Wars franchises are all lumped together under "BW", as if their different-franchises nature is meaningless.
• BW and BM are given separate labels, as if their different-franchises nature is meaningful.
• BW, BM, and TFU are labelled separately from G1, as if their same-continuity nature is meaningless.
• Armada, Energon, and Cybertron are all labelled UT, as if their same-continuity nature is meaningful.
• Characters who appear in the G1/Beast/TFU continuity are generally given a qualifier indicating the franchise in which they first appeared, but characters who appear in the Armada/Energon/Cybertron continuity are all given the UT qualifier.

This is all terribly inconsistant and confusing.

As a matter of taste, I personally like the idea of lumping the UT franchises together, but at the same time, I don't like the idea of putting G1, J-G1, BW, J-BW, BM, and TFU all under a single qualifying label, even if we had a name for that continuity in the first place. Partly because they exist in my mind as connected but still distinct entities, and partly because labelling them that way would eliminate the primary purpose for those labels being there in the first place: disambiguation.

I propose that we use franchise identifiers instead of continuity identifiers. For consistency's sake, this would suggest that we change all the UT titles to their appropriate franchise. Doing so would require a lot of work, but there are automated Wiki-editors (bots) which can do maintenance of that sort, so if that's the route we want to take, it would not require hand-editing hundreds of pages.

Despite the inconsistency, though, I would be willing (and would even prefer) to leave the UT franchises bunched together as UT. I'm not quite sure why I feel that way. I think it is because all the UT franchises happened one after the other with no breaks, and with complete knowledge within the fandom that they were all one entity, such that they felt to me more like a single meta-franchise of sorts. The G1/Beast/Universe continuity, on the other hand, has been cobbled together over many, many years by a variety of writers. It's not the (more or less) cohesive straight shot that the UT has been under Aaron Archer's creative control.

Again, this is an important organizational issue which has already led to a lot of confusion and wasted effort. I think we need to sort it out soon, and would like to see discussion of various solutions and their strengths/weaknesses. Thanks for your attention.

--Steve-o 03:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to say I'm pretty much in complete agreement with you on this on all marks. I'd PREFER to keep the UT entries marked as such for the very same reason... we've never really HAD a multi-line series that felt so purposely self-contained as a single entity (the whole Galaxy Force carbunkle regardless). But, well, I think that in general, listing by sub-franchise of character origin appears to make the most sense. This will involve coming up with more tags we can all agree with, mind... (A) (E) (C) for the individual UT franchises? (HM) (MF) (V) (Z) (OC) for the Japanese G1 sub-franchises?

And yeah, I'm all for bringing back the (BWII) and (BWN) tags.

--M Sipher 03:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Would you feel the same if BWII/Neo had been dubbed into english?

Is this a 'different series' thing or a 'different continuities' thing? Because a single franchise can have multiple continuities.

(I frankly see the various BW series as rather tightly interwoven, despite there being (relatively) little crossover between the casts.) But at this point, the US BW series has had, in some version, appearances by Lio Convoy, Big Convoy, Heinrad, Magmatron, Shaow Panther/TPA crossing directly across lines in 1 continuity... (or is Shadow Panther considered (BW) because he was released for Japan's BW line?) and various nods back and forth.

I mean, I agree that cluping all 3 BW series together and making BM a serperate suffix is daft... but it seems to me the reason we started witht the suffixes was to avoid confusion with allt he name re-use- "Do you mean G1 Blurr or Armada Blurr?" And there's been very little name re-use within what we're calling (BW) (Ironicly, it's that very standard from which TFU having its own designation follows logically- it's rife with name re-use and opportunities for confusion.) -Derik 05:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

"Is this a 'different series' thing or a 'different continuities' thing? Because a single franchise can have multiple continuities."

Have you considered, oh, reading the godsdamned text?

--M Sipher 05:47, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Have you considered- *ahme*

I was not expressing confusion over the nature of the proposed suffix change- I was questioning the reasoning behind it. I went back and revisited ouoriginal reasons for instituting a suffix system, and asked if you'd been different in BW2 and Neo had been dubbed into US continuity. (Wondering if their semi-seperate continuity was the reason behind moving them.)

To re-iterate- we started w/ the suffixes because of confusion abotu name re-use. BW in its various incarnations has vvery little name re-use.

So yeah, I read the damn text. -Derik 06:04, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

My opinion, and apparently Siph's as well, is that continuity suffixes would introduce more problems than it would solve. For example, there is the question of what to call the G1/Beast/Universe continuity and what to do about the large number of duplicate names within it. If we are going to say that the suffixes are based on continuity (families), then we can't leave the Beast stuff separate from G1. Are you proposing a scheme that is based on neither continuities nor franchises? I could potentially see room for something like that, based on "groups" of franchises that have some sort of commonality and little name reuse, but... that sounds like it will be clumsy. Do you have something in mind? --Steve-o 06:31, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Breaking (UT) into it's constituents and re-introducing the (BWII) and (BWN) tags seems the most logical thing to do here (as well as further seperating (J-G1)) if consistency is the goal; and I think it should be. I agree with Steve and Siph in that the continuity system would be awkward, at best, mainly because, unlike Unicron Trilogy, there's no term in the lexicon for the G1/Beast Wars/Beast Machines group.Shellspark 14:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

From Teletraan I: The Transformers Wiki, a Wikia wiki.