MediaWiki talk:Community Portal: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:22, 22 May 2009

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

The move away from Wikia:

Our policy on having ads in the wiki:

Transformers Wiki:Ads

The Bookworm database-crash:

	Community Portal Archives
Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9 Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14 Archive 15 Archive 16 Archive 17 Archive 18 Archive 19 Archive 20 Archive 21 Archive 22 Archive 23 Archive 24 Archive 25 Archive 26 Archive 27 Archive 28 Archive 29 Archive 30 Archive 31 Archive 32

So what now?

This discussion has been moved to Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2#So what now?.

Image aspect ratios

I notice a lot of Animated screencaps, like Image:SariLayingDown1.jpg, are out-of-aspect ratio, which is kinda annoying - neither NTSC (480i, typically 720x480, US/Japan) nor PAL (576i, typically 720x576, UK/Europe/Australia) use square pixels, while computers do. A screencap from a 4:3 NTSC source should really be resized to 640px wide for uploading here, while a screencap from a 4:3 PAL source should be resized to 768px wide. - SanityOrMadness 21:39, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Since screen caps usually have to be trimmed of black borders, I'm not going to bugger about trying to get the aspect ratio correct. I just upload whatever my DVD software gives me. --FFN 03:05, 29 March 2009 (EDT)

News from Wookieepedia

A while back, one of the users here suggested a partnership between Wookieepedia and this wiki. In case you're wondering what happened with that, the ongoing nomination process is here. Silly Dan 22:44, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Awesome! Now, settle this argument - could Death Star transformed as Darth Vader beat Unicron? --FFN 07:13, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Cool. I think I made a vague overture there at one point specifically about the coverage of Attacktix and that weird Star Wars vs. TF packaging - I understand there have been some direct and less-direct TF references in SW (which I imagine will only continue to crop up, given that the current and incoming generations of SW official content creators are likely to be of the age where they're at least casually aware of TF, if not fans in their own right), so this is probably a pretty reasonable networking opportunity. We can explain to you guys why the Optimus Prime that fought Darth Vader doesn't look like the one you had as a kid, and you can explain to us how the entire thing was totally non-canonical anyway. Heh heh. Hooper_X 07:54, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Purging redirects

I've noticed that the recovery process has been used as a good excuse for deleting useless redirects. I'm totally in support of this, and I'd like to figure out what counts as "useless." I used to think the more redirects, the better, since that would increase the chances of good results from people's misspelled or ill-informed searches. But now that we have that auto-drop-down suggestion thing, I've pulled a complete 180. Every redirect just clutters that menu up. To my mind, there are only five justifications for any redirect:

It's the base version of an otherwise parenthetically-disambiguated set (Optimus Prime)
It's an alternate official term (Rodimus Prime)
It's a fan-term that is equally or more prevalent than the official term (Big Floating Head)
It's an alternate parenthetical that had received notable support in discussion (I think Sideways (Armada) was heading in that direction before the crash)
It's a valid alternate spelling/parsing, especially if the auto-drop-down wouldn't naturally correct the user (STARS)

I can't think of any other valid reason for a redirect existing. I bring this up because I've noticed in repairing the S.T.A.R.S. articles that there are both vestigial redirects from past improper capitalization (Have the Decepticons Defeated Us Once and For All?) and newly-created redirects compensating for a grammatical mistake on Hasbro's part (Rodimus Prime remembers the Transformers' greatest battle on Earth.). I don't think either of those have sufficient reason to exist. What say you?
- Jackpot 12:38, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

The less redirects, the better, I think. They just clutter up the search suggestion box, thereby getting in the way rather than helping. Talk page redirects should be killed on sight.

But in this regard, we have Optimus (G1) redirecting to Optimus Prime (G1). Same for other Optimuses and Nemesises and the like. I'm in favour of getting rid of these as well (one such shortened version could stay to redirect to the dismabguation page, but that's it), but I'm not entirely sure. Geewunling 12:46, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Actually, looking at the auto-drop-down menu results for "Optimus (", it looks like every single series has its own version of that. That strikes me as silly; Optimus is all we need. But it depends on your approach: I'm taking a guilty-until-proven-innocent view, where redirects are assumed to be deletable unless they can be defended on the grounds stated above. I checked out how Wikipedia does it, and they seem to favor the opposite view, based on the logic that a deleted redirect can cause unforeseen breakages (like if other websites link to the now-defunct redirect). I personally find their arguments unconvincing, but I don't know how other people feel. - Jackpot 14:03, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Not to mention it is confusing, like in the case of Nemesis (G1)/Nemesis Prime (G1) - most "Nemesis (" are redirects to their respective Nemesis Prime, but Nemesis (G1) leads to the ship, breaking any sense of consistency. As far as common shortened versions of names go, I think all we need is one that redirects to the disambiguation page. Geewunling 14:58, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Absolutely agreed. - Jackpot 19:00, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

I believe we need to give a little leeway to those who are even less than a casual fan. Having extra redirects for characters vaguely remembered (Optimus, Soundwave). Some people may just find the search box, type, and hit enter without even taking into account the drop down menu. One thing I think should remain to a point as well are acronyms minus the periods, i.e. GI Joe or STARS. A quick type, enter, and it redirects. I say this especially with GI Joe in mind since we may be getting traffic with the new movie and the JoePedia seems deader than the wikia TF.

I agree with Jackpot when it comes to redirects being linked to. I highly doubt that will be a problem. In-wiki we have a great team to fix all links before the page is deleted. In the case of out-wiki links, those who place the most around the net are very unlikely to link to a redirect. Those that do I think are too much of a minority to tip the balance against cleanliness of page numbers. Savvy? :::--Bluestreak7 16:53, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Good point with the acronyms. I've added it to the list up above. I'm not sure what you mean about the "extra redirects for characters vaguely remembered", though. In the Optimus example, what less-than-casual fan is going to type "Optimus (G1)"? They're just going to type "Optimus", which will go to the disambig. All those "Optimus (__)" articles still seem completely useless to me. - Jackpot 19:00, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

I'd argue that gramatically correct forms of titles should remain as redirects. I don't want to expect a user to remember that one STARS flyer skimped on an apostrophe or that "Inferno Imprisoned" is actually spelled "Inferno Improsoned". Everything else I agree with you. —Interrobang 19:16, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Though both of those would be wrong because it's actually Improsoned Inferno. I'm not being needlessly nitpicky: It demonstrates the point that I always make a habit of double-checking my links if there's the slightest question about them (especially given how many disambig-pages we have these days). Plus does this mean we should have Scorponok (episode) and Transformers (Italy) pages?

That having been said, I'm not particularly die-hard about this question. The "improsoned" example doesn't bother me that much because it's such a short title and therefore people would likely try to link it from memory. "Rodimus Prime remembers the Transformers greatest battle on Earth.", on the other hand, is so ridiculously long that I wouldn't expect anybody to try to use without looking it up first. It certainly took me a while to get comfortable with it, and I'm the S.T.A.R.S. expert here. Plus having the two(!) apostrophe'd redirects adds a level of absurdity to the drop-down, since you can't even see the difference in the limited space.

Incidentally, right before we left Wikia, a feature was implemented that made the drop-down appear every time you typed a double-bracket while editing. I hadn't decided if that was awesome or annoying before it went away, but if it ever comes back, the argument for "correction" redirects will become even weaker, I think.

- Jackpot 20:13, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

While I agree about keeping useful redirects like the aforementioned STARS and Imprisoned Inferno, I do want to point out that our visitors are not either minimally knowledged on Transformers or complete retards. Someone with barely any knowledge on Transformers should still be able to find the correct article, if not through the search suggestion boxes, then through disambiguation banners or related pages (like "Energon (cartoon)" for Improsoned Inferno). And I doubt anyone would be annoyed about a tiny bit of searching. Geewunling 04:00, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Speaking of the search suggestion box, is it possible to customise its behaviour to give priority to articles starting with whatever you type in? At the moment, if I type in "Megatron", I get a choice of "All Hail Megatron" issues rather than a choice of actual characters named "Megatron". This makes the suggestion thing less useful in my books, and it'd be better if it gave me a choice of articles with names starting with Megatron and then other articles with "Megatron" in the name. --abates 22:20, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't think the search extension proper allows you to do this in settings, but it could be done by adjusting the code.

(You could also make it so redirects didn't show up in the search-suggestion box, which seems much more important to me.)

Hh. I just discovered something hilarious about redirects, I'm gonna make it a new topic. -Derik 22:38, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I vote against the removal of redirects from the search-suggestion box. It would be ridiculous not to be suggested "Rodimus Prime (G1)" when searching for Rodimus because the article's name is "Hot Rod (G1)" with the other identity's name as redirect. Geewunling 00:47, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Can we have the search-menu program ignore redirects by default but have an option for exceptions? For instance, maybe there could be a template that we add to redirects that we actually WANT to have show up in the search-menu, like Rodimus Prime. I know nothing of the programming magic necessary to make this happen, so can someone in the know tell if this is feasible? - Jackpot 02:33, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

But... what purpose do redirects serve if not to help people find an article? The only ones I'm sparing are ones someone arguably could use for their search? Geewunling 02:38, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm gonna agree with Geewunling here. There is no meaningful way to differentiate redirects we want to show up in the searchbox from those we don't, and they are useful to show up as suggestions. The way to get that signal to noise ratio better is exactly what he's been doing, purging those redirects that are unlikely to be frequent search terms, and leaving the ones that people are likely to search by.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 02:41, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

*Psst* "she". Geewunling 02:49, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

No, no, I already deleted that redirect. "He" is all we have left.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 02:53, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Deleting "unworthy" redirects is a rather... violent solution. Even though I advocated it at the beginning of this discussion, I actually do prefer a surgical removal from just the search-menu instead if it's possible. As this discussion has shown, different people have different standards for what counts as worthwhile, and I'd rather see arguments revolve around something as easily changeable as a template than the creation/deletion of whole pages. Plus there's the sheer man-hours factor: My instinct is that more redirects are created by renaming badly-titled articles than because of valid alternates, and therefore it will be more work to cull all the worthless redirects than it will be to modify the good ones for menu-inclusion.

Plus I had another thought that might circumvent the need for any redirect-modification: What if typing the name of a redirect made the drop-down show only the actual article? For instance, the word "Rodimus" is in the name of four different redirects to Hot Rod (G1): Rodimus Prime, Rodimus Prime (G1), Hot Rodimus, and New Rodimus. For some reason only the last two currently show up in the drop-down when you type "Rodimus", but that's still twice as many as there ought to be. If it just said "Hot Rod (G1)" instead of any of those, then we'd be keeping the drop-down clean without blocking the user's path, plus there would be no need at all to delete, modify, or otherwise discriminate among redirects.

(Again, I have NO idea if this is programmatically feasible... but it's the best scenario I can envision.)

- Jackpot 02:33, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

There is no meaningful way to differentiate redirects we want to show up in the searchbox from those we don't

We could have the search function not return redirects, which was the way it behaved on wikia.

It's not a huge issue for most wikis-- but because we are so "disambiguated," (almost every major article having multiple disambigs and redirects,) it's kinda a big deal for us.

So we probably want Scour to edit SearchSuggest.php so that.

if($location == 1){
 
	$res = $db->select( 'page', 'page_title',
			array(  'page_namespace' => 0,
				'page_is_redirect' => 0,
				"UPPER(page_title) LIKE '%" .$db->strencode( strtoupper ($term)). "%'" ),
				"wfSajaxSearch",
				array( 'LIMIT' => $limit )
			);
} else {		

	$res = $db->select( 'page', 'page_title',
		array(  'page_namespace' => 0,
			'page_is_redirect' => 0,
			"UPPER(page_title) LIKE '". $db->strencode( strtoupper ($term)) ."%'" ),
			"wfSajaxSearch",
			array( 'LIMIT' => $limit )
		);		
}

We'd probably also want to set $location = 0; near the beginning of the file. (Match titles from the front only.) -Derik 07:23, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I can't tell what that code does, but from your description it sounds like it would just purge all redirects from the search drop-down. Thing is, so far you're the only one who thinks that's a good idea. I agree with Geewunling and Rosicrucian that at least some redirects are helpful, since there are so many valid alternate terms. So I've been suggesting middle-ground ideas, but I've got no clue if they can actually be done. What do you think of them? - Jackpot 07:33, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

When do you need a redirect in a search-suggestion? Searching for "Megatron" will give you a list of pages with disambigs after them. Searching for "Matrix" will give you a list of pages whose title starts with "Matrix." Matrix (Disambiguation) will be the first match because a "(" comes before any letter alphabetically.

What redirects do you want in there? "Humans" as well as "Human" You want "Brothers in Armor" (a redirect) to appear in addition to the real page "Brothers in Armor!!"

I assume you do have a reason why including redirects in the list of search suggestions would be an idea, an example-case I'm missing. Could you tell me what it is?

I mean-- we get 8 suggestions. There are more than 8 Optimus Primes. At this point I go to the (disambiguation) page, or click RiD Prime at random, then click its disambig link to navigate sideways to the Prime I want.

Wikia's search suggest nix'd redirects-- and a lot of times I just used it to to find a page title I knew was "right" rather than a redirect. So if I see the link to "Falcon" on this page is blinking because it's a redirect, I type "Falcon" into the search-suggest box to see what my options are. Having any redirects there, no matter how well-intentioned is bad. I don't WANT to see "Falcon" as a search-suggestion (it's the #1 match,) because that's a redirect.

When exactly is having a redirect in a search suggestion useful? -Derik 07:57, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

An example has already been brought up: Rodimus Prime. If you type that in and the menu doesn't show redirects, you'll get Rodimus Prime (Animated) and Rodimus Prime remembers the Transformers greatest battle on Earth., but you WON'T get Hot Rod (G1), which is most likely what you were looking for. If you want more examples than that, a couple have already jumped to mind, but I hope you'll agree without further persuasion that there are lots of cases like this. Hence my two suggestions: We exclude redirects by default and either 1) have a template we can throw onto valuable redirects so they're not excluded, or 2) make it so the core article actually shows up in the menu even if the word you're typing isn't in its title. Like I also said, I have NO idea if either of those is feasible. But without some intercessory factor like that, I think simply excluding redirects is a little too baby-with-the-bathwater. In the meantime, Geewunling is weeding through dozens of redirects, marking for deletion all of the ones she judges unworthy. I think THAT solution is dismayingly painstaking and severe (even though I suggested it in the first place), but in the absence of a programmatic solution, it might end up being the best. - Jackpot 09:04, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Geewunling likes to point out that she thinks a lot of these redirects should be fixed and/or deleted regardless. There's no point in keeping most of them, and they clog up things. I like some of the ideas mentioned here on how to have search suggestion box react on queries to exclude unhelpful redirects, but we should just get rid of a lot of them anyway. Btw, I've been wondering, is it possible to make the search suggestion box a bit longer than it currently is? Geewunling 09:30, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Sorry, I didn't mean to disparage your efforts; I appreciate orderliness as much as anyone, and it's pleasing to see useless redirects vanish. By all means, as long as you have the gumption for it, knock yourself out. What's "dismaying" about it to me, the more I think about it, is the idea of it becoming our official solution to the problem of a cluttered search menu. That's a lot of painstaking work to put on the shoulders of the wiki in general, especially since we're never going to see the end of useless redirects as the wiki grows. And the thing is, if we can find a programmatic solution for the search-menu issue, then the only area where redirects will really "clog up things" the annoying realm of double-redirects, which have been popping up at a very manageable rate so far. - Jackpot 09:47, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Double redirects are easy-- have the 'bot fix 'em.

And thank you Jackpot, "Rodimus Prime (G1)" is a good example of a time when redirects in search boxes would be useful-- my imagination failed me.

Here's the thing-- the thing you're suggesting... hiding all redirects except ones we flag in-page is... not possible, at least not without a fundamental change to the core functionality of the wiki, which is code I wouldn't touch with a ten foot laser pole. The "page_is_redirect" flag is a fundamental yes-no boolean database field associated with the page entry. We can reference that, but turning it into something squishier like "is redirect, or is a page we like" sounds nightmarish. I guess maybe you could totally rewrite the database query to use a join that tests against a category id... or more likely a category name that would be... ugh, it's giving me a headache just thinking about it... you'd be transforming a light ajax query that might be performed 10 times when you're typing a single word into an incredibly heavy cross-referencing string-match join query-- it's the difference between using a cup-holder and getting out of the car to fetch your drink from the trunk every time you want to take a sip. ...not to mention you'd be making core wiki functionality dependent on proprietary hacks-- in the service of a function that's supposed to be a minor enhancement.

Let me sketch another scenario for you.

I want Rodimus Prime! I type him in the search box.
I see several results, none of which looks like the one I want. Rather than "Rodimus (disambiguation)" I clock "Rodimus (Animated)," just ot be difficult.
This isn't the guy I want! Oh look, there's a link at the top-- "Other people called Rodimus Prime..." Hey, it's a list! And I want the first one on it!

You know-- that's assuming that the person clicks on the search-suggest. Most people don't. If they click "Search" it'll come up just liek ti always does. The suggest function is just a tiny helper, completely seperate from actual searching.

And finally (and this is the real thing) the search suggest function has been entirely replaced in the new version of MediaWiki. I don't know what's different about the new version, but I think it's stupid to sink too much time into making this version perfect. Slap it a few times to make it behave more like we want, but hold off on major changes until the upgrade.

And finally, I agree with Jackpot-- purging redirects (which may be linked to from off-site) in order to make the "search suggest" function work neater is incredibly wrong-headed. Purge redirects if you want-- we certainly need to get rid of some... but that should not be your reason.

We deleted the "Nest" -> "N.E.S.T." redirect yesterday. Because apparently no one will ever search for "Nest." This is out of control. -Derik 10:17, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

There is now a "NEST" -> "N.E.S.T." redirect and "NEST" comes up in the search box when you type "nest". And I click on the suggested list all the time. I think the only real improvement necessary is to assume that the what you are typing is the first word of the article. (so that "All Hail Megatron" doesn't come up when you type "Megatron") - Starfield 10:27, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm not feeling my work trivialized; most of the things you have said so far count as compliments to me. I'm merely stating what I believe to be the right solution for practical reasons. My current reasoning is that once we have this redirect purging done, it is easier to prevent in the future. A lot of our current redirects to me seem the result of misspellings, disagreements and/or need for an identifier, mostly from a time when we didn't have that awesome search suggestion thing and didn't have a bot to change links for us. I figure that with a clean slate and slightly better organization (like, mark the damn talk page redirect for deletion once you've moved a page), we can prevent the ridicilousness of redirects we currently have. And I disagree with Starfield's suggestion. While we need something for the Megatron search "problem", I have gotten a lot of redirects deleted on the basis that a later word in the query gets you the correct suggestion. Most recent example would be the "Headmasters" redirects to "The Headmasters" articles. But also in case of titles like all the doctors we have, just a correct combination of symbols anywhere should get you the proper suggestions. Geewunling 10:44, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

...crap, I forgot searches were case-insensitive, aren't they, even if the actual page links aren't. Bitchy complaint withdrawn.

And yeah, it's annoying as fuck to see page-after-page of redirect-flagging and deleting every time I check the wiki... but it's not exactly unneeded, and a bunch of that stems from imprort and page recovery, stuff that had moved etc... we're just getting it all at once and clearing out 2 years of accumulated deadwood all at once. I have no problem with that-- Deadwood should be cleared. As long as we're doing it for the right reasons. The volume will level off eventually. -Derik 12:52, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Thank you, Derik, for explaining why my idea #1 won't work. What about #2? Can the search-suggest, in the process of not displaying redirects, recognize where each redirect is going and display those pages in the menu too? As I said when I first suggested it, I actually think that's the BEST option of all. Based on your explanation, I'm guessing it's not feasible, but since you only mentioned my first idea, I want to be extra-sure no options are being dismissed out of hand.

I appreciate your point about the new MediaWiki, but given what happened the last time it was installed, do you really think we'll try again in the remotely near future? My instinct is that it's too far off to be a factor worth consideration. Besides, maybe we can find out right now if the whole point is moot or not. Do we know of any wikis that are using the new software?

- Jackpot 15:44, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

The last abortive attempt at a MediaWiki upgrade should not be taken as by any means typical, nor as an example of best practices performing such an upgrade. It can be done better, we know how to do it better, and the only reason it wasn't done better is because it was done by people other than the ones we generally trust with such things.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 16:16, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Page load issues

For further information, see: Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2

Wikia credits in redirects

I just discovered this... it looks liek all of our redirects have wikia credits in the code. They don't show up normally, but hit the edit button, and there they all are. --M Sipher 01:33, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

I noticed this as well, and pointed it out over on the Damage Control Central section.... What I'm curious about is, is there any way for a bot to seek and destroy these? Because there's no way to see them unless you hit the edit button... --Detour 01:42, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

I'm wondering if, when we move servers, we can run the same script we used when moving here in order to purge all Wikia links. --abates 01:47, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

I think we're gonna run a SQL database import when we move servers- so probably not.

I (finally) have a complete list of all wiki pages (as of about a week ago) including redirects. I'll rig my de-wikia-er script over the redirects tonight as soon as Big Sweep 2.0 is done-- at least on the 4000-odd redirects in the name namespace. (2.0 does about 1/3 of what I'd hoped it would... the regex's were just breaking my fucking balls, so I resigned myself to taking baby steps. Right now it's fixing one sort of in-page template and fixing all the escaped HTML-- so stuff will at least start looking more right, even if it's not properly template'd.) -Derik 01:21, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Icons on external links

Derik is experimenting with sticking icons on the external links for common external link sites (both for branding, and because it lets you visually scan the links without reading them-- "I want the profile-- NTFA!") These icons require CSS3, and I THINK they work on all modern browsers... but I really dont' care because they fail silently (creating no problems) if they don't. These icons should only show up in the External Link section-- I'm worried they might screw up layouts elsewhere.

If you hate it, think it could be improved, or just want a site added- let me know. The community can feel free to vote to toss it out if it's annoying... I just thought it was worth trying. -Derik 01:12, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Quotes

This discussion was moved from Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central#Quotes.

Quotes now seem to look like this:

Freedom is the right of all sentient beingsOptimus Prime

when IIRC before the crash they look like this:

“	Freedom is the right of all sentient beings	”
—Optimus Prime

Now, it seems we can get the second result using the {{bigquote}} template instead of the basic {{quote}} template that is currently populating most of the pages.

I'm of the opinion that the bigquote look is much more pleasing to the eye and it also seemed to be the norm before the crash. Should we change the quotes to bigquotes on individual pages or just have someone with template knowledge make a change there? --Bluestreak7 23:29, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Discussion on Template_talk:Quote suggests that bigquote is the old style and quote is the new style. --abates 01:37, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Mind you I didn't ask anyone before swapping styles-- the intention was to give people a chance to evaluate the new look, but we only had it for a few days before the crash... so I don't think anyone noticed. :p

It's my opinion that the old quote template took up too much space-- which is find for a single quote at the top of an article when you want to make a big thing of it, but I thought most uses of the template would look nicer with s smaller visual footprint. (Plus the html is more contextual.)

Some people seem to dislike the chevron-style quoting... it's consistent with what, at the time, were our new reference templates-- also lost in the crash. The real appeal, to me, is that it lets you put quotes inside the quote template (such as an exchange between characters) without looking weird. The way we used to do that was multiple quote templates in a row, which (being oversize already) resulted in a massive on-screen footprint.

If the consensus is to switch to the bigQuote format for all quotes instead of the smaller one, I guess that's the community's perogative... but I'm gonna argue against it until that decision is made.

I like bitQuote-- it's great if you want a quote to be a big thing. Most of the time you don't. When you do-- why not just use {{bigquote}}? -Derik 01:48, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Ahhh, my mistake! I coulda sworn I'd seen quote in use longer! --abates 01:55, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Why I don't like "quote":

It's ugly.
It's bigger than bigQuote. That seems to defeat the whole point.
Single guillemots don't get used as quotation marks in English and so they don't parse as quotation marks.
It's incredibly ugly.
And finally-if-slightly-tangentially, there's a conscious effort, it seems, to change all "bigquotes" to "quotes", which defeats the whole point of having two templates.

Definite vote to revert - SanityOrMadness 11:35, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

I vote against the revert. I do not like the old quote style, as noted on the above-linked discussion page. All we need to do is change the guillemots to quote marks and it's fine by me. --M Sipher 04:08, 9 April 2009 (EDT) In accordance with the general wishes of the community, the quotes have been changed from guillemots to standard quotation... though I think it looks terribly silly that way. You can see just how silly over at Template_talk:Quote. -Derik 23:57, 10 April 2009 (EDT)

Well, one day after updating the quote template, I finally ran into exactly the scenario I was talking about in regards to quotes within quotes. I need to quote this passage (which includes but is not composed exclusively of dialog) for an article.

"Farewell Optimus prime," [Starscream] whispered to himself. "Time for Endspark."Starscream, Ghosts of Yesterday p280

That looks absolutely retarded. The guillemots may have been ugly-- but they were at least clear. And none of the user suggestions (including User:Abates idea of using multiple parameters for a series of quotes) applies here-- because the text is inline.

You all suck. Does anyone have any suggestions other than guillemots to make that look less retarded? Because {{bigquote}} looks even worse. -Derik 02:53, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Rule four suggests it should look like this:

'Farewell Optimus prime,' [Starscream] whispered to himself. 'Time for Endspark.'Starscream, Ghosts of Yesterday p280

although you could also use ‘ and ’ maybe? --abates 03:33, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I have restore the guillemots as an optional flag. (style=2) The entire point of using a non-english quotation mark was to avoid conflicts with English quotation marks, so the guillemots seem like a good fallback position when there is a conflict.

'Farewell Optimus prime,' [Starscream] whispered to himself. 'Time for Endspark.'Starscream, Ghosts of Yesterday p280

This necessitated html and css changes, so some quotes may look funny for the next 24 hours or so until the pages de-cache. (They'll preview properly, and if you save them they'll look right... but left on their own they will re-cache with the updated {{quote}} HTML in short order, so don't bother.) -Derik 03:50, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Uh, why not take the easy route. Leave out the opening and closing quotation marks when you post, and the template fills them in. i.e.,

Farewell Optimus prime," [Starscream] whispered to himself. "Time for Endspark.Starscream, Ghosts of Yesterday p280

There you go, simple and doesn't involve guillemots that don't parse for anyone. - SanityOrMadness 05:01, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

What a lovely mix of smart and dumb quotes you have created. -Derik 05:46, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Given the use of a monospaced font, it doesn't make sense to use "smart" quotation marks anyway... - SanityOrMadness 07:24, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I prefer the old style quotes. Nobody can make me use the new ones. --FFN 06:09, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I agree, for all the reasons that SanityOrMadness listed above (especially points 1, 2 and 4)81.108.237.26 13:44, 18 May 2009 (EDT)

I completely don't care about this discussion, but I must take the time to point out that it's "guillemet". "Guillemot" is a bird, which is decidedly not relevant to this discussion. —Interrobang 03:49, 16 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't think the normal quotes show up properly in IE6 and a normal quote overlaps an image on http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Protoform so that needs to be fixed or bigquote restored.81.108.237.26 11:08, 22 May 2009 (EDT)

Epnav working?

I remember someone complaining that our episode navigation was broken when we first did crash recovery. Is that still the case?

(Let's pretend that this inquiry is NOT related to me going through goggle analytics and realizing, to my horror, what % of page traffic passes through those previous/next links.) -Derik 04:06, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

I have no idea about the previous possible issues, but I'll point out here that some articles with epnavs converted so they look right, but when you edit them you'll see the epnav sectiosn were just converted to HTML equivalents of our epnav templates. I don't know if this is a problem, but I've placed a bookworm 2 on pages where I have found them regardless. --FFN 07:40, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Interrobang fixed any issues with that a couple of days ago, I think. --abates 08:14, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Project:

For whatever reason, links to Project: Transtector (see Japanese Self Defense Core and Minerva) are automagically translated into links to "Transformers Wiki:Transtector". I'm thinking that's probably not the intended result. --abates 08:44, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Seems to be a kludge to redirect links to wikiprojects.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 13:51, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Blue boxes

Not sure where else to ask this question: Is there a reason the blue boxes (stub, coming soon, etc) don't have right hand borders? Or is this just something wonky with my computer? This has bothered me for some time, just thought it would be a good time to fix this (if it isn't just me) while all the other corrections are being made post-disaster.Khajidha 13:44, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Better suited for the community portal. The main page discussion is specifically for the main page itself. I've moved your question over.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 13:50, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Are you using IE 7? I lose the right-hand side of the stub box in that too. --abates 16:04, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Orphaned pages

Now that things are starting to get in order, I've started my work on the orphaned page list again. I've noticed something odd. It seems there are a bunch of pages with special characters on the orphaned pages listing that are obviously not orphaned. It mostly seems to be Japanese voice actors and such. If you go to the pages and click the "What links here" button, there are pages linking to it.

At first I thought maybe it was an old list, but since then I have integrated in other orphaned pages and the list does continue update. The question is can we even do anything about this due to the automation? I really would like to get that list down at least to one page. Orphaned pages annoy me.--Bluestreak7 17:12, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

While I have no idea how to fix this, it seems like these special character pages have acquired some weird kind of duplicates. For example, type "rmun" into the search box, and the dropdown menu gives you two different "Jörmungandr" articles, apparently with the same name but using different URLs for the special characters: "Jo%CC%88rmungandr" and "J%C3%B6rmungandr". Wiki considers the former URL to be an orphaned article and the latter one to be "correct", but both lead to the same article, no Wiki redirects or nothing. --Apoc 17:38, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

I have some ideas about fixing the problem, but I'd rather set up a test server to try them on before doing them on the main site. --abates 17:41, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

FYI: Professor Gō has two entries in Category sections. One is real (and filed under "G") and one is messed up (and filed under "P"). It isn't a redirect, it is some kind of ghost. - Starfield 16:51, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I've also noticed that our page count on the Main Page seems to be in a state of flux. It gets up higher and then lowers. I wonder if this is due to these "duplicate" pages sometimes getting counted and other times not. --Bluestreak7 10:42, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

I think I am the fault of that. I'm not sure if it goes for all instances, but at least when I put the delete template on a redirect, it suddenly counts as a "page". Wait until someone has removed those pages marked for deletion - the count will lower again. Then wait for me to mark a few more and the page count will go up again. Geewunling 11:02, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

Comics copyright

Right now, the comiccover template states that:

This image is the cover of a single issue of a comic book, the copyright for which is owned by either the publisher or the artist who produced this cover.

...and similarly, the comicinterior template says:

This image is a panel or sequence of panels of a comic book, the copyright for which is owned by either the publisher or the artist and/or writer who produced this issue.

Thing is, that's inaccurate in significant part - AIUI, Hasbro Transformers comic licencees have to surrender the copyrights on material published in a TF comic to Hasbro... with certain exceptions - primarily for our purposes, the publisher logos and publisher-owned characters. That's why Marvel went to the trouble of debuting Circuit Breaker and Death's Head (and others? Not counting issue 3 of the Marvel US series with long-established Spider-Man, Nick Fury, etc; of course) outside of their TF comics, so that they would retain the rights; and why Titan & IDW can reprint Marvel issues (although IDW seem to have a *lot* more trouble getting the rights to reprint the Marvel-owned stuff than Titan did).

Does anyone know enough of the details to write up versions of the templates suitable for Marvel US, Marvel UK, IDW, etc? [DW is more complicated, since their G1 ongoing and WW v3 fell into the black hole of their bankruptcy, when their earlier, nominally completed, stuff didn't] - SanityOrMadness 11:53, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Redirects while editing

Go to User:Derik/Sandbox7, hit edit, then preview. (Hitting shift-refresh might be required to clear out your CSS cache if the effect isn't apparent.)

Links to redirects are highlighted in preview mode only. If it's not highlighted, you know you're pointing to an actual page rather than a redirect. Should probably make it easier to just guess on a lot of links while still being assured you're picking valid ones.

(Pink is a terrible color to use for this. Any suggestions on how this should be styled? Sparkle-background?) -Derik 22:46, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Would making them simply underlined be too subtle? --abates 23:15, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

I worry it's too subtle. What about this?

If that's too subtle I could break out the sparkling text and have the wiki chant "Septus, Dominus!" every time you mouse over it...-Derik 23:30, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Aw, what's wrong with the pink? I think that one's clear enough. Geewunling 00:39, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Not bad. At least this way it'll be easier to catch the redirects, applying changes when necessary. Although pink... I think it'd be better if the color was a different contrast if it's in the colored section of the templates (as in the episode/comic templates). --Lonegamer78 01:34, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Abates suggested underlining... since the redirects only show up that way when in preview mode, I think it'd be a good idea to have multiple visual indications. (I don't think the previous/next links on the comicnav, for example, will change color... because they already have a color set. If you have multiple indicators (color underline, etc...) chances are at least one will remain noticable no matter what happens.

Does anyone hate the blinking? (It's a firefox-only style.) Normally I HATE anything that blinks because its distracting, but the whole point here is to be able to easily spot the redirects. -Derik 01:58, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Eh, blinking's fine. Not that of a biggy for me. --Lonegamer78 02:08, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

It's only in the preview and not in the saved pages, so the blinking is ok so far as I'm concerned! --abates 02:15, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I think the feature is great? But yes, I hate the blinking. - Starfield 10:03, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

This might be a good time to mention this, but just because a link is pink and flashy doesn't necessarily mean it is a mistake needing fixing, right? It is sometimes OK to use redirect links. If you are talking about Goldbug it is OK (and preferable in my opinion) to link to Goldbug (G1) and let the redirect do the work. I think having it stand out so much would tend to have editors feel the need to clean them all out. - Starfield 10:17, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

There is potential for that. I agree that sometimes redirects are okay... *shrug* -Derik 12:44, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

How about "safety orange" or yellow? Those are universal "danger/warning" colors. (And less puke-inducing for me than pink). I don't mind the blinking either, considering that the idea is that the indicator is supposed to annoy the hell out of you until you change it. (FWIW, the whole thing works fine in Opera 9.63, too.)

As for Starfield's comment, eh, I just don't see it 99% of the time. If I wanted to link to something like Goldbug or Rodimus Prime, I would do [[Bumblebee (G1)|Goldbug]] or [[Hot Rod (G1)|Rodimus Prime]] instead. About the only time I could see it useful is if you were doing linking related to a spoiler (like Longarm Prime vs. Shockwave, for instance), but even then you'd still only need to do it for a month at most. --Jeysie 16:15, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't personally see the sense in manually redirecting to Hot Rod when you are talking Rodimus Prime when there is perfectly valid actual redirect to use. You aren't talking about "Hot Rod". It is like word-linking that way, like you are trying to fake out the reader. "Rodimus Prime" is that character's name in that point of the story. I always thought that was the primary purpose of having redirects, and search boxes were secondary.

Plus there is the added benefit of when you use the "what links here" page, you see what pages link to "Rodimus Prime", which is interesting information that is lost if everything links to "Hot Rod". - Starfield 17:53, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Because it's the same character. We say "Spike" or "Daniel", but link to their full name. If someone refers to Bumblebee as a "giant yellow Volkswagon robot" in something, we might use that phrasing in the synopsis, but we'd still link to Bumblebee, not to "giant yellow Volkswagon robot" as a redirect. Etc. It's not a fakeout, it's just using the proper contextual name in the text, but cutting out the middleman for the actual link.

Redirects can make linking easier for editors who don't know immediately what the proper link might be, so we don't end up with accidental duplicate pages (or as a shorter way to link to something like an oft-used section link), but on the whole I think it's mostly useful for searches.

In short, while not all redirect linking is something to worry about, per se, I don't see anything wrong with encouraging editors to hunt down the correct linkage, even in those sorts of edge cases. --Jeysie 18:19, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

"Goldbug" was a character in the comic Used Autobots, the character was not "Bumblebee". In that way, it is different than using Spike's full name, or even Peter Parker vs Spider-Man. I think a link on the Used Autobots article to [[Bumblebee (G1)|Goldbug]] is incorrect because there was no "Bumblebee" in the story. - Starfield 18:36, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

And yet, Bumblebee and Goldbug don't have separate articles, because we treat them as being the same character. *shrugs a little* I don't care either way, really, and wouldn't consider it worth worrying about if someone linked to Goldbug, I just don't see that as more correct. --Jeysie 18:47, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Bumblebee/Goldbug is the same character. That is why I think it is OK to link to "Goldbug", even more correct to do so when you are talking about Goldbug. "Goldbug" is not a nickname for "Bumblebee", Goldbug is that character, at that point in the story. The article could be named "Goldbug (G1)" with Bumblebee redirecting to it or "Bumblebee/Goldbug", but for our, somewhat arbitrary, naming rules. I don't disagree with the naming rules, but just because the article is called "Bumblebee" doesn't mean that that always linking to "Bumblebee" is correct. - Starfield 19:00, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

And yet, even if you link to Goldbug, when you click on the link, you still end up at a page titled "Bumblebee (G1)". Is the little "redirected from" note really that crucial a difference? (Especially since the intro mentions the Goldbug change right at the top anyway.) It just seems like a difference that makes no difference to me. --Jeysie 19:05, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Yes, when you link to Goldbug, you end up at the right spot, so why the big push to not link to Goldbug when you are talking about Goldbug? And yes, in some way I like seeing "redirected from", it lets me know that Goldbug is just as correct but the title is called "Bumblebee" out of convenience. And don't forget about the "What links here" feature. It is a little useful being able to sort out the Goldbug references. - Starfield 19:19, 13 April 2009 (EDT)

Someone requested I link-fix a bunch of minor variants of Hot Rod/Rodimus Prime ot all point to "Hot Rod (G1)". Instead I split them, pointing to "Hot Rod (G1)" and "Rodimus Prime (G1)" as appropriate-- in case we one day decide to split the articles like we do Megatron/Galvatron.

The same principle applies. A split is unlikely, but this way if we do split the articles, all the links are already pointing to the appropriate destination, instead of having to sort through 500+ incoming links by hand (that's abotu the number Hot Rod has...) to figure out which need to go where. -Derik 10:57, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

Is the little "redirected from" note really that crucial a difference?

For me, yes, it kinda is. It lets me know that the powers-that-be have decided that "Goldbug" is heavily subordinate to the character of Bumblebee, that they are well and truly one and the same, that there's not some other Goldbug article out there that I'm missing. That in itself is a significant bit of information, even before I've started reading the text. -- Repowers 20:09, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

I think that the "What Links Here" issue is a fair point. But IMHO if you need the little "redirected from" note to tell you're in the right place instead of just by reading the intro, you're either lazy or the intro needs rewriting. --Jeysie 21:14, 22 April 2009 (EDT)
Edit: Realized I should mention that I'm liking the blinky thingy so far... it used to be annoying having to click through every new link I was adding to make sure it was the proper direct link instead of a redirect. --Jeysie 21:18, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

We should have one standard for linking or not linking to redirect pages. I much prefer being able to link to redirect pages and not get reverted, but I would go along with the other way if that is the standard. I started a draft proposal for a standard to be added to the style guide at my sandbox. Please feel free to comment or edit it or add reasons for/against. - Starfield 10:51, 8 May 2009 (EDT)

Moved talk pages

There should really be an option to delete the old talk page after it is moved instead of creating a redirect. - Starfield 12:20, 17 April 2009 (EDT)

DEFAULSORT problem?

Several of the entries in the voice actors category are listed both under their surname and their first name. These appear to be the actors with some accent in their name: Ireneusz Załóg, Márcio Seixas, Maurício Berger and Willi Röbke. Having accents, but not having this problem are Fátima Noya (but that's not DEFAULTSORTed), José Santacruz and José Sant'anna. Apparently, there's some problem DEFAULTSORT has with some of the accented vowels ([é] does work, [á], [ó], [í] and [ö] don't). Can this problem be solved? -- Tupka86 09:06, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

It's related to the Macron issue mentioned here. Once we fix that, the listing under their first name will disappear. --abates 21:07, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

Franchise identifier consistency

At the moment, we have 34 "G1" articles with an identifier of a specific Japanese sub-franchise to distinguish them from articles on usually Western/G1 material. We also have about 9 "G1" articles who use a different kind of identifier, on basis that the Japanese continuities are G1.
This already led to a bit of moving around with the Grandus article between (G1) and (ROC) when the Animated guy was introduced. To prevent that happening with the Dai Atlas, Sky Garry and possibly Cancer articles, I'd like to have the community make a decision on how to deal with the (G1) identifier vs the (Headmasters), (Masterforce), (Victory), (Zone), (ROC) and (OC) identifiers vs whatever else can be/is used as identifier.
My preference would be to use the Japanese sub-franchise identifiers. Simple and in line with the whole "from the (Japanese franchise) portion of the G1 continuity" on top of those pages. For convenience, here's a list of the moves it would mean:

Sandstorm (Autobot) -> Sandstorm (G1) (Note: we have a SG Sandstorm now, so (Autobot) it can't stay anyway.)
Sandstorm (Decepticon) -> Sandstorm (OC)
Falcon (Predator) -> Falcon (G1)
Falcon (Micromaster) -> Falcon (OC)
Ricochet (G1 Autobot) -> Ricochet (Headmasters)
Metrotitan (G1) -> Metrotitan (Zone)
Grandus (G1) -> Grandus (ROC)
Star Saber (G1) -> Star Saber (Victory)
Joe (Micromaster) -> Joe (ROC)
Circuit (Action Master) -> Circuit (G1)
Circuit (Micromaster) -> Circuit (OC)
Convertor (Micromaster) -> Convertor (OC)
Convertor (Recyclon) -> Convertor (G1), but I'm in favour of leaving this one as (Recyclon) because all other Recyclons with an identifier use (Recyclon).

Thoughts? Geewunling 03:48, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

Sky Garry etc... all fall under (G1.) Widest possible identifier when there's no conflict.

This confuses people because we use specific franchises for UT characters... but the UT has SO MUCH name overlap it'd be pointless-- no one would have the (UT) identifier even if it was standard. G1 has little enough name overlap internal to itself we can make (G1) the default.

So it's inconsistent--but it's at least consistently inconsistent. -Derik 06:55, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

Diver, Planet X, Hydra, maaaaybe Overlord... No, we're not consistently inconsistent either. And now I'm only looking at G1 West vs Japan. With BW, we do seem to be consistent in acknowledging its Japanese sub-franchises in identifiers. Geewunling 07:20, 19 April 2009 (EDT)

What's this "widest possible identifier," Derik? Didn't we go through that huge "Swarm (G1)" debate (which seems to have been completely lost in the Bookworm crash, fantastic) to cement the franchise-of-origin rule forever and ever amen? The only question here is: What counts as a separate franchise? To my mind, Zone bears about the same relationship to G1 as G2 does. And, as the Swarm debate established, G2 is never ever G1 as far as parentheticals are concerned. The UT example has nothing to do with what you said and everything to do with our one simple rule. - Jackpot 00:21, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

...I don't remember anymore. -Derik 00:31, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

At least remember to curse the name of Bookworm for three to seven generations. - Jackpot 00:59, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Side note: Actually, the bit of the discussion that was on my User Page subpage isn't lost. I just didn't upload it anywhere because we never actually determined a good permanent place to move it to, so I didn't know where to upload it to. After a quickie Google search, it turns out there's still a good cache file for the Insecticon Swarm talk page, too. Anyhoo. --Jeysie 02:19, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Hey, whatever you can find and restore, please do. The biggest value of preserving a debate like that is never having to go through it again. I'd say you should re-make your Sandbox and its Talk page exactly as they were before. I don't think a more "permanent" place is necessary; it's an aborted experiment, so it can stay on an "experimental" page. - Jackpot 03:11, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm for moving those pages. Except for "OC" since it's based on a bad translation of a Japanese title. 合体大作戦 (Gattai Daisakusen) means "Great Combination Operation". Everybody who knows this, including me, just has been too lazy to correct it. (And Derik, the punctuation for a sentence is out of the parentheses. I'm not sure why you consistently make that mistake.) —Interrobang 01:54, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Then maybe this is a good moment to correct it? Geewunling 03:55, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Well, problem is that "Operation Combination", as incorrect as it is, is what the majority of English people know it as. And then what to have the disambiguation parentheses as? "(GCO)"? I would prefer to have it as "Gattai Daisakusen", but my opinion of forgoing unofficial translations is decidedly unpopular. —Interrobang 16:13, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Then it depends on what this wiki cares more about: helping people find information or providing them with the correct information. By what you're saying, I'd say Operation Combination should become a redirect to the correctly named article. And from there, I don't think (OC) is going to be anymore clear on what continuity it represents than (GCO) or (GD). I don't think many will immediately guess "OC" stands for Operation Combination, and that's also not the point of identifiers. Geewunling 08:21, 21 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm in favor of using the Japanese sub-franchise names. I checked Beast Wars and we are using the sub-franchise names for that, (BWII), (BWN) so this would be consistent. - Starfield 08:51, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Except as someone (Interrobang?) keeps pointing out-- that's problematic in itself. There was no BWII Toyline. There was a BWII cartoon... and a Beast Wars Toyline. Japan considers all 4 BW series paer of 1 toyline franchise, much like Generation 1. (This argument hasn't received a lot of traction, but I'm bringing it up because it seems relevant.) -Derik 10:19, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

FortMax brought it up at least twice. One could argue that since we focus on fiction, we should base our disambiguation system on it, but I dunno how to reconcile that with Cryotek (RID). —Interrobang 16:13, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Or Sideways (RID). -Derik 18:34, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Sideways at least got a RID bio. All Cryotek gets is a quote. (And what if they have RID fiction with Cryotek in it? RID and BM are in two different continuity families which means we have to split the articles and argharghargh) —Interrobang 19:19, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Disambiguating by fiction has been argued. It doesn't work/help. --Jeysie 19:52, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

*bump* So, I like Geewunling's proposal. Objections? - Starfield 16:14, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

The Wiki calls Headmasters, Beast Wars II, etc. "franchises." I didn't know the weren't until just now. It seems useful enough to do so, even if it isn't 100% historically accurate. - Starfield 19:07, 20 April 2009 (EDT)

Alt Mode Header Pictures?

So, this is a pretty big suggestion, but it struck me that a nice addition to the vast majority of character pages would be, at the top of the page just below the character image, another image of them in their alt mode. I realize that some of the character images already have both representations in them, but plenty of pages (I was at Shrapnel when the idea hit me) don't even have a single visual representation of a Transformer's altmode!

I realize (or at least suspect) that this would be quite the undertaking, given that it would mean a change of the site's format standard, but it's something that I think would genuinely contribute to the overall quality of this wiki. An altmode is just as much a part of who a Transformer is, after all, and a lot of character intros don't reflect that enough. Hell, I've also wondered why we don't have a section right before "Fiction" called "Altmode(s)."

Please consider and respond, because I really think this is a good idea (and sort of an obvious one, too), but it's also a very big idea, and very big ideas tend to be retarded ideas incognito (especially if said ideas seem obvious). Tell other people to weigh in on this too! Preferably the people in charge.

Keegman 16:32, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

Usually, we try to include their (fiction-specific) alternate modes in relevant fiction sections. We don't normally include them as part of the main image because some of the more popular characters have had too many vehicle modes, and often, the main pictures we use up top never had an accompanying vehicle mode image. Personally, I prefer consistency in images so I would rather have, say, an image of Optimus Prime and his vehicle mode having been drawn by the same artist in the same style for the same project, rather than from two entirely different pieces of art. --FFN 07:26, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

Whenever I make a mainpic image, I include the altmode if there is one. (See Galvatron II, Soundwave (Cybertron), Fastlane, Flame (UK comic), and Cog (G1). I even did one for a subsection, Optimus Primal#Cybertron comic.) That's the way I personally prefer to see the idea executed, and it certainly doesn't require a change to the format of the wiki. You're not the first person to bring the idea up, so I'm kind of surprised I've never seen anyone but myself actually do it. I don't think it should ever be considered a requirement for a page, but I do consider it a preferred addition. - Jackpot 16:18, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

I think it'd be nice for a lot of characters... but in many cases it simply doesn't exist, or it'd look awkward. Look at the main image on Optimus Prime, there simply is no vehicle mode art to match that beautiful body shot. And how do you present it? Verrtically? That'd push the dfirst section way down in most cases (it's already pushed down on most articles) whereas horizontally is unworkable for a bunch of other reasons.

The mainpics seem to represent a sort of compromise... even if the character has has multiple incarnations, they all presumably look more-or-less like their original robot mode-- even if the vehicle changes wildly.

And fundamentally-- I think you'd have people throwing fits if you squeezed an irrelevant Cheetah into Cheetor (BW)'s top section instead of his other robot modes. The beast mode is so... secondary. If we were gonna wedge more visuals into the main pics, vehicle modes would not be out first pic in many cases. -Derik 16:47, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

Cover artists

Anyone got a list of cover artists, especially for the Marvel US G1 series? I'm trying to fill our the image description pages for those right now, and I'm being hampered by the lack of info on that score. - SanityOrMadness 21:19, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

I don't know of any pre-existing list. Some I can tell by the style, some I only can guess at due to the signature, and the rest who knows. They didn't credit those things back then beyond the signature, so... --ItsWalky 21:26, 22 April 2009 (EDT)

Well, most of the issue pages appear to have the artists listed (albeit buried at the bottom of the page...), and I've just found this page, so I've been filling them in.

One slightly problematic one though - Marvel US #62. There's two signatures, but the only intelligible one is "Rod Ramos" (Rodney Ramos, who as far as I'm aware works mostly as an inker), and he's given as the artist on the issue page. The current image-page description lists Geoff Senior as the artist, and I can believe it - but I'm not 100% sure, and he inked himself on the interiors. Can anyone confirm? - SanityOrMadness 19:02, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

Anti-troll

After another you-know-who rampage earlier, whatever happened to blacklisting "Detour" and "Fuck" from being used in page & user names, and requiring autoconfirmed priviliges to upload files? Was that a casualty of the Big Crash? - SanityOrMadness 18:38, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

I think plans to upgrade/add plugins to the software have been put on hold while the cleanup too place and we got ready for moving to a new host (how far away are we from setting a date for that anyway?). Perhaps it's time to revisit installing the title blacklist plugin? --abates 19:47, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

Advertising Idea

So, I came up with a fun idea for advertising the wiki IRL. I decided to make an Autobot propaganda poster with the TFWiki.net watermark that people could print out and post in the colleges or whatever nerdy hangouts they use. I've uploaded it to my Photobucket account, so have a look and let me know what you think of it: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/Semysane/TFWiki%20Ads/OptimusPropaganda01-Beta.png This is just a test to see if I could make it not look like crap; it's still a work in progress (ie: still crap). If a more talented person wants to have a go at making a better one, go at it. BTW, the Ancient Autobot text there says "Till All Are One" -- Semysane 22:20, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

I think it looks pretty good. Certainly in very eye-catching colours. :) --abates 06:30, 24 April 2009 (EDT)

Thank you! I'm thinking of making a Decepticon one as well. Any ideas on a slogan for that one? The Cons don't have many awesome ones like Till All Are One. "Transform and Rise Up" maybe? -- Semysane 04:56, 25 April 2009 (EDT)

I've made an alteration to {{mainpic}} that's going to start tracking how long (in months) these articles have lacked main pictures for. In theory this'll (eventually) give us a way to triage these neglected articles. In practice, the dates are starting from now, so there's gonna be a whole mess of articles with '0' months. It'll sort itself out over time.

This depends on me running a maintenece program every couple of weeks FYI, that replaces all instances of {{mainpic}} with {{mainpic|date}}. We'll see how that works. ;) -Derik 09:58, 24 April 2009 (EDT)

Marvel G2 issues

The G2 comic pages are listed under story titles (e.g., Dark Shadows! from G2 #11), but backup stories (in the case of G2 #11, "Tales of Earth Part Eight") are listed on the same pages.

Shouldn't the pages either be moved to a page named after the issue, the way the current UK Titan series appears to be treated, or else split along story lines? - SanityOrMadness 21:05, 24 April 2009 (EDT)

Technical question: Firefox and history pages

Is anyone else running the latest version of Firefox and having trouble with the history pages? I'm running Firefox 3.0.10 and when I look at, say, the Optimus Primal history page, Firefox locks up for half a minute while it runs the javasript to hide half of the radio buttons. It does it on two different computers running the same version of Firefox, but I don't have the same problem on Wikipedia or Wikia. --abates 20:56, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Oh wow, that was a pretty nasty stutter I got when I tried to reproduce your issue. Same version, same results.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 21:00, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Ayep, same here. --Jeysie 22:02, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Issue also reproduced on my home PC, which has more get up and go than my workstation, with Firefox 3.5 beta 4.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 22:34, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Ditto on my notebook and tower unit. --Lonegamer78 23:06, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

...interesting. Why just firefox? (Clearly the 500+ items are an issue here-- but Safari has no problem with 500 items.) -Derik 23:26, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

I'd be curious to know as well. I specifically tried it again with the beta release because it uses a different (and supposedly more efficient) Javascript engine.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 23:30, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

And why only here and not on Wikipedia? Is there that much of a change in the Javascript between MediaWiki 1.12 and 1.14? --abates 23:32, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

Dropped down to Firefox 2...20 there to test, and clicking the radio buttons doesn't take very long, but the page DOES lock up for a while on initial load. - SanityOrMadness 18:28, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

And FF 1.5.10 behaves as-FF2. - SanityOrMadness 18:38, 2 May 2009 (EDT)

Bad images

My scanner is a piece o' crap. Is it better to upload dark and grainy pictures with a "badimage" tag or just put up a "picsneeded" tag? - Starfield 21:38, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

Depends. With recent comic stuff, I think "pics needed" would be better, as there's a good chance that someone else will have the issue (or can find scans, *cough*). I replaced all the Defiance ones, for instance. If you have in mind specific scenes you would have scanned, you can always leave a suggestion in the picsneeded tag or on the talk page.

On the other hand, for stuff that's old or rare, where it might be a choice between a bad image or never having an image, IMHO a bad image is better than nothing.

(If you ever replace your scanner, I recommend the Canon MP210. I use it with Irfanview, and god I love the thing. Prints like a charm, too.) --Jeysie 22:00, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

New User Template

I remember... someone before the crash (FortMax maybe?) suggesting the idea of a template we can stick on the talk pages of new users to welcome them. I rather liked the idea, so I started a mockup idea here: User:Jeysie/NewUser Any ideas for a pic, info to add/change, etc?

Also, I noticed we don't have a New Users log enabled the way Wikia does... if we do create this sort of thing, having that sort of log would be helpful. --Jeysie 16:21, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

We'd need to either upgrade to MediaWiki 1.14 or install the extension to get the new users log. It would be very useful, I'm thinking. --abates 16:35, 4 May 2009 (EDT)

Screencap templates

Er... you know we can edit the text that appears on the file upload screen. Anyone got a list of screencap templates?

(I think you might even be able to set them up for one-click adding.) -Derik 20:37, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

They are all listed at Transformers Wiki:Images, to my knowledge. I added all the ones I knew of.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 20:42, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

This is what I'm looking at. It's kinda fugy. Anyone else want to take a whack at it? -Derik 21:16, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

I'm also working at templating the comics images:

{{MarvelUScover}} (Marvel US G1), {{HMcover}} (Marvel Headmasters mini) and {{MarvelG2cover}} are maxed out.
I think I've got all the extant & relevant images for {{MarvelG2interior}} - although I can't absolutely swear to it
I'm currently working as and when I have the chance on moving the Marvel US G1 interiors and HM interiors to {{MarvelUSinterior}} and {{HMinterior}} from a variety of copyright tags and the absence thereof (including the ones that lost their descriptions in the Bookworm Incident)

Like I say, the covers are maxed out, but there's always the chance that other interiors will be uploaded (Walky's done a few recently), and it would help if they were added too. - SanityOrMadness 21:58, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

Propose a visually compact way of doing so. ;) -Derik 22:10, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

General	Comic Cover
<charinsert>{{hastak}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{comicinterior}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{comiccover}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{screencap}}</charinsert>	<charinsert>{{MarvelUScover\|(description)\|(issue number)\|(issue title)\|(artist list)\|(last two digits of publication year)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{HMcover\|(description)\|(issue number)\|(issue title)\|(artist list)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{MarvelG2cover\|(description)\|(issue number)\|(issue title)\|(artist list)\|(last digit of publication year)}}</charinsert>
Screencap	Comic Interior
<charinsert>{{titlecard}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{G1cap\|(imagedescription)\|(episode name)\|(last digit of premiere year originally aired)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{RIDcap\|(imagedescription)\|(episode name)\|(last digit of year originally aired)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{BWcap\|(imagedescription)\|(episode name)\|(last digit of year originally aired)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{BMcap\|(imagedescription)\|(episode name)\|(year originally aired)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{TFAcap\|(imagedescription)\|(episode name)\|(year originally aired)}}</charinsert>	<charinsert>{{MarvelUSinterior\|description=\|issueno=\|storytitle=\|pageno=\|panelno=\|panelnos=\|script=\|line-art=\|pencils=\|inks=\|colours=[[Nelson Yomtov]]\|letters=\|help=\|year=(last two digits of publication year)}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{HMinterior\|description=\|issueno=\|storytitle=\|pageno=\|panelno=\|panelnos=\|letters=\|help=}}</charinsert> <charinsert>{{MarvelG2interior\|description=\|issueno=\|storytitle=\|pageno=\|panelno=\|panelnos=\|script=\|pencils=\|inks=\|colours=\|letters=\|help=\|year=(last digit of publication year)}}</charinsert>

...I don't know about visually compact, exactly, but considering how many image templates we have, I'm not sure "visually compact" is possible... --Jeysie 23:06, 11 May 2009 (EDT)

Well, it's something to work on. Unfortunately the charinsert plugin doesn't have any way to display s short piece of text while inserting a long one.

There's a rabid wolverine scrabbling around the back of my brain licking carnival pennies... I feel like when he comes down off his filth high he might have some ideas about Stupid CSS Tricks to make that less loathesome. (Failing that we could do something with Javascript, but it'd be a bitch to update so that's a last choice.) -Derik 01:35, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, it's pretty much the opposite... you can stick a description in the tooltip, but the actual text has to be visible. I honestly can't think of any way to do it in pure CSS without messing up the clickability of it.

I guess we could just link to the plain vanilla templates with no parameters, but I kind of want to encourage people to be as thorough as possible with their info.

I think we could also use a way to include a link to each template's page in case one needs to read the instructions. But I had trouble coming up with a way that's brief, clear, and won't get mistaken for the inserto-text link. --Jeysie 01:53, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

Addendum: We could go for a fake form with OPTION or a CSS-based drop-down list, but I think those would both need JS. (Admittedly the CSS based drop-down would need less JS, and only for the style, not the functionality.) (Why do I always have extra thoughts right after hitting the "submit" button?) --Jeysie 01:59, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

What about the Boilerplate plugin that was suggested a while back? Would that be more suitable for this sort of thing? --abates 02:04, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

No, unfortunately... it only works for articles, not on file pages. (At least, if there is a way to get it to work on file pages, I couldn't figure it out.) Although I still think we should give that extension a whirl at some point, it won't help out with this specific thing. --Jeysie 02:07, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

My Wolverine stopped tripping long enough to say "{{MarvelG2}}:<charinsert>{{MarvelG2interior|description=|issueno=|storytitle=|pageno=|panelno=|panelnos=|script=|pencils=|inks=|colours=|letters=|help=|year=(last digit of publication year)}}</charinsert>."

He is a filthy, FILTHY beast, and the hackiness of that CSS shames me. (And it's still not ideal code anyway.)

I think Javascript is a likely fate here. -Derik 03:03, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

Upload Preview

Over at Template talk:Screencap, Mr. Bates (or possibly Doug-- I can't keep them straight) suggested we look at the Upload Preview script-- a pure javascript solution to the lack of previews during image upload (which the MW software doesn't naively support.)

The script is currently available for anyone who has the kired tools plugins installed. Please report your thoughts, and if there are any problems or conflicts. If user response is positive, I'm going to recommend the relevant code be added to the Wiki's common.js file. -Derik 14:59, 12 May 2009 (EDT)

It works great - very handy (I was the one who suggested it, BTW) --abates 05:59, 13 May 2009 (EDT)

I finally figured out why I have such trouble telling you and Doug apart.

I'm actually trying to tell "apog," "apog" and "abates" apart under the impression they are two people. No wonder I'm confused. -Deceptitran 12:37, 18 May 2009 (EDT)

(comic issue) vs. (issue)

Is there any protest against eliminating (comic issue) as a disambiguation parenthetical? Near as I can tell, it's totally redundant with the shorter, simpler (issue) parenthetical. (again, unless there's a "Child's Play (socioeconomic issue)" article that I'm unaware of...) -- Repowers 10:52, 18 May 2009 (EDT)

No protest here. I was planning on doing it someday. —Interrobang 14:58, 18 May 2009 (EDT)

ROTF spoilers from novelizations and other adaptations

So, is information from the novelizations off-limits until the movie is in theaters, or what? (If so, we need to protect the hell out of a bunch of pages) --FortMax 22:58, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

It was discussed here and decided that no, they are not off limits, but please date the spoiler tags on character pages to a week after the film comes out. - Starfield 23:04, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

I've been stubbing in articles where I feel it's appropriate... but I've also been tailoring my content to avoid major spoilers-- more to have the infrastructure in place and ready to fill in then the movie drops.

(And realistically speaking, there's going to be a flood of detailed spoilers, including lists of every fatality and major surprise on the 10th-- the film premieres in Japan 18 days before it does here.)

Incidentally, I don't trust the tie-in novels. Characters vanish suddenly, details are glossed over or changed... I harbor a suspicion that certain plot details are being kept out of the books-- or at least obscured-- to prevent fans from being 100% certain about anything. The climax of the two movie adaptions I've read so far are different, they have noticeably divergent outcomes. -Derik 00:12, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

I do not want any novelization and adaptation spoilers on character pages or other related articles. Stuff from adaptations should stay on their respective articles. Most of my work on the wiki at the moment is updating and maintaining movie articles, so it would be a personal inconvenience to me if I had to avert my eyes every time I come across the Revenge of the Fallen movie sections of character articles. Not only that, but there will be people who will wander onto this wiki with the intention of refreshing themselves on the movie or to read prequel stuff leading up to ROTF, but have no intention of reading up on plot points of the movie itself. And, as Derik says, novelizations and adaptations often differ wildly from the final movie script.

I think it's more than bloody fair to expect that we only post ROTF-related stuff on the day of the movie's release around the world, not before. --FFN 00:59, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

That'd apply to the British Isles contingent? UK and Ireland are getting general release June 19. --Lonegamer78 02:48, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

That's a good question. (I have no opinion, I'm spoiling myself by reading the novel.)

IIRC, back during Animated season 2 we were observing a 1-week moratorium on character-page updates, which more-or-less covered the biggest broadcast markets.

10th - Japan premiere
24th - US Premiere
26th - UK Premiere

Since the period we're talking about is just a 16 day span, I assume the same idea applies-- hold off until the 26th (possibly plus a few days) out of respect for other TF-fans. -Derik 03:23, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

As Lonegamer just said, it's out here in the UK on the 19th. And the rule for TFA S2 seemed to be that "as soon as it was first aired in English, be it in the UK, US or Canada (all three had 'world premieres in English' at different points), go for it". - SanityOrMadness 10:02, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

I think that the modifier in that situation, though, was the fact that as soon as said Animated episodes had aired in English anywhere, high-quality encodes of them were promptly available to download for anybody anywhere who wanted them, making it all pretty much fair game. Information could be added, and editors would not be left unable to verify that information, as they could download and see the episode themselves. The movie won't have that - US editors simply wont know if what anon IPs add is true or not, because they won't be able to see the movie to verify it and will have to operate on good faith, which is laudible, but we saw how well that worked with the Dubai Animated debalce and "Animated Waspinator". While I'll be seeing it opening day here in the UK, I know that I, personally, wasn't planning to add anything about it to the wiki until it screened in the US. - Chris McFeely 11:03, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

What Chris said. "Airing in English" was a polite euphemism for "we can see it too." It doesn't apply for a 2-and-a-half hour theatrical movie. American fans will still be in the dark until the 26th, and as far as I'm concerned the wiki should honor that. --Thylacine 2000 11:04, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

While I'll be seeing it opening day here in the UK, I know that I, personally, wasn't planning to add anything about it to the wiki until it screened in the US.

American fans will still be in the dark until the 26th

Can I take it that the UK and US premiere dates above are switched?--Apcog 14:02, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

@@ Line 235: / Line 235: @@
 ::I completely don't care about this discussion, but I must take the time to point out that it's "guillemet". "Guillemot" is a bird, which is decidedly not relevant to this discussion. [[User:Interrobang|—Interrobang]] 03:49, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
-I don't think the normal quotes show up properly in IE6[[Special:Contributions/81.108.237.26|81.108.237.26]] 11:08, 22 May 2009 (EDT)
+I don't think the normal quotes show up properly in IE6 and a normal quote overlaps an image on http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Protoform so that needs to be fixed or bigquote restored.[[Special:Contributions/81.108.237.26|81.108.237.26]] 11:08, 22 May 2009 (EDT)
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