User talk:Tangerineduel: Difference between revisions

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== Discontinuity; Plot Holes and Errors Sections In Episode Pages ==
== Discontinuity; Plot Holes and Errors Sections In Episode Pages ==


I was wondering about the discontinuity, plot holes and errors sections and if we could introduce dividing them into discontinuity, plot hole and error sub-sections. As some are particually large and are quite hard to read, such as the End of Time's one, which I have already attempted to divide up, but people keep reverting back to the mass list of points.
I was wondering about the discontinuity, plot holes and errors sections and if we could introduce dividing them into discontinuity, plot hole and error sub-sections. As some are particually large and are quite hard to read, such as the End of Time's one, which I have already attempted to divide up, but people keep reverting back to the mass list of points. lottie01 23:10, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Revision as of 23:10, 29 January 2010


sir may i be a admin i have been watching doctor who since baker and i believe i could be admin material thank you--TheLastTimelord 05:24, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Talk Pages and Infobox additions

A few things I have been thinking about regarding to the above two. I though I would sound them out to you. --Bigshowbower 13:24, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Talk page Can we implement some sort of warning when a user creates a talk page saying something like "This page should be used to discuss relevant edits - not to discuss plot holes, rumours and speculation" or something along the lines. For example (you've probably seen it already) but the various discussion on The End of Time page, another user has commented on the discussion saying how they should be in the forums. I have asked various users to discuss in the Forums.

Infobox addition The infobox regarding individuals could it have another section added called "Mentions", just like other infoboxes.

I've actually had a go at using the same clean up template but modifying the the text, it is on my user page. Please feel free suggest any changes. --Bigshowbower 03:36, January 3, 2010 (UTC)
That looks a lot better, thank you --Bigshowbower 03:34, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Rich Text Editor

I've been noticing lately that it's been causing a lot of issues, specifically in that it adds random   spaces all over the place and a large number of blank lines after every simple template that it finds. In fact, one of the recent series of edits to the article on the latest special made it so that the 6 templates at the bottom of the page took up over 3 full screens of blank space and scrolling. Is there anything you can do to request that it get turned off along the way? -- sulfur 19:16, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

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)

2011

We might want to keep an eye on this year article, in particular the DWU section. I just removed items relating to 11th Doctor episodes that haven't even aired yet (including one suggesting the Doctor meets Amy in July). Someone also put forward the guess that the Mickey and Martha scene from End of Time takes place in January 2011 when there's nothing to suggest it couldn't have taken place in 2015 or some other time. I'm not suggesting page protection at this point, but as more plot tidbits regarding Season 5 begin to emerge, it'll be worth keeping an eye on the page (as well as 2010) for nonsense. 23skidoo 20:04, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

  • Sounds good. As I say I don't see it as a big problem yet, so I'll leave protection as a last-resort measure (such as if an edit war erupts as what happened with Children of Earth and 2009/2010). I actually tend to pay more attention to the Real World dates (we've got something approaching almost a day-by-day timeline for the history of the franchise now) so I didn't immediately notice the DWU-related additions. 23skidoo 16:18, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Other language

Hello, I would like to bring your attention (since you an administrator of this wiki) about this idea of mine having a link to Doctor Who wiki in an other language: Forum:Adding links to other language Doctor Who wiki --4me 01:37, January 5, 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism heads up

Just FYI I've blocked a couple of anonymous IPs for posting vandalism. One managed to hit a bunch of SJA-related pages and create a nonsense article on a nonexistent episode. (I thought anonymous IPs weren't allowed to create articles?) Another hit one of the DWM pages. These things seem to come in waves so I'll keep a weather eye out. Sadly we can't permaban IPs because they're often shared by legitimate users. Usually if they get blocked for a day or so they get bored and go after another website... 23skidoo 21:09, January 6, 2010 (UTC)

  • The protection of my user page comes from experience from being an admin on Wikipedia. Now that I've started to address (and block) vandals, it makes my page a potential target. I've gone through enough occasions where disgruntled IPs have caused havoc to my user page that I feel justified in taking advantage of a perk offered by being an admin to take this preventative measure. If I begin archiving my Talk pages (see below) I'll likely protect the archived pages, too. I agree it is a bit unfair to "non-admin" users who can't do it on their own, however on the other hand if a user needs to have their User page protected all they need to do is ask one of us to protect it. 23skidoo 14:26, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

Talk page archiving

I notice that older discussion threads on your Talk Page eventually go away. What is the policy here on archiving talk pages? On Wikipedia we're encouraged (some might even say not allowed) to delete "legitimate" discussion (automated messages and mundane/nonsense postings don't count), which has resulted in some users (such as myself) accumulating dozens of Archive pages. Does such a requirement exist here, or can we just delete old items? I for one would be happy not to have to maintain an archive and just delete outdated material. 23skidoo 14:26, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

  • Good to know. I'm not a big fan of archiving Talk Pages because not all discussions need to be kept forever. 23skidoo 19:38, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

Van Gogh vs van Gogh

Can you check this out and correct the histories at a minimum? -- sulfur 00:58, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Main Page vandalism

I reverted vandalism on the main page, the user Cyberbarber tried to add a catergory for Action figures. --Bigshowbower 10:03, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Vandal

The user Fuhrer has been behind some page vandalism. --Bigshowbower 05:37, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Prop. Delete for images.

I think I knew that, but after being away from the Wiki for a bit, and over-multitasking last night... yeah, thanks for the reminder. Monkey with a Gun 02:37, January 12, 2010 (UTC)

The new editor tools

I'm not a big fan of the changes (someday a website will make "improvements" that actually are improvements). In theory the WSYWYG (what you see is what you get) approach isn't bad, but I just had a minor trainwreck on Century House trying to fix a wikilink. It took me far longer than it should have and I'm a little concerned what might happen if I try to insert a "pipe" (i.e. [[Ninth Doctor|the Doctor]]) into an existing link. Have you been having similar problems? 23skidoo 14:26, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

  • I wasn't aware it could be turned off. One problem is that, while I can work out most of the new icons for myself, with this new format launched suddenly (I was editing at 11 PM last night and it wasn't there; at 6 AM it was) you'd think Wikia would send out some sort of user guide. It's not a huge deal, just an annoyance, but I am concerned it could negatively impact our efforts to standardize and correct formatting. For example, it is rather obscure how one can insert an italicized note (i.e. one that starts with : to indent) admidst a list of bullets. I ran into that just now while editing a timeline item. I agree about the spacing - if the earlier version was causing this, that might explain why so many articles have had extra spaces added, as opposed to editors doing it intentionally or unintentionally. 23skidoo 14:39, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

Matt Smith Page Vandalised

The Matt Smith page continually keeps getting vandalised and I think it needs protecting??? -- Michael Downey 14:55, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. -- Michael Downey 14:58, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes + CSS

FYI, check out my additions to this discussion about infoboxen... -- sulfur 16:13, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

Human Companies

Thanks for the nice words.

You'll notice that where pages about a company exist, there's a Main Article link to them. Human companies could I suppose be reworked as an expansion of Category:Human businesses, with the minor background companies like Fusion Corp being entries above the "Pages in this Category" section, but that strikes me as inelegant and clunky.

I also hesitated to call the page Minor human companies because just because a company is only mentioned as background colour to a stroy doesn't mean it is unimportant within the setting: for example, a character could make a passing reference to the Dutch East India company, a vast and powerful corporate entity but technically a minor company if no further detail is supplied about it within the story the reference came from. -- Koschei 22:18, January 13, 2010 (UTC)

Creating a plethora of stub pages when you've only got a sentance or two to say about a subject seems quite wasteful; there's a reason why Wikipedia makes a point of consolidating smaller articles in a single large one. It's a simpler, more elegant solution. -- 12:20, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

End of Time talk page

Although people keep adding the big red Alert box, people keep trying to start discussions about plot, etc. in the End of Time talk page, to the extent where genuine discussion about the article itself is being lost (and in one case the Alert tag was added to such a thread in error). What is your feeling about deleting these discussions or moving them to a temp page of some sort or The Howling? Again calling on my Wikipedia experiences, sometimes the only way to keep off-topic discussion from ruling the roost is to delete discussions that don't play by the rules. This is, however, a touchy subject with some folks. One item of note (buried among the Alerts) is one user is suggesting The End of Time (TV story) be moved to The End of Time which would cause problems with the disambiguation and the novel article. I laid out my case why it shouldn't be moved. PS I've added to the discussion on Bigshowbower's talk page regarding the talk page Alert box. I do feel it's being overused and have in fact just removed it from one thread on the Eleventh Doctor talk page and may remove it from more since some of the items flagged do include legitimate discussion/queries as to whether such-and-such should be added to an article. 23skidoo 02:33, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Howling

I'll be honest I've never actually looked at the Howling. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have an OG-style forum only because Wikis do become a bit of a community and if there isn't an outlet for discussion then people start doing it on the talk pages, which is of course what we want to avoid. Problem is, of course, you do need to have a monitor for such a thing because people will inevitably misuse it, either by posting stuff that isn't allowed on the wiki (like libel) or personalities will clash. It might be too late to close the barn door on this, but it may be time to try and find an admin dedicated to keeping an eye on the thing. And yeah, setting firm ground rules is never a bad idea. As far as the alert box, remember once you change a template they all change, so if you want to darken it a bit or even remove the color entirely, that's easily done. I support the idea of the box - Wikipedia uses something similar, for the same reasons - it just needs a little tweaking and maybe some ground rules as to when it should be employed. (I really sound like I'm advocating "rule creep" aren't I? For the record I don't believe we need hard and fast rules for everything, but in some cases it's not a bad idea). 23skidoo 13:32, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Houston, we have a problem

Thanks, BBC Online. Apparently many of our links to Doctor Who website-related content, such as, say all the Episode Guide links and all the links on Captain Jack's Monster Files now redirect to the "New Year" placeholder page for the redesigned website, which apparently is becoming geolocked for UK viewers only. (Someone must have whined about their license fees or something.) It is, for the moment, still possible to access the material, but all the links have been changed. It is going to be a massive job to fix all the links -- assuming they remain available. I'd like to suggest some sort of note be sent to all users - I don't know how this might be done - or at least a note placed on the Home Page - indicating the situation. Someone already left an unsigned note complaining about it on the Monster Files talk page. Edit: Looks like the direct links on the Monster Files page do lead to the videos, so it's possible someone's updated them. But I do know the Episode Guide links and links to things like short stories need to be updated. I just checked BBC Writers' Comics though and those links work fine. So I'm not sure what's going on (unless someone's been updating the links, which is possible). 23skidoo 13:11, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

  • That's weird, because the ones I randomly selected, such as The Next Doctor, go to the placeholder page. I can think of a couple of possibilities here. Either someone is going around fixing all the links themselves as we speak, or maybe BBC Online got hit with a bunch of complaints and, again as we speak, is taking off the redirect? I'm tied up with "real world" work for much of today, but I'll make a note to investigate further over the weekend. We do need to keep an eye on things because that statement "Only available in the UK" which is currently next to the link to the site archive has me worried that they might fence off the whole site to non-UK viewers. I brought up the topic on a BBS I belong to and got a rather angry-sounding reply from someone who felt people who don't pay the licence fee shouldn't see any of this stuff anyway. If that's an indication of how people in the UK feel, it's possible BBC Online might be getting political pressure to make their website exclusive. 23skidoo 13:29, January 15, 2010 (UTC)
    • An hour ago that Next Doctor link went to the New Year placeholder page. So it does appear that someone at BBC Online has fixed things, and within the last hour or so! The link to The Advent of Fear which went to the placeholder last night, is now going to the proper place, too. I checked the histories and no one's changed the links at this end. So I must have just timed it to raise the alarm with you at the same time the BBC changed things around. So a sigh of relief! Regarding the site, although I disagree with the idea, I do understand why the video stuff isn't available. I'm just hoping the text material stays available, like those short stories. Video I'm not concerned about because (showing how useless fencing is anyway), stuff like A Ghost Story for Christmas usually ends up, er, elsewhere. That statement about "only available in the UK" on the placeholder with reference to the archive site has me worried only because we used to be able to see video internationally, too, until about 3 years ago when they changed the settings. Hopefully at last some of the site will stay open to us unworthies. The silly part is if the BBC asked international users to pay a few bucks in order to see the full site, I'm willing to bet a lot of people would do so. 23skidoo 14:15, January 15, 2010 (UTC)

Alert tag

I'm actually going to add some wording to the Alert tag - "...or personal opinion regarding characters or actors" or something like that. Check the talk page for The Doctor and you'll see people starting to grip that they don't like Matt Smith which has nothing to do with the price of tea. 23skidoo 19:43, January 17, 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)

Another article to keep an eye on

We'll need to keep an eye on the main Torchwood article. No problems yet, but this report (about a planned US remake) might generate speculation, snarky comments, etc. 23skidoo 23:31, January 19, 2010 (UTC)

Projects I'm working on

In a desperate attempt at avoiding getting work done in the real world, I spent a little time over the weekend tweaking the Episode Lists in the different Seasons articles (Season 1, etc). I converted them over to the prettytable format and added episode counts and writers and a notes section to list milestones. Looks pretty good and I'll do the same with TW and SJA later.

Another project I'm launching is to create a few more categories listing actors who appeared in other major franchises (like one we already have, "Doctor Who actors who appeared in The Avengers"). Of course it's easy to get carried away, but there are a few franchises I think we should have lists for. I've created ones for Star Trek and James Bond and are working on populating them. I'm also thinking of doing ones for The Saint, Danger Man/The Prisoner (probably combine the two), Gerry Anderson productions (to cover all the Supermarionation, Space 1999, UFO, etc), Blake's 7 (for the obvious connection) and maybe the Harry Potter films, too. With sources like the IMDb it's dead easy to find people to populate the categories and it's been fun finding out, for example, that Bernard Cribbins did a Bond film (the 1967 Casino Royale). Are there other franchises we should include here? 23skidoo 20:31, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

  • I agree and there are a few categories that only have one or two items in them. In the case of the ones I'm suggesting these will have many DW names in them. Thanks to an Avengers website I found that cross references with Doctor Who actors, I figure I'll be able to (over time - I won't be doing this in one sitting!) had at least 100 names to that category alone, and I think the Saint and Gerry Anderson categories will also be quite large. Obviously we could create categories for just about any major UK show - Z Cars, for example, or Coronation Street definitely - but I think if we stick to major SF like the ones I mentioned, plus a couple of contemporaries like The Saint and Danger Man, that should be good. I figure doing an overall Gerry Anderson category is better than doing individual ones for UFO, Space 1999, Captain Scarlet, etc.) 23skidoo 15:02, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

Please undo a page move

Someone moved The End of Time (TV story) to The End of Time which now leaves the book high and dry. I love how people try to seek consensus. I've tried to find the user who moved the page, but the History for some reason doesn't seem to record this. Can you do me a big favor and move it back? The reason why I can't is because if I do it I get the feeling someone will just ignore me and change it back. This needs the touch of a superior hand. I bet whoever moved it didn't even look at "What links here" and the dozens of links that are now outdated because of this. If you do move it back, I suggest protecting the page from moves (I think you can do this without preventing other edits). 23skidoo 05:36, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

It was moved 10 days ago:
20:07, 17 January 2010 Doug86 (Talk | contribs) m (154,735 bytes) (moved The End of Time (TV story) to The End of Time: only one other article with this same name) (undo)
Just FYI. -- sulfur 11:55, January 27, 2010 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see a real problem with its location, especially since the novel is disambig'd at the top of the page. The lks to the old name redirects there, and aren't exactly "outdated." But that's just me. -- sulfur 11:58, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

I only just noticed the move (and yeah I know I've edited the page since then). My concern is we need to be consistent and the first use of a title is the one that gets the undisambiguated version. This sets a bad precedent because what about, say, Dreamland which was a Big Finish audio before it was an animated story? Or, for that matter, the two Human Natures? 23skidoo 17:14, January 27, 2010 (UTC)

Removal of others

The reason I did it was because they had just copied all of The Doctor's page on theirs. -- Michael Downey 11:46, January 28, 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)

An easy one...I hope!

Hi! I've got a mental block when it comes to finding current templates for infoboxes! I've come unstuck with the Doctor Who at the BBC series. Help me please oh wise one! The Librarian 18:15, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Should I?

Hello sir.I've been writing a Doctor Who story and I would like to ask you if I could post it in this website.Of course it's not entirely canonical since I've created a main character and some other characters but the Doctor and Torchwood and maybe Sarah Jane Smith could be included.The main character is not the Doctor but my character, who's supposed to be a past companion.If you allow me to post the story I can post a profile of the character for you and other users to see.Please answer in my talk page as soon as possible.--Jimmy10101997 18:32, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Discontinuity; Plot Holes and Errors Sections In Episode Pages

I was wondering about the discontinuity, plot holes and errors sections and if we could introduce dividing them into discontinuity, plot hole and error sub-sections. As some are particually large and are quite hard to read, such as the End of Time's one, which I have already attempted to divide up, but people keep reverting back to the mass list of points. lottie01 23:10, January 29, 2010 (UTC)