MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

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:

	Specific Discussion Subjects
Moving From Wikia: Arriving Leaving Complaints New Ad Policy: Ads Bookworm Database-Crash: Damage Control Central Project:Bookworm Crash Leaving Take 2 Server Move: Arriving Take 2 Relicensing: Relicensing Dealing With Vandalism: Vandalism GoBots Sister Wiki: Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki

Help Wanted

Hello one and all. I'm here representing a newly created Role-Playing forum that is based in the Transformers Universe. We're in the early stages yet, and are looking for people to help get the ball rolling. Since this site seems to lack a dedicated forum (where requests like these would usually be made) and I haven't seen any other way to effectively say my piece in front of a large audience, I thought that posting here was the best way to "advertise" us, as it were. I sincerely apologize if this was the wrong move on our part, or if I've breached protocol at all, but I can assure everyone that our intentions aren't malign. Those interested, please contact me using any of the ways that I have listed on my username page here on this site. I won't tempt fate by linking our website here directly =P

Once again, you all have my sincere greetings, and I hope to hear from you soon. Also, as a side note: the difference in quality between this page and the transformers wikia is amazing. Rathian Warrior 23:50, 3 October 2011 (EDT)

"Fictional" and "real" categories

I think we need to come up with a consistent way to distinguish categories of things that are real and categories of things that have appeared in fiction. So far, we've skimmed the issue by using synonyms, such as companies and businesses, but that doesn't really work for things like magazines, which is already used for real magazines. Currently, we have Category:Fictional books, Category:Fictional video games that consider the fictional entities "different". On the other hand, we have Category:Real-world events by day and Category:Real world films. We focus more on the fictional aspect of Transformers, so it makes sense to not point out the fictionality in categories, but "real world" sounds awkward to some. Which one should we use? —Interrobang 00:26, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I thought I'd cheat and see how some of the other fictional Wikis deal with the problem. Three different approaches I saw:

• Doctor Who wiki has a "Real World" category for real world stuff and in most cases the categories for real world things are at "Real world X".
• Wookiepedia goes the parenthetical route, with "Books" and "Books (real-world)". Though they also have one or two like "Real world companies".
• Stargate wiki has "Books" versus "Stargate books" for real world books.

I kinda like the parenthetical approach that Wookiepedia have taken. --abates 03:11, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I'd favor pointing out the status of both categories, just to make absolutely clear what they are for. The words can be "Fictional" and "Real-world" (I notice both real-world categories use a different spelling. Whichever it's gonna be (if), only one spelling should be used). "Nonfictional" kinda works as an alternative, would "Real-world" be disliked. Geewunling 04:35, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

If we go that route, I think "real-world" should be used, since "real world" is a lot more easier to fix than the other parsing. I like the Wookiepedia approach, but I'm not sure that's enough to change how we already do categories. The idea to label both categories sounds nice, but "Fictional X" seems incongruous with unlabeled categories, such as "weapons", "technology", etc.; considering that our main focus is the fiction, I'm leaning towards only labeling the real stuff. —Interrobang 13:02, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I think it would be advantageous to put a {{disambig2}} at the top, so people could easily go from the fictional to the real world category too. --abates 16:30, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Yeah, I think I put that on Category:Films a while ago. —Interrobang 16:57, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Speaking of this, I found we handle Category:Films like Category:Real people, wouldn't this be some, um, confusing? It's just, somehow, reverse? (Except for the fictional films like Honoji) According to the logic of how we handle Category:Real people, shouldn't we place films like 40-Year-Old Virgin or Godzilla in the Category:Real world films? --TX55^TALK 23:04, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Godzilla doesn't go in "Real world films" because it's not a real world Transformers film. The Transformers is implied in that category name. Presumably we could have a "Real films" category for Godzilla, etc, but I'm not sure it's worth doing. --abates 23:53, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

We shouldn't use "fictional X" for two reasons. One, there things like As the Kitchen Sinks that are fictional even within the fictional Transformers universe. Second, the wiki is written in-universe by default and putting Big Steve's Used Cars in a "fictional businesses" category would kind of break that. Within Transformers fiction, "Big Steve's Used Cars" is not a fictional company, but "As the Kitchen Sinks" is a fictional TV show. - Starfield 18:47, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

In-universe, As the Kitchen Sinks is not a fictional show. It depicts fictional events and fictional people, yes, but the show itself, as a piece of entertainment, is not fictional. I do get your point, as we actually have things like Frankenstein that are two layers of fiction removed from us. —Interrobang 19:18, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Yes, of course. I meant, in-universe, As the Kitchen Sinks is a work of fiction, whereas "Big Steve's Used Cars" is a real business that sells real used cars to real people. Have I been saying it wrong all this time? Wasn't Buck Rogers a fictional TV show? Anyway, it sounds like you got my point. - Starfield 21:14, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Or, judging by the fact categories like "Magazines" in used for magazines in our real life and "Companies" for companies in real life, why not just use "Film" for films (such as DOTM) in real life, while we move current contents in "Films" to "Films in Transformers fictions"? --TX55^TALK 23:04, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

That seems like it would go counter to some of our existing naming schemes. e.g. if we split that out into films by franchise, you'd get "Films in Generation 1" rather than "Generation 1 films". Though admittedly the former title might have the advantage that it's clearer in meaning. --abates 23:50, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I think both are equally ambiguous in their meaning. If we still need to clarify the purpose of the categories, we can always spell it out in the category's introduction. —Interrobang 00:03, 7 September 2011 (EDT)

"Transformers: "

We talked a bit about adding back "Transformers: " to the titles of articles previously, and the general sentiment was that people were for it or didn't have an issue with it. Does anybody else have any input in this matter? —Interrobang 00:34, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I'm okay with this change, but I do have three questions on execution.
1.) Whether or not "Transformers" is followed by a colon seems random in our current system. How will that be handled?
2.) If "Transformers(:)" is going to be added to every relevant page name, then what about all the extra words in the titles of Japanese stuff?
3.) What conseuqneces will this have for categories, lists, storylinks, etc?
Geewunling 04:41, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

1. I think we've had two consistent rules about that: If the title is some kind of phrase, like "Transformers United", "The Transformers Collection", or "Transformers Animated", then we don't use the colon. If the title is some kind of obvious "title: subtitle" setup ("Transformers: Armada", "Transformers: Prime"), then we use the colon. There's some borderline examples, but I think we can figure them out one by one. Official sources will help with determining colon-status. The other rule seems to apply to only games: If the title has another subtitle, then the first colon is dropped (ex. Transformers Prime: Terrorcon Defense). I dunno why, but we can add back the colon, I suppose.
2. I guess we add them? We could argue it for Victory, since it was released in English contexts as just "Transformers: Victory".
3. I think we're just going to continue the same in relation to those. The articles will still be sorted by their subtitles in categories. Storylinks I could go either way on, but I think the trend is to drop the main title. I've been doing that for the AAII storylinks to avoid excessively long links. —Interrobang 12:49, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I don't see how "Transformers United" and "Transformers Animated" are any different from "Transformers: Prime". To me, all three could fall into either of your groups (phrase vs subtitle) and would prefer colons in all of those cases. Of your examples, only "The Transformers Collection" seems to really belong in the "phrase" group. --Khajidha 13:22, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

"United" and "Animated" are adjectives that modify "Transformers" and have official sources that omit the colon. "Transformers Prime" doesn't make sense in that way. —Interrobang 14:58, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I am not certain about those two "rules" for colons either. They're rather vague and bound to cause arguments and confusion. It needs to be made more obvious whether a colon should be used or not before "Transformers" can be added everywhere (a help page on the matter would also be handy in the future, me thinks).

I think that if we would put the cartoon at Transformers: Victory, that would cause confusion with the manga, storypages, toyline and franchises, none of which were ever brought over and should thus not be named such. If moved, the Victory cartoon should best go to its Japanese name. Geewunling 15:28, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

*shrug* The first rule is mostly there for Transformers Animated, which people will be resistant to moving to have a colon (plus, obvious cases like The Transformers Collection). The second rule I really don't care about and can be tossed (it mostly only concerns the movie series of video games and online games). —Interrobang 16:04, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

Are you suggesting there that Victory articles should be moved to "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Victory"? I'd disagree with that, if so! --abates 07:25, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Why? We can't go around writing out the full names of Western franchises and stuff but not do so for the Japanese stuff. We already have "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" written out for the 1985 & 1986 Japanese franchises, so why not Victory? Geewunling 07:30, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Victory (the cartoon) has been released in the West as "Transformers: Victory", to me that means that the official English name of the franchise is Transformers: Victory. Yes, we should give the full Japanese title at the beginning of the franchise page but there is no reason to move anything to that name. --Khajidha 08:35, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

That was pretty much my reasoning too (also typing out the full name every time we wanted to link to it would be tedious). --abates 17:59, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Tying out "(franchise)" every time for everything is more tedious, but we still have it (for... some reason). Ditto long titles like The Story of Super Robot Lifeforms: The Transformers and Transformers Vault's previous ridiculously long title.

But I guess the general principle of "Transformers: " is acceptable to most. I'll start moving the noncontroversial pages (Western comics and cartoons with definite subtitles, etc.) if there's no opposition in the next few hours. —Interrobang 18:08, 10 September 2011 (EDT)

Is there a difference between Transformers, Beast Wars: The Gathering and Transformers: Beast Wars: The Ascending? I must admit, the comma/colon distinction seems kinda arbitrary. Also, these page names seem kind of overlong and stupid, what's wrong with The Ascending and The Gathering? It's a Transformers wiki and those are Beast Wars series; prefixing everything we possibly can with "Transformers" is only going to clog up the search box and make editing just that bit more arduous. What were the arguments in favour of this again? --Emvee 16:21, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

That's the formatting used in the indicia. Your complaint about the search box is silly; did you really think typing "Transformers" into it yielded anything useful 99% of the time?

Like it or not, "Transformers: " is the part of the name of many things, and the hoops we have to go through to maintain this silly system of dropping it from article titles has gotten ridiculous and inconsistent. Adding "Transformers: " to article titles, on the other hand, adds clarity and avoids pointless disambiguation. "The Transformers: Bumblebee" is preferable to "Bumblebee (comic)", "Transformers: Sector 7" to "Sector 7 (comic)", etc. —Interrobang 16:44, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

I get that it's useful in some cases, but it just seems like applying the rule across the board means we're overcomplicating the issue. Occam's razor has a lot going for it, and for user-friendliness I'd go for brevity. --Emvee 17:11, 12 September 2011 (EDT)

Also on an Occam's razor tip, "Bumblebee (comic)" conveys more information in fewer characters than "Transformers: Bumblebee". I really don't understand why the latter is preferable. --Emvee 14:06, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

There's something to say for either argument, but as it is, we have proven to be unable to keep to one consistent "Transformers"-as-part-of-the-title policy at least since TFA. And if trying to keep "Transformers" out of the deal doesn't work, we oughta give the alternative a chance. I don't think it necesarilly makes it harder to find anything, as the search box reacts to words even if they are not the first part of a page title. And I want to have the changes in clear perspective before I might suggest deleting a few redirects, so at least for now, searches won't be any harder and we have a consistent policy. Geewunling 14:49, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

I gotta say, I'm hating how this is working in practice. Article titles seem long and ugly to me.--Jimsorenson 15:46, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

I feel the same, but it seems to be an necessary evil because "Transformers: ***" is a full title? duh. --TX55^TALK 22:45, 13 September 2011 (EDT)

I fear the day someone decides to add full titles to disambiguation suffixes as well, e.g. "Optimus Prime (Transformers Animated)", "Grindor (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)" etc.--Nevermore 13:43, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

That would be silly, and I'm pretty sure most people would oppose it. Putting "Transformers:" in names is a change we'd already been drifting towards for a while with, for instance, the War for Cybertron articles all doing it. --abates 16:32, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

On a related note, it's a pet peeve of mine when a writeup talks about a specific medium related to a franchise but links to the franchise as a whole instead, such as "Jetfire was released as part of wave 1 of the Cybertron toyline" or "in episode 6 of the Energon cartoon...".--Nevermore 17:29, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Would the best solution there be something like "Jetfire was released as part of wave 1 of the Cybertron toyline"? --77.99.176.103 03:32, 29 September 2011 (EDT) (oops, emvee not logged in)

Suggestion to creating templates

Do we need some kinds of templates when typing contents for convenience? For my experience in Terminator Wiki, we use templates like {{T3}} for ''[[Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines]]'' or {{TSCC}} for ''[[Terminator: The Sarah Connnor Chronicles]]''. What I'm suggesting is that after we make all franchise names into full title (and we don't use redirect links), it is some how trouble some when typing the title. So we can make some templates like:

{{tf|Armada}} -> ''[[Transformers: Armada (franchise)|Transformers: Armada]]''

{{tf|Armada|toyline|Pokeformer}} -> ''[[Transformers: Armada (toyline)|Pokeformer]]''

{{jptf|bwn}} -> ''[[Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Neo]]''

If there is any user who can created complex template, we could make

{{tf|armada|t}} -> ''[[Transformers: Armada (toyline)|Transformers: Armada]]''

parameter 1:
2010 = Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010 (toyline)
thm = Transformers: The Headmasters (toyline)
mf = Transformers: Super-God Masterforce (toyline)
v = Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Victory
z = Transformers: Zone
roc = Transformers: Return of Convoy
oc = Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Operation Combination
armada = Transformers Armada
bwn = Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Neo
mov = Movie
rotf = Revenge of the Fallen
tfa = Transformers Animated
...and (blah blah)

parameter 2:
*default* - franchise
t - toyline
ct - cartoon
co - comic
m - manga
f - film

And, if possible:
if parameter 3 = s (for example), it will become short title like ''[[Transformers: Armada (toyline)|Armada]]''

--TX55^TALK 21:42, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

It's something I've thought about as well. Considering there are a lot of exceptions to the regular naming system (parts of franchises that are called something different or franchises that lack the (franchise) identifier on the wiki because it's not necessary to disambiguate it), I don't think a template can be coded to put a link together. A full list system like our TFtoon templates have could maybe work though. Geewunling 16:08, 25 September 2011 (EDT)

I think with the number of franchises we have, it would end up being a hellishly big template and difficult to maintain for only a minor gain. --abates 18:03, 25 September 2011 (EDT)

Jungaroo

Someone made a lovely Jungaroo gobox, but there's no page for him. --Jimsorenson 21:23, 6 September 2011 (EDT)

I don't think he's in any applicable fiction, but his bio card is online here. Someone will have to translate it from Japanese first though. --abates 20:25, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Making the search suggestion work better

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but I noticed sometimes when I type something in the search box, the search suggestions below it jump around and end up on a list which doesn't quite match what I typed. I think it's something to do with the speed I'm typing and the amount of time the server takes to respond to each request.

Anyway, I tweaked the javascript for grabbing the suggestions from the server so it would only trigger when I stopped typing. That seems to fix the problem for me, and as a bonus it's not nagging the server on every keypress. The downside is no instant feedback when I type, but I can live without that if it fixes the other thing.

If anyone else is having that problem and wants to have a go, just copy and paste the following into your monacobook.js (caveat: only tested on Firefox and Chrome):

var ss_memory = null;
var ss_timeron = 0;
var ss_timer;
 
function DoActualSearch() {
    ss_timeron=0;
    var newdiv = document.getElementById("searchsuggest");
    if (!newdiv) {
        var newdiv = document.createElement("div");
        newdiv.id = "searchsuggest";
        var searchdiv = document.getElementById("searchBody");
        searchdiv.appendChild(newdiv);
    }
    var x = document.getElementById("searchInput").value;
    if (x == ss_memory) {
        return;
    }
    ss_memory = x;
    document.getElementById("searchsuggest").style.display = 'none';
    if (x.length < 30 && x.length > 1 && x.value != "") {
        sajax_do_call("wfAjaxSearchSuggest", [x], newdiv);
        document.getElementById("searchsuggest").style.display = 'block';
    }
}

function MySearchCall() {
  if(ss_timeron) {
    clearTimeout(ss_timer);
    ss_timer=setTimeout("DoActualSearch();",500);
  } else {
    ss_timer=setTimeout("DoActualSearch();",500);
    ss_timeron=1;
  }
}

function myss_ajax_onload(){
    var x = document.getElementById('searchInput');
    x.onkeyup = function(){
        MySearchCall();
    };
}

hookEvent("load", myss_ajax_onload);

Unfortunately it won't fix the actual contents of the search suggestions, so you'll still get a bunch of All Hail Megatron issues when you type "Megatron", but that requires changes on the server. --abates 20:02, 14 September 2011 (EDT)

Hmm. I feel like adding ORDER BY `page_counter` DESC around line 20 of suggest.php might help w/ our search results, but it's hard to say for sure given how abstracted mediawiki database calls are, someone would have ot make the change then test it. -Derik 18:47, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

The thought I had was to do a query on article titles starting with the search term, and then if that gives back less than 8 entries, do a second search to fill the rest of the list with titles with the term anywhere in the title. The search suggest currently supports both options, but not at the same time. --abates 20:07, 15 September 2011 (EDT)

Stuff

Firstly, our organization of information related to the junior franchises is terrible and I'd love to do something about it, but I need feedback. We currently have most Japanese and American Go-Bots as separate characters, except for the Japanese Go-Bots from the 1-2-3 line. Though there are requests for a separate Chopper page. Should those pages be split or not? And if so, what about the figures that came with some of the toys. Kid-Bot clearly isn't the "red driver" or "blue driver", but the dog and "Gas-Bot" both have fiction in only one of the two franchises, so is it worth separating them? Also, does the unpublished coloring book count as apocrypha or not, seeing as it was mostly approved? And the human characters within, do they count as cameos like Kelly in the Dreamwave comics or separate characters? And does anyone know what the Japanese name was by which the First Transformers were released? The Go-Bots fansite has an image of Dumpkun's box featuring what looks like a G1 logo, the First Transformers logo and "初めて トランスフォーマー" written on it.

Secondly, many disambiguation pages still mention if there's a separate page for the toys of a character. Is this system still necessary now that we use subpages to separate such stuff under? Geewunling 17:07, 23 September 2011 (EDT)

I think unpublished stuff is treated as apocrypha, isn't it? The character page coverage of unreleased Dreamwave issues is in notes, for instance. --abates 07:48, 24 September 2011 (EDT)

True, but we don't know if those were approved or know those weren't approved. The coloring book was approved, just not released. That makes it better comparable to Wreckers #$, which we do not consider apocrypha (though I wouldn't know if we'd do that if Wreckers #5 didn't partially canonize it). Geewunling 11:39, 1 October 2011 (EDT)

Just weighing in on the toy page issue: I find it useful to have these called out on the disambig pages. Being able to go directly from the disambig page to the toy page of a character saves me at least one click (if I see the suite box in time) and often some scrolling (if I don't see it). However, I won't fight too hard on this if consensus is for the removal of this feature. --Khajidha 07:47, 26 September 2011 (EDT)

Transformers Warzone RPG

Hi Guys! I have a Transformers RPG called Transfromers Warzone, and as of right now I have like 5 active members. It's a really interesting storyline, and we could use some more members! If you're interested, here's the link! [1] - Wing Saber