User talk:Skittles the hog

File:Carnival ep1.JPG

Welcome to my talk page. Please comment on any edit if you have a problem. Please put new messages at the bottom of the page, and remember to sign your post with four tildes (~~~~). Message Not Here ??? I also have Archived Talk for old messages (latest is the highest number) Archived talk: 1 · 2

Infobox Pictures

Hi, how do you insert pictures to infoboxes?Ghastly9090 16:11, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

New wikia layout

I'm up on pretty much all of the new wikia layout including the Community corner.

Are you prompting me for something special?

At the moment the new wiki skin isn't the only one that remains active (you can still select Monaco or Monobook) so we're sort of in the inbetween time for these things. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 13:47, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Ref tags on Death of the Doctor

Not sure why you removed the ref tags the Death of the Doctor article. Or removed the image and enemy fields. Please don't, with the ref tags it messes with the sources used further down in the article. The image and enemy fields will be used later when that info is available. --Tangerineduel 16:51, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Daleks- Apperances

could you please notify, if the Daleks, really apperaed as a shadow (The Beast Below) in cameo, as that's what some users have put, why can't they just put cameo only?

Thanks

2x30

Hey, all of the Doctor Who episodes and that use a number x number for the length of episodes, which is why I've changed it back to that on the SJA pages, so we can keep it the same. --The Thirteenth Doctor 19:13, October 30, 2010 (UTC)

• Hmm... I could have sworn most of them used the number x number format. To be honest, the number x number format makes it absolutely clear that it's so many episodes by so many minutes. The other one can be mistaken for something else, like 1 45-minute being 145 minutes. --The Thirteenth Doctor 21:09, October 30, 2010 (UTC)
  • What does the hyphen stop them from getting mixed up with? But yeah, the forums is probably the best place to discuss it. --The Thirteenth Doctor 22:05, October 30, 2010 (UTC)

can you help me

do you know a site where i can watch out-takes or cat-flap from the Survival DVD Kingdomcode 19:12, November 5, 2010 (UTC)Kingdomcode

hey, i've heard about the new change to all the wikia, don't u hate it when they suddenly got roid of the old design (Monaco)? Sclera1 02:52, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

Templates

I personally think the pages should stay as they are until we come to a decision about where they should go. This would mean reverting edits to how they were before the issue was brought up (under the infobox). They can then be used a evidence if we ever need it? Cheers. Mini-mitch 19:37, November 10, 2010 (UTC)

Help

Hi Skittles. I have just become an admin on The Sarah Jane Adventures Wiki. I think Mini-mitch is a regular user on it as well but it is in really bad shape. There are loads of VITAL pages that need creating and that's where you come in. You are one of the top editors on this wiki and look at it now; It's number 10 on the "Wiki Charts". Please would you try to help Sarah Jane Adventures Wiki by creating some of these pages and I could help by asking the guy in charge (Mini-mitch I think) to make you and admin. This is not bribary. Please could you help or at least have a look. I have left similar messages with Tangerineduel and The Thirteenth Doctor. Thanks so much. Ghastly9090 16:20, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

Because if you wanted to know a typical Sarah Jane fact and you thought "Ah! How about a wiki." I would look for a SJA wiki. If you are complaining are you refusing my offer? Ghastly9090 16:27, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

Where did Sarah Jane get K9, How old is Luke, Who is The Trickster, What is a Sonic Lipstick etc. Ghastly9090 16:33, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

Of course I prefer it here! I've just become an admin on this wiki so I need to do a good job and clean it up but if you look at my edits they're not exactly amazing are they. I need help. Will you give this help? Ghastly9090 16:37, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I prefer this wiki, but as I am an admin on SJA wiki I need to help it. Ok? Ghastly9090 17:18, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

So it's a no? Ghastly9090 17:45, November 20, 2010 (UTC)

holy monkeys its stan!

nice icon

Deletion tag

Please remember to state the reason while a page needs to be deleted e.g. {{delete|reason}}. If you don't, the deletion tag can get removed. Thanks. Mini-mitch 20:22, November 25, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. btw ...

Hi! sorry about the tense bit (I would like to think I'm usually ok), but confess I hadn't checked since late last night. Btw you might be able to help me, where's the page history now, I always found it useful to check what correction were being made but can't seem to find it nowadays Thanks The Librarian 22:44, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

Hi. :)

help

in DW:Survival how was Stuart killed by a cheetah person can you tell me Kingdomcode 05:10, December 4, 2010 (UTC)

Graske

Hi, just wondering why you removed the photo of the Graske I put on it's article? Sontar8 19:00, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

Images

I'm sorry, could you please explain your comment? What do you mean "use reasonable amounts"? And what do you mean use 150px? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:02, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying your points, but, wow, The Krotons? How old are those edits? 2 years? Kinda late in the game to be commenting about that. I'd disagree with setting a specific px value for inline photos, as the problems with the new skin make clear. By choosing to go to the standard thumbnail size, the picture is automatically sized to the defaults of the skin. Standard thumbnail size, for instance, appears to be quite different in the new skin to what it is in the old skin, or in the smartphone skin. Specifying a size for inline articles goes against wikia intent, and would, in my opinion, require discussion and official adoption at the Panopticon. I'm not opposed to having that discussion, but there really must be a standard applied across all articles. In the absence of any consensus agreement here, that standard is surely the wikia default.

All that said, I we've had this kinda discussion before. See Forum:Photos on story pages, Forum:Standard Size Pictures, and the more infobox-centric Forum:Character infobox image standards?. Only the last of these really came to a conclusion where the forum discussion led to a policy change to the MOS. As far as I know, and I could be mistaken, we've talked about pics in the article's body, but we've never come to any conclusions, which is why I think the MediaWiki default is the de facto standard. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:21, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

Sourced in what sense? I've probably contributed more pics to this wiki that just about any other user and I've never had anyone call me on this. If there's a pic of a Kroton, isn't it pretty obvious it must come from The Krotons? What kinda sourcing are you looking for that isn't implied by template:screenshot or template:telesnap or most any of the other licenses? I agree that we could do a better job by having an automatic filing system like at MemoryAlpha, so that pics got put into a category relative to a particular story, but that's in the absence of that, typing "This picture came from The Krotons," doesn't really give us anything we can manipulate or use in any meaningful way. As far as "da Law' is concerned, it wouldn't protect us any more to have a detailed boilerplate like Wikipedia uses to rationalize why they're using non-free images. At the end of the day, if the rights holders want to shut us down, they can shut us down, no matter what we scribble on a picture page.

Still, I agree it's important to at least make it look like we care about copyright by minimally asserting, "This pic is a screenshot; we don't own it; these are the probable copyright holders." So maybe what you're saying is that you've found some very old uploads of mine where there's no license tag? Have you run into some pictures where I haven't appended template:screenshot or something? I know there was a moment a long time ago where the multiple upload function page had a bug in it that prevented a single license being applied across multiple pics, but I didn't find out about it until long after the fact. Other than that, I can't remember failing to give the broad source of any pic.

Again, just like with other issues we've talked about today, I don't mean to shut down your argument, cause I don't really know what it is. But I don't think my behavior on anything you've brought up today is at variance with the norm of most editors' practice on this wiki. If you're displeased with something I'm doing, it would probably benefit the whole community if you started a thread topic and argued for things to change. You might not win the argument — beleive me, I've lost a lot of 'em — but at least you'd have the issue more broadly discussed. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:50, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

Ohhhhhhhh, I see what you're talking about with The Krotons at least. This is what the page looked like when I last touched it over two years ago. It was barely anything back then, and we were using totally different skins, so the "framing" dual-column approach made much more visual sense than it does today. I thought people would've taken those images and put them at appropriate points down the article as it grew. Judging by the revision before yours, though, that's not what happened. They kept the images in exactly that same position, so that they no longer truly illustrated the article. No wonder you thought the thumb size was interrupting the text flow of the article. If you put six or seven consecutive images at the top of an article that then grows beyond the stu stage, of course text flow is going to be compromised. I'll restore them, instead of just deleting them. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:03, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

The new TARDIS team pool their resources while opposing the Daleks. (DW: Power of the Daleks)

Just to be clear, is the image at right what you mean by sourcing? If so, I apologize, I missed that forum discussion. (Could you point me in its direction, please?) I know I've recently made some edits, especially at Polly Wright, where I've deliberately stripped the serial attribution at the bottom, because the caption and/or immediately surrounding text made the source plain, and it seemed like a waste of space. But if it's consensus to always include the serial/episode, I'm happy to oblige. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:40, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've uploaded nearly 1000 images. You're going to have to be a little more specific when you say "all". In general, though, I don't ever upload images I don't intend to use at some point. Besides, it's Tangerineduel's policy not to delete pics, even if unused, except in certain, isolated cases, such when uploaded pics offend the MOS. Oh, and that forum discussion you pointed me to hasn't been archived, so it's still active. As it stood, that discussion was just people throwing opinions around, moving no closer to actual policy change than when you'd first started the thread. No one could reasonably read that thread as having come to any actual conclusions. Clearly, the MOS still doesn't set forth any actual policy on captions. I added my feelings to that discussion in the hopes of getting some more discussion going. Maybe with a little more activity, it'll eventually reach some sort of productive closure, rather than just quiet, unresolved archiving. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:40, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I was suggesting that pictures never get deleted. But the fact that there are well over 1000 pics in the unused photos report indicates that it's clearly not a priority to run out and delete photos willy-nilly. I still don't really know which of my photos you're having a problem with, by the way, but if you're talking about ones uploaded this month, it's a li'l premature to be worrying about them, don't you think? And you know, it's a completely valid editing style to upload photos without knowing, "Oh, I'm going to put that pic exactly right there." Sometimes I upload thinking that I'm going to put it on a character page, but then find that it works better on a story page or a species page. There's absolutely no rule of this wiki that placement of a picture occur within a certain time period.

A Silurian encountered by the Doctor's third self on Wenley Moor. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)

As for caption "sourcing", a strict rule on what must be included will probably lead to boring, repetitive captions, as well as caption blocks that are as tall as the picture height itself. "Sourcing", as you call it, adds at least a line of text to a caption. With longer titles, like Doctor Who and the Silurians, you're talking two additional lines of text, which usually means doubling the size of the caption. If the section it's illustrating is short, the photo with caption could easily be longer than the section. Imagine this graf were a section. Now check the height of the thumb against the height of the paragraph. Then compare the height of the cap to the height of the pic. The cap is taller. To my eye, that's not desirable, especially if the caption itself gives other wikilinked clues as to the picture's source.

I think if you start to demand that every caption must have its source given in a particular way then you're coming dangerously close to telling people how to write. And while we can require some stylistic standards (standard English grammar, preference for British spellings, past tense for in-universe articles), I'm not sure this is one of them. It's not demonstrably better sourcing to give the name of an story as opposed to giving unmistakable, wikilinked hints in the text.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not universally opposed to story titles in captions. I wouldn't be on a campaign to remove them throughout the wiki. But I don't see why we would want to formally require them, either. As long as the caption allows the picture to be sourced in no more than one click, it's fine, I say. In the above example, a click on Wenley Moor identifies the story as Silurians, so all is well.

We have to remember that pictures draw the eye more than the articles. Thus we should be using the captions, where possible, to introduce wikilinks to our less-visited pages. That will happen less if we just robotically give the name of the story under the caption. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:45, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

Kate Freetwood

Hi, I realised there was an article for Kate Freetwood and Fleetwood. The real person is Fleetwood. I have put Freetwood up for deletion. Could you change the article on Ship back to Fleetwood please. Sontar8 19:06, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

Deletion template

Please remember to insert a reason for why you want to delete a page (even if it obvious) as it is part of the Manual of Style. Thanks. Mini-mitch 20:46, December 5, 2010 (UTC)

Have faith :)

Hey, I'm pretty sure you're not trying to pick on me. But this comment about putting things on the list of prefixes is the second issue this week where you've sorta jumped on me while I'm literally in the middle of editing something you flag as problematic. Please don't take this the wrong way, and I'm certainly not claiming infallibility because of it, but I have been here as one of the most prolific and thorough editors since about 2007. So it would be foolish to suggest that what you said wasn't helpful, or that you meant it in a mean-spirited way. But it does make me think that we have two very different editing styles. You seem to edit mostly by watching the recent edit list, expecting that someone's recent edit is their final edit on a topic. My mind doesn't work that way; I tend to sculpt articles with multiple revisions before I'm done. So if you could reserve judgment until there's a halt of about 12 hours on my editing of an article, I'd appreciate it. There was, after all, no way I could have both created INFO and altered Tardis:list of prefixes with the same press of the "submit" button.  :) CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:34, December 10, 2010 (UTC)

DVD features prefix

I think the answer is, "yes, there should be a prefix, but at the moment there there aren't enough articles about the special features to justify one." To my mind, a prefix for the special features would demand specifically naming a special feature, and that would mean redlinks in almost every case. I've tended to, I suppose, cheat by using an acronym that's not a prefix: BBC DVD: The Brain of Morbius, for example. But that's not truly desirable citation. They should be cited by name, for clarity. If these documentaries did finally get articles created for them, I suppose the most flexible prefix would be DOC, as in, DOC: Lalla's Wardrobe. DOC would allow usage beyond just DVDs, to include radio documentaries and the like. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:29, December 22, 2010 (UTC)

Cool, then DOC is a go, I'd say. That's more than enough of a start to indicate the direction of progress we want to make. The only thing I note about your list of documentaries is the collectivization of "Now and Then". Each of the "Now and Then"s should (ultimately) have its own article. Yes, keep the main article, Now and Then, but then add Now and Then: The Masque of Mandragora, et al, for easier citation. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:54, December 22, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing I notice by perusing Category:Doctor Who DVD documentaries is that you're consistently failing to alphabetise articles. Remember that "a", "an" and "the" shouldn't be the sort keys when filing to a category. If you could just add {{DEFAULTSORT:Name of Article, The}}, it would avoid the nastiness of so many of these articles, like The Vampire Lovers, being filed under the letter "T". (So, {{DEFAULTSORT:Vampire Lovers, The}} or you can get lazy and indicate a shorter key, so long as it's likely unique, like, {{DEFAULTSORT:Vampire Lov}}.) You generally want to include a DEFAULTSORT instead of just sorting on a particular category, because you never know what categories the article may later be added to automically. Having DEFAULTSORT set ensures the article is always sorted appropriately, no matter how it finds its way into a category. Thanks :)

Beyond that, though, bloody good work getting so many of these articles started. I'm most impressed. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:07, December 22, 2010 (UTC)

Sepulchre

As sepulchre is an ordinary noun, there's every chance that an article could be written about it (especially after listening to the audio). Thus, Sepulchre (Dead London) should be the character and Sepulchre should be moved to Sepulchre (audio story), then Sepulchre (which would now be an automatic redirect, after the move) should be re-written about the object in the audio story (as well as other sepulchres in broader DW fiction). CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:56, December 22, 2010 (UTC)

A sepulchre is a burial chamber, usually small in nature. You know how when you go to a cemetery, especially a relatively posh one, there are those small structures that have the name of a family and inside are several relatives' remains? That's a sepulchre, though we're more likely to call is a mausoleum, vault or crypt today. More rarely, usually in older texts, it can also be a verb, as in, "The snow sepulchred the tender daffodils in its icy embrace." So a character named "Sepulchre" can't be up to any good, can he? It's about as subtle as just calling him "Death". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 13:33, December 23, 2010 (UTC)

Ref Tags

The ref tags have gone mad on the Christmas Carol TV Story page on the infobox. It was not me. I've tried everything within my knowledge of ref tags etc but nothing works. Can you check it out please! Ghastly9090 17:57, December 23, 2010 (UTC)

Ratchet/Rattle

No, it's really a football rattle in all three cases. I mistyped when I initially said "ratchet", and that red link allowed you to then get the idea to start your article. I apologise for wasting your time (though I really didn't think anyone would be waiting to "pounce" quite so quickly). A football rattle is bigger than a ratchet, and hence produces more noise. Also, tellingly, the rachet's handle is hinged, so it folds up like a jackknife. There's no indication in either Nightmare Masque or Wedding of a hinge. Moreover, a ratchet generally isn't "whirled" like we see the Doctor doing in all three cases. Finally, if you enter "football rattle" in Google, it produces a helluva lot of results, indicating it's the more common name, especially since "ratchet" has so many other meanings. Ratchet really should be deleted. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:24, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry again for wasting your time. I tend to "sculpt" articles, so if you're following my edits closely, you might run into, well, crap. Some people hate that method of editing, but as Firefox crashes at the most annoying times, I've gotten in the habit of incrementally saving articles. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:28, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Other matters

Pic at file:Walnut Muffin.jpg exchanged per request, though I didn't particularly think the panel originally uploaded best illustrated the muffin or the Doctor's enjoyment of it.

And double spaces where? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:20, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

I'm still not sure what you're talking about. I reverted crisp only because your breakup into two separate grafs rendered the second sentence a clause, instead of a sentence. I wasn't intentionally reverting anything to do with spacing. And I don't see any double spaced lines anywhere in that article. Can you please clarify? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:25, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Ugh, I'm so confused. The side-by-side comparison of our latest revisions reveals no red-marked changes. So what did you "fix"? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:29, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Ohhhhhhh, I see what this is! The old "one lump or two" debate on punctuation marks ending with a period. Yeah, sorry, it is intentional that I put in two spaces after a full stop, because, well, that's how I was trained. I don't even think about. But, yeah, if you were trained to type on a computer rather than a typewriter, you probably have been told it's "wrong" to use two spaces. Here's an extract from the MLA handbook, the standard American style guide:

Publications in the United States today usually have the same spacing after a punctuation mark as between words on the same line. Since word processors make available the same fonts used by typesetters for printed works, many writers, influenced by the look of typeset publications, now leave only one space after a concluding punctuation mark. In addition, most publishers' guidelines for preparing electronic manuscripts ask authors to type only the spaces that are to appear in print.

Because it is increasingly common for papers and manuscripts to be prepared with a single space after all punctuation marks, this spacing is shown in the examples in the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual. As a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor requests that you do otherwise.http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/style_faq3

As we never ruled on this issue in the Manual of Style, I've consistently done what is instinctual to me. Might be worth seeing if we want to set a rule on this one in the forum. I'm honestly not bothered either way — but if there's no rule, I'll instinctively double-space. It would be, incidentally, fairly easy for a bot to make the whole site comply one way or the other, so it's not one of these things where it can be credibly said, "Oh, I wish it were this way, but it would be so much work to make it happen, that I'll just live with it as is." This kind of stylistic challenge is precisely what a bot is for. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:53, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Nope, I'm not saying I want one or the other. I'm saying that if there is no rule in the MOS, then we're both right, and it's pointless for either of us to correct the other. I don't care enough about the issue to bring it to the forum. But if you feel really strongly that it should be one way or the other, I'll support whatever consensus emerges there, and offer the services of my bot to actualise the change. My official stance is thus, I don't care, but I'll help those who do in their efforts to achieve uniformity on the site. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:46, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not a mistake; it's training. See, back in the day, when all we had were typewriters, the available fonts were exactly like the one I'm seeing as I type this. That is, they were monospaced fonts. Every character took up exactly the same amount of space. Thus, to distinguish between abbreviations and the end of a sentence, it was necessary to type two spaces when you meant the end of a sentence, and one when you didn't. Otherwise, you might have mistaken the period after "Mr." or "U.N.I.T." (back when people used periods in acronyms) as the end of the line.

It's kinda hard to show you how the difference looks in the font you see before you now — which is why I was having problems understanding what you were talking about before. But, still, this was a Big Damn Deal when I took typing. You could fail a project if you didn't double-space, because each single-space was marked as an error. That's not being overly strict; that's because it really does matter when you're looking at monospaced fonts. Without that extra space, all the letters just run together, and it's hard to get a sense of the beginning and ends of setences. Now that almost everyone types in proportional fonts, the extra spaces are a luxury more than a necessity.

Still, it's not wrong to double space, even now. Every major style guide in the English world says something to the effect of what the MLA did above: computers have made it unnecessary to double-space, but it's still valid. Thus, if we're going to have a standard here, it must be explicit in the MOS. I just don't want to see you wasting a lot of your time editing out these spaces of mine when they don't actually offend the MOS. And I'm not going to "re-train" myself to avoid double-spacing unless there's a rule saying I have to. Again, though, I won't oppose you if you propose a change to the MOS on this matter. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:35, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Heh, yes, I took a course using typewriters, which were still being taught in most American high schools until at least the mid-1990s. Actually, it was the price of getting a computer. My dad wouldn't let me buy a computer until I'd learned to touch type on a manual typewriter. I took the course, not because I needed to learn how to type — my dad had already taught me that — but because I needed a certificate saying that I could type. My typing teacher hated me, because I could type 100 wpm the day I entered her class. Believe me, when you train on a manual, you automatically get a 20-30 wpm "boost" by default. It's kinda like how Superman is stronger on Earth cause he's used to the heavier gravity of Krypton. Or something like that, anyway. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:10, December 24, 2010 (UTC)

Hey

Hey, sorry to bother you. I just wanted to know if there is any jobs needed doing that I can take care of. Thanks - Man for the job 18:34, December 26, 2010 (UTC)

Defaultsort

Hey, if you could, please remember to use DEFAULTSORT for people, too. You might find it convenient to click on the preloadable "ACTOR" format button when creating a new page for an actor or an indvidual; both preloadable formats automatically give you a DEFAULTSORT to fill in. The actor one provides you with an easy IMDB link to fill in, too. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:54, December 26, 2010 (UTC)