User talk:Tangerineduel/Archive - Wiki formatting

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Template boxes for every Doctor Who novel

Seeing as you have a template box for TDA and EDA I think we should have one for every doctor and maybe even Torchwood Novels. --Catkind121 10:47, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

Manual of Style additions, too

I also took a few minutes and added some sections to the Manual of Style. See what you think. I've added a section on Talk Pages, as well as ones on "acceptable sources" and "neutral point of view". I was inspired to do this by someone who posted a link to a tabloid article on The Woman in order to further the opinion that she's the Doctor's mother. I remember when Kylie was supposed to be a Cyberwoman according to these same sources. The Talk Page section ties in with the new tag. 23skidoo 20:21, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

• Aaah! I forgot we need to discuss changes on the Discussion page first. I'm going to revert my changes and post them there first instead. 23skidoo 20:29, January 17, 2010 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I'll give the MoS a look when I have some time (just about to jump into a bunch of real-life work). BBS means "bulletin board system". It's a slightly outdated term used to refer to forums (dating back to the days before browsers when BBSes ruled the Internet), but it's still used by a few sites most notably the Trek BBS. 23skidoo 13:21, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
    • It's a very well known term that's still in wide use. Usenet is also still used, as is newsgroups. 23skidoo 14:10, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
      • Speaking of terminology, it might be worth adding to the MoS a decision on how to refer to the revival seasons. Moffat apparently has muddied the waters in the latest DWM by suggesting Series 5 be either Season 31 or Season 1, which means we might have people unilaterally moving articles. Personally I'd be quite happy to renumber everything from Season 27 in 2005 and move up (and maybe call the Specials year Season 30 1/2 or something). But I can imagine the tons of links that will need to be changed. 23skidoo 19:47, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
        • Re: the TV movie. Well, considering it's such a standalone, I wouldn't think it appropriate to consider it part of any season. And it's in good company, because for all people's attempts to make The Next Doctor part of Season 4, it and the four specials are pretty much going to be set on their own anyway, so it's in good company. There's also a school of thought that suggests the other Christmas specials not be included in any season, and there's also the mini-episodes. I'm a little annoyed at recent DWM articles which seemed to be advocating for the mini-episodes to not be canon. I can understand with Music of the Spheres because it breaks the fourth wall, and the Attack of the Graske game. But Children in Need and Time Crash should be part of canon, and I'd go so far as to say the same goes for the Comic Relief Sarah Jane mini-episode, too. In any regard, I agree that time will tell what ultimately becomes the standard definition for the next season, though we may have to wait till the DVD/Blu-Ray box set to find out for certain! 23skidoo 12:48, January 19, 2010 (UTC)
          • Not a random tangent at all. I agree there should be a way of better integrating the TVM. One possibility is to do what Virgin's "Handbook" series did and roll the TVM into discussion of the Seventh Doctor (since it's a Seventh Doctor story, too). One possibility might be to incorporate the TVM in some way into the Season 26 article. Not declare it part of 26, you understand, but just include a subsection like "after Season 26" or "interregnum" or something. Sort of like how I inserted a brief section about The Next Doctor into the 2009 Specials article. Alternately, we could launch an article on the "Wilderness years" and place it between Season 26 and Series 1/Season 27 so people following along through the infoboxes can find their way there. I like that idea, because not only could such an article cover the TVM, but also the numerous independent productions like Downtime and Shakedown and Big Finish audios -- things that, in my opinion, were as important in keeping the franchise alive as the novels and anything else. It would also be a handy spot for people unfamiliar with this era of the franchise. 23skidoo 18:20, January 19, 2010 (UTC)

Writers Comics

(Facepalm). Thanks for the heads up. I've made my case. If those guys want to start making this place elitist like Wikipedia I'm out of here. I assume they'll want to delete The Last Doctor and Doctor Who and the Silver Spiral next. I appreciate your support for it, though! 23skidoo 14:07, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

• I disagree 100%. Last Doctor was written by Paul Cornell. The other is a short story that has been reported in major media (unless you don't consider Scientific American major). If ever there was a case for exceptions this is it. I only create articles after due consideration of their appropriateness and this is supposed to be a Doctor Who wiki which covers all aspects of Who fandom. Fanfic done in an informal fashion is one thing, but neither of these examples fall into that category. If we delete those then frankly ALL the novels must be deleted as well, because there is a widely held definition of fanfic that includes spin-off novels. I ran into that in Wikipedia when an attempt was made to delete all of the Star Trek novels. And what about things like I Am the Doctor: The Unauthorised Diaries of a Timelord, Farewell Great Macedon (book), The Doctor and the Enterprise? By rights deleting those short stories renders those releases invalid, along with Campaign. Actually, that's a great example. If we delete The Last Doctor then we have to delete Campaign and all the charity book articles, too. And then we can start on Downtime and Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans which are also technically fanfic. It's a slippery slope. And frankly if I'm going to be forced to second-guess my contributions to this place, I might start having second thoughts about contributing in the future.23skidoo 15:07, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
  • We're just going to have to agree to disagree, because in my opinion once things like Last Doctor disappear into other articles that's just it - they disappear and people won't find out about them. Doctor and the Enterprise was a book I purchased at a local equivalent of Barnes & Noble -- where no other Doctor Who books were even being sold. I think exceptions are warranted, considering, for example, The Last Doctor has been described as a sequel to the two newspaper stories Cornell published. And I'm not sure what musicians have to do with the argument because I wouldn't include them just because of the name - though if there's a major Doctor Who influence I do mention them in the timeline, just for interest's sake. I'm probably just going to stick with editing the Timeline for awhile - admin requests notwithstanding - because I really do disagree with disqualifying these particular stories - and once again I'm talking about items with extenuating circumstances such as being written by an established writer, being professionally published, or receiving media attention, not stuff just written by fans -- and I'm including in that, for example, individual episodes of Audio Visuals which were at the time they were made completely unofficial audio fanfic; I wouldn't support individual articles. Nor would I, say, go for individual issue articles for fanzines like Enlightenment. Rolling the exceptions (back to the short stories) into a catchall article no one will think to look for, or handing them off to another Wiki I didn't even know existed, is the same as ignoring them. 23skidoo 15:43, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Google maps

Not sure if I have the right person, but ya seem admin-y enough for me. I'd like to request that you request Google maps to be enabled on the wiki. It'd be helpful for the studio/location pages. For instance, BBC Television Centre currently has to do this clumsy footnoting thing to Google maps, which it doesn't technically have to do for rights reasons. Google does in fact allow Wikia to use its maps, but the wikia owner has to request it.

Here's the info from the Help! wikia. Thanks! CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:40, January 30, 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Thanks for noticing :) I have to say, though, that's probably the hardest thing I've ever done here, in terms of amount of thinking versus quantity of material to show for it. I hate doin' categories as a non-admin because I don't have the power to simply move things. I find there are more changes I would make if I didn't just have to accept category names that were already there. For example, Category:Creatures is a name that provides little definition (every living thing is a creature), but I'm not gonna change it because I'd have to individually change 60 or so pages. And that's a silly waste of time. Also, I have to think forever about a new cat title, so that I don't clunk up the works with a lot of failed efforts. Even then, though, I find I make the occasional mistake. It would be so helpful if I could just move cats and delete the old cats left behind. I don't guess there's a way to channel the limited power of deleting just category pages is there? It would make the process so much faster. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:53, February 5, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, can a category be deleted even though it has members? Or do the members have to be purged of the cat before the cat can be deleted? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:56, February 5, 2010 (UTC)

Navigational sidebar on the left

So. Yanno that that box on the top left underneath the search bar? The one that acts as a quick navigation to major categories and articles? I've just noticed that there's not a single link to anything having to do with behind-the-scenes information (unless you count stories as behind-the-scenes). Is there any way we can add to that menu so that we can quickly find, for example, the actors, producers, directors, writers, merchandise, production info cats? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:33, February 9, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, cool. I need to have some downtime for a bit, but I'll get you a list shortly. Basic thought is, though, that it definitely shouldn't be under "stories". It should be under its own category called "Behind-the-scenes". Some other wikis for franchises don't necessarily cover merchandise, so it's probably important to make it clear that we do. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:19, February 10, 2010 (UTC)

New home page

I've finalized the coding on my version of the new home page. It's at User:CzechOut/Doctor Who Wiki. Notes about it can be found at Forum:New Home Page?. Take a look when you get the chance. I think that you'll like that I found a way to incorporate differently-sized images for magazines and books, and that changine out the elements on the page is easier, yet somewhat more protected against vandalism than the current design. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:11, March 7, 2010 (UTC)

You weren't at all too critical. Your concerns helped shape a better-looking design than what I would probably have gone with on my own. The question is, when do we implement it? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:18, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

On the matter of protection, this new page is interesting, actually. I know the general wikia recommendation is that a main page shouldn't be locked, but you actually lock this one with no appreciable loss of user interaction. Remember, none of the content is actually on the main page. So you could secure the front page, and still have the content of the main page editable by users. That would lock the backbone of the page in place. For the rollout, which I guess I'm doing now-ish, I'm actually going to go in reverse order and put the page up first, then create the DYK nom page. This is only because I have to do a bit of editing on the template names, and because I need to put instructions into each of the constituent parts. The DYK nomination process is kinda secondary to making the code "look pretty". Once it's actually on the main page, the template names get simpler. They go from {{Doctor Who Wiki/Quote}} to just {{/Quote}}, and so on. Don't worry about template:Bgcolor; it was an accident of the wrong number of curly braces. I just fixed it, but for a bit, all those templates that use template:PortalFlex will continue to report needing template:Bgcolor. Oh, and as for the SJA logo — yeah, dunno where it's all used. Possibly is just wallpaper. I know I have seen it in green as well as purple, though, so that means it's been used on at least two images. Green's often a color used by BBC Audiobooks. Maybe it's on one of those. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:09, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, you also need to protect Doctor Who Wiki/News, Doctor Who Wiki/Top, Doctor Who Wiki/Comics, Doctor Who Wiki/Audio, Doctor Who Wiki/Prose, Doctor Who Wiki/Categories, Doctor Who Wiki/Quote, Doctor Who Wiki/DYK. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:44, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Argh, I don't know why I didn't see that before, with the category thing. And I see the stuff getting pushed down right at the bottom. Not quite sure why it's doing that. I'll give it a look. In the meantime, I've taken the category off, because really, front pages aren't typically categorized on most wikia. I do know the front page has a "Featured article" line that's at the very bottom, underneath the featured wikia ads. It's not likely to be causing this problem, but on the other hand, it's not visible on most main pages I've seen. It's redundant, anyway, and should be removed. But, as I said, I don't think that's what's causing this behavior. This sucks. I hate lookin' for interaction problems with wikia advertising spaces (cause that's what's going on, most likely, conflicts with the featured wikia boxes), It's like shootin' in the dark. As for the white/grey thing, you know, I've become so accustomed to it, I've stopped noticing it. It's always been there from the first time I started working on the project. I remember that it was the reason for choosing a transparent logo, because putting the logo in a box just made the line more obvious. Isn't it a default part of the style sheet. It looks like it is to me. Certainly I haven't called it into existence. I really have never examined it before, because, as I said, it's been there from day one. Heh I dunno, maybe I am calling it into existence. It's not on other pages. Weird. I'll look into it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:20, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I don't see the "logo on the left shifting to the center" phenomenon at all. It's in the center, period. I've never seen what you're describing there at all, by the way, and I've loaded this page tons of times. Still, it's a clue on the road to discovering this mystery, so I'll follow it up. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:25, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Just to leave you with an update, I've figured out the source of the problem, but not necessarily the solution. It has to do with using the column formatting. Once I put all the templates into a column construct (you know,

{|
||
|}

then the white box happily wrapped around the whole text. And that's how it is right now. But the pushing down of the wikia ads at the bottom is a bigger problem. It's related, in that if you get rid of the column structures entirely, the bottom ads appear in the normal place. But then you lose other things, like proper columns. It's than damned <mainpage> variable. I don't know what it stands for. I don't know how it achieves column widths and the like. You need to use it, because it gets the top-page advertising in line with your columns. But because I dunno the code behind <mainpage>, I'm not sure why there's the bizarre interaction at the bottom of the page.

So I'm gonna keep pluggin' away at this one little thing, but for the moment that's the only thing that's wrong with the main page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:43, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

I continue to be baffled as to why the column formatting is moving those ads down on the main page. Similar syntax on other main pages doesn't have this effect. I'm still trying various permutations to see if I can hit on the solution. In the meantime, if you remove that "Featured pages" line on the front page, then the "squashing" will be less noticeable. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:48, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'm officially stumped. I've looked at so many other main pages from so many other wikis that my entire life is one big <mainpage> right now. I've put in a call to sulfur to see if maybe his greater wisdom —and, perhaps more importantly at this point, fresher eyes —can see something I'm missing. Somehow, this nut's gonna get cracked, but I'm gonna need some bigger brains. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:09, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

I think the best place for you to go and ask the question is Central Wiki - Forums. They should be able to help with the problems that relate to the main page (and all other wikia related issues). --Tangerineduel 14:53, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

I might well do that. But Sulfur has opined it's to do with a CSS change. This makes sense to me, because the only real difference between our page and the one at MemAlpha is the fact that MemAlpha calls up a CSS class that we don't have available here. He's said he's gonna take a look. Ultimately, it's not gonna be a big deal, but if it involves adding a CSS class, it will of course involve you. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:20, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've asked the question at Central. (Note to self: question marks in forum page titles make them unlinkable by w:c command.) CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:46, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I share your dread of CSS. However, on the scale of things CSS, this would be pretty simple, if indeed it comes to it. All you'd be doing is cutting and pasting a tiny lil definition, from my understanding of things. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:51, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Good news! The guys at Central figured it out. And luckily, it doesn't involve CSS at all. I had forgotten to close a <div> tag on Template:MPH. They did that and all snapped into place. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:12, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

I added links to other language DW wikis as you suggested, and threw in links to other DW wikis, to boot. You'll need to semi-protect Template:Doctor Who Wiki/Wikis and Doctor Who Wiki/Wikis, though. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:22, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

DYK

Okay, my first attempt at defining the "Did you know" process is up at Tardis:DYK nominations. The process can't, I don't think, be as elaborate as what's at the Wikipedia equivalent. They have tons of admins and dedicated editors who specialize in nothing but DYK. Plus, DYK there is aimed at highlighting the newest articles. And I don't think that's really what we want to do. We just want to shine a light on some of our smaller articles to encourage visitation to the darker corners of the site. I don't think, either, that we can really go into a formal voting process, because that would make the page explode in size. Rather, we should encourage editors to merely vote against a factoid; otherwise, we should assume the factoid is appropriate for inclusion. The process should be geared towards including every submitted point. Generally, the admin who changes the box should just take the top-most (i.e. oldest) submission from each of the five categories and call it a day.

We might want to define when a week begins and ends (i.e., the day on which the factoids are changed. I guess that would mean defining a week in terms of the QOTW calendar. But I didn't include that amount of specificity in the article yet, thinking you might want to weigh in on that. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:01, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

The splitting of this into a DYK Nom and a DYK Policy article has occurred. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:06, March 13, 2010 (UTC)

Collapsible navigation boxes

Hey, as you're sorta actively making these navigation boxes collapsible, I thought I'd share with you a little trick I picked up today. If the color stripe at the top of the box is very dark, as with Template:TDA, the show/hide thingie won't really show up if it's black. Thus, you need to add a color:white; to the first style parameter in the box. This will turn the show/hide thing white. (It probably also obviates the need to specifically set the color of the title of the box to white, but it does no harm to leave that coding in place.) This then sets the color of all type in the box to white. You then have to add a color:black; to all the individual cells within the box to get all the unlinked text to show up. I wouldn't universally set the hide/show to white, but if the background is a deep red, blue, green, or black, you probably need to. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 08:49, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

New wiki logo

As a part of the redesign of the front page, I can't help but notice how out of place the logo in the top left corner now looks. It wreaks of the 1990s, to my eye. So I wonder if it's not now time to change things up a bit. Here's an idea that would seem to mesh with the elements on the main page itself. It also has the virtue of containing elements from three different eras of DW — the original Hartnell logo, the Region 2 DVD font, and the current Tardis logo — and may therefore be somewhat more "timeless" than the current logo. It's not necessarily a final design, of course, but it's a start on updating a tired, 5-year-old design, at least.

Let me know what you think. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 08:22, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

Cultural references not specifically named by text

Hey, just read your note at Talk:The Simpsons, and I wanted to comment on something you said that's only tangential to The Simpsons discussion.

The thing about subjects like The Lion Sleeps Tonight, poetry spouted in The Shakespeare Code and The Lazarus Experiment, songs playing on radios in various Torchwood episodes, Tony Bennett, and really dozens of other articles broadly under Cultural references from the real world is precisely that they are just references. They don't rise to the level of specific citation. I don't think we can start to collapse all these into an article about a topic that is specifically named by the episode. In the first place, we don't always have a neat little thing like The Lion King to help us. More's the point, The Lion Sleeps Tonight is something associated in the real world with The Lion King, but not within the DWU. To move it under The Lion King would actually be to introduce a non-canonical "fact" about the song. But in the second, we don't have to have something named for us to write an article about it. Some things are so recognizable they don't need to be named. However, articles should note the fact that the person, place or thing isn't actually named, and give a rationale for why that topic has been identified by that particular name. Paperback Writer is a great example of this type of article. It wasn't named in Evil of the Daleks, nor does it exist in any version of the story that still exists today. But it was definitely there on original transmission, and its subsequent disappearance is interesting and noteworthy. (Heh, I'm prolly going to put it in the DYK for this week, as a matter of fact.) If we limit ourselves to only things that are specifically named, we deny our ability to fully cover the Whoniverse. Nobody sings "The Good Life" like Tony Bennett, for instance. It is just not credible to deny that both exist in the Whoniverse, even though neither were specifically named in TV: Out of Time.

Additionally there is the thornier problem of the reverse. Things are sometimes named in the Whoniverse, but their real world significance isn't specifically given. For instance Tom Hanks is named but the fact of his being an actor isn't. Yet, the clear implication of Silver Scream is that he must be an actor, else the Doctor wouldn't be using that alias at an actor's party.

Cultural references are tricky things, but I think with careful notation on each article, saying what has actually been stated in stories and what hasn't, readers will come to a clear understanding of the topic's place in the Whoniverse. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:46, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

Relative column lengths on front page

This week is the first time where QOTW and DYK have both run "long" , causing an obvious imbalance between the lengths of the right and left columns. Thus, I thought I'd let you know of a little trick to help even things out. By editing the "max" variable on the News section, you can "even up" the two columns. Obviously we can't cater to every single user —some are gonna have their text size turned up or down to extreme levels —but we can make it right for the majority of users by turning our browser's text to the standard size and adjusting the number of news items to a length that makes the columns "match". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:47, March 25, 2010 (UTC)

Timeline Template

Thanks. As you'll see in the documentation, it's been set up to handle all 3 levels of the Timeline section, depending on which fields are left blank. Now the template's in place, you and your minions can just update the timeline pages as the mood takes you

Speaking of documentation, as it seemed to be missing, I also added Template:Documentation to make the process of creating documentation for templates easier in the future.

→ Koschei:

Life. But not as we know it. 16:27, March 26, 2010 (UTC)

Special:CreatePage

Hey, I may have done something, somehow, to mess up the preloadable topic outlines. I don't see how, really, but I can't deny that they're not working now — in both Firefox and Safari. I moved all the templates to a new category (Newpage templates), added a DEFAULTSORT to each page, and a bit of starting lead text. It doesn't make a lot of sense why that would've made the buttons stop functioning. Indeed I tested one of the buttons linked to a page I had not then changed, just to see if my changes were the proximate cause. I am not sure whether the buttons worked before I started making changes to any of the templates. I've tried using the &preload appendage independent of the buttons, by adding it manually to the end of addresses that already had &action=edit, and that didn't work either. I tried preloading other templates, but no dice. Does the function simply not work? Or have I somehow busted something? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:55, March 29, 2010 (UTC)

Timeline naviation changes

Koschei got the ball rolling on navigation improvements with his new template, but this will be extremely laborious to implement. Hundreds of pages requiring minute changes also spells the possibility of manual error creeping in. So I'm updating his template into an entirely automated one. As you can see by examining the code at Template:Timeline test, and its dependent subtemps, all that needs to happen is to add {{timeline}} to a page. The temp will take care of the rest, automatically sensing whether it's on a year, century or decade page, and responding with appropriate output. The bells and whistles of template design aren't yet completed, but that's easily fixed after the hard coding is done. Appropriate categories will also be automatically placed on the page as well.

Best of all, you don't have to do a thing. The template will be placed on every page by a bot. (Ultimately the old HTML table navigation will be removed by a bot too, but that's about a week away yet.) So instead of spending so much time on mind-numbing work, feel free to get back to the greater fun of whatever more enjoyable work you were doing here. Implementation of the core skeleton will happen over the next few days, with the project complete by sometime before the end of April. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:08, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

Yah, the template handles the difference in cardinal numbers ending in 1, 2, 3 — and all the rest of 'em through yet a fifth template called Template:nth. This does a little "mod magic" to check for centuries that end in exactly 11, 12, and 13, and appends "th". If it doesn't find that, it looks again for exactly 1, 2 and 3 in the final digit. Then it appends st, nd, and rd. If it finds neither of those two sets of exact matches, then it just adds the default value of th. And that invariably works in English. Thank God for the regularity of English's irregularities. It'd have to be a lil more complex if every every 100 numbers the number ending in 7 had a different suffix, like 107rd or 307nd. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:18, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

Castrovalva (TV story)#Production errors

When you get a chance could you please check the above link and see if I've been fair about what's a production error and what's not? The rest of what used to be there is already up on the Forum page. Castrovalva is a tricky one because if you view it in isolation of Logopolis there aren't that many production errors, but if you view it as the continuous event it's aspiring to be, there are a number of instances where costumes or props or the director just got it wrong. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 05:11, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Hypens vs. colons on Template:Wales crew

Sorry, I should have responded to you earlier, but honestly I've just been hunkered down with this template for a few days, only coming up occasionally to clear my mind with a bit of new series editing. It's obviously not that big a deal at the moment — far more important to actually get the damn thing finished with as many variables as I can — but I am slightly opposed to dashes, simply in that they take up more space. And there honestly weren't but one or two stories in the whole BBC Wales run that actually had crew sections before I started this thing. So I'd kinda dispute that there was a "precedent" of any kind. (Old series pages don't count; there are so few people credited in the old series that a single space doesn't mean that much.) As I said, though, I'm neither hugely bothered, nor anywhere close to being finished. If you feel very strongly that they should be hyphens, I guess we can keep 'em in. But if you're just doing it because you think there's some kind of "standard", I'd rather go with colons. This template is creating the standard, not following one that already exists. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:07, April 7, 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Strong feelings win the day. I haven't attempted to revert your changes, and indeed have carried forward the hyphens when adding new variables. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:48, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

Reflist

Thanks for your attempt, but that misses the point of what the template code is supposed to do. It's supposed to be that you can name all the references within the reflist template itself, so that all the actual reference text is in one place, rather than scattered throughout the article. It works that way on Wikipedia, but for some reason not here. Sadly, I must revert your changes. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:55, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

We definitely need to upgrade Cite.phb

Yeah something is wrong with the version of Cite.php we're using here. When you go to Special:Version, you see a list of all the li'l bits of jiggerypokery that are implemented on our site. And what we're interested in is the thing called Cite, under the "parser hooks" section. When you click on that, you go to MediaWiki's definition of that item's functionality. And there, we have a definition of how to use it without templates. That is "the long way" of coding citations. There, we have the example of the functionality I'm talking about. I'll copy over the exact text here so you can see:

Separating references from text

In-text references make it easy to copy the text to another page; on the other hand, they make it hard to read. References containing a lot of data, quotes or elaborate citation templates can make up a significantly larger fraction of the source than the text that will actually be visible. To avoid this, recent versions of the extension allow moving some or all of the references into the <code><references /></code> section, to the place where they will actually appear to the reader. Thus, <blockquote> <tt> According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.<font color=red>'''<ref name="miller"/>'''</font><br/> The Moon, however, is not so big.<font color=red>'''<ref name="smith"/>'''</font><br/> <br/> ==Notes== <br/> <font color=red>'''<references>'''<br/> '''<ref name="miller">'''E. Miller, ''The Sun'', (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.'''</ref>'''</br> '''<ref name="smith">'''R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 46 (April 1978): 44-6.'''</ref>'''<br/> '''</references>'''</font> </tt> </blockquote> Now, here's what happens on our site when you do precisely what MediaWiki says Cite should do: According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.<ref name="miller"/> The Moon, however, is not so big.<ref name="smith"/> <h4>Notes</h4> <references> <ref name="miller">E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.</ref> <ref name="smith">R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46 (April 1978): 44-6.</ref> </references> As the text says, "'''recent versions of the extension'''". We need to upgrade Cite.php, per [[w:c:mediawiki:Extension:Cite/Cite.php]]. The latest version for our version of MediaWiki (1.15.x) is 48711, and we're considerably back at 47190. '''[[User:CzechOut|<span style="background:blue;color:white">Czech</span><span style="background:red;color:white">Out</span>]]''' [[User talk:CzechOut|☎]] | [[Special:Contributions/CzechOut|<font size="+1">✍</font>]] 15:47, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

University of Rice at 2017

Sorry, I had hit "preview" instead of submit, so my last wipe of University of Rice didn't go through. All fixed and MOS-appropriate now, though. As to why that's funny — seriously, you don't see it? Who'd want a university of rice? The first warm rain and you'd only be able to feed the community, not educate it.

On a more serious note though, perhaps it should be noted for the future that American English doesn't bear the same sort of word displacement with university names that British English does. There are very few US universities where you can reverse the word order and it be correct. You can do University of Oxford and Oxford University, or Cambridge University and University of Cambridge. But University of New York and New York University mean two different things (and that's true of almost any state university in the union). Generally, "University of [State]" means a state-supported school that has its origins as a liberal arts university, and is (historically) considered a more prestigious school. If the name follows the pattern "[State} (State) University", like New Mexico State University, then that university is what's called a land-grant university, and has its origins as an agricultural science university. It's considered more of a "practical" school, though it's not a trade school, and these days the distinction between what courses the two types offer is blurring. With private universities, the word order is simply not reversed, perhaps for reasons of brand identification. There aren't too many American institutions where you can reverse the word order and it have a meaning that parses to the American ear. University of Brown is not synonymous with Brown University, University of Harvard is not an acceptable substitute for Harvard University, and so on. Thus, any similar redirects should be abolished. It is acceptable to have a redirect that drops the word "university", however. "Rice", if it weren't such a common word, would be an acceptable redirect for Rice University, just as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge all colloquially mean their respective universities. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:06, April 23, 2010 (UTC)

Wikipediainfo in Timeline

Well, if I were the only editor in the joint, no, I'd never even think about putting a wikipedia link on a year page. However, it seemed to be the convention that existed before, and I was just sort of honoring that tradition, while at the same time giving primacy to linking our own timeline. Clearly someone/some people who've edited these pages before like the idea of wikipedia links, and it was fairly painless to code in.

I guess I'm mostly just including it, not because I would personally include it, but because I think people will replace the wikipediainfo tags eventually, anyway. There's certainly a strain of logic that says, "If wikipediainfo is included on other pages of things that exist in the real world, why shouldn't I be able to use them on a year/decade/century page?" At least this way it's controlled, automatic, and fits into the overall layout of the page. You don't have two templates competing with each other visually; you have one with multiple parts.

I'm not quite understanding the point you're raising about the specific yearspan, 1990-2000. You seem to be saying, though I might not be understanding you correctly, that those years don't need the context of a wikipedia link because there's no television production info. Isn't that preferencing one medium over another? That would seem to go against the general "everything counts" philosophy of the site. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:52, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Well, see, the weird thing about the timeline pages was that wikipediainfo was almost always at the top of the article. I noted that in one of the initial posts at Forum:For people working on year/decade/century pages . . ., where I gave a little mockup of the format most of the pages had taken. It was almost never at the bottom of the pages. I'd argue that the absolutely best placement for it is not the top or the bottom, but rather the middle, right underneath the "real world" header.

But that brings up the thorny realities of year pages. We get so focused on years in our lifetimes, that we fail to consider the majority of year pages. Most of them don't have a real world section at all, and most have only a sentence or two of information. The main reason for putting the template at the top right is that it's a navigation box. It's not a message we're trying to bury, like maybe a stub template. It's actually something that has a function, and it should be prominent on the page. For all intents and purposes, it's really an infobox. And infoboxen go to the top where they can always be found. (Don't be fooled, btw, by the fact the template currently has the coloring scheme of a stub template. I've been way more focused on getting the coding and placement done; the thing is gonna get a stylistic make over in due course. It's not gonna be grey forever. And, no, don't worry: it's not gonna be yellow, either.)

The other big reason is for absolute consistency across all years/decades/centuries — not just those we frequent most often. If you have it at the top of the page, it works well regardless of how much information is on the page. If you put it at the bottom, it "floats", depending on how much information is on the page, and, more importantly, how wide one's browser is. If it's at the top, its positioning is absolute. (Now, this template doesn't yet take into account the presence of ads when users are logged out, but none of our templates do. Expand the thing to 292px, and it'll be the same width as the ads, and therefore look even better to anon readers.)

Finally, I do have plans to create either a secondary template or a new part of this one that will go across the entire bottom of the page, as long as the pagesize hits a certain length. This template, in its current form, is not as helpful on really big pages like 2010, as it could be, because you have to scroll so much through those big articles. But you wouldn't want bottom navigation on pages like 2021, so you want to be able to trigger a "backup" bottom template based on pagesize. This bottom temp will not look like the one at the top, in that it will spread across the entire width of the page. But that's for the (kinda sorta) near future. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:05, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Oh and no intention of "overwhelming" the pages with infoboxes(n). This proposed "backup navigator" would only kick in if the page grew to a length that you had to press "page down" a couple of times just to get to the end. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:40, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

Welcome template

Well, my bot's use pre-dated my changes to the welcome template. By making the variables optional, I think I've got it working. It is weird, though, that the auto-welcoming grabs the text of the template rather than the template itself. At any rate, no need to change the template. The code will work correctly, if not as a template. Just typing {{welcome}} ~~~~ seems to work well enough, though it doesn't place the sig within the blue box. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 13:22, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

User talk:Aussie Doc is an example of automation after my code changes. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 13:34, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's adding the code rather than the template. But I'm not sure what difference that makes in this particular instance. It means you can't make changes to the template and then have them be seen on every page that uses the template. But who cares in this case? It's not like people re-read the welcome template, nor is it like we make substantive changes to it. Once it's up, and the person has derived their initial use of the template, it's often forgotten about or even deleted by the user. It's not like we use it as a message board, or other similar way to deliver constantly changing info. I don't think new users will get "daunted" by the code; they'll likely never see it, because they'll tend to edit that page by section. And even if they do chose to edit the whole page, it won't hurt 'em to see what some very basic wikicode looks like. Most of the people who get accounts here aren't "new" to wikicode, anyway. It won't make 'em run for the hills.

As for the bot signing the thing, there's actually a way around that, but I didn't chose to implement it on these experimental runs. And, in any case, the bot uses User talk:CzechOut in its sig. And, thanks to your reminder, User talk:CzechBot is now a redirect back to me. So it's not quite the dead end you think.

--after Edit Conflict---

Well, I see you're now strongly urging the stopping of this thing. And I will. But I'm sad about that cause I really have just started learning how to use this module. It's not nearly so inflexible as you think. For instance different sigs can be assigned. And there's tons of other variables I haven't even been able to explore. I really don't get why it matters so much that the code rather than the temp is added. It's immaterial to whether it gets the message across. And a bot that strongly links back to the user in control of it is really immaterially different than the user himself. There's not really a difference between me signing with CzechBot and CzechOut, except for the contributions link. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:03, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

How stupid am I? The solution to this entire problem is dead easy. You make the Template:Welcome contain exactly one word of text: {{welcometothetardis}} (or whatever you want to call the template that actually has the code for the welcome message. That way, the auto thing can print the literal contents of the template "welcome" all it wants. It's still going to produce just one word. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:10, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

I'm wondering if we're talking about slightly different things, now. Because my thing uses only "Welcome"; it odesn't use any of these other temps you're talking about. And I really can't see how changing the welcome temp to be just Template:Welcometest or whatever would fail. You can nest templates all you want to in MediaWiki. Your auto issues may be different, and beyond my ability to help you with, because I'm not seeing the same control panels you are.

But still you mention that you had "been there done that" with the nested template idea. What was the precise result? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:32, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Um, that totally works. See user talk:Kalishaka. Now, it's throwing a redlink here about "ask on my talk page", but that's easily fixed. Edit the page; my sig is longer than what it threw on the page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:48, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Request for a Radio Times image copyright tag under magazines.

Thats it thanks when you get a mo :) The Librarian 13:47, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks that what I've been using but there is enough material to warrant a BBC Radio Times copyright of its own and if its simply a case of changing the existing ones with a few clicks I'd be happy to do it. I just asked 'cos I know you've been kind enough to me in the past to sort it. The Librarian 16:38, April 25, 2010 (UTC)

Cats:~organization to Cats:~organisation

This is now underway. However, it's not quite as simple as just the one Category:Organizations, as there are many subcats with that word and spelling in it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:15, May 6, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've got 'em all done. Well, at least within the Organisations. If you find more, lemme know. I kinda think that you might want to put some kinda prominent note explaining the preference for British English and give examples of commonly-misspelled-by-American-words. I mean, Americans know "or/our" words, like colour, but "organization" isn't particularly well-known as a word that "switches" in Br. Eng. This is evident by the fact that no category with the word was spelled the British way. I kinda think this is because Canadians are quite tolerant of the "-ize", but yet fiercely protect the "-our". We, oddly, tend to look to Canadians for guidance about what British English is.

Anyway, point is you should use that little note thingie that goes across all pages to point out some common words, cause otherwise, American editors just won't respond. Heck, I use British spellings only about half the time, out of slavish obedience to my spell checker. And "organization" is one of those words that just doesn't look "right" the British way. (Especially cause, technically, the British are wrong. Our spelling is closer to the root word cause American English is based on Elizabethan English, whereas the Brits and their associated Imperial cousins, continued to evolve the word away from the root. "Defence" is a better example of this. The Am. English "Defense" is way more "correct" etymologically than the British spelling; hence why Br. English speakers have to change the "c" to an "s" when they go for "defensible".) CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:12, May 6, 2010 (UTC)

Discontinuity template

I thought I'd already changed the template to accommodate any story by changing the language from Doctor Who story to Doctor Who universe story. Is that not a big enough change for you? Are you saying you'd like it to actually say K9 story, SJA story, TW story, DW audio story, DW prose story, DW comic story, SJA audio story, TW comic story, and all the other little permutations there could possibly be? I'm not too sure I see the point in the extra coding there, since we're only talking about a link on a forum page and not a mainspace article page. After all, they're only getting to the forum page by clicking on one of two things: the discontinuity template on the story page, or the relevant subpage off of Forum:Discontinuity and plot holes. Either way, they'd hsave to already know what kind of story they're dealing with to get to the forum page at all.

That's of course not to say it couldn't be done. You'd just make story a parameter and then type in something like {{disontinuity|story=SJATV}}. But I wonder whether it's really all that necessary, and whether people would remember to set the variable when they typed it in. Thus you'd have to allow for a "default" story, which would be "DWU story", anyway. I'll of course code it if you really want, but my initial thoughts are that it's not going to add a link most people will use. I kinda think it's more important to give a link to the DWU article, anyway, since that's not necessarily a link they would have encountered on the way to te forum page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:34, May 8, 2010 (UTC)

Welcome template

I was looking at Template:Welcome, and thought that since David Tennant has left Doctor Who that the image should be changed to one of the Eleventh Doctor. Do you think that should be done? And if so, what picture would be used (because I couldn't find any suitable ones)? Thanks! --Spamalot360 12:51, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me for jumping in, but check out the scene from Vampires in Venice when Eleven first steps out of the TARDIS and shouts "Venice!," throwing his arms wide. Perhaps that'd do, at least until a better scene comes along? Rob T Firefly 13:16, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

"Well, the most obvious moment so far that looks like the current Tennant pic is when he extends his hand to River out the TARDIS door into space at the end of the teaser to Time of Angels. But personally I am opposed to changing the picture as there's never been another time when the Doctor has been filmed with a first person camera (that is, looking directly into the lens), which hasn't broken the fourth wall. The picture on the welcome page does not have to be of the current Doctor; it just has to illustrate the point. You'll never get a clearer demonstration of "welcome" than Attack of the Graske, cause there's no other time the Doctor has been talking to us, which still exists in the archives, at least. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 13:23, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

I see your point. I have however uploaded the images that have been mentioned:

• 

  The Doctor catching River...

• 

  ...and the Doctor in Venice

What do you think of them? I don't think that they are as good as the current picture, so I suggest keeping that for know until a better one comes along. --Spamalot360 13:51, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree with that - unless an image is perfect for the role, don't change it. --Spamalot360 14:01, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. But as soon as we find a more appropriate image, I believe it should be edited. Musedae 14:38, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

thanks Bakuganamaxusreviews 15:25, May 9, 2010 (UTC)

From BBC DVD: The Creature from the Pit

I've had a chance to think about this a bit, and I guess it doesn't have to be an in-universe image. I mean, it's not an in-universe usage, really. I still don't think it has to be the current Doctor, and I don't find either of the above images particularly compelling. The Attack of the Graske thing probably still wins on points, but I do quite like this li'l gem to the left. It has the virtue of being funny and unique. People will be scratching their heads trying to place it, which might make them look longer at both it and, more importantly, the text that surrounds it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:40, May 13, 2010 (UTC)

Featured Articles used again?

Hey, I noticed that you have voted for Bernice Summerfield in the Featured Articles, but I remembered when I joined I think around 2008 that she already was at one point a featured article. Can we have the same article become a featured article again?? just thought I'd remind you as well incase you forgot that she was one previously. Cheers -- Michael Downey 10:48, May 22, 2010 (UTC).

Yeah thats true with the new system, just didn't know all together if we could have a featured article appear over any time at all once it has been done and gone but thats fine. Leave your nomination because like I said it was 2008 so it probabl has been edited alot but I do agree that we should add a time to the policy preferably 12-18 months rather than 6 but thats my opinion. Thanks -- Michael Downey 11:19, May 22, 2010 (UTC).

Hiding "Forum talk" links on Forum pages

Since the "Forum talk:" namespace is not really used, it might be worth adding the following CSS to your Mediawiki:Common.css file. It will hide the "Discussion" link in the upper right corner when viewing the Forum: namespace.

/***********************************************************
** Hiding "discussion" link in ns:Forum
*/
.ns-100 * li#ca-talk {
	display:none;
}

Might stop some of those random anons putting stuff into "Forum talk:" pages rather than the desired "Forum:" pages. -- sulfur 13:42, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Oops. That "ns-100" should be "ns-110". I just noticed the typo. My apologies. -- sulfur 14:07, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Odd. Common.css is supposed to be included on all skins, but doesn't seem to be on Monaco for your site. Can't figure out why. Try adding it into MediaWiki:Monaco.css as well perhaps? -- sulfur 14:23, August 6, 2010 (UTC)

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Can we disable visual editor please?.

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:18: Wed 21 Dec 2011 

Christmas cheer

Happy holidays!

As this fiftieth anniversary year comes to a close, we here at Tardis just want to thank you for being a part of our community — even if you haven't edited here in a while. If you have edited with us this year, then thanks for all your hard work.

This year has seen an impressive amount of growth. We've added about 11,000 pages this year, which is frankly incredible for a wiki this big. November was predictably one of the busiest months we've ever had: over 500 unique editors pitched in. It was the highest number of editors in wiki history for a year in which only one programme in the DWU was active. And our viewing stats have been through the roof. We've averaged well over 2 million page views each week for the last two months, with some weeks seeing over 4 million views!

We've received an unprecedented level of support from Wikia Staff, resulting in all sorts of new goodies and productive new relationships. And we've recently decided to lift almost every block we've ever made so as to allow most everyone a second chance to be part of our community.

2014 promises to build on this year's foundations, especially since we've got a full, unbroken series coming up — something that hasn't happened since 2011. We hope you'll stick with us — or return to the Tardis — so that you can be a part of the fun!