User talk:Tangerineduel/Archive 2

MissUndefinable

I have been recently looking at the Quote of the Week nominations and literally all of them have been placed by MissUndefinable. It clearly states on the page that one user may place one vote only in each section. This user has broken this regulation. I think that you should place some new quote categories so that MissUndefinable's quotes can not be re-used. Thank You. Ghastly9090 15:58, February 7, 2011 (UTC)

Series 7?

Sorry to bother you again, but last night while I was looking through my latest copy of Doctor Who Magazine, I noticed this section in an interview with Mark Gatiss. Here's what it says: Will Mark be writing for the 2012 Series? "They've asked me to, but it all depends on my other commitments..."

I think that is pretty strong confirmation that there will be a Series 7/Series 2/Series 33. I know that you probably already knew there was going to be a Series 7, but doesn't this show that it might just be time to start putting a Series 7 page into production, or maybe you could do it after all Series 6 filming has finished so there isn't confusion over episodes. The quote above is 100% accurate and true. I'm not lying. This isn't a request, just a gentle nugde if you get what I mean. Thanks once again. Ghastly9090 10:57, February 12, 2011 (UTC)

I take it you saw the above message? Ghastly9090 16:29, February 15, 2011 (UTC)

Can you test something for me?

Hey, by now you'll probably have noticed something different when you try to create a new page. I've started adding in a whole fleet of enw preloadable formats. Today, I've gotten around to the more complicated formats for DWA and DWM issues. When you get some free time, could ya kick the tires on the formats for me, and tell me if you'd like anything tweaked about them? I've based both on the most recent issues of the mags. I think the DWM one is pretty solid, cause I'm familiar with that mag, but it's been a while since I've seen an issue of DWA. I think that you'll like that both formats automatically add a lead, fill in most of the infobox, and even automatically add categories and the previous and next issues. I'm a little less sure that I've got the subheads right on the DWA thing. Thanks for any input you can provide on these or really any of the new preloadables.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Wow, thanks for the detailed remarks. I've already implemented the more cosmetic things you requested, such as going to "Option 1" and paring down the language so that caps could be both used and grammatically correct. Both of those were great suggestions that wouldn't have occurred to me. Now as for the other points:

Stray </div>

Yeah, this is a weird one. The thing is that ultimately the "glowy box thing" will just be hardcoded into the CSS, like it already is at w:c:tardistest:template:Tardis license. If you take a look at that template, you'll see that it really doesn't have much in the way of editable style markup. Roughly, it's just:

<div id="glowy thing">
This is the text in the box.
</div>

And when we make the shift over to an actual CSS style sheet, MediaWiki:Newarticletext will be similarly restyled. That'll mean a reduction of a div, and therefore that stray div will poof. There's undoubtedly a way to make the stray div poof now, using just regualr wiki markup, but it's a waste of effort, because of what's in the next section.

Namespace specific text for new pages

The points you make about the current text failing to apply to, say, the creation of new talkpages, are of course valid. Phase 2 of the "Newpage Project", for lack of a better term, is newpage text specific to the namespace. Thus, if you're creating a new "Help" page, you'll get different text than if you're creating a new "Category" or "User" page. I've been looking around for a way to do this, and unfortunately I was barking up the wrong tree for a while, which is why we didn't the whole system at once.

The solution, it turns out, is something implemented on the Russian Wikipedia. Basically, when the software calls up newarticletext, that file checks to see what the namespace of the new page is, and then switches to a template appropriate to that namespace. Pretty nifty really. I'm not entirely sure that Wikia's version of MediaWiki will let us change every single namespace's new page message this way — not every namespace seems to call MediaWiki:newarticletext — but for those that do, we'll be able to easily fiddle with things. Thus, once it's all in, I'll definitely be looking to you for some wording. Just to get your mind thinking ahead of time, what would you like to say on a new category page? A new user page? A new Tardis page? A new Help page?

Update: Success!

This now produces a different message for each of the namespaces. Of course, it only produces that specific message if you click on a redlink to create the page. If you choose to create a page through Special:CreatePage, then you just get the standard mainspace (option 1/option 2) thing. Thus, if you choose to "Add a Page" but create a Tardis: page, you're not going to trigger the Tardis:-specific message. But if you were to click on Tardis:Namespace-specific new article messages, you'll see a bare bones namespace-specific message. Now we just have to work on what we want to say for each of these namespaces.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Option 2 worries

Yeah, people could just copy a whole page over into a new page, press publish, and we'd be stuck with two copies of the same articles with different names. I think that the time savings for legitimate edits, though, outweigh the potential for abuse. I know that my personal editing style would be more to go for option 2 than option 1.

Other templates

template:infobox Audiobook has in fact been modified to effectively merge the variables in infobox CD and Audiobook together. It can be used for any kind of audio release, save music. As for other templates that haven't yet been finished, I've dragged a lil on TV story templates of series that aren't pending. They'll be in shortly. The rest, save merchandise and toy, are all done. At the end of the day, I may just eliminate merchandise and toy. Dunno yet.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Update: stuff and things

Spelling

"Website" now corrected; thanks for the catch. (The file, btw, is MediaWiki:Edittools, though it is partially now controlled by changes to common.css.)

Glowy boxes

If you want to create a "glowy box", like is used on edittools and newarticletext, that's now been defined as a CSS element, as it's a major design element at w:c:tardistest, and it'll be the base for all message box templates once this site gets its facelift. Also, these new page templates are going to require that background, and I couldn't be bothered cutting and pasting any more. To use, do this:

<div id="glow">Your message</div>

Which gives:

Your message

Any text in the box is unstyled by this id, so you'd likely want to add a second, interior div (or span) to give the text some flair. And the box is at 95% width but not automatically centered. Thus if you want to create a box that IS centered, and style the interior text, you'd do something like this:

<div id="glow" align=center>
<div style="text-align:center;
                 font-family:'Georgia', serif; 
                 color:#2f2cb8;font-size:125%;">
Warning:</div>
<div style="font-size:95%;
                 line-height:110%;
                 text-align:center;">
You are about to do something naughty.</div>
</div>

Which yields:

Warning:

You are about to do something naughty.

Infoboxen

The thing I'm finding after having gone through the process of making up this preloadable formats, and thereby scouring category:infoboxes, is that we have an awful lot of duplication. The difference between audiobook, CD and audio story was minute. There's no reason to have three different infoboxen there. Same thing's true of the various ones we have for television episodes, prose works, and comic stuff. We could cut the number of infoboxen in half and not blink an eye. And, ultimately, this will happen. All the infoboxen will have to be reformatted when the site gets its facelift, and at that point you're likely to see a massive winnowing. And at that point, it will probably be very much appropriate to make very simple, basic template names, like infobox audio. But we won't want to delete any of the pre-existing names, like infobox audiobook. We'll just convert them to redirects, so that the transition is fairly seamless. It's kind of a waste of bot energy, when a single redirect does the same thing. You can already kind of see the coding approach at template:infobox Audiobook. If you look at the guts of it and notice what's going on with the "name" variable, you see that the template allows that variable to be either "name" or "audiobook name", which means it still works on audiobook pages, but now accepts the "name" variable common to infobox CD. (I gotta say, though, I don't understand why a different name for the variable would have been employed in the first place. "Name" should've been kept standard to any infobox. Who knows, though, maybe I did this unique variable name thing on some of the infoboxen I designed. It's gotta stop, though. Users should know that there are some variable names that are standard, "name" being at the top of the list.)

New page text

These are all going to be in category:newpage message templates for you to peruse and change as I add them.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Time Field

Can we please move Time Field to Crack or something? Nobody is going to go searching for "Time Field", and as far as I can remember "Time Field" was only said once or twice in the whole series. Everybody calls this story arc "the cracks", not "the Time Field". Just a thought :-) --The Traveller 14:15, February 14, 2011 (UTC)

What the hell has happened to your talk page?

Where did all the previous questions/answers go? What the...? What happened? 90.215.45.50 21:59, February 16, 2011 (UTC)

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Is using "First Doctor", "Second Doctor" etc in-universe?.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Doug86

Doug86 is an admin but I strongly think he should be dropped back from the admins list. Looking at his talk page, I have found lots of complaints about his edits and he never ever even replies to any of his messages, and that's why I think he shouldn't be an admin. 90.215.45.50 13:33, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

Update on new [ns] page text

Work is continuing apace on the various templates that now appear at the top of the page when you want to start new pages in the various namespaces. You may have noticed in some cases that persistent odd </div>, but this problem has now been solved, as can be observed if you Template:Click on this false red-linked template. Sorry to have kept the wiki in limbo on this issue for longer than I imagined; for some reason I caught the fever to write articles about all things Australian for the past day. Should have completed putting up preliminary text up by either the end of Saturday or maybe Sunday morning your time.

BTW, I did like your proof of concept on the DWM cover organization dealio.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Your rewording request on {{newtemplatetext}} implemented.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Definitely need your eyes at {{newtardistext}}.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Australia

Well, I know. I was fascinated, too. In a way, it's only about a few pages in Invasion of the Cat-People, where Gary Russell decides to write a fairly dull travelogue (oh, wait, it's Gary Russell, of course it's dull writing), but still it's interesting the degree to which there is coverage of Australia in DW fiction. I mean, Three kept coming back for more in his comic strips. Countdown in particular loved sending him to Oz —I think two or three times in the space of about a year. He's certainly the Doctor with the most trips to Oz, which maybe makes sense cause he was on Earth for so long. But you still wouldn't immediately have that at the tip of your brain. I think it's fascinating the degree to which other media lets the Doctor go to both Australia and America, when we tend to think of the Doctor being so incredibly wed to England (not even Britain, but England).
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Edit to Azes13's Talk Page is mistaken

Note: I had to rollback this user's contributions to your page, as he/she destroyed it. The following is an exact copy of their last substantive edit to your page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Why the hell has CzechOut put the above message there?

I have not edited Azes 13's talk page ever so I don't know why you randomly came up with that, but I'm sure there's a logical explanation. User:90.215.45.50 17:02, February 18, 2011 (UTC)

Update

Your concerns about MediaWiki:Edittools saying "if you're uploading a pic blah blah" on every page have now been addressed. Edittools completely changes for Special:Upload and Special:MultipleUpload so that it's no longer necessary to have the license warning on every single edit page. Let me know if you think the version on the upload pages is too bare bones. Might have to do some tweaking on the main edittools text; it looks a little weird to my eye now. Too much whitespace at the top or something.

The new[ns]text pages have now all been completed. Peruse/change at your leisure —but at least now there's something on each type of new page.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

homepage

hi how do you make your homepage hidden --leon norman 22:41, February 19, 2011 (UTC)

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Unknown species. The Thirteenth Doctor 21:57, February 20, 2011 (UTC)#

Why should I know?

I know about the User Conribs page. Anyway, I obviously don't like Doug86 so I did that on Azes13's talk page, I admit, but, How was I to know that that was vandalism when I have only been editing on this wiki for a month and 14 days? 90.215.45.50 16:33, February 21, 2011 (UTC)

admin

can you make me an admin and come and join my wikia at http://classicnewdoctorwho.wikia.com --leon norman 19:20, February 22, 2011 (UTC)

You banned me earlier this year and I would like to say that I had let my 5 year old cousin look at dalek pics but I didn't know that I was still logged on and then he tryed to edit stuff like do on my wiki and when I had come back from doing the gardening I found I was banned. Please can I be an administrator for being banned for 4 months for doing nothing.

Wikia lies

About that 'Anyone can edit' motto sort of thing from wikia, not anyone can edit. For instance, there are a lot of pages we anon users cannot edit so the 'Anyone can edit' slogan is not strictly true. Just saying. 90.215.45.50 20:11, February 22, 2011 (UTC)

pictures

you know when you add a picture on here youve got a liscense how did you create new liscenses like dwm magazine issues if you get what i mean

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Renaming New Earth.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

{{qotw}} and other stuff

Hey, I'm sorry I've not been in touch the past day or so.

• Glad you liked {{qotw}}. I should've done it for you a lot earlier. Poor guy. You've been unnecessarily sloggin' through that copy and past schtick for years now when you really didn't have to. As for first or second person in the "voice" of the message box, I dunno, I went for second, cause I saw you doing second. I figured it just sounded more like what you'd been doing. So you'll see auto-generated phrases like "your quote should ..." and the like throughout. Feel free to change the language to fit your own voice better.
• Oh, btw, wanted to offer you another bit of helpful code for QOTW matters. Did you know that we could knock up a very easy automated system? It's so simple:

{{#switch:{{CURRENTWEEK}}
|1=quote 1
|2=quote 2
|3=quote 3
...
|52=quote 52}}

Literally, that's it. You could effectively change the whole way you did quotes with this. You start the year with 10 quotes left over from the previous year. That gives you a cushion. You throw out 20 broad topics in January, then wait for people to populate those requests. At about the time the Doctor Who series starts in the spring, you "harvest" the quote page for the next few months. With any luck, you'll get 42 quotes at that point, and then you'll never have to mess with QOTW until the end of the year. At that point, you'd have all the quotes in one place, and you could just send them off to archive without having to do all that cutting and pasting. So basically you interact with quotes a three or four times a year, not every week. Lemme know if you'd like to implement this.

• In response to a rather cryptic message at Forum:Rumours on the loose, I took a look at tardis:spoiler policy and noticed it was maybe not specific enough to help User:Ghastly9090 combat an influx of rumors on series 6 (Doctor Who 2005). Thus, I beefed up the language on the page and gave a detailed example of proper sourcing at the various stages of a rumor's life. Please take a look when you get a chance to see if you have problems with the amplification of the basic policy.
• How do you think I should handle the visual changeover that drove me to seek adminship in the first place? Do I ask for a community vote of every single point of the design at w:c:tardistest? Do I bring it in one major feature at a time? Or do I say, look at this overall design; are you mostly in favor of it or not? Or do I just bring it in without discussion and say, "Look if you've got specific problems with this, please let me know on the forums?" I've kinda gotten off the rails on that major project, but it's late February now and there's not much time before the new series starts. I really need to be gettin' on with the implementation, but it's so major a change I'm honestly not sure of the best way to go about getting basic community assent.
• I know you had a specific objection to the design of the transparent background. But remember I put the Baker vortex design up specifically to highlight what the background could do. That's not the design I'm saying should ultimately be there, nor do I think it should always be one design. I think it should a) change seasonally and b) largely concentrate on images that are on either side of the main text area. For me, the interesting thing about the feature is not that you can see through the text area, but that it doesn't move when you scroll. That means you can create a design that's relatively short and it won't scroll away when you scroll down. So let's say we wanted to put up a little strip of Gallifreyan writing across the top. It would always be across the top. I also made another test background where I had a couple of Yeti peeking out from behind the text area. That was fun. We could certainly have "character" backgrounds like too. Or a background where photos were pinned to the sides of the screen. Or one where we have the Doctor in profile on one side, and Amy in profile on the other. Or one dominated by roundels. There are a lot of possibilities for it. Don't prejudge it by the test pattern :)
  czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Pictures

If a picture that has nothing to do with the Dr. Who universe is put onto a subjects talk page does it have a right to be deleted. I ask as I put a picture on the Vashta Narada talk page, so that people can decide wether it should be written about as a refrence. Please tell me if it is alright. The picture was temporary anyway. Thank you (;,;) Son of Icthar 11:17, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

Also I am not very happy with Skittles the hog's tone in the messages he leaves on my talk page. Thank you. (;,;) Son of Icthar 11:36, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

3 things; 1 Thank you for answering me. 2. Do you think it could be a possible refrence? 3. How do you do a link to another site, because I have no idea. Thank you (;,;) Son of Icthar 12:36, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

I still don'tlike his tone. (;,;) Son of Icthar 11:13, February 28, 2011 (UTC)

User

I have a strange feeling that User:Finisterman may be a User that was blocked earlier in the year for doing the exact same thing: Adding the wrong categories to pages, even after being warned several times. Can you look into it for me?? Cheers. Mini-mitch\talk 16:39, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

I thought the same thing the second he started editing, possibly using the same IP adress I mentioned to you earlier. His edits are identical and as vandalising as Finister2's edits and they share a common name. --Revan\Talk 16:42, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

I would like to thank you once more for telling me how to do an external link, would it be alright to do that on the page or shall I let it die down abit? I also thought that there should be a page to Nicholas Courtney's most memorable lines on this wiki, if you agree I think that would be an excellent tribute to the great actor. (;,;) Son of Icthar 17:01, February 24, 2011 (UTC)

Quotations

I understand. (;,;) Son of Icthar 14:06, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Would you do me a favour please?

Hi! Thanks for the help recently managed to sort it out with CzechOut ...just wondered would you be so good as to just drop me a line on my talk page with a subject heading of whatever 'cos I just want to see something <nah I'm not that sad!> more a test realy - thanks! The Librarian 15:59, February 27, 2011 (UTC)

Why can't anon users insert pictures?

Why can't anon users insert pictures onto the wikia? 90.215.45.50 18:14, February 27, 2011 (UTC)

New Look

1. What has the blots got to do with dr. who?
2. FEELING SEA SICK Josho 03:44, February 28, 2011 (UTC)

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Home Era., so a decision can be reached! Mini-mitch\talk 17:14, February 28, 2011 (UTC)

Once again the decor changes

ok that is weird the previous decor lasted less than two months and this decor is weird. One question. What the hell is with the bubbles? QUIT CHANGING THE DECOR! IT'S JUST A WEBSITE AND IT DOESN'T NEED DECORATION AFTER DECORATION AFTER DECORATION ALL THE TIME! Oh, and one other thing, ANSWER MY QUESTIONS PLEASE, O MIGHTY TANGERINEDUEL!!!!!!!!! 90.215.45.50 17:26, March 8, 2011 (UTC)

New Dr Who Books

Hi,

I was looking for a page where I could contact the site admins or editors. It might be worth adding an 'admin talk' type page, where ideas and suggestions could be thrown in. Maybe it's there and I'm not seeing it, but if that's the case, then making it a little more obvious for the impatient like me might be useful.

Anyway, I have found a new series of Doctor Who (Matt Smith) children's books, known as 'flip books' (because you read one story, then turn the book upside down so that the back becomes the front, and you have a second story). These don't seem to be covered in the wikia at all.

Here's some links to them on Amazon:

Book 1: Heart of Stone / Death Riders

Book 2: The Good, the Bad and the Alien / System Wipe

Book 3: Rain of Terror / Extra Time(not yet released)

Book 4: The Underwater War / Terminal of Despair (not yet released)

Sorry, I don't have to time to add these, and was hoping someone else did...

EDIT: Nevermind, found Forum:Panopticon... Will post this there
EDIT: Posted it here: Forum:New_flip_books_by_BBC_Childrens_Books

Thanks Jamdog 18:41, March 8, 2011 (UTC)

Canon policy rewrite

Hey could you take a look at user:CzechOut/Sandbox8 for me? It's a top-down rewrite of the canon policy, which incorporates some recent discussions at Forum:BBV and canon policy. I'd appreciate your thoughts.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 03:49:52 Thu 10 Mar 2011 

Thanks for the comments. Well, I haven't begun to address all of them, since one of your requests is a fairly massive undertaking. I've made a decent stab, I hope, at getting the positive list you requested. In my way of thinking at present, there'll be the policy page, which generally proceeds from the notion of explaining what we don't allow, and then a list-ish page which goes through what we do allow. It's here: User:CzechOut/Sandbox8/WhatThisWikiCovers. Thing is though, the main canon policy page should be given primacy, because it's more likely it will be current. For instance, the current "positive" list doesn't even refer to IDW at all. So, technically, according to current policy, IDW isn't canon! People just aren't going to remain committed to keeping the "positive" list up to date, if the current canon policy page is any indication. That's why I think it's important to approach it from two different angles, and make the more long-winded canon policy page as the "superior" version of the policy (that is, any discrepancies are resolved in the main canon policy page). Any future stories should be evaluated on the basis of the policy, rather than the list.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 09:18:49 Fri 11 Mar 2011 

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon?.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:06:59 Fri 11 Mar 2011 

The Beast Below?

I was on "List of Dalek Appearances " an i went down to Series 5 and the last scene from The Beast Below has been totally ignored, Is there a reason behind this??? Josho 21:00, March 12, 2011 (UTC)

I Know i can up date it my self. It's just that i rember the beast below being in the "dalek Appearances box" so i though it was an admin thing Josho 19:09, March 13, 2011 (UTC)

QOTW

Could you explain that a little more, or, better, take a screenshot of what you're seeing? I'm not detecting any problems my end.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:01:26 Mon 14 Mar 2011 

Ahhhh, TOC/glow collision. I see. Thanks for the pic. I'll look into it. I'll try defining TOC a little more, but if that doesn't work, the obvious solution is simply to make the width of the QOTW template narrower, about 600px. But let me mess around with the TOC defs first. Interesting problem.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:57:43 Mon 14 Mar 2011 

Well, I wanted to get you a quick solution so that the page didn't look so bad. This may not be the final solution, because TOC's are tricky. They're not "really" there on the page, so it's hard to tell the code, "if you detect this TOC box, adjust to its presence". Nevertheless you can easily change some things about them. What I've gone for here is to switch it from a transparent box to one that has the color of transparency. So it still matches the background, but it actually has a background. I've also absolutely defined a left margin, so the text of the template, at least, will recognize the edge of the template — even though the border of the template won't. This will tuck the right edge of the template background under the TOC, but still leave the text of the template fully readable. Ideally, it'd be nice to actually get the whole template to recognize the TOC border, but for now, at least it's all readable and not actually colliding any more.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 18:08:05 Mon 14 Mar 2011 

Well, like I said, the solution was a stop-gap one, just to make the page legible. It's probably not where we'll end up. I'll continue looking at it. The best solution, by far, is to get proper collision detection, such that {{qotw}} "sees" the toc and shrinks accordingly. Dunno quite how to do that yet.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:39:19 Tue 15 Mar 2011 

Yes, I thought about changing the width of {{qotw}}. And I still might do it. Problem is that doesn't solve the larger issue. See, the TOC is not, for reasons I don't get, obeying it's own width commands. If you check out pages where the sectional headsers are really wordy (I dunno, like DWA 1, maybe), you'll see that it has a much bigger width than on the page I just edited, Time Wake (short story). Somehow, the TOC's just got a mind of its own. And I really do need to understand its fundamentals a bit better. So it's just as well to play around with this excellent test case at the QOTW nomination page than to just fix that one page and learn relatively nothing about why the TOC behaves as it does.

See, if I can control the TOC, and ensure that it is always 250px, then that gives us a definite width for {{qotw}}. Because the header length is controlling the TOC width, however, the TOC width is not always the same, even on that one page. (A header for a week in December is longer than a header for a week in May, for example.)

I guess that what I'm saying is there are obvious fixes, but more obscure solutions.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:03:55 Tue 15 Mar 2011 

Some progress has been made today in that a found the right element to use to make all TOCs a standard width. At the moment all are at 250px. I may have found something which allows an object, like a template, to clip itself off after a certain width, if it encounters another object nearby. It failed to work putting it on the TOC code, but i'll try later putting it on the QOTW temp. If that fails I'll keep looking for a bit. But at least we now know what the width of the TOC is definitely going to be, meaning that we can, at a minimum, define the width of QOTW with confidence that it will always "clear" the TOC.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 08:21:01 Wed 16 Mar 2011 

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Character information on novels, etc. Mini-mitch\talk 17:20, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

Adventure making books

Surely Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who and Decide Your Destiny books are not canon as they have no set storyline. Is there a reason they are not in this category?----Skittles the hog--Talk 18:09, March 17, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought you'd relate them to computer games. Personally, I don't think a non-definitive story can be canon, but the adventure games are clearly designed to fit in with the series, so I suppose you can't discriminate.----Skittles the hog--Talk 16:25, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

New artcle of the month

No offence to Nick Courtney, but isn't it time for a new article of the month?Ghastly9090 16:20, March 21, 2011 (UTC)

Subheads

There might be a little tweaking here and there, but not much. This is pretty much where it is. I think it's a vast improvement in readability. It's very clear now what's a section head and what's a bit of text in the section. This was considerably less clear, especially when you got down to the h5 and h6 headers. Now though, there's an obvious difference between the headers and the regular text on the page. [Take a look at companion, for an example of an article that uses all subhead levels.]

But the big thing is precisely this matter of the sentence case. It's still the rule, and I hope this doesn't give people license to go do what they want with headers cause they know the headers will "take care of things for them". But as someone who's spent a fair amount of time enforcing the MOS, I'm honestly just tired of fighting that fight, even with a bot. This way, with one command, the site instantly snaps to attention and looks more professional.

Of course, people should still follow the rule because of TOCs and because if you link to a section of a page, you want to have confidence in how it's capitalised; section links are entirely case sensitive. In other words, this is a cosmetic change in the way a particular class of text is presented on our site. It's not a revision to the manual of style, which tells us how we should type in the raw text. It's still very important that people follow tardis:Manual of Style#Headings.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:50:13 Mon 21 Mar 2011 

I strongly disagree with your assessment. It's taken me a while, but I'm really happy with the font mix that now obtains on the site. I love the all caps accents that exist on the site right now, and think that the pages look much more interesting because there's a clear demarcation between body text and other text. I can add more explanatory text to the MOS to explain what's going on. It's more important that the site read clearly to the average user than it is that we get a perfectly WYSIWYG output for our editors. Besides which, WYSIWYG headers are available on every page through the TOC. The site finally has a uniform, simple text style that uses a minimum number of fonts in the font stack. I don't want to change it — especially not if the main rationale is "because editors might get confused if they read the MOS". The solution is to change the MOS so that it's clearer, not to throw out the baby with the bath water.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 14:44:36 Tue 22 Mar 2011 

I'm confused. You said to keep the details out of the forums when I started the project, and now when you find one thing you disagree with, you want a vote? Odd. I don't understand why you're so concerned about this, anyway, since largely you're not the person who polices this issue. I am. My bot has made literally thousands of changes on the sentence case in headers issue. My experience on this matter is simply greater than yours. And I'm tellin' you that people are going to disregard the issue. Headers will always be put in title case, and it's impossible for bots to take care of the hundreds of pages where unique headers are used. Therefore, it's best that the code forces a style upon the headers, so that everything is consistent.

In any event, I was rewriting the MOS at the time you left your last message — please don't think that I did it after receiving your message, out of spite — and I think it's a lot clearer than it's ever been.

I would urge you to give yourself and others some time to let this new font mix breathe. I wish that I had been able to implement this from the get-go, but I didn't know a few weeks ago how to do it. Though I know a bit about design theory, I am still learning how to enact that theory through CSS. So I'm not always able to instantly make my original design ideas happen.

I will say this, though. The idea you have that editors should be able to see what they type is completely contrary to the very notion of CSS. What is the point of having the ability to style text if you don't use it? In fact, we never see things as we type them, because the font of the edit box is not the same as the font of the article page. Indeed, the very act of creating a subhead always results in a text transformation. On the web, there's always a text transformation of some kind that happens between your raw text and the way that a page ultimately presents itself to the reader. Contrary to your apparent belief, the web is not a WYSIWYG environment — MediaWiki wikis, even less so.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:44:06 Tue 22 Mar 2011 

Nav templates and headers

Sorry for not getting back to you about your earlier comment about the headers. I honestly don't know whether I'll be able to get a superscript "c" for the case of "McCoy". Since it's only theoretical at this point, I'd say it's probably best to just do a bit of individualistic coding on the future headlines in which this might occur. The easiest coding is:

===The M<small>c</small>Coy factor===

As for nav templates, thanks :) You mentioned the bottom spacing, and this was a concern for me. I've put in a 5px spacing at the bottom, which can be observed in action best on one of the "combined" navboxes, such as the ones at Sarah Jane Smith and Jack Harkness. When you open up the single navbox at the bottom, all the others come tumbling out. Tell me if you think that's not enough space. I don't want it to get crazy with space between them — certainly I don't want anything close to even a half-line of space between them, but I could maybe go along with a few more pixels of distance between them.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:56:53 Fri 25 Mar 2011 

Ohhhhh, the top margin colliding with text above it. Yes, that's a valid concern. I Had thought about this one, too, but I had thought it better to put the spacing on the bottom margin rather than the top. Let me try reversing the margin to see what effect that has. If it's usatisfactory, I might have to put this on the unresolved issues list for a bit, since I want to finish actually switching over the templates, and this issue wouldn't seem large enough to stop the rollout. But you're right, it's every so slightly inelegant.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:23:06 Fri 25 Mar 2011 

Okay, if you will, please open up two windows to Sarah Jane Smith. In one of the two, clear your cache so that you're looking at the new version in one window and the old version in the other. Then if you would, report back on things you like about the change, and things you don't.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:35:01 Fri 25 Mar 2011 

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Aliens and enemies templates: the final battle.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:43:48 Tue 29 Mar 2011 

"Human" in infoboxes

Yeah, the bot's "human" run kept getting aborted by a problem in the category tree that tends to create endless loops somewhere in the "British categories" (locations in Britain, British monarchs, etc.). So I kinda stopped on that project because I coudln't do it "in the background" of my restyling efforts. But I do intend to get back to it, and to do a mass infobox switch. Hopefully it won't be too hard to do, but I am kinda of expecting that I can only do it semi-automatically, in that I'll have to approve each bot change individually. Dunno, though, maybe I can just do multiple runs to account for those people who properly put pipes at the beginning of lines, and other runs where people put pipes at the end of lines (that is, |species = human versus the sloppier species = human |).
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 02:55:20 Wed 30 Mar 2011 

No, wait, that's stupid. The limiting factor for the bot isn't the pipe. It's whether the variable is "species" or "race" and the number of spaces around the equals sign.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 02:55:20 Wed 30 Mar 2011 

Try using a regex expression instead. Something along the lines of 'species( *)=( *)human' -> 'species\1=\2Human' (for example). -- sulfur 11:58, March 30, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, sulfur is of course correct. I've just been a) preoccupied and b) lazy. It's actually just a regex away. So to answer your latest question, no, it won't hurt if you change things manually. On the other hand, I don't want you wasting your time. I really will get on it. Maybe right now, in fact :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 13:13:29 Wed 30 Mar 2011 

Okay, the bot's on it right now, after a few minutes of tinkering with sulfur's suggested regex. However random your efforts have been, you can step back and concentrate on other things. I expect that this run will take several hours, possibly as much as 24, thanks to our still-looping category tree structure.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:53:21 Wed 30 Mar 2011 

Okay, the bot has given up — but only an hour ago. That was a long run, but, hey, it's most of the database. If you find a nest of these lower-case-h "humans" in infoboxes, please don't change them, but let me know. It'll help me further refine the bot runs if I know the bot is missing a category here or there. But I'm guessin' you won't find much, cause it made something approaching 3000 edits.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 01:13:58 Fri 01 Apr 2011 

One user and untagged images

I've have asked User:Jeffman52001 several time now to add a license tag to the image he has upload and by judging from his talk page, you have as well. On all occasions he has ignored me and not selected a license. On one occasions I add to add the licenses myself, but it should be him that is doing it, not me. I have warned him action will be taken if he continues to ignore me, and I've offered to help him if he cannot see the drop down menu to select the license, which he has not taken up with me. What action should we take? Is there a away to prevent an image from being uploaded without a license? Thanks. Mini-mitch\talk 17:28, March 31, 2011 (UTC)

I've looked into this a little bit, and what I've found is that it is theoretically possible. However, according to w:forum:"None selected" in upload form should pull up a template, it may be a violation of the TOS to alter things so as to prevent someone from uploading without a license. Or it may not. Nevertheless, I did find some javascript that looked like it was going to work. But it hasn't. If this is going to be successful, it must be done through js, and, frankly, I'm not that strong with js. So all I can tell you is that I tried something and . . . it didn't work. I'll look back in on this subject from time to time, but I haven't found a way to do it easily. I certainly haven't found any solutions on a wikia wiki. (My attempted code comes from an outside wiki running MediaWiki.) I'll keep looking, but it's not super high on my priority list, since we do have a tool that shows us pics without a license. We can then pretty easily delete these. It's not as good as preventing the problem in the first place, but it's relatively easier to fix than other problems which don't have associated automatically-generated reports.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 02:17:18 Fri 01 Apr 2011 

Can you help me?

I am very new to Tardis wiki. Revanvolatrelundar has been stalking me since I signed up and when I asked him to stop, he threatened to ban me. Can you help? | Who is Dr. Who? 15:02, April 1, 2011 (UTC)

Admin page update

i was just looking at the admon page, and i saw that some people listed as admins, haven't logged in since 2005! I think the page needs to be updated, and people that have not logged in or been active on the wiki since say April 2009 should be dropped. This is just a opinion. Thanks. Ghastly9090 14:00, April 2, 2011 (UTC)

Series 6

Hi. I've just had a thought that I got after having a look on another wiki. Basically a reallly big thing was released and they locked editing on the wiki to prevent congestion. I know we already do this for episode pages, but shouldn't we make this a bit more bigger? People will be creating character pages as the episodes roll on, so mabye a editing block should be made so that only registered members and mabye just admins would be able to edit. I know this has probably been considered before, but seeing as the series is being broadcast in the U.S at the same time as the U.K we should be a bit more controlled. Ghastly9090 16:45, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

What do you think? 85.210.91.65 14:49, April 5, 2011 (UTC)

General update

In addition to matters mentioned at MediaWiki:Community-corner, here's an update on matters you've either talked to me about in the last week, or things that likely will interest you.

• Gave up on the collision thing on Quote of the Week nominations, and just made {{qotw}} fit between the toc and the left margin of the page. It makes them look a little short as you go down the page, but it's not horrible. The tempalte clears the TOC, I'm able to get back transparent TOCs and everything's legible. If you have further ideas about how you'd like that page to look, please let me know.
• {{NameSort}} is nearly fully implemented on real world pages, which is probably where it needed to be done first. The "cleanup run", described in the community-corner message, still has a few hours left in it. I encourage you to read the documentation if you haven't already, so that you can understand the limitations of it, and the direction that future development might go. Until I can find a way to get it to play nice with one-word tiles and disambiguated names, I'm a li'l hesitant of doing a full, automated run on character pages. So that side of things will come in more slowly. But, hey, I'm just excited to finally have real world people consistently sorting by their last names at last. I hate having to edit a page, find out if there's a defaultsort key, and add it if it's not there — all to add one stupid category. Now we can reliably add categories without having to edit articles.
• DWIA license template format switched, thanks to your catch. I haven't actually gone back to check whether I've gotten everything in the license format switch, or the top of page format switch. I think I'm probably missing the spoiler tag, {{current}} and some other stragglers, but I'll get to 'em in due course.
• As for stub category nomenclature, y'know, I'd honestly never thought of making them match the proper, un-stubby categories. I'd only thought to make them match the stub template. So, {{drink stub}} matches category:drink stubs, but not, as you say, category:beverages. Course, the thing is with the particular example you provided, there is no "beverages" category. The category is Category:Foods and beverages, so when that cat is broken up (as it should be) the easy solution to this particular problem is just to make the regular cat, category:drinks and category:foods. As you can see, though, the categories will never exactly match, because category names are almost always plural. So I dunno if you're ever gonna get a perfect match, cause the general nomenclauture is cat:noun stubs and cat:nouns.
• Moving on to the idea of a location stub. This was on my list to do, but then I ran into the thought that one day we might expand our real world coverage to include locations, as used during location filming. And so I paused before adding that stub, not wanting to confuse it with geographical locations, in universe. At the moment, I'm going with the idea that {{region stub}} works to cover the idea of a general "location" in the sense that you mean. Any thoughts on how to resolve (and pictorally represent in 25px or less) the distinction between in-universe and real-world general locations would be appreciated.
• Canon rewrite, and your suggestions on how to improve that, was temporarily sidelined by the question of whether Curse was canon. Now that this seems to have been conclusively resolved, I'll probably be returning to the rewrite and integrating your suggestions soon.
• In the last week my powers with the bot have increased, well, exponentially. I finally learned how to do truly massive, multiple changes simultaneously. One of the practical applications will be something I think you'd be all over. The permanent policing of British spelling all over the wiki at the same time. As I know this is a particular bugbear of yours, I thought I'd tell you about it. Basically, if you can provide me with a list of all the words that you want to make sure are spelled the British way, I can correct them simultaneously. I just don't want to do the research and the listification. But if you gimme the list, we can really start to make good on that part of the MOS.
  czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:48:25 Tue 12 Apr 2011 

I Think we have a template missing

Just on the impossible astronaut page. The plots a bit short (well 1/2 an episode short.) Do we have a "this sections unfinished" templateJosho 08:23, April 24, 2011 (UTC)

Background

Hey, I was just wondering if the background is positioned well on your screen. It's fine on mine but I realise it could vary. Thanks----Skittles the hog--Talk 15:13, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

There's a good couple of centimetres between the moon and my browser's edge. I agree that dark colours work well against this colour. The main problem I came across when making the background was the file limit. Okay, it wasn't that much of a problem, but it might throw any detailed versions out the window.----Skittles the hog--Talk 15:24, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I just filled in the remaining space around the image in the colour the background was set to. I'm not that keen on the titling of images as it just looks a bit cheap. If you copy this image (File:Wiki-background) into an editing program (I used photoshop), you could take a look at the various images that can be used.----Skittles the hog--Talk 15:42, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

You have provided a tremendous amount of guidance to me since I have registered, by answering my questions and pointing me to the right policies/guides and I just wanted to let you know I really appreciate all your assistance! -- Rest In Peace Sarah Jane \ Talk to me! 16:32, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

Background continued

Is that off the screen now? You may have to clear the cache if your not seeing changes. Thanks for the help.----Skittles the hog--Talk 17:07, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course. If you take preference to the previous image, you can revert back to it at the above image link. Thanks again.----Skittles the hog--Talk 17:22, April 27, 2011 (UTC)

Vandal

I come from the Mass Effect wiki with a warning. Their was a vandal that originated from our wiki(as far as we know) and has done over 500 vandalism edits, he has also moved to atleast eight different wikis including the Call of duty wiki, World of warcraft wiki, and the L.A. Noire wiki. If you see a guy by the name of lancer or spithog98, thats probably him(just so you know this guy mimics other users, there is a real Lancer by the name of Lancer1289, you can contact him here for more information. I am going to stay here and help monitor this wiki until I can determin that he wont come here or he has been stoped.Legionwrex 23:06, April 30, 2011 (UTC)

I won't be coming back

Your user Revanvolatrelundar needs to be told to cool it. I just spent a bunch of time voluntarily adding information (as a Wikipedia veteran with 50,000 edits who has decided to protect his privacy by remaining unregistered in editing Wikia sites) and he's gone and undone most if not all of it. There's a difference between policing vandals and wiki-stalking IPs simply because they aren't registered. The net effect is I will no longer contribute to this Wiki, and in fact will probably never darken its door again. There are plenty of more welcoming sites out there. I'd ask for an apology but since I won't be coming back here, there's no point. I wonder how many potential contributors are abandoning this wiki (check the Eleventh Doctor talk page and you'll find another one about to walk). 68.146.78.43 15:33, May 1, 2011 (UTC)

Terms of Use Issues

Hello Tangerineduel,

Some issues were recently brought to the attention of Wikia recently that I need to talk to you about.

First, while changing the text size and face is okay, the variation of the size on this wiki is causing some elements, like the Random Page and Recent Changes buttons to wrap/appear in places they should not. Please make necessary changes to the font size so the buttons that are a key part of the Wikia skin are in their proper places.

Secondly, you have replaced the link/text of "Wiki Activity" to "Recent Changes". I'm sorry, but this is simply not allowed and must be undone.

I will be happy to answer any questions you have on this and will work with you to make sure this gets fixed in an expedient but respectful manner. --daNASCAT http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb32675/wikia/images/e/e9/WikiaStaff.png (help forum | blog) 18:58, May 2, 2011 (UTC)

The curse of the black spot

The page The Curse of the Black Spot, the TV Story, has no plot. Why is that? Won't somebody give it a plot anytime soon?

Doug86 + admin = world's most stupid idea

Why is Doug86 an admin? Doug86 is a disgrace to this wiki and should be deleted. Leave your reply beneath rather than in my talk page because I haven't got one. A discrace, that Doug86. Ruined this wiki's good name. Doug87 May 15, 14:18, 2011 (UTC)

Spoiler

There is a spoiler on The Curse of the Black Spot's talk page, which is in the section Eye Patch Lady, which was made by Michael Downey. The Spoiler is Michael has written that The Eye Patch Lady's actress makes her debut in Series 6's Episode 7, which has not yet been broadcast. It says she makes her debut by becoming a story arc, "Like the cracks in time in the previous series.". I am not happy about this spoiler as it is rather big, and reveals quite a lot to users who didn't know and don't want to know until the episode, like me for example. 90.210.131.149 14:37, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

I was just about to say the same thing! 90.215.45.50 15:40, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, so was I! 194.81.55.193 15:42, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

Background

I apologise for my sudden absence a few weeks back, but a family emergency made it unavoidable. I'll be working the next couple of days on picking up where I left off. I've communicated with the wikia staff member who noted a TOU issue to get greater clarification on matters there. My main priority for the next few days is to establish clear guidelines (and a template) for the background. I hope to have something up by Saturday. In the meantime, I'd appreciate you not reverting to the background you've had up for the past few weeks, as its blue totally throws off the design aesthetic. Also, that file in the Theme Maker had different colors of blue for the buttons, links and background, meaning that the blues clash on several different level. One of the principles of the design is that we have a standard, "TARDIS blue", #2f2cb8. Our color palette has to be centered on that precise shade of blue — varying the levels of blue saturation, or adding other colors to #2f2cb8, for things to look their best.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:05:18 Thu 12 May 2011 

The formatting of the Tardis Wiki

I am the admin of the Solar cooking wiki. We are impressed with the formatting you have done on your wiki. Could you tell us how you changed the fonts on the global drop-down menus?

Tom Sponheim 18:14, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

A warning is not a good reply!

I give you information about a big spoiler on The Curse of the Black Spot's talk page and what do you do? Give me a warning for something I didn't even do. That doesn't seem very orthodox, especcially for the best admin I know. 90.210.131.149 19:47, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm not "Doug87", obviously, as I have a strange message from him myself. Why would I, a brand new anon user, pretend to be a signed up user and send a creepy message to myself? 90.210.131.149 19:47, May 15, 2011 (UTC)

Doug87

I realised it wasn't a user after I'd left the message and I agree with you that it is probably best deleted. In my opinion, the IP who left the message was in breach of the personal attack section of the blocking policy as he did directly say that he hated another member of the wikia. I decided not to pursue this and tried to defend Doug86's actions in the instance of the Temporal Anomaly page, as I was the user who flagged the page for deletion in the first place. I'll leave it up to you where to take this matter now, perhaps letting Doug86 decide? --Revan\Talk 14:56, May 16, 2011 (UTC)

Doug86 should absolutely not be involved. If an admin is the target of a personal attack, they should in no way be involved with any punitive action against the perpetrator of the attack.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:11:16 Mon 16 May 2011 

Two times the history, twice the fun

Yeah I've noticed it. And I've not quite decided what to do about it.

I can tell you why it's happening, though. You may remember that up until a few weeks ago, there was a little dropdown under an article's name which told you who last changed the article. In other words, the "history" button had been taken out of the Edit drop down and placed under the title. This had the deleterious effect of making it extremely difficult to get a history of most pages outside the main namespace. If you wanted a history on a talk page, you had to either know enough about wikia to change your toolbar at the bottom to include "history", or you had to manually adjust a URL. So I put in this bit of java that forced history back into the edit bar. Problem is, Wikia still haven't fixed the problem for the user: and user talk: namespaces. Thus, on those pages, there's only one history. I still think it's useful to have the history button easily available for those pages, because quite often people don't sign their stuff, and history is the only way of figuring out who's talking to you. So, for the moment, I'd prefer living with "double history" until and unless I can figure out how to make it work only in the user: and user talk: namespaces.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:07:07 Mon 16 May 2011 

Reply

Yeah, well, I don't know why that is, plus you still haven't replied to my request about the spoiler on The Curse of the Black Spot's talk page. 90.210.131.149 15:25, May 16, 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, that doesn't make any sense. 90.210.131.149 19:24, May 16, 2011 (UTC)

Discontinuity should be its own forum

Hey, I just changed the main {{discontinuity}} template to alert people to the fact that they were in the Howling, and as such, spoilers were possible. But the more I think about it, the more I don't like that. I think we want to keep discontinuity discussions in the forum namespace, of course, but I think it should be in its own separate forum. I really don't think people who click on the discontinuity note on a story page are expecting that they'll go to an area where spoilers are possible. They're thinking the discussion will be about how that episode ties into other, already-published stories, surely.

Plus, it might help people who want to go straight to the discon discussions directly, bypassing story pages, if the discontinuity threads were more visible in a list of threads. If all of discon was its own forum, the threads would be more visible.

It's just somehow unsatisfactory that a person who wants to discuss discontinuity of the latest episode might be plagued by spoilers that are allowed simply because the discon discussions happen to reside in The Howling. What do you think?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:27:10 Mon 16 May 2011 

No, it probably won't completely remove the possibility, but at least it will give us clearer policy lines. It's better to say, "No spoilers here, period." than it is to say, "No spoilers in the discontinuity section, but otherwise the Howling is a spoiler-allowed zone".

I don't think it'll mean the name length will change at all, since a "forum", with our current forum software, is just a set of pages within a category. All we're doing is creating a new category, not changing the titles in any way.

And I don't think we need a "Who-y" name. Not sure there is a readily apparent "who-y" name. Discontinuity index (small i), is as good as any.

The move should be a relatively straightforward bot run. I'll get on it today or tomorrow.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:06:50 Tue 17 May 2011 

Listen up, you

I am not 90.210.131.149 so leave him alone! Have you ever been told to shut up? You need a warning. Doug87 14:43, May 18, 2011 (UTC)

Forum overhaul continues; infobox response

By way of progress report, the basic structure of the forum:discontinuity index is now in place. I'm just trying to think of an efficient way to categorize the hundreds of subpages so that they'll populate the created structure. I think it's going to involve actually moving all those pages so they're no longer subpages, but that they all get a regimented nomenclature, like "[Story name] discontinuity". Just so you can field questions from other users, when the discussions get ripped off the main page and put on their own page, {{discontinuity}} will be broken for the length of time the process takes. That means there will be a few hours where clicking on a discontinuity discussion link on a story page (or clicking on a story link on a discontinuity page) will fail until I rewrite {{discontinuity}}. Whether I rewrite it ahead of doing the page move or after is irrelevant; there'll be a period of disconnect. But then everything will be happy and organized after that.

Also, in my continuing efforts to try to do something for the people who don't like the spoilery nature of The Howling, I have today applied to Wikia Support for a new namespace, "Howling:". If approved, all the threads of The Howling will be moved into its own namespace, creating a useful quarantine. This will mean that when people search the forums, there will be no possibility of being accidentally exposed to a spoiler in The Howling. It will also give users the ability to completely turn off the Howling as a possible search location.

As to arrows in infoboxen, well, you articulated your views well enough in the past that I wasn't even contemplating using them instead of a story name. However, I still think they can be a useful decoration, and they may appear in concert with story names. I keep getting distracted on the infoboxen, though — even though it's really critical to the overall design process.

Oh, and any chance you could give me some notes on Help:Background images? I need some help with somehow simplifying the whole thing. When I try to try to trim it that, I think, "No, that bit's important" and end up making it longer. Maybe you could give me an idea of how I could use illustrations to lose the fat?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 23:02:59 Wed 18 May 2011 

Images

Thanks for weeding out the excess images. Don't suppose you know why some images keep overlapping text?----Skittles the hog--Talk 16:42, May 19, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, just in general. I'm pretty sure it's just a result of removing the "Added by X" section, so it doesn't really matter any more. Thanks----Skittles the hog--Talk 15:27, May 20, 2011 (UTC)

Our name on Enttertainment

Just wanted to acknowledge your message and tell you I'm looking into it. I've never considered this at all, so I don't have immediate ideas. But I'm gonna stop what I'm doing and look into it right now cause it's really not helpful for us to be listed that way. I'll get back to you today, even if it's just to tell you I've had to give up and complain to wikia central.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:51:49 Fri 20 May 2011 

just to get you a quick answer before I eat breakfast, analysis of the ten pages listed in their top ten indicates a definite pattern. All the names given are those that appear when you input {{ns:4}} onto any page of that wiki. It's our project name. See the recently re-written help:namespace for a live demonstration of this phenomenon in the table of namespaces. I'm going to check the actual code of the page after breakfast and give you more, but I bet there's no way to change it without actually changing our project name. That would mean losing the simple Tardis: namespace. Anyway, that's my quick impression. More to come.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:07:01 Fri 20 May 2011 

It's stored in an internal Wikia DB from what I understand. Use the Special Contact method of talking to the staff. -- sulfur 18:37, May 20, 2011 (UTC)

Well, sulfur got in there while I was typing my response. I do like his theory of the internal server. My thoughts, though, didn't take that possibility into account.

Okay, here are my findings:

1. The Wikia Entertainment page is absolutely using the name associated with ns:4. I can't figure out how in the world to actually look at the wiki code on that page — Wikia has it locked down so tight, manually appending action=edit doesn't work, and the "Edit" tool on the bottom footer physically disappears when you're on that site. Nevertheless, the pattern is too obvious for any other conclusion: they're grabbing the value of either our project namespace (ns:4) or stripping the name from Project:Community Portal, a page that's guaranteed to be on every wiki.
2. The entertainment page isn't likely to be re-coded to allow us special dispensation. It must depend upon cracking open a variable — some remote way of checking the local name of ns:4 that isn't widely publicised. Although a peek of the source code of the Entertainment page shows plain text rendering of wiki names, I'm sure it's derived from a variable working in the background, because positions on the list change. We go higher when the DW season is in session, for instance. Since there's almost certainly not an individual re-coding the site from moment-to-moment, it's gotta be automated, which means variables are definitely involved. So they're not going to change it just because we don't like the way the name of our wiki appears in this one instance
3. This is the consequence of (I guess) User:Freethinker1of1's decision to dub us "Tardis" in the first place.
4. There is nothing in the MediaWiki ns that will allow us to change the project name. It can only be changed by Wikia themselves, per Help:Title for the wiki.
5. Although I don't personally like the name, I've since relented on trying to get it changed. One of the big things that changed my mind was discovering that we've "graduated" to the "adult table" on wikia. Other people can link to us now by just typing tardis:article name, like you can with starwars:Stormtrooper or memoryalpha:Spock. It used to be that we had to do w:c:tardis:articlename, as is still the case on some of the smaller wikis. If we were to change our project name, this kind of easy linkage would probably be severed, and that's bad for interwiki relations.
6. Tardis is better than anything else we could think of, really. The TARDIS has appeared, or at least been heard, in every part of the BBC franchise: DW, SJA and TW. It's more symbolic of the universe than any other person or object. doctorwho would be longer, and imply we only cover DW. DWU would be shorter, but too obscure. tardisindexfile would be too long, and less user-friendly than just tardis. It's the shortest project name of any of the major wikis. I pity those poor people at Wookieepedia, who have to type that in everytime they want to look up a policy page. (Though, admittedly, it's still the coolest pun out there.)
7. Being at the "big kids" table means you can go into any search bar anywhere on wikia, type tardis:whatever, and get transported instantly here. Try this little trick. Go to Improvaganza Wiki and type "tardis:tardis" into the searchbar. That works great. But then, in a tardis search bar, type "improvaganza:improvaganza Wiki". Doesn't work at all. The convenience of instant transportation to us from any search bar is worth more to our traffic flow than anything the wikia entertainment page might be doing for us. Besides, they're listing us under "Dr. Who" in the hover-down on the wikia banner.

Therefore, to the extent that we want to ask Wikia central to change anything bout the way we appear on Entertinment, I would recommend that we leave the name alone, and that we concentrate on altering the description underneath. That makes it sound like we only do Doctor Who, and we should probably forumlate a better one-sentence description, then formally submit it to them for their approval. Or, and this may be a better idea, we could ask them whether that description can be changed, and then work on a change only if they say that it can.

Another question we should probably ask them is about the wiki header. We're under Entertainment now that Doctor Who is on the air. My question would be, what happens when Torchwood follows? Will they remember to highlight us then?

Finally, since we're talking about our profile within the Wikia community, we should probably address another matter in the same message to Wikia. I've never seen an image for our site in the "Around Wikia's Network" section. Is there a reason for this? Do we need to submit a picture to make that happen? I recall there was a kind of nomination process some years ago, but I can't remember now whether we need to take some overt action and make sure they have an image they can use.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 19:40:10 Fri 20 May 2011 

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Can we disable visual editor please?.

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:18: Wed 21 Dec 2011 

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!