MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

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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:

The Bookworm database-crash:

The server move:

Relicensing discussion:

Community Portal Archives

Affiliate sites

Over at Template:External, I've been poking at the coding that flags certain external links. (It's been doing this in External Links sectiosn for months, and there was a discussion... somewhere... where we agreed that everyone was okay with these sites beign thus flagged.)

Here's my thing... if we consider these guys preferred content providers... we should reward them. I think we should disable rel=nofollow for these sites. (Something that makes our links to them not be 'counted' in search engines.)

Also-- I notice that rel=nofollow has been reset for Wookieepedia-- it had been off, part of our 'friends of' networking program. The setting probably got un-flagged in the software upgrade. We should fix that. -Derik 02:18, 30 June 2009 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. We trust these sites, so it shouldn't be an issue if we unnofollow the links to them. --abates 03:05, 30 June 2009 (EDT)
While I'm thinking about it, we should also un-nofollow the links on Main Page to our status/twitter/facebook pages. I'm not sure how or where the whitelist is set, so I think that's probably a task for Suki Brits. --abates 21:40, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

And also we should do the same for the Cybertron Chonicle (cybertronchronicle.freewebspace.com) and RiD Forever (ridforever.info) on the G1 and RID cartoon pages, respectively. --abates 04:19, 20 July 2009 (EDT)

Our tech-people being apparently busy, I'm going to point out that the mechanism for making this change is made in LocalSettings.php, and follows this basic format;
$wgNoFollowDomainExceptions = array( 'en.wikipedia.org', 'wiktionary.org' );
-Derik 09:51, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
I think only the tech people have access to change that file. --abates 20:44, 1 August 2009 (EDT)

Firefox 3.5

Firefox is launching it's first major upgrade in 18 months, and it sounds like there's signifigant under-the-hood reccoding to make it lighter and faster.

Please report any problems associated with the new version here. -Derik 15:09, 1 July 2009 (EDT)

I've been using it since the beta. I've noticed no major issues with the site, and I've had it for months. The major under-the-hood stuff was related to javascript parsing, and our functions that depend on it (image description previews, faction symbol, etc.) seem to work just fine.--RosicrucianTalk 15:13, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
The History javascript problem is still there, but I'm hoping it disappears when we upgrade MediaWiki. I dunno about lighter and faster, but Firefox no longer properly terminates when I close it. Grrr. --abates 18:13, 6 July 2009 (EDT)

Size-scale references

someone is adding the scale size to a lot of the ROTF toys, and I was wondering A) if anyone cares considering they're not supposed to be any scale like the alternators/binaltech, and B) should we stop it before it gets outa hand. I don't think we need this information, personally, but maybe the rest of you disagree. it poses the problem of adding this ridiculous scale system to EVERY page on here. Cliffjumper prime 18:49, 1 July 2009 (EDT)

Nope, I don't care for noting scale unless it's some sort of unusual circumstance that should be noted (say a toy that turns into a train fitting on whatever scale train tracks). And like somebody who asked us to list the heights of every modern toy ever made, I'm not going to waste my time listing scales and such. I have more important things to do on the wiki. --FFN 18:55, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
I especially thought it was pointless considering a lot of more recent toys are simply approximations of real vehicles, or altered versions, not the real thing. Cliffjumper prime 19:10, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
I'd rather reserve the whole size-scaling thing for JUST Binaltech/Alternators and Alternity! --Lonegamer78 19:47, 1 July 2009 (EDT)
Oh, definitely. When scale is explicitly called for (1:24 Alternators, 1:32 Alternity, whatever else Takara tries) we should point it out, but otherwise it's just stupid. --Detour 19:51, 1 July 2009 (EDT)

Changes to comic issue format

I'd like to propose two changes to our comic issue format.

  1. I think that, when available, the 'covers' section should present the covers without copy. Virtually every TF comic printed this decade has had its cover art previewed online without the title, issue-box, etc. I'm not suggesting that old content should be purged... just that there should be an official preference for copy-free covers.
  2. I'd like to propose a 'Reprints and Collections' section near the bottom of comic pages, like the video release section found on some episodes. (This particularly applies to Marvel UK stuff.) It'd look something like this;
Reprints / Collections
  • Reprinted in Transformers Collected Comics #8 (1986) — UK only
  • Reprinted with Issue #98 as Marvel Comics (US) #34
  • Recolored and reprinted in Marvel UK's "1990 Transformer Annual" (1989) — UK only
  • Collected in the Titan Trade paperback collections "Primal Scream" and "Matrix Quest" (1997)
  • Reprinted in IDW's "Transformer Generations #16" (2006)

No single set template format can adequately describe the way Transformers stories are printed, collected, bundled, broken up, recolored, excerpted etc etc etc. A plain English approach (allowing for in/as/with etc...) seems best. (The above examples are kind of a mess... I was trying to throw in as many oddball scenarios as possible.)

Our existing comic template accommodates two publications for US and UK Marvel stuff... but a UK story might've been reprinted in the UK, ported to the US and bundled with another issue, gotten a 'Collected Comics' edition, been recolored for an annual, then gotten Titan releases in color or black and White... and that's without even getting into the IDW reprint series, which've had their own trade paperback collections...

It really just needs its own section. So I'm proposing one and seeing what other people think. -Derik 19:14, 8 July 2009 (EDT)

I disagree pretty strongly with point #1. In the "covers" section, we're documenting the actual, physical comic covers, are we not? What you propose seems like it belongs in a seperate "cover art" section. Does that distinction make sense? --Salt-Man Z 17:15, 23 July 2009 (EDT)

New templates for toy releaess?

In addition to the "comingsoontoy" template, I propose adopting one or two more templates that indicate a toy has been officially released on another market but not in the USA yet. Usually this is merely a matter of a few weeks, but in some instances it could mean several months of waiting (see ROTF Legends Constructicons). My main reasoning is that a) listing a toy as "coming soon" when you can already buy it in another country (Japan, other Hasbro markets) seems a little too US-centric, and b) listing a toy as "out" even though it's not actually out at US retail yet is equally awkward. So I propose a tag to indicate a middle status. Either one single tag, or two, one to indicate a TakaraTomy release and another to indicate non-US market Hasbro releases. Furthermore, we might also adopt one or two similar tags to indicate that some toys/multi-packs are/were exclusively available outside the USA, such as various Takara-only redecos, European late-G1 toys and such.--Nevermore 15:39, 19 July 2009 (EDT)

Upload image templates

A discussion about adding a list of insertable templates to the Upload form a couple months ago got derailed by the rush of other higher priories. I re-visit it now;

If you're running Kired Tools, a (perfunctory) list of image templates will now appear in your Upload form. This is being drawn from User:Derik/Sandbox10, so feel free to add to it, edit it, experiment, etc... there are a lot of image templates, and I'd like to try to figure out how to handle such a dense list... good.

Responses appreciated. -Derik 09:42, 21 July 2009 (EDT)

Category Proliferation

OK, just because you can make a theoretical grouping of seven or more characters, doesn't mean that it's wise or advisable to do so. We should limit ourselves to groupings that people might actually be interested in. The more categories we make, the harder it is to keep them all complete. Having an incomplete category is far worse than having no category. The natural assumption is that a category is exhaustive, so an incomplete category is basically misinformation - it implies that we've listed all of something when in fact we have not. Adding in more noise does not help anyone and gives us that much more inventory to mange without creating real value. --Jimsorenson 02:48, 22 July 2009 (EDT)

Great! Now digest that and write Help:Categories! -Derik 13:26, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
Okay.--RosicrucianTalk 12:07, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

Pointing out redirects while editing

Was trying to think of something less annoying than a blink tag. Maybe have them followed by a small graphic to denote them on the edit screen? Perhaps a scaled down version of this?--RosicrucianTalk 14:29, 22 July 2009 (EDT)

I think the point is that they're supposed to be annoying, so you easily notice them and feel compelled to fix them. The instances where a redirect is the "correct" linkage are rare enough that I don't see it as a big deal to ignore the blinking in those cases. --Jeysie 14:37, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
I still think a yellow u-turn icon is obvious enough.--RosicrucianTalk 14:39, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
I guess I just don't see it as a big deal, since you're only going to see it for the 30 seconds it takes to fix the link and refresh the preview anyway. (Plus, I actually find the yellow more annoying than the blinking, though it does make them nice and easy to pick out while scanning.) --Jeysie 14:46, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
I can see where Rosh is going... when you're drafting an extensive change, at some point you're re-reading the entire thing to try and see if it 'feels right' before committing the save. The blink tag is very distracting... making it hard to ignore to judge the overall 'feel' of the page.
The real appeal of it, OTOH, is that the blink tag is the one thing you can be sure will always work-- because blink isn't used anywhere else. Storylinks (for example) have inline background and border colors-- I think those would override the yellow background of redirects, so they wouldn't show up. But because no one ever uses "blink," blink will always show up.
I'd be open to adding the image... but I think (for example) if a prev/next link on a comic issue template was pointed at a re-direct... it would totally break the layout of the button because it imposes padding and background attributes that either:
  1. Won't show up (overriden by the template styles) so there's no indicator that the link is a redirect.
  2. Will show up-- and then break the template which was never intended to accommodate this.
(I'm having trouble picture which.) Basically as set up, it's a 'least offensive solutiont hat will always work.'
IIRC, we already have redirects with a yellow background and double-underline. So if Rosh wants, I can show him the code to turn off the blinking in his own CSS file and he can evaluate how it looks/try other solutions to propose. -Derik 15:31, 22 July 2009 (EDT)
Well, like I said, if I spot redirects to fix when previewing, I quickly fix all of them and then preview again to check for more possible mistakes.
I will say that the yellow and underlines do indeed show up over the grey of the storylinks, though, as I've come across more than a few "Shattered Glass (comic)" links in my editing. But that's in Opera 9.x; I can't speak for other browsers. --Jeysie 15:41, 22 July 2009 (EDT)

Image templates for video game images and screen captures?

Hey guys, do we have an image/copyright template for video game images (covers ect) and their screenshots? If not, we should consider making one at least for the big three english language series of TF games: The Armada PS2 game, the 2007 TF movie games, and the ROTF games (please be aware there are several games under 2007 TF and ROTF). What do you guys think? --FFN 07:35, 25 July 2009 (EDT)

Perhaps we can create a series of the gamecap template just like screencap, which is used to create G1cap, BWcap, BMcap, TFAcap and so on. I think there can be a Template:gamecap, which can be used to create Template:armadagame, 2007game, Template:rotfgame and more (if needed).
And, since there are many games under 2007 TF and ROTF, 2007game and rotfgame will feature parameter to co-op with the games. --TX55TALK 11:57, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
Screencap is already tailored to handle video game screenshots, and can take enough optional parameters that the ownership can be easily identified. Are we really going to have enough screenshots from each game to dedicate a template to each? It's not that hard to type out manually.
I do agree with FFN that something for non-screenshot images from video games might be in order, perhaps based off of the comic cover template.--RosicrucianTalk 12:04, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
...and I specifically think creating the "gamecap" template anyway is a dumb idea. There is no need whatsoever for a generic template for video game screen captures. There is nothing it can do that the screencap template isn't designed to do already.--RosicrucianTalk 12:11, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
Are we really going to have enough screenshots from each game to dedicate a template to each?
Yes we already do. Unfortunately, the guy who uploaded most of them seems to have disappeared.
It's not that hard to type out manually.
Try telling yourself that when you're the one actually writing it, yes? --FFN 14:08, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
No necessarily a dumb idea in some way, the gamecap template is more convenient than using screencap for game screen.
Take Image:Tidalwave_pushup.gif for example, when using screencap, we need to typing:
[[Tidal Wave (Armada)|Tidal Wave]] knows regular exercise is the key to a healthy lifestyle.

{{c}} 2004 Melbourne House and Atari
{{screencap
|source= the PS2 video game "[[Transformers (Melbourne House)|Transformers]]"
|owner=Melbourne House and Atari
|nocategory=true
}}
[[Category:Screen captures from video games]]
While using gamecap, we only need to type
{{gamecap|
[[Tidal Wave (Armada)|Tidal Wave]] knows [[Humanization|regular exercise is the key to a healthy lifestyle]].|
[[Transformers (Melbourne House)|Transformers]]|
Melbourne House and Atari|
2004
}}
without parameters such as "source=", "owner=", "nocategory=true" or "Category:Screen captures from video games"
--TX55TALK 13:23, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
That doesn't look like much work saved, to me.--RosicrucianTalk 19:34, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
Well, the template is kinda like G1cap, BWcap or TFAcap, which only need <description>, <source>, <year> and doesn't need to type those parameters mentioned above as well. --TX55TALK 21:18, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
Except all those examples autofill most of the fields the screencap template needs. Here, you're entering roughly the same amount of information you'd need to use the naked screencap template. It's an extra level of transclusion with very little payoff in terms of time/work saved.--RosicrucianTalk 21:21, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
I don't feel much, for the most apparent thing, at least we won't need to fill nocategory=true and Category:Screen captures from video games, just like the G1cap and others. --TX55TALK 21:27, 25 July 2009 (EDT)
As for the non-game-screenshot, I've created a concept for various covers which are not comicbook covers. --TX55TALK 08:25, 26 July 2009 (EDT)
Hey, I like the prototype template. --FFN 14:08, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
Thank you. ^^ Right now I think I need to search out which pictures are from games so I can figure out what should be done in the next move. --TX55TALK 23:53, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

Shattered Glass Character Categories

Anyone I catch adding redundant "Decepticons" or "Shattered Glass characters" categories to any character already in the "Mayhem Supression Squad" category is GETTING FED TO GRIMLOCK. Their omission not a mistake! Stop adding them back in! :P
...sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Carry on. --Jeysie 11:47, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

In less ranting thoughts, I had been considering making a category to denote which characters are "Alpha Trion's acolytes". --Jeysie 17:55, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
A "factions of the Shattered Glass Universe" catch-all page might be interesting, showing the Elite Guard, the Wreckers, Trion's forces, Optimus' loyalists, etc.--RosicrucianTalk 18:05, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
Well, it's pretty much... we already have the Seekers, Dinobots, Elite Guard, and Technobots in those existing categories, and we should put the Wreckers in the existing category too (though do we even know any of the former Wreckers in SG other than Rodimus?). And we don't have enough of Optimus Prime's loyalists named to make a category for it - only Blurr, Nightbeat, Ironhide, and Grimlock.
Or were you talking about some sort of umbrella category and/or article? --Jeysie 18:28, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
An article, rather than a category. While we "hate lists" here, an article exploring the political situation and factions of the continuity could be informative.--RosicrucianTalk 18:47, 29 July 2009 (EDT)
Ah. I could get behind that. Especially since we have the ABN crew, the Micromasters, the Targetmasters, the Terrorcons, the Mayhem Suppression Squad, the Predacons, and Astrotrain's squad as well. There's also Arkeville and his interns on the humans' side. --Jeysie 18:51, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

Mold reusage list

I've been working on a list that lists the most reused molds. Sorted after Toyline and alphabetical order. Now I would like to know if this would be a useful piece of information or if it's uninteresting for the wiki. Check out the current poor and far from finished version here. Should I continue working on it or stop and erase it.Dead Metal 13:09, 29 July 2009 (EDT)

It's almost worth it just for that picture. LiamK 09:20, 12 August 2009 (EDT)

Robot Heroes Organization

Allright. Robot Heroes from the first movie being listed below Revenge of the Fallen RPMs in characters' Merchandise sections is giving me a headache. Right now, the toy/merch lists are treating Robot Heroes as their own line, when they've really all been branded as subsets of other lines - you have TF 2007 Robot Heroes, Universe Robot Heroes, and ROTF Robot Heroes. Right now, the lists are mis-representating this aspect of the figures; I don't know who began the practice, because that info was wiped out in the crash.

I move to, at least, put the Robot Heroes under their respective franchise banners in characters' Merchandise sections — most relevant for movie-based characters, I grant, but characters having Merch/TF2007/Robot Heroes and Merch/ROTF/Robot Heroes sections makes more sense to me, as it makes it more like the toy sections. For other characters - let's say Perceptor - it could go Merchandise/Universe/Robot Heroes, or maybe Merchandise/Universe.

I considered starting on this myself tonight, but I'm tossing it out for opinions first. --Monzo 04:36, 31 July 2009 (EDT)

Relicensing vote

TFWiki.net has until midnight tonight to decide whether if we want to switch from a GFDL license to a CC-BY-SA3 license.

I've been studying the issue, and I have some thoughts on the direction I think we should go in terms of licensing. (As long as we're switching over, let's actually get it right.) But none of that has to be done now, the actual relicensing has to be performed tonight, and I'm calling for a vote.

  • User:Derik votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. -Derik 15:38, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Jeysie still votes to switch to CC-BY-SA3. --Jeysie 15:40, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Rosicrucian votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3 and is in favor of Derik's opinion draft on potential wrinkles and assertions we can make.--RosicrucianTalk 15:43, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Starfield votes we drop all licenses and go without one. I normally wouldn't give my opinion on this, but since you seem to be soliciting my vote, there it is. - Starfield 16:01, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
    • User:Derik points out that that would make us GFDL, (whether we acknowledged it or not) because we don't have a legal right to drop their license. -Derik 16:05, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Dead Metal votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3 Dead Metal 16:03, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:DrSpengler (who is at work and cannot log in) votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. --DrSpengler (at work)
  • User:Lonegamer78 votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. --Lonegamer78 16:57, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:MrBlud votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. MrBlud 17:17, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Jackpot votes we switch to 007 and shoot anyone who steals our shit. - Jackpot 19:14, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:Shellshock votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. Shellshock 20:02, 31 July 2009 (EDT)
  • User:TX55 votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3.

--TX55TALK 21:07, 31 July 2009 (EDT)

  • User:ACIDSTORM92 votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3.--ACIDSTORM92 00:02, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
  • Nuts, I missed the deadline while I was working, and didn't see the vote listed in Recent Changes until now. FWIW, User:Apcog would've voted to switch. I'm still not 100% certain of all aspects of CC-BY-SA3, but it currently seems better than standing pat.--Apcog 02:21, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
    • Language in the GFDL relicensing clause simply says 'By August 1.' Your vote is still valid for 4 hours yet. -Derik 03:56, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
  • User:abates votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. --abates 04:32, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
  • User:FFN votes we switch to CC-BY-SA3. --FFN 07:29, 1 August 2009 (EDT)

Relicencing vote outcome

On July 31, 2009, TFWiki.net conducted a community vote about whether our content licensing should remain GFDL or switch to CC-BY-SA3 as afforded under the provisions of GFDL 1.3

In low turnout, 86% of votes cast were in favor of the switch to CC-BY-SA3. No votes were in favor of remaining to GFDL, and two votes cast in favor of general lawlessness.

The result of this voting being in line with previous general discussion on the subject, and 3 of 3 administrators being in favor of the change, I assert that at a time of 23:59:59 GMT-12 the operating body of TFWiki.net had voted to switch to CC-BY-SA3 and declare on my bare authority that all articles on this site have been so republished.

May God uphold the right. -Derik 08:08, 1 August 2009 (EDT)

I request that Suki or McFly set $wgRightsText in LocalSettings.php to be "CC-BY-SA", in accordance with this change. -Derik 08:08, 1 August 2009 (EDT)

Did anything happen?

The footer says GFDL; the editing page says GFDL; Transformers Wiki:Copyrights still says GFDL... Did anything get changed at all in time? --fleb 00:02, 4 August 2009 (EDT)

Also Transformers Wiki:General disclaimer - that and Transformers Wiki:Copyrights are easily updatable (Derik?), but only McFly or Suki Brits have access to change the configuration file to correct the other messages. --abates 00:18, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
We held a vote and declared the change had taken place. That the admins are slow in making the necessary changes is annoying, but does not change the underlying reality. (Even a storekeeper must be allowed time to repaint his signs.)
I have refrained from editing the other instances where it says GFDL to make a proper clean transition when our web-bravos get off their asses. Anyone else si free to do it though... we have transitioned. -Derik 00:23, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
Ah, fair enough too! --abates 03:05, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
My apologies for not checking three days ago. It is fixed. --Suki Brits 03:25, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.
I... guess you could interpret 'republish' that way. To optimism. --fleb 09:12, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
It's hard to interpret 'republish' any other way. The provisio specifies that the articles must be republished on the same site. You're not going to create another copy of every article in another namespace. It's very clearly a case of "republish in place," where 'republish' refers to the ephemeral act of changing the license. -Derik 22:44, 4 August 2009 (EDT)
No, I get that part; I meant interpreting republishing as an abstract decision-making process, instead of as the act of changing the actual, network-transmitted licensing text by a sysop. --fleb 11:12, 5 August 2009 (EDT)
The sysop could change our licensing text to read "CC-BY" or "CC-BY-SA-NC." ...but neither of those are legal under the GFDL's relicensing provision. (Neither is "NARF" or "MALP," to name a few more nonsensical examples.) Changing a central data string doesn't affect the individual pages any more than a diffuse declaration (less actually, they only have legal force when a subsequent edit is made.)
The relicensing proviso is vague on implementation. This is how I did it. *shrug* Seems as valid as any other way, really. And it's certainly true to the spirit of the thing. As always, YMMV. -Derik 12:15, 5 August 2009 (EDT)

Marvel UK issue pages

I feel that we need to make a change with how we handle Marvel UK comic issues. The UK comics split most of its stories up over multiple issues, and even reprinted some of the split up in a different way. This has led the story articles to become bloated with non-story info (covers, letter pages, other comics from the same issue, contests, ads) for multiple issues on a single story page. Also, navigating the UK comic is a pain in the ass, as many issues having two stories (one issue has three!), as well as the reprints.

Here's what I suggest we do:

  • Make "hub" pages for the individual issues. These pages will cover issue-specific things. Those UK cover scans clogging up every Marvel Transformer story? They go here. As does information from that issue's letter pages, ads, TransFormations, and anything else that isn't a part of the actual stories. Also, there will be a list of what each issue contains, mostly the TOC from the issue itself. Non-Transformers backup strips (Machine Man, Action Force) should need nothing more beyond the name of the series and the title of the story unless more info is given in the cover, letters page, TransFormations, Coming Attractions or the like. The TOC will also have links to our story articles.
  • Leave the story articles mostly unchanged The UK comic usually treated the stories like serials (think the early Flash Gotdon films or the original Doctor Who series), so splitting them up makes no sense. Aside from moving the issue-specific stuff to the hub pages, the only changes needed will be removing the story navigation box from the UK-original stories, removal of the UK navigation from the stories written for the US comic, and adding any needed "Reprinted in" links, and putting "Originally printed in" links on the stories written for the UK comic.

Marvel US 33 & 34 (Man of Iron!) and Action Force 24-27 (Ancient Relics!) would be handled in the same way. --FortMax 17:40, 1 August 2009 (EDT)

So you're suggesting that any issue which contained multiple discontinuous stories get a page for the issue, and a page for both stories? -Derik 22:37, 1 August 2009 (EDT)
Not exactly. Marvel UK is a special case because these multiple discontinuous stories are broken up over multiple issues. We would still have one page for Time Wars. I'll put together a sample tommorow. --FortMax 00:51, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
I have a very rough example at User:FortMax/Sandbox. The main reason I feel this needs to be done is because not only does the UK comic non only have multiple stories in each issue, these stories get spread out over multiple issues. For example, Time Wars was printed over seven issues. --FortMax 12:04, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
That makes sense... a 'landing page.' I'm tentatively in favor of it... but I'd like to see what others say. -Derik 15:40, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
I think this is a really good idea, because it enables us to show the very different format of the UK comic. Formats, in fact - something I didn't realise till I completed my collection is how very different the first 30 or so issues are from the rest. More like a robot enthusiast's magazine than a comic, and much more 'British' in feel. Unfortunately I've only got my scanned copies of issues 1-5 to work from at the moment, but I can mock something up to show you what I mean. --Tribimat 06:25, 4 August 2009 (EDT)

Concept arts of questionable nature

As we all know, there are some concept art images out there of various Transformers in Revenge of the Fallen that we have up until now considered to be leaked art and will not use. However, it has come to my attention that Wikipedia is using this art without issue in their articles, as are our "friends" over at Wikia. I wanted to ask the powers that be what to do here, so can someone give me an opinion? -- SFH 19:21, 2 August 2009 (EDT)

I don't consider either of those a ringing endorsement. Yes, these are likely actual concept art, but I believe they are still leaked. The only officially released concept art we've been getting has been mostly through Josh Nizzi.--RosicrucianTalk 19:42, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
And I should probably elaborate on why I don't think Wikipedia using these images means we ought to (Wikia not being a good indicator should be obvious). Wikipedia has... well, both more and less copyright restrictions than we do. They are bigger wonks about the letter of the law and fair use justifications, and it may well be that the resident copyright nigglers just haven't spotted these images yet. Wikipedia is an enormous site, and that means there's large swaths of terra incognita where you can get away with nearly everything, just because the more anal-retentive users don't frequent them. On the other hand, Wikipedia has no real policy whatsoever on leaked information or images, and we do. That makes our criteria for use and retention of images wildly different from theirs.--RosicrucianTalk 19:52, 2 August 2009 (EDT)
I thoink Detour cited the image on Rampage's article as questionable. (I put that up.) And I could have sworn it came from someplace saying it'd been officially released... but I haven't been able to find it again, so I was probably just wrong. *sigh*
I suggest we yank the pictures and stick 'em on the talk pages, pending some anticipated future release. -Derik 12:22, 5 August 2009 (EDT)

State of Traffic August 2009 (Nattering)

A lot of major websites (including YouTube) have begun to harass users running IE6. (I personally find that a bit obnoxious, and the design of the main site behind the movement irritates the hell out of me, as well as being a thinly disguised PR ploy) ...which made me want to look up what % of our users still use IE6, (6.66%—no jokes) which got me into our analytics.

3 month overview

TFWiki had ~150,000 people visit us in the last month, making about 2 visits each. That's trending down from the previous month (which included the movie) but still well up from 3 months ago. The chart at right shows our last 3 months (the heavy downtime we experienced due to software upgrade, caching and traffic issues makes the hump a lot less pronounced than might otherwise be expected-- only about 200% our normal traffic. I estimate that about 400-500% our normal traffic was trying to get in at peak times though.)

Is there was to traffic-stress test our site before Botcon/TF3 in 2012?

Google analytics says that our "average time in site" per visit is 13 minutes, which means that TFWiki.net kills 1.5 parallel humans per year. That is to say; TFWiki.net absorbs 102 years of eyeball-time annually, or about 1.5 human lifetimes. (I rationalize my guilt about this by telling myself that the parallel dead would probably have just spent their lives watching youTube if we didn't exist.)
Alexa (which doesn't have access to Google Analytics more intimate knowledge of visitor activity and so makes 'best guesses') estimates our time-on-site as 7.9 minutes (so its numbers 'lose' about 40% of the actual time.) By way of contrast visitors to TVTropes spend about 15.9 minutes (26 minutes, corrected) per-visit. We are about 50% as 'sticky' as TVTropes. (Our 'bounce' rate-- people who leave shortly after coming here and don't visit another page are about he same, their is ~5% lower.)

Our highest 'quality' users (spending the most time on site, viewing the most pages) comes from Bing and MSN searches. (I have no idea why people who use Microsoft web portals spend twice as long here, but they are only a tiny fraction of our users.)

Firefox has barely scraped ahead of IE as the most common browser used on our site. There's no significant usage difference between FF and IE users... except that IE users tend to visit 50% more pages in the same amount of time. Does this mean IE users skim more? (I don't know.) Safari users spend ~30% less time on the site, with a corresponding decrease in number-of-pages-per-visit... which means they're spending ~ the same amount of time per-page. (I have no idea if this reflects the site being less usable on Safari, or simply mac users having a different demographic.) Safari users are ~6.7% of our traffic-- so if a tech issue is causing us to lose that 30% of Safari users time, remedying it would cause a ~2.3% overall traffic increase. (In short "worth looking at.")

New vs. returning users, 3 month view

The 'quality' of our users (time on site, # of pages visited) did not really change during the ROTF movie-- which means new users that surfed in during the ROTF promo rush 'behaved' just like our normal new users. The new:old user ratio also barely shifted from 4:6 to 5:5. (see chart.) We got (I'm guessing on these numbers, everything else went through a calculator) a ~120% increase in new users, and a 85% increase in returning users. I suspect our downtime skewed this. (Returning users having more reason to keep trying to get us vs. Wikia.)

New Users spend ~ half as much time and view half as many pages as returning users. Those numbers have remained rock-solid since forever.

Compared to TV/Entertainment sites or Comics and animation sites of the same size... our daily page-views are below average, but our bounce rate is half of average, and pageviews/time on site are spectacularly above average. I think this just reflects how wikis behave differently than other sites. (And really... any entertainment sites that has 10,000 pages is freaking huge. It's a poor benchmark for comparison all around.) -Derik 16:24, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

Personally I find pushing people to get rid of IE6 to be a good thing. It's a bad browser both in terms of usability, performance, and standards compliance, and there's zero reason to use it when there's browsers like Opera where even the newest versions run fine on Win95 & 98. Websites are rightly dropping support for it anyway to focus on standards-compliant browsers that let them more easily code pages and use useful CSS properties. (I have a hard enough time getting IE7 to match up with FF and Opera without worrying about IE6 too, I know that much.)
There's a difference between letting people choose between those browsers that work differently but all meet standards, and wasting time supporting people who continue to use a broken browser. But anyhoo. --Jeysie 17:56, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Oh, I agree entirely. As a web developer, I loathe IE6. But for TFWiki.net specifically... we're running mediaWiki which (mostly) addresses the worst problems out of the box, and any in-page templates/layouts etc... don't bump up against IE6's problems. (But another way, we have a relatively high proportion of IE6 users on our site simply because our site looks good on Ie6-- through no effort of our own.) -Derik 18:06, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Well, the site looks useable on IE6. I don't know about "good". --Jeysie 18:38, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
It's more than most websites as graphically oriented as we are (and which don't use Flash as a crutch) can say.--RosicrucianTalk 18:40, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

Images by Artist Categories

Uh, as much as I like the idea, could we possibly have the bot do the pure category adds instead? Having everyone doing it manually is doing horrible things to the Recent Changes page, and I don't want to hide minor edits because those can be useful to keep an eye on. (Folks sometimes mark Talk page comments as minor, for instance.) --Jeysie 17:48, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

A lot of what's being notated are ones that lacked image descriptions in the first place. If we restrict it to that, would that be okay?--RosicrucianTalk 18:07, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Well, it seemed like from the size of the edits, people were just adding categories. The places where we have to do full-on descriptions and credits is another thing entirely. --Jeysie 18:34, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

Need Disambig Help

Deathsaurus and Landcross need to be moved, but I remember us doing different stuff with the Victory characters, so I didn't know if I should move them to (G1) or (Victory). --Jeysie 22:09, 6 August 2009 (EDT)

Relevant discussions suggest "Deathsaurus (Victory)", etc. --abates 22:16, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Okie dokie. Thankee! --Jeysie 22:19, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
*Derik growls*
...you growled, sir? --Jeysie 22:59, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Derik likes the G1 parenthetical when applicable. Interrobang hates it with a passion. We are going to put them in Thunderdome.--RosicrucianTalk 23:44, 6 August 2009 (EDT)
Derik thunderously proclaims that the (G1) parenthetical is a reference to the umbrella franchise that contains all "Generation 1" franchises. If we truly named characters for franchises, we would have "Optimus Prime (The Transformers)." We're not-- ergo we prefer to use the umbrella franchise for disambig when possible, and that should apply to Victory characters as well! -Derik 00:01, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
Uh, no. More like it's one of those cases where we have to make an exception because the result caused by following the rule would be ridiculously unhelpful. Otherwise we do in fact disambig by franchise. --Jeysie 00:36, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
I disagree! -Derik 00:41, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
With which? You disagree that (The Transformers) is unhelpful despite the conversation on the matter (to whit: "Because, having 'The Transformers' be the name of a specific franchise and continuity family would be insanely confusing, when technically 'The Transformers' is the also name of the entire general franchise and continuity family that encompasses everything. Having two different concepts named "Generation 1" is already confusing enough without making it ten times worse."), or you disagree with the fact that we disambiguate by franchise?
(The Transformers) is a uselessly ambiguous disambiguation, and it is a fact that we disambiguate by franchise. --Jeysie 00:47, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
But... we don't use the "umbrella franchise" for anything else. We don't do it for the UT. We don't do it for Beast Wars (who some would argue falls under G1). We don't do it for the movies. Why only G1? And "Generation 1" is the name of the franchise, as established by numerous product. —Interrobang 12:33, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
Bah! Humbug! -Derik 22:45, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
Let's make sure we've got our terminology straight. At the very top level, we have the Generation 1 continuity family, which, NOT being a franchise, is never used for parentheticals. Underneath that, we have the G1 franchise, G2, BW, the 2003 Universe, etc. The G1 franchise is synonymous with "The Transformers", so Derik's point above about how we don't say "Optimus Prime (The Transformers)" is nonsensical. Every time we say "(G1)", we are saying "(The Transformers)". This franchise could be considered an "umbrella franchise" because it contains all the Japanese franchises like Headmasters, Victory, Zone, etc. So does a Victory-exclusive character get a "(G1)" or a "(Victory)"? Both technically count as franchise-of-origin. The only reason I see to get granular about it is to follow the example of the Japanese BW sub-franchises. For example, it would be perfectly valid if Skywarp (BWII) were "Skywarp (BW)" instead, but for whatever reason, we've decided those sub-franchises deserve their own parentheticals. I favor consistency, but I can't think of any clear logic that demands one outcome or the other. - Jackpot 22:19, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
It's the 'for whatever reason' I'm stuck on. I don't think we ever actually made that decision so much as some contribuitors have simply been pushing that view-- thus the periodic outbreaks of "What? Why the fuck is ArticleName now at such a retarded location?" followed by block reversions. -Derik 22:49, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
IIRC, I think that the reasoning was that we should always be disambiguating by franchise rather than umbrella franchise, so (Victory), (Zone), (BWII) was more correct. Basically, it was a change to make our disambiguating more consistent. --Jeysie 22:52, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
I can think of one umbrella franchise we do disambiguate by: the 2008 Universe. With the exception of the "Action Blast" Flash animations, all it does is subsume other franchises, but when a new character comes out of it, we use "Universe" as the parenthetical instead of whatever franchise they're from within that. I've argued against this, but to little avail. - Jackpot 23:06, 7 August 2009 (EDT)

I've been spending a fair bit of time lately adding to and updating our collection of logos, but it's occurred to me that of all our thin-ice copyright practices, displaying Hasbro's trademarks is pretty damn questionable. So I checked out how Wikipedia deals with it, and I think we can pare down their boilerplate into something that fits our typical copyright templates. What do you all think? - Jackpot 23:16, 7 August 2009 (EDT)

Logos are something you put out as a metonymic symbol for yourself. Mangling them or presentignt hem badly is bad... but simply presenting them should be fine.
Trademark infringement is an entirely different thing than copyright infringement-- it only occurs if we were trying to use their names/logos to represent ourselves. Creating "Genuine opportunity for confusion" between ourselves and Hasbro. We're not using them that way... we're usign them to represent Hasbro, which is entirely proper.
(It wouldn't hurt to work up a {{logo}} template for image credit though, that underlines that this is Hasbro's Trademark, not an image they own copyright on.) -Derik 23:37, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
I've done a first draft. Feel free to mangle it so that the language is more sound.--RosicrucianTalk 23:51, 7 August 2009 (EDT)
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