User talk:Bongolium500

Re: The Daft Dimension

A pleasure to see a new user going into such details and minutiae of dabbing policy! It's worth noting that the Daft Dimension naming scheme is identical to the one used for the Quinn & Howett Doctor Who? stories, which is massive enough that even if it isn't currently recorded in policy, the way of translating "Doctor Who? (DWM 103 comic story)" into a "(Doctor Who? 103)" dab term can, by now, be considered "current policy" in th T:BOUND sense of the term.

Beyond that, I'm sure people like User:Borisashton will have an opinion on this issue, so you'd best copy over the text of your message to Talk:The Daft Dimension so that more people can participate. I think the current way is fine, personally — IIRC Doctor Who? strips aren't numbered, although I'm not sure if Daft Dimension ones are, so it's easier for readers wanting to track down the story to have the number of the issue, rather than the number of the story itself within the series, since that number is not present anywhere in the actual stories. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the speedy response. As I mentioned, I am new here and so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to reply here or on your talk page. I hadn't even thought to put this on Talk: The Daft Dimension so I will do that right away. them you. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 20:38, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Hm, yeah, usually one should reply on the talk page of the other fellow. Quite alright not to have figured this out on the first try, though, don't worry!Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 20:57, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

T:VS elucidation

Hi! Just spotted User:Bongolium500/Sandbox 3. There are a few points on which you say you are unsure, so let me clarify:

• A work which passes Rules 2 and 3 (commercially licensed by a DWU copyright-holder, and officially released), but fails Rule 1 (being a story) and Rule 4 (being meant to be set in the DWU), would be covered-as-{{invalid}}. A non-narrative parody gamebook, for example. The Universe Marathon may count: it's licensed and released, but it's a parody and has a branching narrative, so it's invalid.
• A work with passes Rules 2 (licensed) and 4 (meant to be set in the DWU), but fails Rule 1 (being a story) and Rule 3 (having been officially released)… Or a work which passes Rule 2 (licensed) but fails the other three little rules… That depends on what you mean by "failing Rule 3". Obviously T:SPOIL applies to these things, as it does to everything. But if we had information about a cancelled licensed, non-narrative Doctor Who work, then I think we would have an {{unprod}} page on that work. I don't know that the case has ever come up, but in theory we could.

Also, although that would in theory be a valid grounding on which to rule it out IMO, Can I Help You? is not currently deemed to be invalid on Rule 1 grounds; after all, we do dab it as a "(short story)" still. Rather, it is provisionally invalid for reasons similar to the Dalek Wars short stories — it's suspected that being too tied in with a "merchandise tie-in" makes it fail Rule 4 for similar reasons to commercials. It was due for a proper inclusion debate when the UCP mishap happened. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:27, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Daft Dimension numbering

Please do not change the citations in the (COMIC: The Daft Dimension 477) format. This is used on hundreds of pages, potentially thousands, across the Wiki to efficiently cite individual installments of Doctor Who? and The Daft Dimension, and even if I agreed that these citations aren't really proper, T:BOUND would apply for such a wide-ranging change. Really, this goes hand in hand with the dabbing issue we discussed two months ago (see above). Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 10:50, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Comments on your Sandboxes

I just wanted to say that your citation template proposal is easily the coolest and most impactful idea I've ever seen proposed on the wiki. I understand it will take significant effort and reformatting to get it working with Template:Infobox Story etc, but I commit myself to doing what I can to facilitate its implementation, if/when it's approved. In the meantime I look forward to watching more of your brainstorming on this topic! – n8 (☎) 16:13, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Template

Yes, certainly, if you need it to continue your excellent work on new templates. But, of course, don't start using it on pages in the main namespace unless it's been approved and renamed to something less "placeholder"y. Thank you for asking first, anyway! Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 18:05, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Connection tree

Hi Bongolium,

I think that your sandbox showing how various series connect is really impressive. I have a suggestion for the Periodic Adventures of Señor 105 section, I think that it would be better to swap out the "Excelis Saga" for the Main Range and then have that part connect to Iris and then The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (series) underneath (as Iris appeared in several Main Range releases and Brenda appeared in The Boy That Time Forgot (audio story)).

Just a suggestion, but I think that you're doing great and I can't wait to see more. RadMatter ☎ 11:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement! I have made a small tree at User:RadMatter/Sandbox 1 using your original template to show how most of Paul Magrs/George Mann's series interact. RadMatter ☎ 23:07, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

I have again expanded my own tree, with help from your own.

It would be good if we were able to somehow incorporate the Virgin New Adventures, as they spun off into both the Bernice Summerfield (series) (which contained a part of the Excelis Saga) and Cwej: The Series (which featured an appearance by Iris in Down the Middle). RadMatter ☎ 11:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Which of the placements on my tree do you disagree with, if you don't mind saying? RadMatter ☎ 15:39, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah! I didn't realise that the lines had meaning, I've just seen your key. RadMatter ☎ 15:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Tree limitations

Bongo, you might be interested in some work I've done at User:NateBumber/Sandbox2 based on your character family trees – I think I've found a pretty good way to represent the ambiguity of Orson Pink's relationship with Danny and Clara, as well as the Doctor's multiple possible parentages – although I've leaned into speculation and invalid sources for that one! Thanks for revitalizing this template, I think we could do really cool things with it. – n8 (☎) 13:11, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words! I've just reorganized the page to more clearly present my two different ideas and their pros and cons. To summarize, one is more rigid and requires extra tiles, and the other is more flexible but would require resurrecting the old-style "VNA: Lungbarrow" prefixes, which were abandoned for a reason.

I've given some thought to mobile users, who (despite T:DESK WINS) make up a majority of wiki readers. But I don't think it's an insurmountable obstacle, as long as each tree is just an alternate way of rendering information already available on the page, so mobile readers aren't actually be missing out on any core info. Thinking ahead … well, you know more about templates than I do: would it be possible to modify {{tree/start}} so it doesn't even try to render the tree in mobile view, or so it adds an indicator that the page should be viewed on desktop? From my naive perspective, this seems more achievable than actually making {{tree}} work for mobile. – n8 (☎) 16:41, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I definitely hear what you're saying regarding the different versions: a degree of flexibility is definitely necessary, and multiple formats can and should exist and interact, differentiated by their accompanying keys. The fact that even ""serious"" fans don't know the title of every story in each series is definitely why I started using prefixes in the first place (series-less stories just wouldn't get them I guess). I am an remain a superfan of your citation template idea, so incorporating it here seems like it would be a perfect fit.

And wow, you found out how to add shapes very quickly! :) Is it possible to The concept in my charts is that dotted lines can be merged / absorbed into filled lines sometimes, so I think the missing squares in my charts rely on a horizontal dashed line being able to turn solid when it meets a vertical solid line. Is that remotely possible? – n8 (☎) 19:54, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, those are perfect! If I may, I'd also suggest ones where the vertical line stops halfway / doesn't continue through to the bottom. I'd do it myself but ... I have no idea how you're doing it! – n8 (☎) 14:10, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Those are perfect, and as you can see in my newly-updated Sandbox2, they make my "Proposal 1" work effectively. Thank you again! – n8 (☎) 13:04, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification! I've removed my links to your tree sandbox. I also saw that you mentioned at User:Najawin/Sandbox 5 that you'd like a forum debate about using {{tree}} on more pages. Do you really think the forums would be necessary for that change? I don't think there was ever a debate about using <gallery> on story pages; someone just started doing it, and it works great. Maybe getting a thumbs up from an admin would be nice, but as I see it, there isn't anything stopping us from just going ahead and sticking them on pages. – n8 (☎) 16:57, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Some of your recent changes and proposals

Hey there! I see you've been pretty busy around here, and we all thank you for your creativity. Coupla pooints, though. We've been striving around here for years to make the CSS increasinlyh simplified. Your recent effortts in Fandomdesktop.css and .js have therefore been deleted. This created a massively confusing situation whereby the less technically-minded amongst our admin staff wouldn't have been able to easily locate many things that should have been easily presented by the Theme Designer. A good example: the background banner. This should only be inserted via ThemeDesigner, and never by CSS. I appreciate that you might have picked up some bad advice about this, and that you meant no harm, but all backgrounds must be applied by TD only.

Additionally, Fandomdesktop.css, despite its name, is best used for helping historical Gamepedia wikis better align with Fandom ones, since those wikis have long had user-manipulatable css and js that works for the mobile skin, and so those wikis can have different styling.

Obviously, it's possible to use Fandomdesktop on a historically Fandom wiki, but we shouldn't be doing that here. See, what happens is that this would split the CSS tree by having two style sheets at the same load level. That immediately doubles the complexity of the code. And if you start putting the same code on both style sheets, then page load times could be impacted -- much less the fact that you then have a harder time finding the declaration you want to change.

So the idea for the basic structure of the pages is to have everything that could impact every single page of the wiki in MediaWiki:Common.css, and then to have several specific sub style pages linking off from that, such as MediaWiki:Infoboxes.css.

Finally, I do wanna stop you on your development path to the automated User:Bongolium500/Sandbox 5. Over the years we've made several such stabs at this, and this thing you've called merely an "issue" is non-trivial:

According to MediaWiki's website, this can be confusing for users using a screen reader. Every collapsible is open for a short amount of time while the page loads before closing which, on a larger page using this a lot, would cause the page to jump a lot.

We've taken a pretty firm stance here over the years to keep the site as broadly usable as possible, and we fear that this would create chaos on longer pages for people who rely on a screenreader. So we can't do this.

Additionally there's a potentially Fandom-wide issue with this:

For this to work at all, a lot of prior work needs to be done with Semantic MediaWiki annotations. By far the best solution (in terms of future-proofing and best practises) is to update Infobox Story.

Fandom's version of SMW is no longer available to wikis that don't have it enabled -- and for good cause. Calc-intensive operations like this have an impact across the network, so we really can't do this. This is a minor burden -- typing out the abbreviations for media types -- and we've been doing it fine for years. It's really not worth the expense or load on the whole of SMW across the network.

And finally, we won't be using tooltips around here. While other older wikis, typically covering games, have widespread use of toolips, they aren't trying to install them in 2021 where mobile usage is wwwwaaayyyy higher than it was back in the day. So when you note, correctly, that [tooltips do] not work at all on mobile" -- you're really saying we can't use them at all.

Thanks again for all your work. I hope this doesn't discourage you from contributing other ideas. And I'm really sorry I was out on extended medical leave over the whole summer so that I could have saved you some time.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  23:23: Sun 31 Oct 2021

Re: Template test

It would be best if you kept an {{inuse}} tag on the pages while you're testing the template on them, until it is certain that what you're trying out does work with no unforeseen side-effects. But with that caveat, unless another admin with more coding knowledge than I has an objection, go ahead! Thank you for asking first. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Hm, yes, I think that would do it! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)