User talk:LelalMekha
Thanks for your edits! We hope you'll keep on editing with us. This is a great time to have joined us, because now you can play the Game of Rassilon with us and win cool stuff! Well, okay, badges. That have no monetary value. And that largely only you can see. But still: they're cool!
We've got a couple of important quirks for a Wikia wiki, so let's get them out of the way first.
British English, please
We generally use British English round these parts, so if you're American, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card.
Spoilers aren't cool
We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details.
Other useful stuff
Aside from those two things, we also have some pages that you should probably read when you get a chance, like:
- the listing of all our help, policy and guideline pages
- our Manual of Style
- our image use policy
- our user page policy
- a list of people whose job it is to help you
If you're brand new to wiki editing — and we all were, once! — you probably want to check out these tutorials at Wikipedia, the world's largest wiki:
Remember that you should always sign your comments on talk and vote pages using four tildes like this:Thanks for becoming a member of the TARDIS crew! If you have any questions, see the Help pages, add a question to one of the Forums or ask on my talk page. Doug86 ☎ 00:00, August 28, 2014 (UTC)
Stegosaurus[[edit source]]
Hi there. I incorrectly presumed your edit was based upon a picture on Luke's t-shirt. I have reverted my undoing of your edit. My sincerest apology. --Revan\Talk 08:23, September 17, 2014 (UTC)
Re: mistake[[edit source]]
No problem! In my experience, it's often harder to learn something different from what you're used to than to learn something brand new. And we have quite a few policies that are different from other popular wikis. Shambala108 ☎ 19:33, September 17, 2014 (UTC)
Images[[edit source]]
Thanks so much for trying to improve our image library of SJA images! Seriously, very helpful! Still, I've had to delete a few of your pictures today just because they didn't quite comply with our image guidelines. A basic rule of thumb that we have is that you should always try to get a widescreen image. This isn't always possible, of course. Some of our topics are comics and/or an earlier age of television. Still, it's generally possible to crop to widescreen, even if the whole of the original image is not widescreen.
We won't necessarily delete an image from classic Doctor Who or a comic if it's at least 4:3. However, one thing that almost always get a delete are images that are square or even portrait-orientated. And one thing I'll always delete are non-widescreen images that are taken from widescreen productions. Since most people who edit here are only interested in BBC Wales productions, and all of those were in widescreen, it's really important that we insist upon widescreen images, or the rule will mean nothing?
Why do we even have the rule? Mainly because filmmakers wouldn't shoot in widescreen were it 16:9/16:10 an attractive ratio. But the secondary reasons are that many of Wikia's products assume that your images are widescreen. For instance, every page served by the iOS app, MyWkia, begins with a widescreen image. And if it finds only a portrait image on the page, you end up with only a forehead. If we always try to give widescreen images, our work is going to look the best across the widest number of devices and applications.
So please: don't think my deletions were done arbitrarily or because we have stupid rules. Instead, I'm trying to future proof your work, and make sure that your contributions will live on for many years to come.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 22:22: Wed 17 Sep 2014
Re: TARDIS plaque[[edit source]]
Hey, I've passed your question along to User:CzechOut, because, although it seems to me that if it appears in an episode it can support an article, I don't want to make a mistake that would cause you extra work, and CzechOut has a lot more wiki/Doctor Who experience than I do. So when I hear back, I'll let you know. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎ 01:35, September 22, 2014 (UTC)
- Rule of thumb is that if it can be seen in an episode, it's fair game for an article here. That plaque has been long known about here at Tardis, but I suppose no one really messed with it, for the same reasons that Memory Alpha never created articles for all the people on the plaques for the various Enterprises, as that would cause some technically correct but practically difficult pages to be created. Suddenly people who were on the Star Trek staff would have to be given in-universe pages because they appeared on the plaque.
- Actually, though, the plaque is itself even more difficult for us because it implies things that can't be easily reconciled. Is that "1963" as in the Earth year the show started? Or is it a Gallifreyan year? Why is the plaque in English, when interfaces on board the TARDIS have usually been seen in Gallifreyan? And so on.
- So this is one of those things you could write up — it's fair game — but the article wouldn't have much substance, because we have no more than the words on the plaque to go by. I'd probably leave it alone and write about the many other subjects that we have yet to document. It's probably best left to the page Amy's Choice and not in in-universe pages. On a real world page, you have much greater scope to adequately contextualise it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 03:45: Mon 22 Sep 2014
Re: first name/last name[[edit source]]
Hi! It's a habit that's based on discussion. A while back we tried to decide whether to go by first or last names (if you're interested, the relevant discussion is located at Thread:130306), and there was no final consensus, but some general ideas have become habit.
For all real-world, out of universe articles, we use last names. For instance, we would use "Troughton" instead of "Patrick".
For in universe articles, we tend to go by whatever the character is called in the story. The problem arose that some characters, mostly males, are sometimes called by first names, sometimes by last names. To complicate matters, many classic series companions only have one name. That's probably why we weren't able to agree on a policy.
The main reason why I switched your "Smith" to "Sarah" is that, even though your article was clearly talking about Sarah, there are in fact four Smiths on The Sarah Jane Adventures, and we try to write the wiki as though it were being read by casual fans. That is, we don't make assumptions about our readers knowing the same amount of DWU info as we fanatics do.
The main idea that emerged from the discussion I cited is that we usually call characters by the names used in stories, and no matter which way we choose, we at least try to stay consistent in a particular article.
Sorry for this long response, but I hope it answers your questions. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎ 22:36, September 25, 2014 (UTC)
