User talk:Acardwell415

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• Acardwell415 •

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Apologies

I'm sorry for not getting back to you on your proposal. You know, I'm here normally 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. But it seems like in the coupla weeks I stepped back for personal reasons, all of Wikia descended on my talk page, and I've disappointed more Wikia Staff members than I knew existed.

While Tardis definitely does want to participate in the wider Wikia world, your fashion proposal would invite our community to break with our local spoiler policy. It's against site policy to reveal casting before episodes have been broadcast. So officially, our wiki doesn't even know who's been cast — and I personally, actually, honest-to-God, do not know. (You apparently revealed the casting in your comment, but another user helpfully redacted your revelation before I could read it.) I just wouldn't feel comfortable recommending that our users, who are used to a very strict spoiler policy, go off to a place where they would, of necessity, encounter that very spoiler. It would create an administrative headache that's just not worth having. Maybe I'm not thinking creatively enough, but I don't see how I can on the one hand say that people will be blocked if they reveal this casting information on Tardis, but on the other recommend that they dress the new Doctor on another wiki.

Put another way, I feel like this asks me to help the development of w:c:fashion to the detriment of w:c:tardis. Before this spoiler rule, this wiki was an absolute nightmare to administer. We had so much maintenance caused by articles replete rumours and speculation and supposed future knowledge. Although this rule has to be defended quite often, that is nothing compared to the cleanup work required before.

So while I'm happy to engage and enhance w:c:fashion — we have plenty of articles in Category:fashion and clothing — I don't initially see how I could possibly recommend this to our community prior to 25 December 2013. That may seem like a really late date to you, but remember that Twelve is not going to be in costume on that date; he or she will be wearing Smtih's outfit. And principal photography hasn't started on series 8 yet, nor do we have a start date for it. So there is every possibility that we'll get to the Christmas special without a picture of Twelve in costume. (Having said that, I have been largely away from my computer for two weeks and a production start date may have been given.)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  08:13: Tue 03 Sep 2013

Lifestyle

Hi! I'd be happy to help out. For the immediate future, I have a bunch of real-life things going on for the next five days or so, and I will mostly just be patrolling the wiki here and playing around when I have a break. In the meantime, if you want to add more specific info on my talk page, feel free. Then I can read it when I get a chance and get an idea of what you need. Shambala108 ☎ 22:31, October 4, 2013 (UTC)

Parental filter

¡Hola, chica!

Hey, on the Parent Filter, we've got a little problem with Doctor Who, and I was hoping for your advice. Stories are rated individually as they come out on TV, but then either the box set has another rating, or the individual story gets re-rated by the BBFC when it comes out on DVD. In some cases, these might conflict. Which do you think we should use? Rating-on-broadcast, or rating-on-home-sales?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  19:16: Wed 23 Oct 2013

I think I might be missing the concept of this program. I thought we were putting the template on every story/game/film page. Are we only filling out MediaWiki:ParentFilter?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  22:37: Wed 23 Oct 2013

Hey, could you to me a favour and take a look at our MediaWiki:ParentFilter? I think I'm finished with it, but I'm still not quite sure I'm doing it correctly, since our topic is so broad. Thanks :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  04:56: Thu 24 Oct 2013

Thanks so much for taking a look at the ParentalFilter. I've floated the TV stuff to the top, per your request. I think in alphabetical terms, but I'm not particularly precious about it. It makes sense that TV should serve as the "gateway" to the rest. Plus: pretty pictures at the top!

So, I notice that there was talk on the CC page of including a link to this page in the nav bar so parents can find it easily. Is this something you're turning on in the "On the wiki" section — which would make the most sense — or is it something local admin are putting into their modifiable menus? If so, where are people typically putting it?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  06:53: Fri 25 Oct 2013

Cool. Well, while you work on getting it to the "On the wiki" menu, I've just put a link on the main page, right underneath the buttons. That seems like a good and prominent place for it, and shows we're at least trying to proactively placate protective parents. Heh. Say that five times fast. :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  01:53: Mon 28 Oct 2013

Food Fiction

Hey! Your dates sound good to me — Nov 4 we nominate foods, Nov 11 we do the poll, and Nov 18 announce the menu.

I will need a couple of days to think of the categories. At first, I really liked your idea of eras, but offhand I can't think of a lot of choices for the earlier eras. I'll probably end up going with something like courses, but I'll need to do a bit of research to see which categories would be best. I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks! Shambala108 ☎ 00:47, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

Ok, this is what I've got so far. I'm not real happy with the last one or two, and I don't know if we really want two beverage categories.

• beverages
• alcoholic beverages
• dishes/meals
• sweets
• "alien" foods
• seafood

Feel free to change/remove any of these. If I come up with anything else in the next couple of days, I'll pass it along. Shambala108 ☎ 05:01, October 28, 2013 (UTC)

For seafood, I was thinking of a Third Doctor story where he and the Brigadier are served some fairly exotic seafood dishes. However, I don't really like the category that much; fish fingers would soundly defeat any other choice so there's not much point to it. I like keeping just the four categories you listed:

• beverages (which would include alcoholic beverages)
• dishes/meals
• sweets (and maybe include snacks with it)
• "alien" foods

I think with these four we can get a decent number of submissions. Shambala108 ☎ 17:52, October 28, 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to say Board:The Panopticon, as that's the one that allows for user participation in this kind of thing. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎ 19:21, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, we need to drum up some business there. I made specific mention and links to it in our Skype group, but no one has bitten yet. I'll whip up a little banner for the front page or something today. Don't panic just yet: our highest volume of editing is always on the weekends.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  14:49: Wed 06 Nov 2013

Sorry for the delay. Had to pinch-hit today at drwho.answers today and deal with pt.doctorwho issues. Weird day; spent more time with the Wikia DW family than with Tardis. Anyway, I'm working on a graphic for our front page that should be live pretty soon. When it goes live, I'll of course do a Twitter launch to accompany.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  01:22: Thu 07 Nov 2013

Lol. I just spent some time creating a graphical bar for the front page and ... of course you already had one. Ahhh well, at least there's a link from the front page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  02:43: Thu 07 Nov 2013

Eh, first iteration of that sucked. Replaced now with something that's a lot cleaner and more balanced. Not sure which iteration you saw. Anyway, you know what I could use when you get a chance — provided you have it — is a clean transparency of the Wikia Food Fiction logo.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  03:13: Thu 07 Nov 2013

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of T3CHNOCIDE, an advert for the Food for 50 event now appears at the top of all pages over this weekend. Hopefully this will expand our reach over the busiest editing days and we'll get a lot more responses. I've already seen a marked increase in responses, even before this implementation, and am particularly pleased that people I don't even know have taken the bait. Hoepfully, this ad will mean we reach even IPs. I've also started Tardis:Food for 50, a page that will help in the collection of pictures for the event, so that your team doesn't have to look around so hard. Our team did well helping out Kate with Tardis:Trivia pictures, so hopefully we'll bear at least some of the graphical burden for you. Have a great weekend!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  00:17: Sat 09 Nov 2013

As promised, we've gathered up images to accompany the (valid) suggestions that have been made thus far. They're at Tardis:Food for 50. Let us know if you need anything else. Oh, and when creating your pages over at w:c:recipes, don't forget that we're an oooooolllld wiki, so you don't need "w:c:". Just [[tardis:banana]] will work. Might save you a bit of time, because you can just pipe trick tardis away: [[tardis:banana|]] → banana.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  04:39: Mon 11 Nov 2013

That is some truly awesome artwork. It's very proudly on our front page, even "above the fold", linking back to w:c:recipes so that hopefully we get some good cross-pollination going on. Any chance of getting the background files for that lovely image? We might want to make announcements on that background in future ...
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  19:56: Wed 20 Nov 2013

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!

Parent filter link chain broken

Hey, gotta thought about the currnet state of the ParentPage project. Seems to me that in all the shuffling of the name of the parent page, we've somehow confused the "legacy" text, such that if you stumble across MediaWiki:ParentFilter, you'll be totally lost as to what's currently going on.

By my reckoning, we've gone MediaWiki:ParentalFilter → MediaWiki:ParentFilter → MediaWiki:ParentPage → Project:ParentPage

But if you stumble across the MediaWiki pages — which I think you have to, if you're setting up your ParentPage for the first time, right? —  none of those have links that work. I've kinda messed with MediaWiki:ParentFilter here, so let me direct you instead to w:c:aybs:MediaWiki:ParentFilter — a typical, totally non-custom setup. Here, the user will encounter all manner of links, none of them correct. There's no way to glean any useful information about what the project is supposed to be from MediaWiki:ParentFilter.

So I think either these legacy pages should be entirely deleted, or updated at root so that the links of "good examples" links actually go somewhere.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  19:55: Fri 31 Jan 2014

Oh, yeah. I also note that when MediaWiki:ParentPage was moved to Project:ParentPage, the following edit summary was left:

04:26, 2014 January 8‎ 127.0.0.1 (Talk | block)‎ . . (31 bytes) (+31)‎ . . (127.0.0.1 moved page MediaWiki:ParentPage to Tardis:ParentPage: Moved by Mix, CE-536.)

In other words, the page was moved with a redirect left behind. Problem is that MediaWiki "namespace" isn't a real namesapce and so redirects from there don't work. They can look like they're working, but they're not working at all. (Go ahead, click on MediaWiki:ParentPage to see what I mean.) The practical result is that if a wiki had actually linked to MediaWiki:ParentPage — or indeed if anyone made an interwiki link to w:c:tardis:MediaWiki:ParentPage — that link would now be dead. So basically, MediaWiki:ParentPage is, as far as I can tell, wholly useless. It doesn't have any actual info on it, and it doesn't function as a redirect. It should just be deleted outright.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  20:04: Fri 31 Jan 2014

Twelfth Doctor costume

Okay, so I was wrong. This Twelfth Doctor costume announcement came way earlier than I thought. So early that I didn't find out about it when it initially broke. You were right; we could have had way more fun with it if we'd just started earlier.

In partial compensation for my, well, utter wrongness, I've gone ahead and created a blog post at w:c:fashion, and then posted prominent links to it at our main page and our articles about Peter Capaldi and the Twelfth Doctor. This will hopefully generate at least a little bit of traffic to your side of the street. It'll also usefully give us a place to talk about the costume, and indeed post a picture of it, such that we only put a toe on our spoiler policy, but don't quite cross over it.

Sorry that I didn't do this a wee bit earlier in the week, but, hey, the story continues to break today, as we discover that Crombie's, the makers of the coat, are being swamped by people trying to emulate Capaldi already.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  01:36: Sun 02 Feb 2014