User talk:Tangerineduel

Template boxes for every Doctor Who novel

Seeing as you have a template box for TDA and EDA I think we should have one for every doctor and maybe even Torchwood Novels. --Catkind121 10:47, January 4, 2010 (UTC)

Howling

I'll be honest I've never actually looked at the Howling. I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to have an OG-style forum only because Wikis do become a bit of a community and if there isn't an outlet for discussion then people start doing it on the talk pages, which is of course what we want to avoid. Problem is, of course, you do need to have a monitor for such a thing because people will inevitably misuse it, either by posting stuff that isn't allowed on the wiki (like libel) or personalities will clash. It might be too late to close the barn door on this, but it may be time to try and find an admin dedicated to keeping an eye on the thing. And yeah, setting firm ground rules is never a bad idea. As far as the alert box, remember once you change a template they all change, so if you want to darken it a bit or even remove the color entirely, that's easily done. I support the idea of the box - Wikipedia uses something similar, for the same reasons - it just needs a little tweaking and maybe some ground rules as to when it should be employed. (I really sound like I'm advocating "rule creep" aren't I? For the record I don't believe we need hard and fast rules for everything, but in some cases it's not a bad idea). 23skidoo 13:32, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Manual of Style additions, too

I also took a few minutes and added some sections to the Manual of Style. See what you think. I've added a section on Talk Pages, as well as ones on "acceptable sources" and "neutral point of view". I was inspired to do this by someone who posted a link to a tabloid article on The Woman in order to further the opinion that she's the Doctor's mother. I remember when Kylie was supposed to be a Cyberwoman according to these same sources. The Talk Page section ties in with the new tag. 23skidoo 20:21, January 17, 2010 (UTC)

Aaah! I forgot we need to discuss changes on the Discussion page first. I'm going to revert my changes and post them there first instead. 23skidoo 20:29, January 17, 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks. I'll give the MoS a look when I have some time (just about to jump into a bunch of real-life work). BBS means "bulletin board system". It's a slightly outdated term used to refer to forums (dating back to the days before browsers when BBSes ruled the Internet), but it's still used by a few sites most notably the Trek BBS. 23skidoo 13:21, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
  - It's a very well known term that's still in wide use. Usenet is also still used, as is newsgroups. 23skidoo 14:10, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
    - Speaking of terminology, it might be worth adding to the MoS a decision on how to refer to the revival seasons. Moffat apparently has muddied the waters in the latest DWM by suggesting Series 5 be either Season 31 or Season 1, which means we might have people unilaterally moving articles. Personally I'd be quite happy to renumber everything from Season 27 in 2005 and move up (and maybe call the Specials year Season 30 1/2 or something). But I can imagine the tons of links that will need to be changed. 23skidoo 19:47, January 18, 2010 (UTC)
      - Re: the TV movie. Well, considering it's such a standalone, I wouldn't think it appropriate to consider it part of any season. And it's in good company, because for all people's attempts to make The Next Doctor part of Season 4, it and the four specials are pretty much going to be set on their own anyway, so it's in good company. There's also a school of thought that suggests the other Christmas specials not be included in any season, and there's also the mini-episodes. I'm a little annoyed at recent DWM articles which seemed to be advocating for the mini-episodes to not be canon. I can understand with Music of the Spheres because it breaks the fourth wall, and the Attack of the Graske game. But Children in Need and Time Crash should be part of canon, and I'd go so far as to say the same goes for the Comic Relief Sarah Jane mini-episode, too. In any regard, I agree that time will tell what ultimately becomes the standard definition for the next season, though we may have to wait till the DVD/Blu-Ray box set to find out for certain! 23skidoo 12:48, January 19, 2010 (UTC)
        Not a random tangent at all. I agree there should be a way of better integrating the TVM. One possibility is to do what Virgin's "Handbook" series did and roll the TVM into discussion of the Seventh Doctor (since it's a Seventh Doctor story, too). One possibility might be to incorporate the TVM in some way into the Season 26 article. Not declare it part of 26, you understand, but just include a subsection like "after Season 26" or "interregnum" or something. Sort of like how I inserted a brief section about The Next Doctor into the 2009 Specials article. Alternately, we could launch an article on the "Wilderness years" and place it between Season 26 and Series 1/Season 27 so people following along through the infoboxes can find their way there. I like that idea, because not only could such an article cover the TVM, but also the numerous independent productions like Downtime and Shakedown and Big Finish audios -- things that, in my opinion, were as important in keeping the franchise alive as the novels and anything else. It would also be a handy spot for people unfamiliar with this era of the franchise. 23skidoo 18:20, January 19, 2010 (UTC)

Writers Comics

(Facepalm). Thanks for the heads up. I've made my case. If those guys want to start making this place elitist like Wikipedia I'm out of here. I assume they'll want to delete The Last Doctor and Doctor Who and the Silver Spiral next. I appreciate your support for it, though! 23skidoo 14:07, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

I disagree 100%. Last Doctor was written by Paul Cornell. The other is a short story that has been reported in major media (unless you don't consider Scientific American major). If ever there was a case for exceptions this is it. I only create articles after due consideration of their appropriateness and this is supposed to be a Doctor Who wiki which covers all aspects of Who fandom. Fanfic done in an informal fashion is one thing, but neither of these examples fall into that category. If we delete those then frankly ALL the novels must be deleted as well, because there is a widely held definition of fanfic that includes spin-off novels. I ran into that in Wikipedia when an attempt was made to delete all of the Star Trek novels. And what about things like I Am the Doctor: The Unauthorised Diaries of a Timelord, Farewell Great Macedon (book), The Doctor and the Enterprise? By rights deleting those short stories renders those releases invalid, along with Campaign. Actually, that's a great example. If we delete The Last Doctor then we have to delete Campaign and all the charity book articles, too. And then we can start on Downtime and Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans which are also technically fanfic. It's a slippery slope. And frankly if I'm going to be forced to second-guess my contributions to this place, I might start having second thoughts about contributing in the future.23skidoo 15:07, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
- We're just going to have to agree to disagree, because in my opinion once things like Last Doctor disappear into other articles that's just it - they disappear and people won't find out about them. Doctor and the Enterprise was a book I purchased at a local equivalent of Barnes & Noble -- where no other Doctor Who books were even being sold. I think exceptions are warranted, considering, for example, The Last Doctor has been described as a sequel to the two newspaper stories Cornell published. And I'm not sure what musicians have to do with the argument because I wouldn't include them just because of the name - though if there's a major Doctor Who influence I do mention them in the timeline, just for interest's sake. I'm probably just going to stick with editing the Timeline for awhile - admin requests notwithstanding - because I really do disagree with disqualifying these particular stories - and once again I'm talking about items with extenuating circumstances such as being written by an established writer, being professionally published, or receiving media attention, not stuff just written by fans -- and I'm including in that, for example, individual episodes of Audio Visuals which were at the time they were made completely unofficial audio fanfic; I wouldn't support individual articles. Nor would I, say, go for individual issue articles for fanzines like Enlightenment. Rolling the exceptions (back to the short stories) into a catchall article no one will think to look for, or handing them off to another Wiki I didn't even know existed, is the same as ignoring them. 23skidoo 15:43, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Discontinuity; Plot Holes and Errors Sections In Episode Pages

I was wondering about the discontinuity, plot holes and errors sections and if we could introduce dividing them into discontinuity, plot hole and error sub-sections. As some are particually large and are quite hard to read, such as the End of Time's one, which I have already attempted to divide up, but people keep reverting back to the mass list of points. lottie01 23:10, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

This is a good idea. But there should be criteria as to what constitutes a discontinuity vs plot hole, etc. 23skidoo 15:43, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Google maps

Not sure if I have the right person, but ya seem admin-y enough for me. I'd like to request that you request Google maps to be enabled on the wiki. It'd be helpful for the studio/location pages. For instance, BBC Television Centre currently has to do this clumsy footnoting thing to Google maps, which it doesn't technically have to do for rights reasons. Google does in fact allow Wikia to use its maps, but the wikia owner has to request it.

Here's the info from the Help! wikia. Thanks! CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:40, January 30, 2010 (UTC)

Episode Infobox

I think that we should add another section underneath "Enemy" with a list of appearances from other aliens and/or races just so it highlights them out. I think it may help readers as well who are looking for say something in particular and if they see they appeared in such a such it would be easier to be spotted out. The reason why I think this is beacause looking through species etc I came across quite a few that I'd never seen before and didn't even realise they where in such a such an episode. What do you think and how would I find the means of going about this? -- Michael Downey 14:08, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah I see what you mean and I think all pages should be like that which I will try and look into doing it on all of the televised episodes but I still think there should just be a little section with bullet points of others for example in the episode Planet of the Dead the tritovores where not enemies but should be in pointed out just to have appeared as its to the top of the page so it gives a quick reminder to viewers that they appeared in this episode. (That episode was just an example but there are many more) -- Michael Downey 14:43, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

Yes I see but it is a quick summary itself it will literally be bullet points of what others appeared like the enemies. Not all of the characters just for example a race or species that appeared but where not an enemy. If it is done properly and put in a form that makes it still a summary I don't think it will get out of hand. We could try out some system and if it does then we can easily revert it but I think it may benefit a bit to narrowing it down as a summary. -- Michael Downey 14:54, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

I know but thinking about it, it doesn't really matter how long it is for example on Wikipedia they list all of their entire cast on their infobox and page so they don't really need it but they still do because its the first thing you see on the page and it stands out that's why I think there should be a list because it catches the readers eye of to who appeared in the episode instead of looking for it because some episode pages are not detailed and/or labeled properly so some pages don't even say a species exist until you come across them randomly and they say they appeared in such a such a episode. -- Michael Downey 15:10, February 3, 2010 (UTC)

New license for K9TV pics

Hey, I just noticed that the license for Template:Screenshot really won't work for pics from the new K9 series, as that series isn't © BBC. Yeah I know the language gives the wiggle room of "though not limited to", but that's kinda lazy since we know the copyright holders of K9. Therefore, I created template:K9-screenshot, but I don't know how to get it in the drop-down list. Any guesses how to do that? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:52, February 8, 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, when you say "screenshots from spin-offs which the BBC don't have ownership over", what are you talking about, exactly? BBV stuff? In placing the non-canonical template on most of these pages, I noticed that there aren't more than a handful of these pics around. In fact, most of the BBV pages just had a picture of the video cover — which would be template:Promotional — not something from the show itself. Surely it'd be better just to create a BBV-screenshot template for these tiny few. Though, come to think of it, there's already template:film-screenshot which could be repurposed for that, since technically they are direct-to-video films. Far as I know, there are no television screenshots, except for maybe a few station idents, which aren't under the BBC's control. And these could be just as easily classed as template:promotional, anyway.

Point is that there are really just three major types of screenshot. There's stuff from the BBC, which comprises something like 99% of the screenshots we have. Then there's like 10 or so BBV shots. Then there's currently 10 K9 shots. The K9 stuff will likely grow quite quickly, whereas the BBV stuff will quite possibly never substantially increase.

I strongly feel that, from a legal standpoint, we definitely need to have a separate tag for K9, because the "and/or original owners" thing (which now reads "other parties may have ownership rights as well") doesn't sufficiently address the ownership rights of the K9 producers.

So the question is, how do we make a change most efficiently? I think we keep template:screenshot instead of changing it to template:BBC-screenshot, because there's almost no distinction between screenshot and BBC-screenshots. Then if we repurpose film to include language that mentions BBV, or make a new BBV-specific template, we cover that base in a matter of minutes. Then, we keep the K9 tag, which has already been applied to everything currently on the site.

Then you add them all to the drop-down, change the titles so it's obvious, and there we have it. I mean, it's obvious the title of the template in the drop down is not the same thing as the title of the template page itself. "Screenshot" could be retitled in the drop down as "BBC screenshot". "K9-screenshot" could become K9 TV series screenshot", and "film-screenshot" could become "Other screenshots". The only thing I can think of that might not be covered in this would be stuff of which we don't even have screenshots, I don't think. I suppose it would be possible for someone to upload a picture from one of the 31 Who segments, notably the one included on The Three Doctors DVD, or maybe from a documentary that wasn't produced by 2 entertain or BBV, but you're into the realm of fan video and footage from news interviews there. We could make a separate template for that, too, but I doubt there's even one photo on the site from that sort of very marginal material on the site, so there wouldn't be anything to "undo". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:14, February 10, 2010 (UTC)

Navigational sidebar on the left

So. Yanno that that box on the top left underneath the search bar? The one that acts as a quick navigation to major categories and articles? I've just noticed that there's not a single link to anything having to do with behind-the-scenes information (unless you count stories as behind-the-scenes). Is there any way we can add to that menu so that we can quickly find, for example, the actors, producers, directors, writers, merchandise, production info cats? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:33, February 9, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, cool. I need to have some downtime for a bit, but I'll get you a list shortly. Basic thought is, though, that it definitely shouldn't be under "stories". It should be under its own category called "Behind-the-scenes". Some other wikis for franchises don't necessarily cover merchandise, so it's probably important to make it clear that we do. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:19, February 10, 2010 (UTC)

Article deleted/salted

Just a heads up, a few minutes ago an anonymous IP created Doctor Who Tour of Locations which was nothing more than an ad for some tour a guy is organizing. I deleted the article (it certainly met the criteria of quick deletion) and since the IP might just try and recreate it, I placed a block on it (I think the Wikipedia term is "salting"). Just a heads up that the IP might try and create it again under another name. I left a message on the IP's talk page recommending he go to Gallifrey Base or some other forum to put up his ads. I actually thought IP's weren't allowed to create articles. It might be worth changing that setting as articles created by unregistered users often end up being stuff like this. 23skidoo 15:47, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

All the same, it would be nice if there was some way (I don't believe there is) for IP-created pages to be approved by an admin before going live. There wouldn't be so many as to impractical (I'm just talking full-out page creation, not individual edits). I just happened to spot that one by chance. While I agree with your view of IPs on general terms, having had to deal with a nasty situation at a Wiki dedicated to a children's show where an IP uploaded illegal porn to the site, plus the hundreds (possibly thousands) of vandalism clean-ups I had to do at Wikipedia (99% of which were done by IPs), you'll forgive me if I default to suspicion whenever I see an IP edit. 23skidoo 15:09, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

Create Page popup

Hi there! You were very passionate about not liking the new Create Page popup on the Central blog last week. I put in a ticket to allow for people to turn it off individually, but I'm not sure exactly when that'll get done -- so for now, I turned off the new popup for this wiki. I like you and this wiki, and I hated the idea that you were unhappy. :) We're trying to build features for new users, but it's important also not to punish the contributors who have made 36,000+ edits and counting...

So I hope that makes the situation better. I can turn the feature back on, once we've got a preference that allows you to turn it off individually. Let me know if there's anything else you need! -- Danny<staff /> (talk) 13:49, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Monaco-Sidebar

Hi, do you and the rest of the users get a chance to edit the mediawiki:monacosidebar or is it just you? Trikster87 1st March 2010, 4:46pm, (UTC)

New home page

I've finalized the coding on my version of the new home page. It's at User:CzechOut/Doctor Who Wiki. Notes about it can be found at Forum:New Home Page?. Take a look when you get the chance. I think that you'll like that I found a way to incorporate differently-sized images for magazines and books, and that changine out the elements on the page is easier, yet somewhat more protected against vandalism than the current design. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 09:11, March 7, 2010 (UTC)

You weren't at all too critical. Your concerns helped shape a better-looking design than what I would probably have gone with on my own. The question is, when do we implement it? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:18, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

On the matter of protection, this new page is interesting, actually. I know the general wikia recommendation is that a main page shouldn't be locked, but you actually lock this one with no appreciable loss of user interaction. Remember, none of the content is actually on the main page. So you could secure the front page, and still have the content of the main page editable by users. That would lock the backbone of the page in place. For the rollout, which I guess I'm doing now-ish, I'm actually going to go in reverse order and put the page up first, then create the DYK nom page. This is only because I have to do a bit of editing on the template names, and because I need to put instructions into each of the constituent parts. The DYK nomination process is kinda secondary to making the code "look pretty". Once it's actually on the main page, the template names get simpler. They go from {{Doctor Who Wiki/Quote}} to just {{/Quote}}, and so on. Don't worry about template:Bgcolor; it was an accident of the wrong number of curly braces. I just fixed it, but for a bit, all those templates that use template:PortalFlex will continue to report needing template:Bgcolor. Oh, and as for the SJA logo — yeah, dunno where it's all used. Possibly is just wallpaper. I know I have seen it in green as well as purple, though, so that means it's been used on at least two images. Green's often a color used by BBC Audiobooks. Maybe it's on one of those. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:09, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, you also need to protect Doctor Who Wiki/News, Doctor Who Wiki/Top, Doctor Who Wiki/Comics, Doctor Who Wiki/Audio, Doctor Who Wiki/Prose, Doctor Who Wiki/Categories, Doctor Who Wiki/Quote, Doctor Who Wiki/DYK. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:44, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Argh, I don't know why I didn't see that before, with the category thing. And I see the stuff getting pushed down right at the bottom. Not quite sure why it's doing that. I'll give it a look. In the meantime, I've taken the category off, because really, front pages aren't typically categorized on most wikia. I do know the front page has a "Featured article" line that's at the very bottom, underneath the featured wikia ads. It's not likely to be causing this problem, but on the other hand, it's not visible on most main pages I've seen. It's redundant, anyway, and should be removed. But, as I said, I don't think that's what's causing this behavior. This sucks. I hate lookin' for interaction problems with wikia advertising spaces (cause that's what's going on, most likely, conflicts with the featured wikia boxes), It's like shootin' in the dark. As for the white/grey thing, you know, I've become so accustomed to it, I've stopped noticing it. It's always been there from the first time I started working on the project. I remember that it was the reason for choosing a transparent logo, because putting the logo in a box just made the line more obvious. Isn't it a default part of the style sheet. It looks like it is to me. Certainly I haven't called it into existence. I really have never examined it before, because, as I said, it's been there from day one. Heh I dunno, maybe I am calling it into existence. It's not on other pages. Weird. I'll look into it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:20, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I don't see the "logo on the left shifting to the center" phenomenon at all. It's in the center, period. I've never seen what you're describing there at all, by the way, and I've loaded this page tons of times. Still, it's a clue on the road to discovering this mystery, so I'll follow it up. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:25, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

Just to leave you with an update, I've figured out the source of the problem, but not necessarily the solution. It has to do with using the column formatting. Once I put all the templates into a column construct (you know,

{|
||
|}

then the white box happily wrapped around the whole text. And that's how it is right now. But the pushing down of the wikia ads at the bottom is a bigger problem. It's related, in that if you get rid of the column structures entirely, the bottom ads appear in the normal place. But then you lose other things, like proper columns. It's than damned <mainpage> variable. I don't know what it stands for. I don't know how it achieves column widths and the like. You need to use it, because it gets the top-page advertising in line with your columns. But because I dunno the code behind <mainpage>, I'm not sure why there's the bizarre interaction at the bottom of the page.

So I'm gonna keep pluggin' away at this one little thing, but for the moment that's the only thing that's wrong with the main page. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:43, March 8, 2010 (UTC)

I continue to be baffled as to why the column formatting is moving those ads down on the main page. Similar syntax on other main pages doesn't have this effect. I'm still trying various permutations to see if I can hit on the solution. In the meantime, if you remove that "Featured pages" line on the front page, then the "squashing" will be less noticeable. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 19:48, March 9, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'm officially stumped. I've looked at so many other main pages from so many other wikis that my entire life is one big <mainpage> right now. I've put in a call to sulfur to see if maybe his greater wisdom — and, perhaps more importantly at this point, fresher eyes — can see something I'm missing. Somehow, this nut's gonna get cracked, but I'm gonna need some bigger brains. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 02:09, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

I think the best place for you to go and ask the question is Central Wiki - Forums. They should be able to help with the problems that relate to the main page (and all other wikia related issues). --Tangerineduel 14:53, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

I might well do that. But Sulfur has opined it's to do with a CSS change. This makes sense to me, because the only real difference between our page and the one at MemAlpha is the fact that MemAlpha calls up a CSS class that we don't have available here. He's said he's gonna take a look. Ultimately, it's not gonna be a big deal, but if it involves adding a CSS class, it will of course involve you. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:20, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've asked the question at Central. (Note to self: question marks in forum page titles make them unlinkable by w:c command.) CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:46, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I share your dread of CSS. However, on the scale of things CSS, this would be pretty simple, if indeed it comes to it. All you'd be doing is cutting and pasting a tiny lil definition, from my understanding of things. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 15:51, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Good news! The guys at Central figured it out. And luckily, it doesn't involve CSS at all. I had forgotten to close a <div> tag on Template:MPH. They did that and all snapped into place. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:12, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

I added links to other language DW wikis as you suggested, and threw in links to other DW wikis, to boot. You'll need to semi-protect Template:Doctor Who Wiki/Wikis and Doctor Who Wiki/Wikis, though. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:22, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

DYK

Okay, my first attempt at defining the "Did you know" process is up at Tardis:DYK nominations. The process can't, I don't think, be as elaborate as what's at the Wikipedia equivalent. They have tons of admins and dedicated editors who specialize in nothing but DYK. Plus, DYK there is aimed at highlighting the newest articles. And I don't think that's really what we want to do. We just want to shine a light on some of our smaller articles to encourage visitation to the darker corners of the site. I don't think, either, that we can really go into a formal voting process, because that would make the page explode in size. Rather, we should encourage editors to merely vote against a factoid; otherwise, we should assume the factoid is appropriate for inclusion. The process should be geared towards including every submitted point. Generally, the admin who changes the box should just take the top-most (i.e. oldest) submission from each of the five categories and call it a day.

We might want to define when a week begins and ends (i.e., the day on which the factoids are changed. I guess that would mean defining a week in terms of the QOTW calendar. But I didn't include that amount of specificity in the article yet, thinking you might want to weigh in on that. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:01, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

The splitting of this into a DYK Nom and a DYK Policy article has occurred. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 23:06, March 13, 2010 (UTC)

Collapsible navigation boxes

Hey, as you're sorta actively making these navigation boxes collapsible, I thought I'd share with you a little trick I picked up today. If the color stripe at the top of the box is very dark, as with Template:TDA, the show/hide thingie won't really show up if it's black. Thus, you need to add a color:white; to the first style parameter in the box. This will turn the show/hide thing white. (It probably also obviates the need to specifically set the color of the title of the box to white, but it does no harm to leave that coding in place.) This then sets the color of all type in the box to white. You then have to add a color:black; to all the individual cells within the box to get all the unlinked text to show up. I wouldn't universally set the hide/show to white, but if the background is a deep red, blue, green, or black, you probably need to. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 08:49, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

Category help

What's the difference between Category:Individuals by affiliation and Category:Individuals by association? I've been pondering for a bit now and can't work it out. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:44, March 14, 2010 (UTC)

New wiki logo

As a part of the redesign of the front page, I can't help but notice how out of place the logo in the top left corner now looks. It wreaks of the 1990s, to my eye. So I wonder if it's not now time to change things up a bit. Here's an idea that would seem to mesh with the elements on the main page itself. It also has the virtue of containing elements from three different eras of DW — the original Hartnell logo, the Region 2 DVD font, and the current Tardis logo — and may therefore be somewhat more "timeless" than the current logo. It's not necessarily a final design, of course, but it's a start on updating a tired, 5-year-old design, at least.

Let me know what you think. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 08:22, March 15, 2010 (UTC)

Cultural references not specifically named by text

Hey, just read your note at Talk:The Simpsons, and I wanted to comment on something you said that's only tangential to The Simpsons discussion.

The thing about subjects like The Lion Sleeps Tonight, poetry spouted in The Shakespeare Code and The Lazarus Experiment, songs playing on radios in various Torchwood episodes, Tony Bennett, and really dozens of other articles broadly under Cultural references from the real world is precisely that they are just references. They don't rise to the level of specific citation. I don't think we can start to collapse all these into an article about a topic that is specifically named by the episode. In the first place, we don't always have a neat little thing like The Lion King to help us. More's the point, The Lion Sleeps Tonight is something associated in the real world with The Lion King, but not within the DWU. To move it under The Lion King would actually be to introduce a non-canonical "fact" about the song. But in the second, we don't have to have something named for us to write an article about it. Some things are so recognizable they don't need to be named. However, articles should note the fact that the person, place or thing isn't actually named, and give a rationale for why that topic has been identified by that particular name. Paperback Writer is a great example of this type of article. It wasn't named in Evil of the Daleks, nor does it exist in any version of the story that still exists today. But it was definitely there on original transmission, and its subsequent disappearance is interesting and noteworthy. (Heh, I'm prolly going to put it in the DYK for this week, as a matter of fact.) If we limit ourselves to only things that are specifically named, we deny our ability to fully cover the Whoniverse. Nobody sings "The Good Life" like Tony Bennett, for instance. It is just not credible to deny that both exist in the Whoniverse, even though neither were specifically named in TW: Out of Time.

Additionally there is the thornier problem of the reverse. Things are sometimes named in the Whoniverse, but their real world significance isn't specifically given. For instance Tom Hanks is named but the fact of his being an actor isn't. Yet, the clear implication of Silver Scream is that he must be an actor, else the Doctor wouldn't be using that alias at an actor's party.

Cultural references are tricky things, but I think with careful notation on each article, saying what has actually been stated in stories and what hasn't, readers will come to a clear understanding of the topic's place in the Whoniverse. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:46, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

Relative column lengths on front page

This week is the first time where QOTW and DYK have both run "long" , causing an obvious imbalance between the lengths of the right and left columns. Thus, I thought I'd let you know of a little trick to help even things out. By editing the "max" variable on the News section, you can "even up" the two columns. Obviously we can't cater to every single user — some are gonna have their text size turned up or down to extreme levels — but we can make it right for the majority of users by turning our browser's text to the standard size and adjusting the number of news items to a length that makes the columns "match". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 21:47, March 25, 2010 (UTC)

Timeline Template

Thanks. As you'll see in the documentation, it's been set up to handle all 3 levels of the Timeline section, depending on which fields are left blank. Now the template's in place, you and your minions can just update the timeline pages as the mood takes you

Speaking of documentation, as it seemed to be missing, I also added Template:Documentation to make the process of creating documentation for templates easier in the future.

→ Koschei:: Life. But not as we know it. 16:27, March 26, 2010 (UTC)

Special:CreatePage

Hey, I may have done something, somehow, to mess up the preloadable topic outlines. I don't see how, really, but I can't deny that they're not working now — in both Firefox and Safari. I moved all the templates to a new category (Newpage templates), added a DEFAULTSORT to each page, and a bit of starting lead text. It doesn't make a lot of sense why that would've made the buttons stop functioning. Indeed I tested one of the buttons linked to a page I had not then changed, just to see if my changes were the proximate cause. I am not sure whether the buttons worked before I started making changes to any of the templates. I've tried using the &preload appendage independent of the buttons, by adding it manually to the end of addresses that already had &action=edit, and that didn't work either. I tried preloading other templates, but no dice. Does the function simply not work? Or have I somehow busted something? CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:55, March 29, 2010 (UTC)

Timeline naviation changes

Koschei got the ball rolling on navigation improvements with his new template, but this will be extremely laborious to implement. Hundreds of pages requiring minute changes also spells the possibility of manual error creeping in. So I'm updating his template into an entirely automated one. As you can see by examining the code at Template:Timeline test, and its dependent subtemps, all that needs to happen is to add {{timeline}} to a page. The temp will take care of the rest, automatically sensing whether it's on a year, century or decade page, and responding with appropriate output. The bells and whistles of template design aren't yet completed, but that's easily fixed after the hard coding is done. Appropriate categories will also be automatically placed on the page as well.

Best of all, you don't have to do a thing. The template will be placed on every page by a bot. (Ultimately the old HTML table navigation will be removed by a bot too, but that's about a week away yet.) So instead of spending so much time on mind-numbing work, feel free to get back to the greater fun of whatever more enjoyable work you were doing here. Implementation of the core skeleton will happen over the next few days, with the project complete by sometime before the end of April. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:08, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

Yah, the template handles the difference in cardinal numbers ending in 1, 2, 3 — and all the rest of 'em through yet a fifth template called Template:nth. This does a little "mod magic" to check for centuries that end in exactly 11, 12, and 13, and appends "th". If it doesn't find that, it looks again for exactly 1, 2 and 3 in the final digit. Then it appends st, nd, and rd. If it finds neither of those two sets of exact matches, then it just adds the default value of th. And that invariably works in English. Thank God for the regularity of English's irregularities. It'd have to be a lil more complex if every every 100 numbers the number ending in 7 had a different suffix, like 107rd or 307nd. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:18, March 31, 2010 (UTC)

Your help required

I'm gonna start this little subsection for things having to do with timeline template implementation for which your help is required. General stuff about the timeline, I'll post in the main section, above. Up first are two things:

Template protection: Timeline, Nth, YearNav, CenturyNav, DecadeNav
Reversion of extremely large years to proper date format. Date format has no commas. Thus, all the years in Category:Far future must be put in standard date format for the template to work. 5,000,000,000 must be reverted to 5000000000, for instance (and I can't do it because obviously they're both blue-linked). Obviously this move won't prevent anyone from using 5,000,000,000 in an article for easier readability. Nor does it prevent using 5,000,000,000 as the bolded topic of the lead of the article. But proper date format should be observed in the PAGENAMEs. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 10:53, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and if template protection doesn't automatically extend to all sub pages, then: Timeline/doc, Nth/doc, YearNav/doc, CenturyNav/doc, DecadeNav/doc. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 10:56, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Castrovalva (TV story)#Production errors

When you get a chance could you please check the above link and see if I've been fair about what's a production error and what's not? The rest of what used to be there is already up on the Forum page. Castrovalva is a tricky one because if you view it in isolation of Logopolis there aren't that many production errors, but if you view it as the continuous event it's aspiring to be, there are a number of instances where costumes or props or the director just got it wrong. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 05:11, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Hypens vs. colons on Template:Wales crew

Sorry, I should have responded to you earlier, but honestly I've just been hunkered down with this template for a few days, only coming up occasionally to clear my mind with a bit of new series editing. It's obviously not that big a deal at the moment — far more important to actually get the damn thing finished with as many variables as I can — but I am slightly opposed to dashes, simply in that they take up more space. And there honestly weren't but one or two stories in the whole BBC Wales run that actually had crew sections before I started this thing. So I'd kinda dispute that there was a "precedent" of any kind. (Old series pages don't count; there are so few people credited in the old series that a single space doesn't mean that much.) As I said, though, I'm neither hugely bothered, nor anywhere close to being finished. If you feel very strongly that they should be hyphens, I guess we can keep 'em in. But if you're just doing it because you think there's some kind of "standard", I'd rather go with colons. This template is creating the standard, not following one that already exists. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:07, April 7, 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. Strong feelings win the day. I haven't attempted to revert your changes, and indeed have carried forward the hyphens when adding new variables. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:48, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

Reflist

Thanks for your attempt, but that misses the point of what the template code is supposed to do. It's supposed to be that you can name all the references within the reflist template itself, so that all the actual reference text is in one place, rather than scattered throughout the article. It works that way on Wikipedia, but for some reason not here. Sadly, I must revert your changes. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 14:55, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

We definitely need to upgrade Cite.phb

Yeah something is wrong with the version of Cite.php we're using here. When you go to Special:Version, you see a list of all the li'l bits of jiggerypokery that are implemented on our site. And what we're interested in is the thing called Cite, under the "parser hooks" section. When you click on that, you go to MediaWiki's definition of that item's functionality. And there, we have a definition of how to use it without templates. That is "the long way" of coding citations. There, we have the example of the functionality I'm talking about. I'll copy over the exact text here so you can see:

Separating references from text

In-text references make it easy to copy the text to another page; on the other hand, they make it hard to read. References containing a lot of data, quotes or elaborate citation templates can make up a significantly larger fraction of the source than the text that will actually be visible. To avoid this, recent versions of the extension allow moving some or all of the references into the <code><references /></code> section, to the place where they will actually appear to the reader. Thus, <blockquote> <tt> According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.'''<ref name="miller"/>''' The Moon, however, is not so big.'''<ref name="smith"/>''' ==Notes== '''<references>''' '''<ref name="miller">'''E. Miller, ''The Sun'', (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.'''</ref>''' '''<ref name="smith">'''R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", ''Scientific American'', 46 (April 1978): 44-6.'''</ref>''' '''</references>''' </tt> </blockquote> Now, here's what happens on our site when you do precisely what MediaWiki says Cite should do: According to scientists, the Sun is pretty big.<ref name="miller"/> The Moon, however, is not so big.<ref name="smith"/> <h4>Notes</h4> <references> <ref name="miller">E. Miller, The Sun, (New York: Academic Press, 2005), 23-5.</ref> <ref name="smith">R. Smith, "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 46 (April 1978): 44-6.</ref> </references> As the text says, "'''recent versions of the extension'''". We need to upgrade Cite.php, per [[w:c:mediawiki:Extension:Cite/Cite.php]]. The latest version for our version of MediaWiki (1.15.x) is 48711, and we're considerably back at 47190. '''[[User:CzechOut|CzechOut]]''' [[User talk:CzechOut|☎]] | [[Special:Contributions/CzechOut|✍]] 15:47, April 16, 2010 (UTC)

Template:Wales crew

The director "link fail" issue is currently documented at Template:Wales crew/doc. It's part of the continuing efforts to figure out a way to do a pipe trick from within a parser function. None of the directors, except for Adam Smith (director) are currently linking properly. Makes it a little easier on my eyes if I have a non-functioning element on the top line, cause the type's bigger up there. Plus, the director is properly linked in the infobox, so it's not a huge inconvenience for people while I tinker. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:21, April 18, 2010 (UTC)

This issue now solved, but see the doc page for details of how it was solved. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:33, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Removal of quotes

When was the Manual of Style changed requiring all quotes to be deleted from the Wiki? (See Eleventh Hour edits) Was it a unilateral decision or was there a discussion I missed somewhere. I didn't see any discussion at it on the MOS page. I'm concerned that the wording that has been added is making things a bit too "Wikipedia-like". By declaring quotes unencyclopedic, it's not too far to move from that to declaring other aspects of the Wiki unencyclopedic, too, like book cover images, etc. Considering how many articles include quotes both as headers and in the body, I think there should have been a bit more discussion. 23skidoo 23:48, April 18, 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I was concerned that someone had come out of nowhere and made changes. If it's something you and/or other senior editors have been working on for a while, that's a different story. 23skidoo 11:45, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Bot login problems

Hey, some kind of settings have been changed somewhere that are now requiring I enter a captcha phrase when I try to login my bot. Unfortunately, this routine isn't working, cause it's not accepting my captcha response. I've tried it at last 10 times and I always fail at the captcha. The captcha words aren't hard to type — things like "pushy", "detox" and other five letter real words. And my own input box isn't protecting my captcha entry so I can see in my own window that I'm typing the right response to the captcha. I've tried it several times now, and I'm getting nowhere. Can you maybe turn off the captcha requirement, cause it wasn't there before, and it's simply not working. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 16:32, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for looking into it. I think that my bot would appear listed as a bot if you changed its flag. At least that's what I gathered from [[User:sulfur|] and that was why he suggested I create Forum:Bot flag request. Indeed Special:ListGroupRights says that if CzechBot were a bot, he'd be exempted from captcha. And as I read that list, it doesn't look lik an admin has the right to assign a bot to the user group "Bot", which means you don't, in fact, have that power. Problem is, there's no one listed as having the power anywhere on the wiki. So, yeah, it's to wikia I go. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:38, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

According to this, you (or another admin) must request the flag. I can't do it. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:44, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

Despite that, I've used Special:Contact myself to outline the problems and point to our discussion here. If you could send in a note yourself using that form, I'd be appreciative. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:59, April 19, 2010 (UTC)

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