MediaWiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central

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What happened
TFWiki.net's database was accidentally deleted in an attempt to upgrade the wiki-software. And due to a different software failure, the only existing backup was from June 2008. So one day we all logged in and saw that every article was nine months out of date. Our response was to raid Google's cache for more recent versions. The vast majority of articles have now been restored from there, but the Google-caching process has been an imperfect solution: Many articles are now up-to-date but badly-formatted, with garbled lines of code in plain view.

What needs to be done
The ugliness needs to be fixed, and some articles still need to be restored from Google's cache. Some of the work can be automated, but much will have to be done by hand. See the "Restoration" section below for resources and advice.

Information outside of the wiki
Immediately after the crash, discussion sprung up on these Allspark threads, and they have been a continuing source of information (especially as the wiki has been experiencing a lot of downtime lately):

Damage Control Central Archives
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3





Restoration

Basically, if you see an article that looks messed-up, feel free to fix it.

Useful Resources

Files

If an article is still in its June 2008 state, there is probably a newer version that it should be restored to. Here are places to look:

  • The Google cache. Add the name of the page you're looking for to the URL. (Don't click on the links in these pages; those will send you back here.)

As time goes on, the Google cache becomes less relevant because it overwrites itself with the current state of the articles. So several editors downloaded swaths of articles from the cache immediately after the crash:

All of those files were converted by Google from wikicode to HTML. Since the wiki software doesn't understand most HTML, we have used some programs to try to convert the files back. Here are the results:

And here's a program to open all of these archives:

HTML-to-wikicode processors

Here are the programs we've been using to convert the files back to wiki-format:

Fixing ugly pages

The simplest thing to do when you see a page with broken code all over it is to call it out. Put the Bookworm template at the top of the page, adding a severity-number and preferably a description of what's wrong. This will put the page in a category so everyone can see that it needs to be fixed.

If you'd like to help repair the damage, you'll find that most of the problems with HTML failing to convert back to wikicode have to do with templates. Oftentimes a dozen lines of HTML can be replaced with a single "{{stub}}" or "{{picsneeded}}". Some templates are more complicated, however. Those are explained in the next section.

The other big problem is references. These need to be re-created by hand via putting empty <ref></ref> tags in the proper places in the article, then picking out the actual reference from under the Footnotes/References section and sticking them in the Ref tags, then replacing the leftover messed-up code with the <references/> element. You may want to check against the unprocessed cache page to make sure it's all correct.

Template Code You Might Need

Breaking Lists Into Columns
{{columnlist|(number of items per column)|
(list of items)}}
Comic Issues

Items between "coverdate" and "continuity" should be customized to match the issue's actual credits and wikilinked to the person's name. 

{{Comicstory|
|seriesissue=(wikilinked comic series the issue is part of)
|prev=(previous issue)
|next=(next issue)
|seriesissue2=(wikilinked second comic series the issue is also part of, if applicable)
|prev2=(previous issue in the second series, if applicable)
|next2=(next issue in the second series, if applicable)
|title=(title of the issue, if applicable)
|image=(cover image)
|caption=(caption for the cover image)
|publisher=(wikilink to the publisher)
|date=(month, day, and year the issue was released)
|coverdate=(month and year on the issue itself)
|writer=
|penciler=
|inker=
|colorist=
|letterer=
|editor=
|continuity=(wikilink to the continuity the issue takes place in)
}}
Episodes

Items between "production company" and "animation studio" should be customized to match the episode's actual opening credits and wikilinked to the person's name. 

{{episode|
|series=(series the episode is in (codes: g1, headmasters, masterforce, victory,
zone, g2, beast wars ii, beast wars neo, beast machines, rid, armada, energon,
cybertron, animated))
|ep=(the episode number)
|prev=(previous episode)
|next=(next episode)
|series2=(second series the episode is in, if applicable (codes: g1, headmasters,
masterforce, victory, zone, g2, beast wars ii, beast wars neo,
beast machines, rid, armada, energon, cybertron, animated))
|ep2=(the second series episode number, if applicable)
|prev2=(previous episode in the second series, if applicable)
|next2=(next episode in the second series, if applicable)
|title=(title of the episode)
|japanese=(title in Japanese for Japanese-origin episodes, if applicable)
|romaji=(romanization of Japanese title)
|translation=(translation of Japanese title)
|image=(some representative image)
|caption=(caption for the image)
|production code=(episode's production code, if known)
|production company=(wikilink to the company that produced the episode)
|writer=
|director=
|animation studio=(wikilink to the studio that animated the episode)
|airdate=(the date the episode aired)
|continuity=(wikilink to the continuity the episode takes place in)
}}

First column is "Autobots", second is "Decepticons", third is "Humans", fourth is "Others", fifth is "Misc." These headers can be changed if needed by using |h1=(new header)|c1= in place of the c1=. Code sections with no characters in them can be deleted. 

{{featuredcharacters
|c1=

|c2=

|c3=

|c4=

|c5=

}}
"For Further Information"

Used whenever an article has had some of its sections separated into separate articles.
{{see|(title of separated section page)}}

Image Galleries

Used to format lots of images into a swanky-looking table. 

<gallery>
Image:(filename)|(caption)
</gallery>
"See Main Article"

Whenever an article has had some of its sections separated into separate articles, this should be placed at the top of the separate articles to link them back to the page they were split from.
{{main|(title of main article)}}

Specifying How an Article Should Be Sorted in Categories

For instance, if the article is named "Simon Furman", but you want it sorted as "Furman, Simon" in all categories.
{{DEFAULTSORT:(altered title)}}

Speedy Delete

Slap this on any page that can definitely be deleted. Needless to say, don't stick this on a page unless you're absolutely certain it can be deleted!
{{speedy|(reason for delete)}}

Stubs
  • General: {{stub}}
  • Character pages: {{charstub}}
    • Character pages that need fiction: {{charstubfiction}}
    • Character pages that need toys: {{charstubtoys}}
  • Comic issues: {{issuestub}}
  • Episodes: {{epstub}}
Year Page Navigation

Puts a nice navigation box on the top of year pages.
{{yearofthe|(year)}}

Google Cache Pages

Saved

  • Main
  • Template
  • Help
  • Transformers Wiki
  • Talk 0000-0499, 8600-8921

Exceptions

Not Saved

  • Talk 0500-8599
  • Template talk
  • Help talk
  • Transformers Wiki talk (non-Community Portal pages)

Macron issues

Currently, the Wiki is containing two pages of every article with a macron in its title. One with the macron properly over the letter, and one with the two characters separate. (I.e., the regular version has ō as G%C5%8 in the url. The fucked up version has it as o%CC%84.) I don't know how to handle this issue, since clicking on the title with the characters separate just takes you to the page with the characters together. Their individual diffs can be accessed, though. Perhaps somebody with a old browser that doesn't support the macron sign can fix it? —Interrobang 06:25, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

I don't think an older browser will make any difference - the redirect is occurring at the server end. --abates 07:35, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
Okay, that's annoying. I guess somebody with the ability will have to dig through the Wiki's drive to delete them. Scout, I guess? —Interrobang 08:22, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
Hmm, I wonder what would happen if you tried moving one of the affected pages (not that I'm suggesting anyone try this, at least until we have backups working).
My gut instinct is to say we should leave it as a problem until we're back up and running at 100%, since it doesn't seem to be stopping anything from working. --abates 16:00, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
I don't have a problem with prioritization; I just put this up so I wouldn't forget about it later. The one and only problem arising from them (other than taking up space) is that they show up in categories. —Interrobang 16:03, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
Having loaded up a test install of MediaWiki 1.12.0, I managed to duplicate the macron problem we're having here. After trying some ideas, I was unable to find a way to rename or delete the problem article through the software itself, so it appears that the only way to delete them is to delete the problem records directly in the database. I didn't encounter any problems from doing that on the test install, but it'd be good to consult with the MediaWiki developers, perhaps, to confirm that it won't cause any problems. --abates 05:17, 9 April 2009 (EDT)
Did you try moving the "real" pages away to something like "Macron 1", deleting the redirect from the real page and then trying the "broken" one? - SanityOrMadness 11:32, 12 April 2009 (EDT)
Yep. When you do that, trying the broken one just takes you to the corrected URL, which says it's been deleted. Most of my experiments revolved around using a greasemonkey script to allow me to fiddle with the form data I was submitting when moving, but none of it worked - MediaWiki would always correct the article name before doing the move. (sorry for not replying to this earlier - I didn't see your reply!) --abates 07:38, 18 April 2009 (EDT)
Is it possible to delete individual history logs? It's possible to access diffs, like here. —Interrobang 21:25, 18 April 2009 (EDT)
MediaWiki doesn't provide any way through the interface to delete stuff that way, no. I'm wondering if one of the command-line scripts included would be able to fix the problem (my web host doesn't have shell access, so I don't think I can run them on my test server) --abates 23:09, 18 April 2009 (EDT)

Updating the page counter

Not critical I understand, but when we initially did the migration the counter could be corrected by a script an admin could run if I recall.--RosicrucianTalk 12:15, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

References

While there's obviously no way to fully automate these, I do wonder if there's some way to automatically make them more readable.

Like being able to turn:

<sup id="cite_ref-0" class="reference">[[#cite_note-0|[1]]]</sup>

into:

<ref>1</ref>

Or turn:

<sup id="cite_ref-lorenzoiesb_16-1" class="reference">[[#cite_note-lorenzoiesb-16|[17]]]</sup>

into:

<ref name="lorenzoiesb">17</ref>

Then at the bottom, turn:

<li id="cite_note-0">[[#cite_ref-0|↑]] The movie had some content cuts to meet the standards of some <strike>oppressive regimes</strike> quaint "developing world" rating boards.

into:

0 The movie had some content cuts to meet the standards of some <strike>oppressive regimes</strike> quaint "developing world" rating boards.

And:

<li id="cite_note-tfwtour-12">↑ <sup>[[#cite_ref-tfwtour_12-0|13.0]]</sup> <sup>[[#cite_ref-tfwtour_12-1|13.1]]</sup> <sup>[[#cite_ref-tfwtour_12-2|13.2]]</sup> <sup>[[#cite_ref-tfwtour_12-3|13.3]]</sup> [http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=139273 BotCon 2007 Hasbro tour report.]

into:

tfwtour 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 [http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/showthread.php?t=139273 BotCon 2007 Hasbro tour report.]

And:

<li id="cite_note-murphylatino-3">[[#cite_ref-murphylatino_3-0|↑]] [http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=1502 Latino Review interview with producer Don Murphy.]

into:

murphylatino [http://www.latinoreview.com/news.php?id=1502 Latino Review interview with producer Don Murphy.]

Or just something like this to turn the mess into as much usable (or at least readable) code as possible.

I don't know if this sort of processing is even possible, but if it is, it would definitely make it easier to clean up pages that have more than just a few references. --Jeysie 17:42, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Oh, you could automate them. Same way my tool automates categories. It's just a fair amount of work. (...I suppose I should take a whack at it at SOME point.) -Derik 20:24, 25 March 2009 (EDT)
I honestly think it might be worth it... it took me literally a number of hours to untangle the references on the 2K7 movie page, and we have a fair number of similarly reference-heavy pages. (The Japanese Generation 1 Cartoon Timeline, for instance, is sitting in my bookmarks until I have the courage to tackle untangling ~60 references on a giant list. XP) Anything that can make the process even slightly easier would be well-appreciated if it's doable. --Jeysie 20:32, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Nautilator

We have [[Nautilator]], [[Nautilator (G1)]] and [[Nautilator (Energon)]]

  • Nautilator and Nautilator (G1) are the same guy.
  • Nautilator (G1) disambigs to Nautilator (Energon) and vice versa.
  • Nautilator is the only one of the three which has a cache version saved for it.
  • Neither Nautilator (G1) nor Nautilator (Energon) come up in web searches.

It looks to me as if Nautilator (Energon) was deleted sometime between June and the Crash and Nautilator (G1) was moved to Nautilator. Anyone know the history there? --abates 21:47, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

The Energon guy no longer exists, basically. The toy that was going to become Energon Nautilator eventually found release as a new version of the G1 guy through the fan club. So the Energon guy got absorbed back into the G1 guy's page. I think only Archerbot keeps a separate page, since he's got his own name. Maybe? I'm not sure, actually, but that's how I understand all this. -- Repowers 22:17, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
I was the guy who merged them. Archerbot wasn't an exception. —Interrobang 22:31, 24 March 2009 (EDT)
Oh! These guys! So that's why those pages didn't get updated from the cache results. --abates 23:16, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Misplaced Pages

We have Super-God Masterforce (franchise) and Super-God Masterforce, the latter of which has more information than the former. Which one do I keep? --Jeysie 04:18, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

The latter one was resurrected with the rollback, by the looks. All the extra info is redundant with what's on Super-God Masterforce (cartoon) anyway. I suggest setting it as a redirect to the franchise page. --abates 04:54, 25 March 2009 (EDT)
That's what I figured, but I thought I'd check. OK, this issue is settled. --Jeysie 04:59, 25 March 2009 (EDT)
We've got a whole bunch of redundant pages now, ranging from Kup/Kup (G1) to Detour (Cybertron episode)/Detour (episode). Good fun! --abates 06:11, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Transtech and TransTech are both about the canceled franchise. Shouldn't one of them be about the club comic alternate dimension? Where did that info go? --Crockalley 18:50, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Looks like Transtech got uploaded at TransTech by accident. Both pages were in the cache zip, so I've restored them to their proper places. Thanks for pointing that out! --abates 04:37, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Pages in Google cache but not in tfwikicache.tar.gz

So I noticed that Omnibot was suspiciously outdated, and it turns out it wasn't included in tfwikicache.tar.gz for some reason, even though it's in the Google cache, dated Mar. 9. I didn't see "Omnibot" under any of the "Lost Pages" or "Sweep" lists, so I wanted to bring it to people's attention that this phenomenon exists. I've updated Omnibot completely, but I have no idea how many other pages out there might be like this, with Google's clock still ticking on them. - Jackpot 04:41, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

That's because Omnibot, as well as various other "O" and "P" pages, are in G1MarvelBlaster's cache pile as linked under "Useful Resources" (and as mentioned several times on this page previously :>). --Jeysie 04:47, 25 March 2009 (EDT)
If no one does those by the time I finish going through all the totally slagged pages, I guess I'll be doing them. :) --abates 04:51, 25 March 2009 (EDT)
Ah, thank you. I knew there was something strange regarding the O's and P's, but I couldn't find the relevant conversation. There's.... a lot to keep up with. - Jackpot 04:56, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Talk-page cache?

Have the talk-pages been downloaded from the Google cache en masse and put into a .zip somewhere the way the articles have? According to the stats above, only a handful have been "saved," whatever that means. - Jackpot 14:02, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

And when I try to go to any of the pages in the link marked "Saved", they don't work. Google cache just doesn't seem to think they exist at all. Yet I've seen people restore Talk pages. How is this done? - Jackpot 01:14, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
I was only able to do it when the {{bookworm}} template provided an automatic link to the page's Google cache. Now it doesn't. If I wanted to restore my Talk page, I wouldn't know how to do it.
Edit: Gah, forgot to nowiki-tag the template name.--Apcog 03:09, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
It's http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:tfwiki.net/wiki/(article title with underscores/encodings as needed)
So your user talkpage would be http://74.125.93.104/search?q=cache:tfwiki.net/wiki/User_talk:Apcog for instance.
Much obliged. Jackpot too, I'm sure.
Doesn't always work. Can't seem to find mine. --Lonegamer78 05:07, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
Indeed, I thank you as well. For some reason I couldn't get it to work earlier, but your cache-link is apparently better somehow. The only problem is that the cache is overwriting itself now. For instance, I was trying to get Talk:Sideways, but that's been overwritten with the March 24 version. I thought that someone had claimed to have downloaded all the Talk pages right after the crash. Am I imagining things? - Jackpot 13:52, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Attacktix Template

I went and restored the Template:Attacktix off the Wikia copy. I know copying from there is frowned upon, but I compared it to the Google's cache of our version and made the appropriate changes. I also figured templates were a bit of a different animal as opposed to normal articles. It looks like it's ready to be used. Not knowing what our template code looked like however, I can't be certain it's exactly what it was. Are there any problems?--Tigerpaw28 02:57, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

As the original template creator, I can verify it is very much as it was when last I saw it.--RosicrucianTalk 03:07, 26 March 2009 (EDT)
We shouldn't have issues copying over templates from Wikia. All of it is our work. —Interrobang 04:05, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

I've gone through all the pages in the Attacktix category, and added or restored the template for any article that had the template or had the stats laid out for the template. However, since I don't know anything about Attacktix, I couldn't fix any factual errors. I also did not touch the ID numbers for series two, as a consensus on how to format them has yet to be reached. --Tigerpaw28 23:40, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Midnote template

Maybe I'm just not looking well enough, but do we still have the midnote template? If so, where is it? If not, can someone restore it, because the regular note really makes some pages look ugly? Geewunling 03:53, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Missing images

Despite running image import TWICE, the wiki is apparently still 'missing' some images that will have to be re-uploaded by hand. (However we should actually have them all.)

When you run into missing images, please post them here so someone can tidy them;

Edgeofextinction-someonefight.jpg found on On the Edge of Extinction!
Megatron_generic_marvel_uk_265.jpg found on Once Upon a Time...
Onslaughtmodelsheetshood.jpg found on Onslaught
OptimusPrimalvsMegatron.jpg found on Optimus Primal vs Megatron!
Safeguardriseofsafeguard.jpg found on Rise of Safeguard
--Tigerpaw28 14:10, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Image:ClubCon Raindance GrandSlam.JPG _ Raindance/Grand Slam
Image:RobotTimeMachineSixModes.jpg _ Autobot (G2)
Image:Madman comic Soundwave ejects tapes.jpg _ Decepticon Mini-Cassette
Image:Breakdown.jpg _ Breakdown (G1) --Geewunling 10:01, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Image:SpotlightGrimlock cover2.jpg --MistaTee 13:58, 29 March 2009 (EDT)

Image:GunmodeMegsMasterpieceConvoy.jpg missing from Megatron (G1) toys --abates 04:42, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Checked through everything listed and uploaded the Megatron image, so we're caught up on these for the moment.--Tigerpaw28 00:43, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

Image:Victory_ep4_sandhide.jpg missing from Leozack --abates 21:14, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

Image:DivebombMovie-Card.jpg missing from Divebomb (Movie) --abates 23:51, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

Hmm, tried finding the address from the cache and got http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/4/4b/DivebombMovie-Card.jpg. But there's no file at that URL. Is the file gone? --Tigerpaw28 13:31, 8 April 2009 (EDT)

Image:TFA Headmaster unit facial expression changed.jpg missing from A Bridge Too Close, Part II (I was tempted to steal it back from *mumble*, but the copy there looks blurry anyway) --abates 22:37, 1 May 2009 (EDT)

I resnapped it from my DVD. --Jeysie 23:41, 1 May 2009 (EDT)


What to do if you find a image is missing

  1. Find a cached version of the page with the image on it (at this stage, it's decreasingly likely Google will have a pre-crash version of the page, so you may be best going for the saved versions linked from the #Files section of this page).
  2. Find the image thumbnail which should be present there, and choose to "view image" or "copy image location" (in Firefox, terminology may vary in other browsers, and in IE, you may have to click "Properties" and copy the address from there).
  3. The URL will be something like http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/thumb/b/b9/Ravageboxart.jpg/350px-Ravageboxart.jpg. Delete the sections marked in red and go to the altered link (Which should be in the form http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/b/b9/Ravageboxart.jpg. The exact bits after /images2/ will vary, of course) to check that it works.
  4. Copy that link and go to Special:Upload. Choose to upload from a URL, and paste that link in the lower "source filename" box. Preferably fill out where it came from/etc at this point, but if you don't know, put {{bookworm|5|Needs description and copyright tag}} in the lower box and submit it (you may get a "page (but not file) exists"-type message. If so, ignore it and save the file anyway).

- SanityOrMadness 15:37, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

I think, if the image had descriptive text before, it'll show up again when the image is reuploaded. I had that happen with Image:Tww1_oracle_tank.jpg and Image:Movie_OptimusPrime_MicroIR.jpg. However, it did not happen with the image I crossed off my list above. I'm guessing that one never had a description. It might also be dependent on whether you get to the upload page by clicking on the toolbox link or by clicking the link for the missing image. I've been doing the latter.--Tigerpaw28 01:30, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
What's happened is that some of the PAGES exist, but the database has lost the FILES that are associated with them (The files are still on the server, but MediaWiki is blind to their existence). That leads to the "page (but not file) exists"-type message, and the description which existed before (which may *not* be sufficient, given the rollbacks) will be there when you go to the Image:page. - SanityOrMadness 14:40, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
I wonder if there's an easy way to search for missing images. Also, when we move servers, are we going to be able to take all of the files with us and not just the ones that the MediaWiki database knows about? --abates 16:55, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

I can't find the source for the Rise of Safeguard one. :\ And I can't find the thumbnail for Image:Stunticons-collectallfive.jpg either. Nevermind. Found them manually. Geewunling 07:23, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

I think I removed all the wikia links from the category pages. We could probably remove that bit from the main page now. There is a possibility I may have missed a few, but I did go through systematically.

I had no idea we had that many category pages. Wow. --Bluestreak7 12:02, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Making things less tedious

Because reformatting <gallery>s is tedious, I've made a tool to do it for us.

Copy and paste the gallery code into the form, hit the submit button, copy the reformatted text back out. Will do multiple galleries, though I don't think we have many pages with more than one. --abates 20:34, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Comic template converter

I've created a tool to convert the HTML on comic pages to {{comicstory}} and {{comicnav}} templates.

I'm pretty sure I managed to get all of the many many parameters the comicstory template can take, but please check to make sure that they match what's on the original page, and, as always, if it fails to convert something, leave a link to it on my talk page. :)

Interrobang, do you want one for the episode template? --abates 23:11, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Wow. That's awesome! - Starfield 11:05, 29 March 2009 (EDT)
Be careful when using it. I lost a non-standard credit of "Finished Pencils". It was just dropped. - Starfield 11:26, 30 March 2009 (EDT)
When writing the converter, I was working off the current (ie June 2008) version of the comicstory template, however a number of credit types were added since June 2008, so those won't be supported. This is why I mentioned about checking to make sure the credits match what's on the page. :) --abates 14:58, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

Totally scrambled pages

All right, I've fixed all of the pages that failed to convert at all and ended up as HTML mess. At least, all of the ones I could find. If anyone spots any more, feel free to drop a note on my talk page! --abates 06:56, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Infobox template for books?

Do we have one for books like do we with comics? I can use the comic ones fine, but I can't figure out how to get the ISBN to show up in the info box and, indeed, how to the get the ISBN function that you can click to search for the book on Amazon and such retailers. Thanks. --FFN 14:57, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

The ISBN one confused me at first, but it appears if you just write an ISBN, MediaWiki recognises it and turns it into a link: ISBN 1-84023-527-6 --abates 18:22, 27 March 2009 (EDT)
We used to have a book infobox, but it must have been new enough that it didn't get saved. We need one, though, I find that trying to cram book page info into the comicstory one is just too awkward. (*would rebuild it herself, except that those infoboxes kind of fall into wikivoodoo territory code-wise*) --Jeysie 21:32, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Redirects

Has a bot been set up to find and remove all the Wikia linkbacks? Because by doing a search for the word Wikia, I've noticed that a lot of them are on redirect pages, and that accessing the redirect page doesn't show that link until you're on the Edit page... --Detour 20:39, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Moved/deleted pages

We got a lot of pages back which we had in June 2008 which we didn't before the crash. I did a diff on the current list of pages and the one we were saving caches from and have 43 pages left to check. So far, these pages are ones I'm not sure what happened to in the intervening 8 months:

  1. Autobot Overlord
  2. Clamp
  3. Dinocons
  4. "Gone Forever"
  5. Holly Kaneko
  6. Matrix Buster
  7. Monorail transport
  8. Seattle-Tacoma area
  9. Steamer
  10. Taitem Kusunoki
  11. Transformers books
  12. "Transformers in 3D issue 2"

Dinocons, I'd have assumed was deleted, but our cache copy of Dinobot (disambiguation) links to it. Holly Kaneko and Taitem Kusunoki are copies of Harii Kaneko and Taiten Kusunoki respectively. Someone with a better grasp of Japanese may know where they belong. Matrix buster and Seattle-Tacoma area may have been merged with Big Cannon and Seattle. Steamer, I have no idea what happened to, as "Steamer (G1)" redirects to Chuffer... --abates 00:50, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Yep, I'd moved "Seattle-Tacoma area" to "Seattle" when I realized there were more specific references to that one city in the canon. - Jackpot 01:19, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
Dinocons is definitely an unrecovered page, possibly one of G1MarvelBlaster's cache recoveries... It's the Shattered Glass Dinobots who ally themselves with Decepticons in that continuity. --Detour 01:21, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
Those would be at Dinobot (Shattered Glass) though! G1MarvelBlaster's pages all start with O and P. --abates 01:42, 28 March 2009 (EDT)
Well, no. The "Dinobots" that ended up in Decepticon hands following Dungeons & Dinobots got renamed Dinocons once Do Over started. (literally. The first line of Do Over is "Good morning, Dinocons!".) --Detour 07:00, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

"Transformers in 3D issue 2" was moved to Transformers in 3-D issue 2, following the title on the cover. —Interrobang 13:04, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Double redirects

The restoration process has resulted in quite a lot of double redirects, and we probably haven't seen the end of it. I've got other projects I want to use my time on right now, but I figured I'd point this out so that anyone interested could tackle it and keep an eye on it in the future. - Jackpot 14:59, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

IDW Gen1 issues completed

These have all been fixed. Still outstanding (as far as I know) are Hearts of Steel, Beast Wars and Movie continuity. Oh, and reprint series. --MistaTee 11:18, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

Update: HOS and movie issues are done.--MistaTee 16:46, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Current status of the wiki

So, at the moment how are we? I have read all of this page but I'm still not sure what exactly is left to do at the moment (IE how many pages have we lost, how close are we to being back to normal, what is the extent of the damage to pages etc etc) P.S. how much space does the wiki take up (I'd prefer to have images and articles seperately) because I thought that maybe toghether we could all back up the wiki on our computers (as in we each get a little bit of it). P.P.S. I'll probably be registering soon, any ideas on a good name? 81.108.237.26 11:25, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

So far as I can tell, the lost pages, at least in the main article space, has been minimal. It's hard to tell, but if I had to make a guess, I'd say we had maybe 1/4 to 1/5th of the articles left to fix.
The Help and Transformers Wiki article spaces, we have caches of, but I don't think they've been updated.
There still seem to be a few pictures missing, but not many. Maybe 1 or 2%. Actually finding which ones are missing is the trick. --abates 04:08, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

Big Sweep 2.0

Deceptitran's first big sweep is done. The Wikia links are (mostly) excised.

Prep now begins for a second sweep-- Scout has dome some prep-stuff that'll let me target Deceptitraan better, as well as giving it a more complete page list-- yay!

What's Broken

What's broken? What templates are still mangled HTML you want User:Deceptitran to try and fix? Provide a page link showing the broken code, and say what template you want it to turn into, and I'll take a poke at the coding, yes? -Derik 19:00, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

Generally replace &#39; with ' and &amp; with &. Templates follow in their own sections... - SanityOrMadness 19:41, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

There are a handful of pages where this might be inadvisable... I'm thinking of cueing the substitution only if it finds &lt;table or &lt;div on the page as a safety catch. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DEEERRRIIKKKKK!!! (talk • contribs).
Makes sense to an extent - but the 39s seem to be everywhere.
[I'm also not sure I caught all the stub-templates below, FTR] - SanityOrMadness 21:55, 31 March 2009 (EDT)
Seems to be that &#39; occurs mostly in captions on images, if that helps. I believe that all of the ongoing, canceledtoy, bigquote, charstubfiction, charstubtoys and charstub templates have been dealt with. From searching it looks like there are still around 200 picsneeded and 370 stub tags to get fixed. Deceptitran's work in converting the escaped HTML will at least make them look normal in the meantime though. --abates 04:26, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

{{charstubfiction}}

Rendered as the following on Soundwave (G1):

<center> <table cellspacing="0" style="width:80%;">

<tr>

<td style="padding:0 1em 0 1em;text-align:right;"><div class="tti_messageboxdiv" style="width:100%;padding:.5em; background-color:#efefff; border:solid 1px #9f9fff;text-align:center;margin:auto;">

No, really. HE WANTS TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE TRANSFORMERS.
No, really. HE WANTS TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE TRANSFORMERS.

<span style="font-size:125%;font-weight:900;">I want to tell you about the Transformers!</span><hr /> This character article is a stub and is missing information on their fictional appearances. You can help Transformers Wiki by expanding it.


</div> </td></tr></table> </center>

Also places in [[Category:Character stubs missing fiction]], which the import script adds to the list of categories at the bottom, and which should be removed.

{{ongoing}}

Rendered as the following on Soundwave (G1):

<table cellspacing="0" border="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">

<tr bgcolor="#ececec"> <td><span style="font-size:10px;line-height:1;">This section covers fiction that is ongoing. It will be added to as the story progresses. If it isn't current, you can help by <span class="plainlinks">updating it</span>.</span> </td></tr></table>

{{picsneeded}}

Arcee (G1) has:

<center> <table cellspacing="0" style="">

<tr>

<td style="padding:0 1em 0 1em;text-align:right;"><div class="tti_messageboxdiv" style="width:100%;padding:.5em; background-color:#efefff; border:solid 1px #9f9fff;text-align:center;margin:auto;">

They're actually both looking for characterization.
They're actually both looking for characterization.

<span style="font-size:125%;font-weight:900;">Let's see what you can see...</span><hr /> This article is in need of images.


</div><small>Specifics: some toys</small> </td></tr></table> </center>

[[Category:Articles in need of images]] to remove

{{canceledtoy}} (FIX'D)

Another Arcee (G1):

<center> <table cellspacing="0" style="">

<tr>

<td style="padding:0 1em 0 1em;text-align:right;"><div class="tti_messageboxdiv" style="width:100%;padding:.5em; background-color:#efefff; border:solid 1px #9f9fff;text-align:center;margin:auto;">

Your bargaining posture is highly dubious.
Your bargaining posture is highly dubious.

Proceed on your way to oblivion.<br />This item has been canceled, with no current plans for release.


</div> </td></tr></table> </center>

[[Category:Unreleased toys]] to remove

{{quote}}/{{bigquote}}

From Dinobot (G1):

<table align="center" style="border-collapse:collapse; border-style:none; background-color:transparent;" class="cquote"> <tr> <td width="20" valign="top" style="color:#B2B7F2;font-size:35px;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-weight:bold;text-align:left;padding:9px 10px 0 10px;"> “ </td><td valign="top" style="padding:4px 10px 5px 10px;font-family: 'lucida console', arial, sans-serif;"> Crash and Burn! </td><td width="20" valign="bottom" style="color:#B2B7F2;font-size:35px;font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-weight:bold;text-align:right;padding:10px 10px 0px 10px;"> ” </td></tr> <tr> <td colspan="3" style="padding-top: 0"> <p style="font-size:smaller;line-height:1em;text-align: right"><cite style="font-style:normal;">—Dinobot unit motto, Maximum Dinobots</cite>

</td></tr></table>

{{charstub}}

From Dinobot (G1):

<center> <table cellspacing="0" style="width:90%;">

<tr>

<td style="padding:0 1em 0 1em;text-align:right;"><div class="tti_messageboxdiv" style="width:100%;padding:.5em; background-color:#efefff; border:solid 1px #9f9fff;text-align:center;margin:auto;">

You will be whole again. I promise.
You will be whole again. I promise.

<span style="font-size:125%;font-weight:900;">I cannot remain in this unacceptable operational status!</span><hr /> This character article is a stub and is missing information. You can help Transformers Wiki by expanding it.


</div> </td></tr></table> </center>

Places in [[Category:Character stubs]]

{{stub}}

Example: Brasnya

<center> <table cellspacing="0" style="width:90%;">

<tr>

<td style="padding:0 1em 0 1em;text-align:right;"><div class="tti_messageboxdiv" style="width:100%;padding:.5em; background-color:#efefff; border:solid 1px #9f9fff;text-align:center;margin:auto;">

Kup piece.gif
Kup piece.gif

<span style="font-size:125%;font-weight:900;">You left a piece out!</span><hr /> This article is a stub and is missing information. You can help Transformers Wiki by <span class="plainlinks">expanding it</span>.


</div> </td></tr></table> </center>

Places in [[Category:Stub]]

Wikipedia links?

Can Deceptitran do anything with Wikipedia links? Perhaps not, since there is a lot of variation. - Starfield 23:01, 30 March 2009 (EDT)

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusters_%28US_game_show%29" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:Blockbusters_(US_game_show)">quiz show</a>

[[wikipedia:Blockbusters_(US_game_show)|quiz show]]

At this point, should we fix those tags as we come across them, or just wait for the bot to do the work of repairing them? Magnusblitz 00:05, 31 March 2009 (EDT)
IMO, I would think it'd be more productive to do other things instead of something that Deceptitran will eventually do anyway. Of course, that's looking at it purely from an efficiency standpoint.--Tigerpaw28 01:04, 31 March 2009 (EDT)
Deceptitran doesn't appear to have done particularly well with the remaining Wikipedia links - all it's done is convert the &lt;/&gt;s to < and >s. Since <a> tags don't render - to do a working link, it MUST be rendered in wikicode - that's not much of an improvement. - SanityOrMadness 09:05, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Go-boxes

Can someone take a look at them? Currently, Image:GB-Sunstreaker.jpg needs to be re-uploaded and Image:GB-WolfangPred.jpg leads to Wolfang (BWTS) which doesn't exist (Correct one would be Wolfang (Predacon). Geewunling 04:59, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Both fixed! --abates 23:33, 1 April 2009 (EDT)

Sweep status

Sweet #2 has ended-- it does less than I'd hoped (the regex's were consistently being annoying greedy) but all the {{canceledtoy}}s are fixed (which i figure is important because they represent a permenant article fixture) and all the garbage HTML has been converted to real HTML-- which means pages will at least start looking right, even if they're not properly templated under the skin. I'm currently running a sweep to get rid of our remaining Wikia spam (~4000 instances hiding in redirects) after which I'll tackle setting up a sweep for some of the other templates. -Derik 21:35, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

I think something the next sweep may have to do is fix all the remaining links - even if it entails, as you suggested before, ripping them apart and putting them back together as something like a bare <a href="LINK">Text</a> so that the converter can do them properly. There's still a few, and they're one of the only HTML tags that don't render (presumably as an anti-spam thing). - SanityOrMadness 23:21, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Article lock down so anons can't edit them

Since the crash, articles that were set so only registered members could edit them have once again become free-for-all. For example, Revenge of the Fallen (film) and our Main Page both appear to be editable by anybody (I don't see a warning about only registered users being able to make edits for those pages). Perhaps a staff member can change the settings for such articles to save us some headaches in the future? Honestly, I'm surprised if it hasn't been done yet. --FFN 03:41, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

Sorted. I'm sure there are others which ought to be protected which have been overlooked. --abates 04:11, 2 April 2009 (EDT)
Thanks. Can somebody lock down All Hail Megatron as well? I'd rather not have anon apologists for that series muck about with our discrepancy list. --FFN 15:13, 3 April 2009 (EDT)

MIA?

Super Ginrai Gets Blown Away in the Desert!? and The Autobot Warrior, Sixknight?! don't appear to be among the cache files we saved. MSN has both cached, although the versions are from late January and are pretty much the same as what we have... --abates 07:48, 4 April 2009 (EDT)

Odd, thought I saved it in my cache. That, or Jeysie hasn't updated the additional cache I sent her... --Lonegamer78 05:58, 5 April 2009 (EDT)
The zip I have of your cache files has Masterforce episode 1, 13, 17, 18, 28 and 42 in it. --abates 06:01, 5 April 2009 (EDT)
Crap, I forgot I hadn't uploaded that already. Uploaded and linked from the Files section above. --Jeysie 07:10, 5 April 2009 (EDT)
Ahh! Excellent! I should check the other shows and see if there are any other episodes which didn't get updated. --abates 08:04, 5 April 2009 (EDT)
OK, having checked all of the cartoon episodes (or at least the ones Interrobang hasn't got to yet), all of them have been updated from cache. The only issues I could see were (a) some of the Beast Wars II episodes are missing bits of HTML, causing the body of the page to render as part of the episode box (e.g. Enter Lio Junior), and (b) one or two of the Headmasters/Masterforce/Victory episodes have the episodenav template instead of the episode template, and are therefore lacking the Japanese/Romaji titles. --abates 22:21, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Quotes

This discussion has been moved to Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal#Quotes.

Clone Pilot?

I dunno if this should be discussed in an earlier section, but... I fixed up Clone Pilot well before the crash, but for some reason, all our saved caches are the same as the old piece of crap we have right now. Did Google just never save it between the cleanup and the crash, or what? More importantly, can it still be repaired somehow? There was a lot of work put into it. --Apoc 21:25, 8 April 2009 (EDT)

It looks like Google didn't update their cache until a couple of days the crash. :( I can't find the page at all on yahoo or msn. --abates 22:50, 10 April 2009 (EDT)
I think we should all start saving major edits onto text files in case of database crashes, google screw ups and the regular server outages we've been having lately. That's what I do. --FFN 06:12, 12 April 2009 (EDT)

Damage: Controlled?

Have we handled most of the issues concerning the crash? It has been a month at at casual glance (and even some closer glances), we appear to be back on target. Is it now necessary to have a link to this page from our main page? Discussion appears to have stagnated from what I can tell and the most recent conversation is about quotes, which is not crash-related. (As the user who initially brought up the quotes question, I thought at the time the change was crash related. Now I think it should be delegated to Comm. Portal.)

So should we consider "Mission Accomplished" of all major battles fighting and now just cleanup of insurgent pages? Keep the pages, obviously, but get the link off the main page. The community has done a good job bringing the wiki back (yeah!) and I'd like to especially thank Jeysie, abates, Derik, and Rosicrucian for what to me was above and beyond work.

Thoughts? --Bluestreak7 19:40, 14 April 2009 (EDT)

I am still finding the occasional borked/codelicious template. Yes, we've gotten the worst of it, but we should still keep an eye out. Does anyone know if there's anything we're still outright missing? I know Monzo was in the process of manually uploading some images.--RosicrucianTalk 19:48, 14 April 2009 (EDT)
Most of the work to be done now is in restoring descriptions to images, I think, and restoring any missing images as we find them. I think it's safe to remove it from the main page - it's still linked via the Community portal. --abates 21:18, 14 April 2009 (EDT)
Agreed-- We've still got a lot of templates that've extended to HTML... but they at least no longer look broken for the most part... I think we can stop advising people they're stepping into a disaster zone. -Derik 21:53, 14 April 2009 (EDT)
The "Quotes" discussion has now been moved. Also, a hearty second on the gratitude to everyone who pitched in on the restoration. It's looking damn good. - Jackpot 03:33, 16 April 2009 (EDT)


Probably not entirely related damage control-wise, but I kinda miss the ability to "View (newer <# of edits>) (older <# of edits>)" in the Recent Changes page. It only goes up to the last 500 changes. --Lonegamer78 04:27, 25 April 2009 (EDT)

Episode articles missing Japanese title info

Headmasters: Head Formation of Friendship

Masterforce: Super Warriors - The Godmaster Brothers, The Autobot Warrior, Sixknight?!, Overlord - Terror of the Chōkon Tornado

Victory: Big City - Underground Terror, Attack the Shuttle Base!!, Rescue Jean!!, Battle Up of Wrath!!

Those episodes are all using the episodenav template and therefore are missing the Japanese title information. Also Savage (episode) from Cybertron is missing the romaji transliteration. --abates 08:03, 15 April 2009 (EDT)

And done. --Lonegamer78 01:24, 16 April 2009 (EDT)
Excellent! Thanks! --abates 01:37, 16 April 2009 (EDT)

Some more from Masterforce which got upgraded but don't have the romaji translation filled in:

--abates 06:38, 17 April 2009 (EDT)

Doink! --Lonegamer78 07:41, 17 April 2009 (EDT)
Hooray! --abates 07:53, 17 April 2009 (EDT)

GFDL

Something I've been wondering for a while now... after the loss of all the page history between the move and the crash, are we in breach of the GDFL, which everything originally submitted to this wiki is licensed under? - SanityOrMadness 18:23, 17 April 2009 (EDT)

Yes, unfortunately. Though whether anyone actually cares is another matter. GreenReaper 16:08, 27 April 2009 (EDT)
Howso? The attribution part? I think our import memos all say 'importing recovered...' etc, which at least acknowledges that there are undocumented contributions at work there-- it's not like we're trying to pass them off as the sole work of the person doing the import.
GFDL is a difficult concept on mass-collaboration projects like this. If we'd done a 'present page state only' export from Wikia instead of a complete history we'd be in exactly the same position. I think that intent plays a part here... loving some author attribution is definitely non-ideal under GFDL... but I don't think it's actually in violation as long as we're open about it and it represents a breach of the normal way things are done rather than a matter of routine. -Derik 06:12, 28 April 2009 (EDT)
We're talking about a legal license here. Sections 4B and 4J are quite clear. You must list at least five of the principal authors, unless they release you from that requirement, and you must preserve the history. The only people who could call you on this are the copyright holders, however.
On that note, now that Wikipedia's moving to CC, have you given thought to doing the same? Might save a lot of bother down the line. GreenReaper 22:37, 21 May 2009 (EDT)

Restoring Help/Transformers Wiki pages

Do the following articles (not currently present) need to be restored?:

Also we now have Help:Disambiguation and "Transformers Wiki:Disambiguation". I think the former is the redundant one, since there's no cache for it. --abates 04:24, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

Power User at least not. That one was deleted for being an unused short page of information regarding an editing trick that was far better explained on Help:Editing. Geewunling 05:56, 28 April 2009 (EDT)

P.S. it seems to me the TW:D is the redundant one, given how many pages link to it (vs. the H:D) and because of its talk page. Geewunling 06:06, 28 April 2009 (EDT)
I think only the first two need restoring. Do we have caches for them? -Derik 06:14, 28 April 2009 (EDT)
Yep, I have caches for all of those from the zip file Scout provides. --abates 06:30, 28 April 2009 (EDT)
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