User talk:Reversinator

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Welcome to the
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Reversinator

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:

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. -- Mini-mitch (Talk) 16:18, 18 October 2012

Tense[[edit source]]

CzechOut has recently (and is still in the process) of updating and consolidating various bits of a MoS.

I apologise for not leaving you a message alerting you to the changes made, I was going to, then got distracted and forgot.

If you look around at practically any of the stories, their intros are all written in the past tense, and as you discovered all the CON intros were/are in the past tense.

As you can see on my talk page, in the sub-section above the one you left (also a side note, please remember to sign your talk comments with four tildes ~~~~) CzechOut was responding to my queries concerning tense.

Present tense is difficult because none of the stories are ever "current", they're either a future to be broadcast or released story or they've been broadcast or released. The only true middle ground where present tense could be used is the day they're broadcast / released. As CzechOut has said on my talk page "every use of present tense immediately dates our writing".

As for your minor grammar fix, if you note the next edit I did undo my edit, that one I realised was a mistake. Regarding in line summary, I was quickly rolling back your edits rather than undoing them (rolling back doesn't allow for edit summary editions). Again, as I've said I apologise for not leaving a message on your talk page, I usually try to explain to users changes on the wiki. Thanks, any further questions please ask. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:16, October 30, 2012 (UTC)

Worlds of Time[[edit source]]

Because that's what being an invalid source means. Also, the case with Worlds is especially tricky, as there's no guarantee any two players will experience the same thing or the same characters in exactly the same way.

It should be pointed out, as well, that there's an entire Worlds wiki out there, which will undoubtedly be more complete than this one.
czechout<staff />    19:17: Tue 30 Oct 2012

Christmas cheer[[edit source]]

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!

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Recording dates[[edit source]]

The plan is, as it now stands, to add a variable to {{Infobox Story}} so that SMW can then create a list of stories (TV and audio) recorded on any given day. We will then have a template of some sort on each production day page which will feature that list. Pretty much, the end result will be a box on the page listing stories recorded on that day. It's not yet a fully fledged plan, but that is most likely what we'll be doing some time in the next few months. If you have any more questions, you can go to our tech admin CzechOut; it was his idea.
--SOTO 02:11, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Woah, that was a quick response. Any time. :)
--SOTO 02:14, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Images[[edit source]]

Hi! When you upload an image to the wiki, it must include a license. This is perhaps the most important image policy we have. You can read our image policies at the following locations:

Thanks. Shambala108 03:47, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Well first of all, ever since the 50th special, I have been deleting several images a day for violating policy. I have left messages on people's talk pages, and they ignore the messages and continue to add images without reading our policies. That's why I started the post at thread:148148, to have one place I could send users without having to type the same message every other day.
Be careful when you cite category names. If you just type it like this: [[Category:Second Doctor]], you end up putting the page into the category; therefore you ended up putting my talk page in the image category you were asking about. (I've fixed it, by the way.) If you want to cite — and link — a category on a talk page or forum page, you type it like this: [[:Category:Second Doctor]] (note the colon at the beginning) and it will show up in the body of your text and be clickable.
To answer your question, yes, screenshots from an episode get put in the category "episode name" images.
Hope this helps. Shambala108 04:13, December 31, 2013 (UTC)

Infobox Person[[edit source]]

{{Infobox Person}} is definitely optional. In terms of layout and design, we want to avoid having an infobox on a page that doesn't have enough text to support it. Many thousands of pages about behind the scenes personnel are little more than stubs, and most of these would be visually swamped by an infobox. (Tardis:Guide to images#Real infobox heights on live pages clearly applies.)

Even on longer articles, though, it's not strictly necessary> We'd prefer you spend the time writing the article to a good standard, than wasting time messing around with n infobox. It's much more important for a "behind the scenes" article to point out the various connections an actor has to other DWU actors, than to ensure the presence of an infobox. Equally a good video of the person can be much more helpful than an infobox.

On other types of articles, infoboxes are important, even mandatory, but with crew articles, they should be seen as a final step, not a first one.

As a general rule of thumb, you probably don't want an infobox that's any more than about 150% the height of the total text on the article, when the browser is opened to its widest extent.

Another way of looking at it is that if the infobox' IMDb link is lower than the level of the IMDb link under the "external link" section, then the infobox isn't necessary. The IMDb link in the infobox should be saving you the time of scrolling down to "external links".

Attacking the issue from another angle, here are some examples of the kind of thing we're looking for in crew articles:

  • Bill Paterson, for an example of how to contextualise a career in terms of DWU connections
  • Mark Chambers (counter tenor), for an example of how to give a broad overview of a career that doesn't have too many DWU conections
  • Chris Hardwick, for demonstrating use of video in lieu of an infobox
  • Greg Nicotero and Todd McIntosh, for articles with adequate context that could support an infobox
  • Kelly A Manners, for a decent use of an infobox
  • Julian Glover, for an example of how to write an article about a person's DWU career, but leverage the rest of the Wikia network to provide details about his career in other franchises

Because what we know about crew varies so much between individuals there's no single right way to write these articles. But if you're serious about writing this kind of article — and we hope you are! — we hope you'll take time to survey a few of them and get ideas about what you think works best so that you can add your unique voice to the wiki!

In a sense, that's more than you were asking in your question. And the answer, again, is that it simply depends whether {{Infobox Person}} is required or useful. But I hope you see the challenge of writing this kind of article more exciting because there are so many different possible approaches.
czechout<staff />    03:02: Fri 03 Jan 2014

We do this: http://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=Jack_Hollington&diff=1642987&oldid=1640046
czechout<staff />    03:50: Fri 03 Jan 2014

Images[[edit source]]

I should get into the habit of leaving talk page messages. You did the right thing in contacting me.

So, looking at the images now, it's very clear that they're either squished vertically or stretched horizontally. Visibly. Either way, even if it was accidental, please feel free to re-upload those images unmodified. We do want widescreen images, but we don't want ones stretched to be widescreen. See T:GTI for more information. So just go back to the source, and take the screenshot again, as close as possible to widescreen without modifying the dimensions.
--SOTO 02:19, January 4, 2014 (UTC)

Lol. No worries. I think I misworded that: images should be cropped, but not stretched. Preferably, you should always actually go to the source itself — in this case, The Time of the Doctor — to get screenshots, especially since lots of images flying around the 'net are publicity stills, which are strictly disallowed.
Ironically, I'm still going to have to delete these ones too, because they're nearly 700 KB big — way over the 100 KB allowed. So let's just go through each new image, and see if we can do anything with them.
  • Young man's is not only right-looking, but badly lit. Even ignoring those two issues, it desperately needs to be cropped in closer to the face. But I wouldn't even bother cropping this one; I think I'll just delete it to encourage others to find something better.
  • Meme's is a bit more salvageable, so I replaced it with my best attempt to fix it with a crop. (The cache might take a while to clear, so you won't see the update immediately.) Not only do we not want those two soldiers in the shot, we also want it to be focussed on her face, as explained here. This one's also a bit dark, but it's passable.
All this said, don't be deterred. Let's make this a learning experience. Just give Tardis:Guide to images a read, and, as the proverb goes, "try, try, try again".
SOTO 03:27, January 4, 2014 (UTC)
Good catch. I forgot that was his only scene. Here's the best possible infobox image for him (or the best I could do, at least :P): File:Young man TTOTD.jpg. It's close up, and the closest to left-looking this "young man" gives us. Take it as an example of what to go for when the best of images simply isn't possible. Cropping is key — as a general rule of thumb, the closer the crop, the better.
--SOTO 04:20, January 4, 2014 (UTC)