User talk:Tangerineduel/Archive 5

	This page is an archive. Please do not make any edits here. Edit the active conversation only.

Fun new toy

Useful bit of new kit for you at: Forum:Monobook users: please install this code. Lets you switch between skins without going through Special:Preferences. Perfect if you want to bypass java-heavy Oasis for a bit, but still keep your pulse on oasis.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 22:56: Wed 11 Apr 2012 

I don't think you're the odd man out. I was just telling you so you'd know what to tell users who may have a preference for monobook (as a number of people who came from Wookieepedia and MemAlpha still do). It's really important that we stress the fact that people who do edit in Monobook occasionally take a look at Wikia. For instance, the new {{you may}} and {{dab away}} templates work totally differently in monobook than they do in wikia. user:Doug86 was unaware of this because, I gather, he rarely looks at Wikia. He therefore began moving around instances of the template around so that it fit in with what he thought looked good in Monobook. But this had terrible implications for Wikia. People like Doug need to have an easy way to check their work in Wikia so that they can keep editing in Monobook, but not destroy Wikia.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:17: Thu 12 Apr 2012 

Unproduced TV story images

No idea. I've just discovered one part of the "unproduced story" mess. I haven't even gotten around to the image part. How are there genuine images of these stories, anyway? They're unproduced, right? Does it count if someone, years later, does a concept illustration in DWM?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:17: Thu 12 Apr 2012 

Yep, I totally agree with you. They are illustrations of the article not concept art done in pre-production of the story. That's a huge difference, to my mind. These categories, and all references to them, have been stripped. We don't want to get into the business of "pictures of what might have been".

Now as to the validity of the articles themselves, I think they should definitely stay. I know what you mean about wanting to sort of fold them into a single article, but there is utility to having them separated out, since the infoboxes now allow us to track adaptations. It's more convenient for there to be Ice Time (TV story) and Ice Time (audio story) so that we can distinguish between the two. Sure, in some cases there's not a lot to say about the unproduced story, but in others, there's quite a bit known — and it's very different from the version that got produced. Crime of the Century (audio story) is significantly different to Crime of the Century (TV story), and it's useful to have free-standing articles for this kind of highlighting. And you might as well just live with the small articles so that we don't have to come up with a rule defining the word "significant".
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 17:11: Thu 12 Apr 2012 

Expanded navigation

Four words: Over. My. Dead. Body.

Well, okay, that's a little harsh. But I really don't want to enable it unless Wikia shove it down our throats. The main reason is that it will involve a good deal of restyling on my part, which I don't wanna do. I've just spent a week intensively revamping the monobook skin. I am totally loathe to having to now go back and restyle huge parts of the Wikia skin. There's nothing really wrong with the navigation we have now. It fits in with our general styling in an elegant, unobtrusive way. And it's easy to use. Sure, it doesn't offer the same number of levels of navigation, but it's just a plain, simple drop-down menu. Everyone gets how to use those. Down and to the right navigation is slightly trickier for end users, and I'd have to be convinced of the actual utility of those extra levels of navigation. Also, if we employ it, we'll be sacrificing a bit of the screen real estate we're currently not using, but which we could use. We could put an additional background element (well, two actually) behind the wordmark, running the whole width of the page. I'd like to reserve that for potential use, rather than giving it over to the new navigation bar.

Expanded navigation is enabled at w:c:tardistest. You can take a look at it there in all its ugliness. I will at some point take a look at styling it at tardistest, just because I may have to have something available if Wikia make it mandatory. But I really don't like it. Not one bit.

That said, I am speaking primarily from a design standpoint. If there's a compelling contentual argument you'd like to advance, I will of course be willing to listen. But given the time I've put in lately on monobook, I really don't want to start another big project for at least a month.

Here are my current priorities:

1. Finish up a few touches on Monobook (est. completion: this weekend)
2. Finish up stray infoboxes not done (est. completion: this weekend)
3. Make categories for all comic stories. I didn't expect user:OttselSpy25 to just start making them in a hodgepodege fashion on his own because there's a freakin' huge note saying not to do that. But whatever. They all need to be done. (est. completion: 20 April)
4. Complete work on {{title dab away}} so that there's a single tool people can use to italicise titles with dab terms. (est. completion 20 April)
5. Implemnt standard, easy table-making CSS, along the same lines as the code simplification of infoboxes. Basically, all tables should have a standard look, and "mouseover effects" for maximum readability. (est. completion 1 May)
6. Do a wholesale rewrite of documentation on infoboxes as well as Tardis:Guide to infoboxes (est. completion: 1 May)
7. Full automation of the DYK thing. I know, I know. Don't roll your eyes. There's a way to do it so that it's random on each page load, and I think it would be so cool. People might sit on our front page for a while just reloading the page for new facts. If it works, we might conisider doing the featured article like that, too. Just have a pool of 100 articles and be done with it. Once you set it up, it'll be just like the QOTW: completely hands free, but dynamic.
8. Tackling the MOS. Once and for all making it easier to understand. User:Boblipton's recent criticisms are valid. The thing is a rambling mess. It must be ripped apart, refactored, illustrated, and just made clearer. Things which are genuine stylistic minutae can stay; things which are more "guideline/policy"-like need to be split off. The MOS has got to be about tiny details such as T:HONOUR, not broader policies, like T:SOURCES. Not proposing losing any of the info, just making the MOS a more approachable, better-defined document. (est. completion: hopefully early May)
9. Tackling the T:CAN rewrite. Again, this is a document which is central to our existence as a wiki community, but recent discussions about video games, Dimensions in Time and other things make it clear to me that it's not communicating the point we're trying to make. I had started a rewrite last year, and you annotated my changes, but I never got back to the rewrite incorporating your notes. I want to get back to that, so that we have something in place that's a bit clearer before the new season starts. (est. completion: 1 June)
10. Implementing some sort of progress track for articles. We've got to have some way, as a community, of pushing articles down an at least loosely defined path of improvement, as at Wookieepedia and MemAlpha and Wikipedia. I recently participated in a FA nom process at MemAlpha and it was enjoyable and highly productive. We need something like that here. Skittles was a big advocate of it, but we never got around to it while he was active. We really shold have something in place by the start of the new season.

So, point is, I've got a lot more to worry about than restyling something which, basically, we already have. But I'm not completely closed to the idea, if there's a valid contentual reason to do it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 18:48: Fri 13 Apr 2012 

Sorry. My bad. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:09, April 13, 2012 (UTC)

Monobook toy expansion

I know you weren't terribly interested in the skin-changing tool before, but its functionality has been expanded to also allow desktop viewing of the wikiamobile skin. Code has been updated at Forum:Easy switching between monobook, wikia and wikiamobile.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:49: Fri 20 Apr 2012 

A dangerous precedent may soon be set here

One thing I appreciate about this wiki is its open acceptance of what is considered canon. Like the BBC, it's pretty flexible and with a little creativity - or simply paying attention - it's possible to work most licensed works into the in-universe discussion. Even Death Comes to Time. So you can understand why I am distressed to see this discussion in which one of your admins is proposing the wiki unilaterally declare a fully licensed novel (The Infinity Doctors) as non-canon, simply because it's too difficult to rationalize it with the in-universe stories. That's a ridiculous suggestion, and in my opinion will set this wiki down a slippery slope. If we're going to declare things willy nilly non-canon, then let's just delete Season 18, Miracle Day, anything with the names John and Gillian in it, Fear Her, etc etc. You see where I'm getting at. I wouldn't care if it was just some general user making the suggestion, but it comes from one of your admins. How about giving editors a little credit to be able to work with the material provided? 70.72.223.215^{talk to me} 19:46, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

Randomness

Okay, the technology is in place for having the front page display something different on each page load, which will free us from having to remember to change it.

It also has the potential for making our front page perhaps the most dynamic on wikia, since we could randomise every module on the front page. It will look different to every person on every page load. People will potentially be mesmerised by it, if we implement it in a big way.

For instance, if we put in about 100 featured articles, 50 more quotes, a DYK section that randomly selects each of the five separate pools of facts of apparent randomness. All five 'slots' will be separately randomised so that every user will get a totally unique front page on each pageload. Yes, it will take some work to build the infrastructure, but then we'll never have to touch the front page again.

Here's an example. Just reload the page to watch it change.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 02:08: Tue 24 Apr 2012 

Tegan Jovanka: Nyssa . . . looks bored out of her mind. The Doctor's probably been trying to explain cricket to her again.

Miss Stoker: Cricket?

Tegan: It's a sport, on Earth. Or so they say.

PROSE: Fear of the Dark

Welcome to the Tardis!
Layout
Naming conventions
Things with the same name
Links
Images
Allowed sources
Community
Spelling
Admin
Your account

Cool! Well, I don't see how it would make load times slower, because I deliberately avoided the javascript solution. This is just a simple random number generator triggering a page load through completely ordinary wikicode. The downside, to the extent it is a downside, is that we'll (okay I'll) be creating a ton of template pages. Like seriously thousands. But that's not much of an issue, since they'll all just be subpages and rather neatly tucked away. I'll let you know once the infrastructure is in place. As always I'm juggling several big changes at once.

That said, however, I can tell you exactly what we're going to need:

• 47 more quotes to bring us up to an even 100 quote pages.
• Intros for 100 "featured pages" (And I don't see any reason why we can't reuse things from the past, so that's gotta be about half of 'em lying in the page histories.)
• 500 factoids for DYK, broken down into 5 groups of 100 facts. Groups are: "old series BTS", "new series BTS", "species", "technology/object/concept", and "facts about main characters (something interesting about an incarnation of the Doctor, a companion, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack or K9". These cats aren't hard and fast; they're just a starting point for building the five pools of information.

I'll soon have a "proper" home to deposit this info, but until then you could just dump the info on a sandbox or something. Hopefully I'll have something more permanent up by the time your computer situation is settled.

Work continues apace on the great manual of style restyle. I'll pop the new {{[[Template:tardis manual}] on your page here so you can take a look at the attempt to get something going. It's very much still a work in progress though, so it's changing all the time. Obviously, your comments on its progress are valued. But basically the deal is that everything not under layout will be peeled away from the MOS and put on its own page. The idea is that the MOS will now be just about niggly little formatting issues. Everything else will go on bite-sied pages of their own. So there will be a page for T:DOCTORS, a page for magazine naming conventions, etc. Things that are in within one of the {{tardis manual}} headings will get an additional template that'll say something like "part of a series of articles about <whatever>". So all the naming stuff will be additionally linked by a small template like {{looks like}}, that'll sit on top of {{tardis manual}} and not collapse. That way people won't get lost, and they'll hopefully red all the little naming things one at a time. Basically it'll create "reading topics", so people can take steps through each topic, rather than being overwhelmed by everything presented all at once. Essentially, the {[tl|tardis manual}] on your page here so you can take a look at the attempt to get something going. It's very much still a work in progress though, so it's changing all the time. Obviously, your comments on its progress are valued. But basically the deal is that everything not under layout will be peeled away from the MOS and put on its own page. The idea is that the MOS will now be just about niggly little formatting issues. Everything else will go on bite-sied pages of their own. So there will be a page for T:DOCTORS, a page for magazine naming conventions, etc. Things that are in within one of the {{tardis manual}} headings will get an additional template that'll say something like "part of a series of articles about <whatever>". So all the naming stuff will be additionally linked by a small template like {{looks like}}, that'll sit on top of {{tardis manual}} and not collapse. That way people won't get lost, and they'll hopefully red all the little naming things one at a time. Basically it'll create "reading topics", so people can take steps through each topic, rather than being overwhelmed by everything presented all at once. Essentially, the {[tl]]}} will be the table of contents for the whole book, and the little {{tardis manual topic}} will be a chapter in that book.

(BTW: If you're viewing on an ipad, this box will still be there and usable, but it doesn't look anything like it does in wikia/monobook. Temporarily switch to regular view to view as intended.)

Oh, and as you can see — if you're not viewing with wikiamobile — I've had to add infobox collapsibility to the wiki. This might mean that we can now just have appearances reintegrated into the infobox, rather than on separate pages. Dunno what you think about that, but it's definitely possible to eliminate the appearances pages now without making the infoboxes grow one millimeter.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 18:27: Tue 24 Apr 2012 

The series logo buttons at {{Doctor Who Wiki/Television}} have now been randomised to cover the "little" problem of 3/4ths of the shows being no longer in production.

As for what I'm doing with the poll data, I dunno. I've preserved it at Tardis:Poll archive, but beyond that, nada. It's unfortunately not possible to save it into any kind of format that would be useful by any bot process, magic word, or (known) template, so if we wanted to "pretty up" the raw data, we'd have to do it manually.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 13:58: Wed 25 Apr 2012 

Okay the structure for the "featured article" randomisation has now been created at {{aotm}} (meaning, "article of the minute", consonant with the recent re-labeling of the "quote of the week" to "quote of the minute" on the main page.

Also, the {{qotw}} template has been expanded to allow for 100 entries, but it's still working perfectly because I've not changed the actual math of randomisation. It's still just looking for 53 possibilities until all 100 are entered.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 21:05: Wed 25 Apr 2012 

And now the {{DYK}} infrastructure is in place.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 02:44: Thu 26 Apr 2012 

DYK is now back on the main page. Although there are still a lot of facts to create, there are enough in that the randomisation thing "works" to a sufficient standard.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:07: Sat 28 Apr 2012 

Page needs to be protected

I haven't been around much, but a situation has arisen away from the wiki that should be noted as it could impact an article here. A few fan groups have been fooled by a hoaxer claiming to be Miranda Borman, the actress who played Stellar in the McCoy story Dragonfire. It got so far that I actually interviewed this person thinking it was the real actress and put it on a blog. Multiple reliable sources indicated that this was likely a hoaxer and the person confessed last night to being a "bored college student". Anyway, this individual has been impersonating Miranda on multiple occasions. And during my conversation with her when I thought she was genuine, I let her know about "her" page on the Tardis Index File. So far nothing's been added to the page, but I strongly suggest the page be given full protection and be policed for any changes made in case the hoaxer isn't done, for the sake of our equivalent of Wikipedia's BLP. It appears the photo on the article is of the real actress (who now goes by the name Mindi Buttons) so at least that's correct. 23skidoo ^{talk to me} 13:57, April 29, 2012 (UTC)

Well, there is User:Miranda Borman, and she has added a birth year to the page Miranda Borman. She's also had contact with me that seemed respectful. She was quite reluctant about editing her own page. I took the time to explain what I thought were best practices here for people editing their own pages. She seemed to accept those conditions. She may well be a hoaxer, but she doesn't seem to be vandalistic. See User talk:Miranda Borman and my own talk page for details.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:39: Thu 03 May 2012 

Forum:Timeline - The Master

Forum:Timeline - The Master has been deleted despite being made from scratch. Will you restore it? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 15:45, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you understand. Other timelines, like the First Doctor's, we're deleted because they were based off a fan websites timeline. Forum:Timeline - The Master was based off none of this. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 15:58, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

I've ruled in the negative on this one Too may intervening editors who may not have been editing to OS25's standard; no sourcing; a ton of code errors (thanks to the visual editor). Best to just restart.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:06: Thu 03 May 2012 

Timeline pages in general

As you know, I have a pretty big disdain for these timeline pages. I consider my own involvement with them to have ended about 5 minutes ago when I finished deleting fragments of the old "system". Since I think of my role as having been more about infrastructure than content in this case, I'll be directing questions about how to form the timeline pages to you and User:Revanvolatrelundar.

As a final report on the tech side of things, about 1500 individual links to the old timeline pages were successfully delinked. As I went back through the WhatLinksHere on the old pages, the only link I still found was on the various Lists of Appearances pages. These appear to be in unnecessary "See Also" sections. It's possible you'll encounter one or two links here and there, but I really don't think so. I've also had to fight against Doug86 and OS25 recreating deleted pages right in the middle of the deletion process. This may indicate that your desire to see a totally fresh restart will be thwarted by people who don't understand what's being attempted.

However, as things stand right now, the only thing that survives from the old era is your "work in progress" Eighth Doctor timeline, the talk page for that timeline, and the talk page for the Seventh Doctor timeline. Forum talk:Timeline - Seventh Doctor had some sourced scholarship on it that might actually prove useful to the rewriting of the timeline, but all the other talk pages had nothing worth keeping. (Except for the old Elevneth Doctor timeline talk page, but that's just been merged into Forum:Timeline pages for easier comprehension.)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:50: Thu 03 May 2012 

Timeline

So, is Forum:Timeline - Eighth Doctor a good outline for writing a new timeline page from scratch, or does it have stuff which fits better in the "Time essay" pages mentioned on the main Forum:Timey-wimey detector? Also, should every story that's not conjecture, even those released in succession or on the same date in the same series, have a note (such as in the bit between The Eight Doctors and Bounty on the Eighth Doctor page stating why it's where it is or is that overkill? -- Tybort (talk page) 23:27, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

Is that a "yes" to every companion addition and subtraction on those pages, then? -- Tybort (talk page) 00:50, May 5, 2012 (UTC)

Also, my main concern for overkill is mentioning every single time a story flows into another through a cliffhanger or dialogue otherwise stating the previous story has just happened. It just seems messy in my mind if doing all this on, as an example, First Doctor page referencing all the cross-story cliffhangers on TV. -- Tybort (talk page) 03:17, May 5, 2012 (UTC)

Is that a "yes" to River Song as well? Personally, I think despite her opposite timeline, she appears in all of seven stories (eight if you count Good Man and Hitler separately), plus Night and the Doctor, so it's not my priority to create one myself, even if I'm ambivalent to outright killing the page.

Though one thing that bugged me about Sarah Jane's old page was that it only included her post-Doctor stories. Given your "include every story, even if it's undated for now" comment obviously goes against it, that obviously wouldn't fly now. Though for Sarah Jane, that would probably need communication between that page and the Third and Fourth Doctor pages to make sure that those don't vary wildly. And, yes, there's overlap, but Sarah Jane was one of eight companions (less, depending on whether you consider the later ones "really" Fifth Doctor territory) over the Fourth Doctor's seven years.

I'm not that familiar with Big Finish, so I'm afraid to give judgement on the Companion Chronicles' format, nor when the short stories are supposed to be set. I think for a companion to count, they should either have a timeline that meets the Doctor in a different order to him, or otherwise returns to him after a massive narrative gap (200 years may have passed between The God Complex and The Wedding of River Song, but it's only two episodes narratively), or involve a lot of stories after ceasing to be a Doctor Who regular. Jack and Sarah Jane obviously will do with pages, given that both have had their own series and Sarah Jane's involvement spans the third through eleventh Doctor's eras.

Of course, that leaves the whole point that that's not what I was getting at to begin with. By "companion addition and subtraction", I meant stuff like pointing out every instance when companions (as well as Torchwood members on a proposed Jack's page and allies of Sarah Jane come and go) arrive and leave. -- Tybort (talk page) 14:01, May 5, 2012 (UTC)

Revisiting this, I've been thinking, with a couple of short-term exceptions, wouldn't all "additions and subtractions" as I put it qualify as relevant to story placements? I.e. "Martha is present, placing it between Gridlock and Utopia", or "Amy and Rory are travelling together, placing it either between The Vampires of Venice and The Hungry Earth or A Christmas Carol and The God Complex". -- Tybort (talk page) 14:41, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Not all of the "limiting factors" sections, in particular, the ones on timeline pages that I started, use that pattern. That's actually probably a good place, come to think of it. -- Tybort (talk page) 15:15, June 29, 2012 (UTC)

Spelling

How do you get the tool bar at the bottom to say customise instead of customize? I'm an admin of SWBF wiki and would like to know how to implement this on my wiki. {{SUBST:User:Kingofall42/SigReal|{{SUBST:{Predated }}}}. 16:09, May 5, 2012 (UTC)

Timeline

I was thinking about re-starting the timeline for the Second Doctor at Forum:Timeline - Second Doctor, sencse I have a very firm understanding of Season 6B and placement. Would this be okay? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 02:07, May 6, 2012 (UTC)

Timeline - First Doctor

I'm not familiar enough with the First Doctor's chronology to directly edit myself, so I'd like some clarification.

I'm not 100% whether "between The War Machines and The War Machines" is a typo, or whether it actually means before the final scene of the story as pointed out on the timeline section, but it's confusingly worded the way it currently is.

Also, I would have thought thought that statements on the back of "past Doctor" novels were official enough to "count", or at least hold a lot more weight than The Complete Adventures and DWRG, or is it still too secondary source-y to qualify. -- Tybort (talk page) 19:07, May 6, 2012 (UTC)

FP deletions

Hi, Tangerineduel. I see that you deleted Caldera, which is fine per the community's decision about Faction Paradox. But in future, do you think that before FP deletions, you could copy the material to the Faction Paradox wiki? I've copied the old content of Caldera to Caldera, but that's just because I happened to notice the deletion. Ideally, any FP material that's removed here should be relocated there (and eventually edited into a FP-based perspective, but it's better to copy the Doctor Who version over than simply to delete it). Thanks! —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 04:43, June 10, 2012 (UTC)

No problem. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 18:32, June 10, 2012 (UTC)

This is sorta my fault because I temporarily halted the process of importing actual content in order to focus on the importation of templates, policies and MediaWiki stuff, just to get the structure in place. I have most of the content imported but not quite all of it. If I could, I'd like to call a moratorium on FP deletions until 1 July, just so I can check and double check things.

On a related note, can I please impose on you to accept bureaucrat status at w:c:factionparodox? This will not require you to do any work, if you don't want to, but it will ensure that the Faction Paradox wiki won't die if something should happen to me/my computer/my internet connection/whatever. User:Revanvolatrelundar has already accepted admin status, which I'm going to confer in the next week or so, once the structure is complete. I expect that he'll be the "main" engineer on the train once the tracks are laid.

The FP wiki has failed twice before because there wasn't a "backup bureaucrat", so I hope you'll accept.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 18:40: Sun 10 Jun 2012 

Main page "featured articles"

As we discussed in the probably too-distant past, the "featured article" element of the main page has now been randomised. It works pretty much like the quote and dyk randomisers. There's one template — {{Doctor Who Wiki/Aotm}} — which is actually on the main page and controls the randomisation math. The {{aotm}} template is the "hub" for all the individual, numbered templates like {{aotm/1}} and {{aotm/2}}, and its documentation gives you an easy overview of the article creation process. So far, 27 articles are in the mix, drawn mostly from the past featured article nominees. This is enough to make it basically "work", but if we get 100 articles in the mix, having the same article randomly appear twice will be almost impossible. With 27, seeing the same article twice in a row happens about every 20 reloads.

There's also a preloadable template, {{aotm/preload}}, that's been created for easy manufacture of new articles. Note that the commented instructions on the preload should be followed exactly, as the articles slot into the parent {{aotm}} in a precise way. After some experimentation, I've determined that a paragraph of maybe 3 to 4 sentences (say ~150 words) works best with the other elements on the right column, and tends to produce a main page right column of approximately equal length to the left column. {{aotm/5}} is a good example of proper length. (Of course, I'm talking "proper length" in Wikia when there's one, a normal-height advertisement. All bets are off in Monobook — though {{aotm/5}} seems to work there with browsers opened to widescreen orientation — and in Wikia when one of the gigantically long ads is served.

Because this new system is now "live" all policy and archive pages regarding the old system have now been deleted.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:41: Wed 13 Jun 2012 

MW update

I can't predict everything that might happen as a result of the update. But the issue is more one of an interaction between Wikia's add-ons than my own. It's indeed possible that some things will briefly not work right, and other "fixes" will be obsolted by the new software. But it's sorely overdue. The core MediaWiki software has been out of date for approaching two years. Wikipedia have long used higher versions than Wikia. So there is a need to bite the bullet and do it, no matter the consequences. (Wikipedia will still be at a higher version, I think, because they tend to be at the bleeding edge, which is .20.) Of course, these updates have happened many times since 2004 and we've barely noticed. This one will be felt more keenly because we're skipping over so several different versions. In the past, we've typically incremented every full version or so, but this time we're going up by about three versions at once. This is going to fix a lot of bugs, but I'd by lying if I said that I knew exactly what effect it's going to have. Wikia's whole approach to the rollout — first going with test wikis, then going with moderate use wikis, then with the biggies — suggests that they, too, are optimistic enough to announce a plan, but cautious.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:57: Fri 15 Jun 2012 

Archived ebooks

Hi, Tangerineduel. I saw that you removed the link to the ebook of The Scales of Injustice on the Wayback Machine, but I wasn't certain why. Was it out of concern for copyright, or for some other reason? If so, does the fact that the novels used to be available for free have any bearing on the decision?

Most of the pages for the other ebooks that the BBC published on its website back in the day still contain dead links to those pages. If there hasn't been a discussion about what to do with those links, we should probably have one. And if there has been a discussion, could you please point me towards it? Thanks. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 19:38, June 18, 2012 (UTC)

Hey, we did discuss it, indeed you even agreed with me. See Forum:How should we deal with link rot?. I did as I suggested on the thread, I removed the link and added a text only version to the Notes section. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:34, June 19, 2012 (UTC)

So I did. How embarrassing. Please to ignore my idiocy. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 15:24, June 19, 2012 (UTC)

Canon policy name

Well, the thing is that "tardis:canon policy" has been references a lot on the wiki. And "project:canon policy" is quite a common page name on wikis-based wikis. There's one at Wookiee, MemAlpha, etc. It seems to serve a useful function, in that it gives people a familiar page to go to — whereupon they discover that, oh my!, there is no canon in DW. I think it's useful as a repurposed page that says "there is no canon policy, this is why, now run along to tardis:valid sources, please."

I'm not wedded to the idea, but that was the conceit when I rewrote it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 21:28: Sat 30 Jun 2012 

9/11

I think Donna referenced Gitmo, or Guantanamo Bay in The Sontaran Stratagem, which is an indirect post-9/11 reference, but otherwise I don't think the terrorist attacks have appeared anywhere on TV. That said, that edit on 11 September is still too speculatory to keep. -- Tybort (talk page) 19:19, July 4, 2012 (UTC)

Front page changes

Keeping you apprised of a couple of changes to the front page:

• {{Doctor Who Wiki/Wikis}} has been changed so sas to hide the links to w:c:whospecialfeatures, w:c:doctorwhofanon and w:c:dwexpanded. All three wikis have "gone cold". No admin has edited at either for about a year, and they're all three just ugly. I'm considering applying to take over fanon and expanded, just to keep those communities alive, but I'm ineligible for a few more weeks due to my recent adoption of w:c:factionparadox. Wikia Staff probably won't go for my adoption, anyway, because I'm not genuinely interested in contributing to the main namespace — only to the MediaWiki, Forum and and Project namespaces. For the moment, then, these three are out.
• You may have noticed that I've put up a temporary link to the Comic-Con wiki. We also have a reciprocal link at the Comic-Con wiki itself. This will be removed by the end of the month. Hopefully it'll drive a little traffic our way, as they're supposed to be pushing that Wikia wiki, and by extension ours, on the con floor itself.
  czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 13:50: Tue 10 Jul 2012 

Category yellow

That yellow was the yellow that was on forum/user talk pages. I switched the two. It's odd you think it's harsh on the eyes, though, because it's so barely there at all. It's as light as yellow can go without being white. Still, I'll cast around for some non-yellow thing. I was considering going green, anyway — but that takes a little more work, since I'd have to change the link color away from blue. Not to worry; I'll give it a second look within the week, and maybe even today.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 14:19: Tue 10 Jul 2012 

The Faction

Hi, Tangerineduel.

I noticed that you seem to be the one who's changed most of the references to Faction Paradox to "the Faction Paradox", on the grounds that they're referred to that way in their EDA appearances. I've just re-read Interference, and that's not the case there: they're almost always called either "Faction Paradox" (no article) or "the Faction" (no Paradox). It's a minor note, but I think that there are a few places where the wiki's use of "the Faction Paradox" reads awkwardly, and when I come upon those I plan to change them — and I didn't want to get into an edit war with you over something so minor. Best, —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:25, July 14, 2012 (UTC)

Hey. I probably did, when I first came to this wiki (I seem to remember writing something like that). Back then I hadn't really studied all the EDAs with intensity that I have further along. Now though with others having written more detailed articles than I have followed their leads. Don't worry about edit warring, the most I'd do is leave a note on your talk page. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:05, July 14, 2012 (UTC)

Cool beans. Just didn't want to step on anybody's toes. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 16:11, July 14, 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for stepping on on the List of DVD releases page!Gallicus ☎ 07:33, July 25, 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

Shouldn't the List Of BBC DVD Releases page be locked to prevent vandalism? I mean, this is an ongoing thing. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Darrendw (talk • contribs) .

Admin request

Sorry about that! If I need to further elaborate, I'll start a new section as opposed to adding to the existing one.

To be perfectly honest, the reason that I haven't contributed extensively to the forum as that for quite a while I didn't even know that it existed and, after I learned of its existence and had a look at various topics, I found that people with the same views as me on various policies were often in the minority. Rather than helping them fight their corner, I simply left them to it. I've since changed my stance on the matter as I want to make more of an impact if I can on the Wiki's policies in the interest of making more accessible to new users, as I said. GusF ☎ 14:28, July 30, 2012 (UTC)

Two examples of large bodies of texts which I've contributed would be the in-universe article of Peri's mother Janine Foster and the real world page on the unproduced 1960s story The Laird of McCrimmon (TV story). For the former, I basically included every piece of information about Peri's mother from novels, short stories and audio dramas in the interest of creating as informative a page as I possibly could. For the latter, I provided a brief summary of the storyline (as much of it as is known anyway) and, as regards the behind the scenes info, placed it in context with the what was going at the time that it was considered. e.g. Frazer Hines' impending departure and Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln's falling out with the production team regarding the rights to the Quarks.

An article which I would like to think shows off my skills and knowledge would be Who Killed Kennedy (novel), specifically the "Continuity" section thereof. (The plot summary section has nothing to do with me!) I think that it displays that I'm very knowledgeable about the classic series as a whole as I've noted the numerous references made to stories featuring almost every classic Doctor from An Unearthly Child (TV story) to Remembrance of the Daleks (TV story) in a novel which probably refers to more TV stories than any other non-reference book. The section is also written in as clear and concise manner as possible.

Some of the articles of which I'm most proud would be Who Killed Kennedy, The Reaping, Beautiful Things (audio story), The Crimes of Thomas Brewster (audio story) and The Emerald Tiger (audio story), though the respective references sections of the audio articles could certainly benefit from being reorganised into categories as you recommended. Thanks for the tip by the way! I'm keep it in mind! GusF ☎ 16:21, July 30, 2012 (UTC)

I certainly appreciate the sentiment of your last message on my talk page, Tangerineduel, but you haven't put me off editing on the Wiki. Don't worry. As well as editing it because I absolutely adore Doctor Who, I also do so as it find very relaxing and, in some cases, even therapeutic so I'm glad to say that I'm here to stay.

You never know, I am apply for admin status again some day if I feel I'm ready and have better met the requirements. Anyway, thanks again. GusF ☎ 15:51, August 5, 2012 (UTC)

Unbounds

At a minimum, it needs pointing out that the wiki doesn't (at least as of now) consider that it's an alternative timeline, but closer to a what-if that we consider "out of bounds", if not on the behind the scenes pages, then at least in in-universe pages. I can maybe see the references to companions "foreshadowing" like C'rizz and Hex being readded. Either way, it's not strictly "continuity". If you still think I'm a bit overzealous with the stuff, then I'll hold it off for a while. Cuts on the in-universe pages are okay though, right? -- Tybort (talk page) 13:20, July 31, 2012 (UTC)

PNG

Read your comment on User:Clone gunner commander jedi's page...I thought png was allowed for comic art, just not photographs, just so long that it didn't have something silly like over a megabyte in size. Or am I misreading what T:ICC means by "line drawings"? -- Tybort (talk page) 17:25, August 13, 2012 (UTC)

In response to your question, both you and Tybort are basically right here. As Tybort says, .pngs and .svgs are okay for comic art. But the target size for all pics is <100kb. The rules do mention that file sizes of over 1mb in size will just be summarily deleted, but it also says that you should try to limit filesizes to <100kb. The main reason for this range is that there are some pics, like the collages at the Master and the Doctor that would be very, very hard to keep below 100kb, but which are very, very easy to keep below 1mb. I certainly have deleted pics that were between 100kb and 1mb, and I'm pretty sure Mini-mitch does too. If it's perfectly obvious that a 523kb picture could have been made to come in under 100kb, then I'll delete it and leave a note on the contributor's page.

Therefore your advice to Clone gunner commander jedi is essentially correct. While .pngs are allowed for comic pics, it takes some jiggerypokery to get a png that's, say, 800px wide to have a file size under 100kb. This is usually more achievable with monochromatic comics than modern, full-colour, fully-shaded ones. For instance, if you just took a screenshot with the Mac OS X screenshot facility available to you with ⌘ shift 4, the resulting image would — by default — be a .png. But you almost certainly couldn't immediately upload that .png to our site cause it would be over 100kb.

I just did it on an 1000px area of text on my left monitor and it came it at 115kb. Another test I just performed was of an entire pane of a monochromatic TV Comic, at 800px width, and got 400kb. To get that down, I'd have to run it through a graphics program like Photoshop and try to compress it. But that takes a little bit of doing. Much easier just to convert it to .jpg, where I could get it down to 10-40kb with no appreciable degradation of image.

So:

• Screenshots/photographs: .jpg only. Delete .pngs on site, even if below 100kb, because the concern here is really the replicable quality of a .png versus a .jpg. Someone could grab a .png from us and make a T-shirt of it downstream. So using .jpg is not only something which limits the size, but it shows we're making a good-faith effort to comply with fair use guidelines.
• Comics: .jpg is still the preferred format, but if the editor can get it in under 100kb in .png/.svg, we probably won't mess with it. (I would delete comic proof art — that is, art without the balloons and lettering, if it were in .svg/.png. This is because such images could be used downstream to make other goods illegally, whereas word balloons tend to limit the downstream utility of comic images.)
• Transparencies: can only be achieved with .png and .svg, so these formats must be allowed for instances when transparency is required. Generally, transparencies are needed only for images tagged {{maintenance}}, but company logos, as at BBCA and Quick Reads, are also in .png because of the alpha channel that .png/.svg has, but .jpg does not. Most editors, however, will never fool with transparencies on our site, because transparency isn't required in most pictures.

This means that there is nothing wrong with simplifying all this to "just use .jpg" as you with with Clone Commander. The policy allows .png and .svg for line drawings simply because it's silly to deny those formats — if the editor knows what they're doing with Photoshop. But it's just as well to say to someone that you recommend that they just use .jpg.

Hope that helps.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:03: Wed 15 Aug 2012 

Technical Advice

Hey, TD. Before I ask my question, I'd like to thank you for giving me another chance; I have learned from my many mistakes during the past few months, but I realise that I have a lot to do before I can earn back some trust around here.

And now for my main message: I noticed that, unlike other Wikis, TARDIS Wiki's "new messages" notification instead says "you have a hypercube (at). You know what I mean? Would you happen to know how to edit that notification thing on other Wikis? In case you're wondering why, I'm asking 'cos I'm thinking of reprogramming said "notification" on ZimWiki (where I'm an admin) so that it instead says "Incoming transmission (from)", so that it's more in line with the Wiki's general theme. Unfortunately, I'm no expert at programming, so.. Here I am.

Thanks, User: Dr. Anonymous1 14:57, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

Well, thanks anyway.

Also, another annoying question: I read in a 2010 interview with Steven Moffat (Brilliant Book 2011) that he's keeping the RTD-era Daleks in action, and that the new ones are serving as an "officer class". Would this be worth mentioning in the relevant articles? User: Dr. Anonymous1 15:43, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

Well, it was already officially confirmed by 2010, and I have seen numerous officially released things (from trailers to even "Character Building" sets) that further back it up.

That's another thing: spoilers. What is the official criteria for a spoiler? I mean, they're given away like Halloween candy in BBC-released trailers... Yet Steven Moffat says that anyone who deals out spoilers is considered to be a "vandal". Kind of a paradox, don't you think? Does this mean that all of the people involved in creating the DW promos on TV are vandals? User: Dr. Anonymous1 16:08, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

OK, then. Thanks. User: Dr. Anonymous1 16:20, August 22, 2012 (UTC)

Compulsory message wall

You asked before whether Wikia could force us to take the message wall. Well, of course, they have the technical ability to force it on us, sure. And I do think this was their plan originally. But if you look at the status under Special:WikiFeatures, you'll see that only 9600 wikis have chosen to enable the feature. Compared with the popularity of other optional features, like the new navigation bar (150k wikis) and the achievements game (100k), it's barely implemented at all. It's basically at the level of Top 10 Lists, which has been — at least so far as I can figure out — all but abandoned by Wikia.

In fairness, though, the new nav bar is default for new wikis, and the achievement game might be too. But still, people aren't turning it off. A fair comparison might be the Chat module, which definitely isn't default. 17K have enabled that, compared to only 9.5k for the message wall. And you can see why if you follow all the discussions at w:c:community. It's really, really not popular amongst the established users. And since established users tend to be admin, the feature is turned off on the overwhelming majority of wikis.

That said, Wikia are trying to make it more attractive. They've just implemented a new forum structure which depends on the Message Wall system. It's active at w:c:avatar if you want to look at it. And I gotta say, I love that addition. It's great to get a notification when a forum thread has changed. If they could just lock down the time during which alterations can be made, so that our local policies weren't so obviously offended, I'd think that the disadvantages would outweigh the advantages.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 17:01: Wed 22 Aug 2012 

Brackets

Sorry, thanks for telling me. Cyruptsaram:Head Administrator ☎ 17:12, August 27, 2012 (UTC)

Administrator

How do I mark my signature as Head Administrator on one website without it copying onto the other? Because I need that signature on another wiki, but I do understand why it interferes. Cyruptsaram ☎ 07:42, August 28, 2012 (UTC)

It just that im not sure if its either Jolodex or Jodelex Sclera1 ☎ 02:55, September 1, 2012 (UTC)

I was editing some sections of The Doctor's page, and when I looked at the wiki contributions page, it said that I had added a bunch of pictures, but I didn't. Any idea why? The powers ☎ 16:38, September 7, 2012 (UTC)

File deletion reply

Sorry about that! I will remember in future. Cheers for the reminder. MM/Want to talk? 10:05, September 8, 2012 (UTC)

New nav bar

So they're forcing the new navbar on us. It goes live 3 October. I will try to have something ready on or before that date. Please don't enable it here before I do, because it obviously has to be heavily styled.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  20:09: Thu 20 Sep 2012

Wikia are helpfully sending me some tech backup early next week, because they recognise we have some special design needs on this wiki. It's possible that, with their assistance, we'll go live with the new nav sooner than 3 October.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  04:03: Sat 22 Sep 2012

Unknown dates

Well, I do think that it makes it more accurate and somewhat more informative really as it makes it clear to the user that the date wasn't established. Plus I've always thought that arranging the information on the year pages looks better stylistically as well as more professional looking. In my view, leaving it as an introduction or lead-in paragraph looks a bit, well, slapdash frankly. I was using the style of the year pages on Wikipedia as a rough guide. That was my thinking behind it. GusF ☎ 16:13, September 21, 2012 (UTC)

Complete blog deletion

Blogs have been temporarily turned back on so I can actually delete all the blog comments and the blog posts themselves. The fact that they were still there was causing the bot to abort as I was trying to changeover all the prefixes, because some blog posts and comments used the old prefixes. So when the blog went to do a run, it would get stopped by the fact that it detected a page that needed changing, but it couldn't access it.

BLogs will be again deactivated after I completely delete them. Unfortunately, I have to delete the blog comments before the blog posts, so the run will likely take several hours instead of just a few minutes.

Until then, please don't turn off blogs, as this will foobar the whole process.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  04:01: Sat 22 Sep 2012

Prefix status

Prefix changeover is going apace, but I do keep getting blocked by unexpected challenges. The latest is this blog hiccup that's forced me to stop for a few hours to delete everything blog-related so the bot won't see the unavailable. However, upwards of 90% of all prefixes have been changed over, and I'm in the process of actually deleting prefixes that no longer have links. I am close to reaching the point where the bot will no longer be useful, because people simply have used the wrong prefix, and the bot can't be programmed to expect completely random usage of some prefixes. I estimate that by Monday, all the in-universe prefixes that have been agreed at Forum:Prefix simplification will have been actually changed. Over 30,000 pages have so far been altered in this project.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  04:23: Sat 22 Sep 2012

We're not quite to the manual stage just yet. You can be assured, however, that I'm probably gonna just present you with a list and get back to doing other things. But the list likely won't be that long. Most of these prefixes are in fact whittled down to zero by the series of bot runs that I've done. I shouldn't think the final manual run will be too much more than 100 pages.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  05:23: Sat 22 Sep 2012

New nav

The CSS for new nav is now essentially complete. Unfortunately, enabling new nav had a number of knock on effects that were not widely reported, and these secondary effects are taking a bit of time to track down and restyle. For instance, the article tally (PagesOnWiki) module is gone once you enable new nav, which meant that I had to figure out what to do about the little greeter thingie ("come, play the Game of Rassilon") that was attached to the PagesOnWiki module. This then required doing something about the loss of word wrapping in the "Recent Wiki Activity" module. So because we were forced to change one thing, we had to address several other issues.

Luckily, they gave me not just one but two Wikia Staff members to bounce ideas off, and they helped me cut through the problems in a fraction of the time. There's only one or two more fiddly bits to worry about and they're coming back tomorrow for another round of discussions.

In this case I can truly say that, although Wikia have forced a round of changes, they have at least provided excellent assistance in implementing their required changes.

Practical upshot for you is that you may feel free to edit MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation (there's also a convenient link under the new "Contribute" button.) I feel like I've given my best shot, for the moment, at the actual content of the menu.

Coupla words of advice, though. Be very careful with the words you display at the 1 and 2 asterisk level. These "button labels" can't be too long, or it throws the box completely off. Short labels of no more than 8 characters work best, but you can sometimes massage it to give you more characters. You basically just have to be mindful of the fact that it's possible to "break" the design by using too many characters on the first and second rows.

Also, as for the link to Tardis:Help, I'm not too keen. Ultimately, Tardis:Tardis Manual will take the place of Tardis:Help. There may be some wisdom, however, to creating a new submenu called "help", and putting the Tardis Manual under that, along with direct links to several key help files. In any event, Tardis:Help will ultimately be deleted as redundant.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  03:22: Tue 25 Sep 2012

Revert

Why did you revert my edit? The K9 series (not K9 and Company, but K9 (TV series)) is not an official Doctor Who spin-off, not any more than e.g. Downtime - it only licenses the titular character from its creator, it's not licensed from BBC in anyway, unlike the other spin-offs listed. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.105.112.65 (talk).

Doctor-lite Gallifrey

Thank you for letting me know. Sorry about that! --Graske of the mandragora ☎ 07:30, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

File redirects

The main reason I maintain file redirects is that it harmlessly saves time. I don't want to — or have time to — go to every page where the bad file name exists and change it. Sure I could do a bot run and change it automatically, but i don't have the enthusiasm even for that — often because I'd have to precisely type a very long, nonsensical phrase, like File:$T2eC16VHJIkE9qU3kI7NBQVkjGMgz!~~60 35.JPG into the bot. It doesn't actually hurt anything to have a redirect around, so I'll just move and preserve the link. That way, we get a name that follows policy, and we don't have to actually change anything on any page where it might exist.

Moving a file, but keeping a redirect, is simply the fastest way to obey policy.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  17:29: Sat 29 Sep 2012

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!