User talk:Spongebob456

FandomDesktop migration

Jerricho infoboxes on FandomDesktop (left) vs (right)

Hey, thanks for reaching out regarding FandomDesktop. Indeed, I've switched to it a few days ago. While an "official" CSS / JS adjustments wasn't rolled out, me and Scrooge have been in touch with User:Bongolium500, who, while not an admin, knows a bit of coding and was able to assist us in the meantime. All changes he performed are currently under MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.css and MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.js.

I haven't looked at the LightTheme, nor any templates specifically, but something I did notice is that Infoboxes in general are far longer than they used to be (see picture for a comparison on Jerricho on both skins). As one of our policies is to try and make all infoboxes not be bigger than the text they accompany, I'd put this semi-high on priority lists. I look forward helping out whereven I can on these matters. :) OncomingStorm12th ☎ 18:58, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

User:OncomingStorm12th got there before me! User:Bongolium500 has indeed been extremely helpful and much MediaWiki prep-work has already been done, notable to make sure navboxes continue displaying alright.

But a side-note: your message suggested a thread at Forum:Index — does this mean you've found a way to get the DPL Forums back up and running? I know it may take some time before User:CzechOut's project to transfer old threads to the DPL format is complete, but the sheer availability of the tools to make new threads would be extremely useful, and a very good thing to have in our arsenal at the time of migration. There's a whole, growing sandbox of new threads in need of creation. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:25, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello, I'd just like to say that I'm planning to make a few tweaks and fixes to the temporary CSS that I've implemented this weekend. It would be good if you could wait until after I've done these to start on any CSS edits to prevent conflicts (assuming you're planning to keep the temporary CSS: it's intended to only be temporary so will need changing eventually). As a side note, there's a bit of JavaScript in MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.js that worked fine in my user JS but doesn't seem to work here. Do you know why this would be? Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 20:14, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi folks! Thanks for getting back to me and for being enthusiastic about this, is great you've already started getting the wiki ready.

@OncomingStorm12th, thanks for the detailed update! Feel free to check out light theme (there is a toggle for this top right). What my thinking was for now was to make the background the same colour and make the content area lighter. Feel free to edit this in Special:ThemeDesigner under the light theme tab. Shall I let you have a play around with what you want light seemed to look like? I'm happy to help of course :)

@Bongolium500, can I just confirm the CSS fixes you're adding this weekend will fix the infobox issues OncomingStorm12th mentioned? I'm happy to wait re adding CSS. Can you let me know when you have added that so we can assess where we're at please? Thanks so much for your help on this!!

Re the contents of MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.js not showing, that's due to the "Submit for review" button not being pressed. Ever since that security issue we had a while ago, each JS change needs to be manually reviewed by a JS reviewer. The user doing it now usually doesn't take too long so fingers crossed!

@Scrooge, sorry I forgot about the pending Forum:Index fixes! My understanding is there is no movement on that project at the moment and Czech won't be available yet. I think we can carry on using my talk page here unless you have another space we could use. We could try a subpage if you wanted to.

Keep the messages coming and I will do all I can to help :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:10, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Some of the CSS changes were to fix Infoboxes (pretty much just by importing the styling used in Oasis - these really are only temporary fixes to get FandomDesktop useable). They were implemented a few minutes ago (although I'm waiting on an admin adding one small revision). I also believe that all that is needed to get Forum:Index to be functional is to allow the creation of pages in the Forum namespace by regular users. It would also be good to update {{Forums_add_box}} (it seems that type=create is currently omitted from the input boxes). {{Forums search box}} is also broken but I believe that this is out of our control. There may be more behind the scenes stuff that I don't know about but it would be good to have some very basic forums, even if we don't yet have all of the archives. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 14:23, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Awesome, they look great! Re Forum:Index, I'd like to wait for Czech to come back before looking into that as that is something I know he was interested in fixing.

The only fixes I can see now is light theme. If you look at First Doctor in light theme, the text stays black and can't be read. I think we can work round that by removing the color: areas of those templates, such as Template:Cleanup in the CSS. Do you agree? Do you have any other workarounds?

We could do with working on light theme as we need the wiki readable in both themes by early next week. As templates are styled in CSS, shouldn't take long. I messaged above about you all having a play in theme designer, but for templates we just need them to dispay well in a light background which we can add it later. Let me know if I can help with fixing templates for light theme, I don't want to tread on your toes though! This guide may be useful for light theme prep. :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 16:54, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there a way to detect what theme is being used and change CSS accordingly? If not, I feel a full redesign of all colours currently used would be needed to ensure compatibility between both themes. This was something I was really trying to avoid as my design sense isn't great. It'd also probably benefit from having a community discussion (something that is hard without forums). Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 17:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, there is a way to use CSS to only affect light or dark theme. For example, for a .general class you can use .theme-fandomdesktop-light for light theme, and .theme-fandomdesktop-dark for dark theme. In practice, this may look like .theme-fandomdesktop-light .general { background-color:white } for example.

We are a bit late for a community discussion at the moment, we need to be ready by early next week if we can. We can do a temporary one now then do a community discussion perhaps? All we need is light theme readable as dark theme is set to the community default theme.

What I'll do is set some sort of light theme in theme designer, adjust a few templates to work with it, and then that may give you an idea of how switching themes will work CSS wise. Any questions, please let me know! --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:49, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, that makes sense. If you could sort out the basics that would be great. I can look at fine-tuning stuff over the coming weeks, along with the admins. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 11:10, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

No worries! Just to confirm, were the navboxes at the bottom of articles already hard to read, even in Oasis? For example, here? I don't think I've touched any CSS to affect it. Just want to make sure I've not broken anything! --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 12:04, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, navboxes have been like that for a while. In the temporary Fandom Desktop CSS, I stripped their styling down to the bare minimum which looks a lot nicer. I'd also like to note that I'm waiting on an admin adding (hopefully) one last CSS revision to fix a few things (such as {{quote}}). Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 12:29, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I've just seen that you made some edits to MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.css. I'll incorporate them with my tweaks. Also, you commented the section as dark theme fixes. Did you mean light theme fixes? Most of the selectors refer to .theme-fandomdesktop-light. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 12:34, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi, you're right yes! Should be light theme fixes. As most wikis I've worked on needed a dark theme added, it was force of habit haha. Feel free to change! The only other major element I see in need of changing is navboxes. Try viewing them in Fandomdesktop compared to Oasis. When expanded, the table appears differently in light and dark themes. Do you know why/do you have a fix? :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 14:01, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

The only thing I can see is that some text is white and therefore not visible in light theme, which I have fixed in my personal copy of the CSS and given to an admin to add to MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.css. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 14:36, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hmm I'm seeing this on Template:Companions of the First Doctor:

• 

  FandomDesktop

• 

  Oasis

Do you know how to make the navboxes display like Oasis? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 14:44, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh you're referring to that. We deliberately changed the navbox styling as the Oasis one is hard to read. The basic version that is now on FandomDesktop isn't perfect but it is an improvement. We could add it back by adding MediaWiki:Navbox.css to the import statement at the stop and removing the large navbox section currently in MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.css but I don't think that should be done. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 15:06, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh ok that's fine! If it was intentional, all good. Any other big issues on the wiki I missed? Anything unreadable/really unsightly in light and dark themes? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 15:22, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

The only other issues that I know of were pre-existing, not that bad and will be fixed in time. Thanks for your help! Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 15:26, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I've thrown a light theme together in the ThemeDesigner. It's not perfect, but I think it'll serve. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:57, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bongolium thanks so much! Feel free to report issues to me, no worries on that. If it's ticketed, I can let you know.

@Scrooge looks awesome! Thanks for working on that, mine was made in a bit of a hurry haha.

Any more issues guys, let me know, and we're looking at migration next week. Feeling rather under the weather at the moment (not Covid related [I think!]) but any help I can offer, ping me a message and I'll do what I can. Thanks for your work this weekend :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 19:08, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi guys, posting on this thread as I'm thinking you'll all get email notifs I hope? How're things on the wiki theme wise? Did we get everything? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:31, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I feel most things are working fine. One thing that I've noticed that needs fixing is that diffs are quite hard to read in light mode. In fact, I've found that I need to highlight some text in order to read it. I've been meaning to have a go at fixing this but just haven't got round to it yet. I'd also like to mention that I think Fandom's rebrand looks quite nice with the wiki's theme, at least for logged in users (the bright yellow for logged out users is quite eye catching which is the point I guess). Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 10:41, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Hi, re diffs, is that something you intend to fix or did you need a hand with that? Is this relating to some CSS on the wiki or Fandom issues? Thanks for the feedback re the rebrand! Passing on now. By coincidence, the dark theme branding works super well with this wiki's dark theme. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 13:13, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Diffs are a CSS related issue and something I will probably fix today or tomorrow, along with a contrast issue in image licensing templates that I've just noticed. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 13:17, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Yep! Spotted in the wild: outsider confirmation that people like the new colours and how they work with the FANDOM-wise dark theme! Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:35, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

@Bongo50, ok if you need a hand with fixing please let me know! Don't want to tread on your toes, but let me know if I can help.

@Scrooge, fantastic! I have passed that on right now! Thanks! :D --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 12:33, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

I ran out of time to mention this earlier when I made the changes but I have made the CSS fixes and given them to Scrooge MacDuck, who has implemented said changes. I don't know of any other issues so, at least for now, everything's working (unless anyone else has noticed something). Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 15:45, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Okay, no problem, thanks for letting me know! Sorry for my reply, I was on holiday last week. The new theme on the wiki looks great! If you need any help, please do let me know. Do you guys have predictions for [SPOILER]? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:36, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah… Sorry to go all 'admin' on you there, but our spoiler policy is really quite stringent. We can't acknowledge Certain Announcements About The Future Of Doctor Who on the Wiki until the things announced are actually broadcast — even in very vague terms. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:10, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

No need to apologise! That one's on me, sorry about that! That's my brain not kicking in after a week long vacation xD --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:42, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey guys! Not sure if you'll see this post but below a Wiki Specialist has been assigned to work on a project to look at the state of wiki themes on various wikis. They picked up something on this wiki which I'll quote below:

The yellowish gold in the fonts for the characters/cast sections for the names isn't that readable in light mode.

Is that something you want me to fix? Did you guys want to? Happy either way :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 06:55, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that message but I really don't have a clue what they're referring to. I would be happy to have a look at it but I don't know what to look at. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 08:36, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Hmm, I can't tell either. Certain for episode articles like Planet of Giants (TV story), the links look fine in light theme? I'll check in with the Wiki Specialist and see what they say. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 09:38, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey guys when I said that the yellowish gold in the fonts for the cast and character make it hard to read, I meant that because the names are on the pictures, with the kind of yellow its hard to read for some. So maybe just a little bit brighter? It doesn't have to the bright yellow Fandom is using now but something a little bit more bright. Alternatively, maybe just moving the names to the bottom of the pics like you guys have done it for the crew section? Hope the screenshot helps this time around. And sorry, I mispoke and meant in dark theme, NOT light theme.Fearless Diva <staff/> 22:11, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah ok, I see what you mean now. Changing the colour is something it would be best to avoid as it is a major part of the dark theme's colours. I'll have a look at moving the links below the images later today. Having said that, I'm not actually sure if we can. I have heard that CzechOut may have entered some form of agreement with BBC America meaning that we can't change the main page. I'm not sure how true this is though. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 09:03, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It was actually really easy to change the link positions. I did it for the 'How to Doctor Who' section as well as it suffers from the same issue. I'm not able to edit the relevant templates as they are protected so I've done it in some subpages of my user page. When copying them across to the actual templates, please keep the <noinclude></noinclude> tags as I didn't put these in my subpages so that they wouldn't get added to Category:Main page templates.

User:Bongolium500/Your New Friends needs to go to Template:Doctor Who Wiki/Your New Friends

User:Bongolium500/How to Doctor Who needs to go to Template:Doctor Who Wiki/How to Doctor Who

I think it would be good to link back to this talk page in the edit summaries. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 16:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Skin state is broken

Hey there Spongebob456, FD here and I am a Wiki Specialist working in the PQEI project which I was told you are aware of. Today Wednesday August 25, 2021 I am messaging you to inform you that skin state of this wiki is broken and needs to be fixed. Also, The yellowish gold in the fonts for the characters/cast sections for the names isn't that readable in dark mode. I am informing you of this since you are the wiki representative attached to this wiki. Please don't hesitate in letting me know how I can be of any help if necessary. Thanks!Fearless Diva <staff/> 00:23, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Re: Fandom projects

Yes, I believe I did receive the email.

As concerns Forum links — I believe User:CzechOut still plans to bring the Special:Forum archive back online in some new format, and I assume he hopes that any links to old threads will be able to made into redirects to wherever the archived versions of those threads will be able to be consulted. Thus, if any links to the Forums remain, it is actually in our interest to keep them until then, even if they're currently redlinks. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 12:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ditto for Scrooge's message re:forums.

As for the email, I don't believe I did, but checking my e-mail settings, it seems that I had all Fandom emails turned off, so that may be the reason 😅. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 14:57, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I know about Special:Forum, my understanding is our cleanup of old links wouldn't break this, but I'm not 100% sure what Czech has planned with those. I'm inclined, as above, to not clean them up for the time being.

@OncomingStorm12th, hmm, email should be separate from those haha, anything in spam? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 13:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Re: questions

Hi I think it's safe to assume that there are links to old forum posts throughout the wiki. I personally have linked to forums hundreds of times in the past (and there are probably others who have also).

I probably did get the email you sent but I was on vacation last week so I can't be sure. Shambala108 ☎ 22:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ok no worries! Let me know if you didn't get the email and we can sort it :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 13:40, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Re Fandom Project Questions

No, I didn't receive the email, I had a look in my community profile and realised I had the 'disable all emails from Fandom' ticked, so I've been receiving no emails, I've sorted that.

As Shambala108 and Scrooge MacDuck says above there probably are links to old forums. I'd hazard a guess that there are a lot of old links around the wiki pointing to the old forums, we used them a lot to discuss things. It's an issue for the wiki because they no longer exist, and they're something we need, but cleaning them up isn't the solution we need them to exist. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

No worries re email! The Downstream is a public event anyway, but we sent admins a form to ask questions. Are you on Discord where I could send that to you?

Re forums, I agree with you and I'm not too sure how Czech has the forum backup, I'll do some digging on that. Another option is to do a wiki database dump which has the page names at least. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 09:14, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Reading back through my messages with Czech, I understand he already has Special:Forum content locally. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 09:17, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Re:Checking in

Hey, I've been good lately, how about you? Nice catch on the navigation being hard to read, I didn't really notice that much. I've experimented changing it to black and the current color, #e5c076 (which are basically all the options which more or less match the current style). I wasn't fond of the result in black, and neither am I with #e5c076 too much, tbh, but between the three, is the one that less-worse. Let me know, though, if you have another suggestion that you think might contrast better and not look too deviant of the theme.

Other than that, all is more os less fine 'round here, I think. Well, except the absence of the forums. Do you have any new insight on them that we don't? OncomingStorm12th ☎ 19:19, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I've not been too bad lately thanks, just been out of action which is frustrating. Another option with the navigation is to - with CSS - give it a black shadow around the links. Here is an example of that. The CSS for that to go in MediaWiki:Fandomdesktop.css is:

.fandom-community-header {
    filter: drop-shadow(0px 0px 3px #000) drop-shadow(0px 0px 2px #000) drop-shadow(0px 0px 6px #000);
    z-index: 100;
}

In my example, you would just need to change the link colour back to white in theme designer. Thoughts appreciated!

In terms of forums, I have messaged Czech about it to see what help I can offer there with implementing. Will keep you posted! :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 08:30, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh, yes. In terms or readability, the shadow-behind-white-text it deffo the best option so far; just added a little bit of extra code, because the one you gave me also added the shadow on light mode.

Regarding the forums, thank you so much; we've been without them for a while now, so discussion have been majorly halted in this meantime. Hopefully there'll be updates for that soon(ish) :) OncomingStorm12th ☎ 18:10, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

The nav looks great! Re Forums, yeah I totally see what you mean. In terms of the plan, we have an archive of Special:Forum. Can I confirm that you're talking a version of Forum returning with the archive which will help wiki conversations resume yeah? Feels a while ago since we brought this up so just wanted to check :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 18:17, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Well — if we can get the archive back online that would be ideal, but it's really getting to the point where it would be worth just activating the DPL Forums without having the archive yet. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:22, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

So even if we could get DPL forums up without the archive for the time being, that would work yeah? Sounds good to me, will see what I can do. :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 09:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, if you don't mind me popping in, I've done some research into the forum situation and believe I know what needs to be done to get DPL Forums back in action. The big thing is that people can't currently create pages in the forum namespace. Once this namespace is configured to allow pages to be created, forums will be pretty much functional again. The Howling namespace (used for spoiler-allowed forums) and the Theory namespace (used for 'theory-crafting' and timeline 'forums') which both also used DPL Forums do not have this issues and so, to my knowledge, are fully functional, but not currently used in the case of The Howling. There are a handful of other issues. {{Forum search box}} is broken due to an issues with the inputbox extension that where the format for the parameters for Special:Search is different then what the extension expects. I have reported this via Zendesk but the template, to my knowledge, can't be made functional until this issue is fixed. The other issues is that MediaWiki:Allpagesnext and MediaWiki:Allpagesprev have been deleted, but this should be easy enough to rectify and only causes a small visual issue. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 18:17, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for this! That's really helpful and, as you say, would in theory be quite a simple fix for the non-archive version. Will see what Czech thinks on that and whether I'm able to assist there. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 18:46, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, as concerns Czech… look. You can ask him what he thinks, but it's become apparent that he hasn't been in a position to keep the deadlines he originally promised when it comes to when he's bring the archive online. Unless he can name a specific date in the near future, in which case it would maybe be worth waiting a little while longer — I really think you ought to make it clear to him that the community needs the Forums, at this point. After all these delays, his at first reasonable insistence on sorting the archive first is seriously impairing the Wiki's ability to function. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:58, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I've found another small thing that would need doing to make Forum:Index fully functional again and I thought I would let you know. {{Forumheader/Panopticon}} and {{Forumheader/Reference desk}} both use {{archive}} at the top which should be changed to {{Forumheader}}. The parameter given for {{archive}} should remain the same for {{Forumheader}}. Bongo50 (aka Bongolium500) ☎ 14:42, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, many thanks! I've noted that for when we make a start.

@Scrooge - Sorry I'm late replying, I've brought it to Czech's attention and I know he does still intend to do it, but I can't give a specific date at the moment sorry. I have made clear the community needs it to get community discussions up and running to help the wiki function. I'll keep this on my radar and do regular check-ins with Czech on it. Apologies! --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 16:21, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

On your About,

You're going to Spongebob wiki! – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scamblescamblescamble!!! (talk • contribs) .

Re: Updated policies

Thank you for bringing this to my attention! With the deadline approaching, I've done my best to update Help:I'm blocked, Tardis:Local rules prevail (now renamed to Tardis:When do local rules prevail? for clarity), and Tardis:Guidelines for administrators (as well as the Wiki navigation) to bring them fully in-line with the specifications of this "Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy". I think everything is now "WRaBP-compliant" (although perhaps there are small details elsewhere that could be hammered out in time — another thing to earmark for when we have functional Forums again…). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:16, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Forums

Czech's involvement would always be welcome! I think we were planning on going to him later, right now we seem to be at the consensus building stage. But if he wishes to hop in prior to that there's certainly no reason for him not to. Najawin ☎ 21:21, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

We'll definitely try to notify Czech. It would be great to hear his thoughts on this. That being said, as User:NateBumber noted on Najawin's talk page, this isn't really something that needs Czech's approval, much as it would be welcome. A consensus is forming with or without him, and from what he has said of his current plans it doesn't seem like it would actually throw any spanners in the work he's planning to do on the Archives eventually. I am definitely of a mind that we should try to go forward with this without him if he doesn't have the time/energy to get involved within a reasonable span of time. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I was leaving a comment at User talk:CzechOut#Forums discussion while Scrooge was writing that, so there's a bit of redundancy there. I think we'd all love his comments on the topic. Najawin ☎ 20:10, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Hi both! Just to say, I wasn't necessarily referring to 'approval', rather 'input' and any ideas Czech has. How's progress going on enabling DPL forums? Is that discussion on how to do it still ongoing? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 14:47, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

There's currently a discussion at Forum talk:Index (moved there from Tardis talk:Temporary forums). Unless I'm forgetting someone, everyone who has commented so far is in favour of restoring DPL Forums. In terms of the technical stuff that needs doing, I made a list in one of my comments. Bongo50 ☎ 16:44, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Ok great, so is the status is everyone is ready to enable them without the archive? It's just the technical stuff that needs doing? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 13:12, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Everyone seems to want to re-enable forums without archives, although the discussion has not yet been formally closed by an admin. Moreover, there are a lot of editors who probably don't even know that the discussion exists and who may want to voice their thoughts. Bongo50 ☎ 15:08, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, Bongo! Yeah if an admin agrees consensus that would be the way to go for sure. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 16:37, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Alright, then: I'll be that admin.

The gauntlet I threw here has been picked up a hundredfold — there is a clear, overwhelming consensus among the userbase for launching the new Forums without the archives. We'd be grateful if you could handle that technical business. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Hi, can I just confirm what technical business you precisely need me to do please? If you're able to list it below? That way I can be sure not to miss anything. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:13, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

My understanding is that the following tasks are needed (and cannot be performed with simple admin rights):

• • MediaWiki:Allpagesnext should be restored
  • MediaWiki:Allpagesprev should be restored
  • The Forum namespace is currently configured so that no-one can create pages. This needs to be fixed, we think it can be done by changing a configuration variable in LocalSettings.php.

(Also, {{Forum search box}} is currently broken due to a bug related to Extension:Inputbox and Fandom's changes to Special:Search, but this isn't crucial to basic operation of the Forums, and has already been reported as a bug in any case.)

Thank you very much! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 10:18, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

Oh, should it be helpful: I've done a bit of digging at Special:ListGroupRights, asked some techy people for additional: advice, and while I'm not 100% sure if these are what we're looking for, here are some potentially useful observations:

• At the bottom of the page under Namespace restrictions, it seems that the Forum namespace is restricted to those with the user right curator, however no user group has this right. (This should not be confused with the smwcurator user group.) Since the goal is to allow anyone to create and edit pages on the forums, I would think the best course of action would be to remove the restriction entirely, but perhaps not.

• Not sure how these are related, but there are also several user rights with "forums" in them: forums:read, forums:edit, forums:create, forums:delete, forums:displayorder and forums:viewhidden. Right now, aside from all users having the read privilege, only the user groups for people who work for/with Fandom have any of the rest. If these are what I think they are, then all users should be able to read, edit, and create, and local admins and bureaucrats should also be able to delete, view hidden entries, and change the display order.

I hope this is helpful! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 10:55, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

If you're not too busy - it's been four weeks since Czech's post. As OS12 asked below, I was wondering if you knew the status on the forums coming back. Najawin ☎ 07:49, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Hey! As it stands, Czech says forums should be up by the end of the year. If they're not, I will look into it in January. :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 19:24, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Welcoming new users

Hey Spongebob, how are things on your end? User:Najawin pointed out to me that User:FANDOM isn't welcoming new users since the end of 2020. I don't know whether the bot has been officially retired, or if there's some sort of bug going on, but I thought it best to ask either way. Hopefully it's something that can be easily fixed, as it was a really useful bot to have around. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 15:48, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh yes, although it's a shame that the Fandom bot has been put to rest, the Dev option is for sure something I'm interested in! I'll take a look and try to implement it as soon as possible; we never know when it'll become very useful ;). Thanks for showing me it existed. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 13:23, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Closing a user nomination

Hey Spongebob, how are things on your end? A few weeks ago, we had an admin nomination, which has run over its minimum requirement of a week with unanimous support (the one opposition came from a misreading of dates, and has since been retracted). While I know these are usually dealt with by bureaucrat, both of ours are currently busy, and not been editing regularly lately, reason why I turn to you in seek of assistance.

(Also, while we're here, has there been any updates on whether you'd open our Forums back for us? The end of the year has also been a bit busy to me, but last I heard, Czech agreed that restoring the Lost Forums were no longer the priority, and was ok with the New Forums being open - although he also seems busy, so again I sort of turn to you). Anyway, here's hoping you'll be able to assist us with these. :) OncomingStorm12th ☎ 19:20, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Hey! So sorry I missed this :( The wiki's currents crats are Czech and Tangerine right? Have you messaged either about this nomination? I'm happy to help out with it, but I do have to check if efforts have been made to contact either of them first. :) --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 19:24, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

They have indeed, both of them! Not by me, but rather by User:NateBumber. Don't worry about having missed it, end of the year is usually busy for everyone, after all. The important bit is that you got to see it eventually :p. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 19:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Haha all good - I see Bongo was promoted, that's great! Did it all work out yeah? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 15:56, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Temporary Forums Are Live!

Hello!

Just wanted to notify you that, User:CzechOut's final deadline of "by New Year's Day" having passed, and following in-depth discussion between myself and fellow admins User:SOTO, User:OncomingStorm12th and User:Bongolium500, we have decided to activate Tardis:Temporary forums, come what may. A sitenotice has been set to inform the community of this development, and I am taking it upon myself to personally update our Administrators on the situation, as well as yourself.

As the name implies, we hope the Temporary Forums will remain — well — temporary. Any work on reactivating proper DPL Forums will still be welcome and appreciated; this system is a further fine-tuning of the setup Bongolium500 had proposed in December 2021, which it means is designed from the ground up to be easy to transfer into the actual DPL Forums if we should get those back in the near future after all.

But it has been multiple years since the Wiki has had a venue for changing policy and forming community consensus on important matters. Bongolium500 and SOTO put forward the first draft of the Temporary Forums a full year ago — and were convinced to retract it by a promise that the real Forums would come ‘very soon’; and here we are. I don't think anyone's at fault; I do think everyone has the Wiki's best interests at heart. But the time has come to realise that the overly-optimistic strategy of endlessly putting off an imperfect temporary solution in pursuit of a perfect one "soon" has failed, resoundingly. It is time for a different approach. The Tardis community are owed a different approach. If you have active DPL Forums to give us, we will take them gladly. But we cannot sacrifice one more promising alternative to a nebulous future possibility which has already proven more difficult to achieve that you'd expected several times over. It is our hope that you can understand respect our decision in this matter.

We four elementals behind the Temporary Forums would like to reassure the rest of the admin team that this necessary step is not intended to create more work for them unbidden. Four are, if it comes to that, plenty enough to keep the peace a Forum with no more than six threads running at a time; we would be thrilled to see the rest of the team embracing the Temporary Forums, but please don't feel any obligation to do so.

Happy New Year, happy editing — and happy contribution to the New Forums!

Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:01, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Just curious if you know of any movement of opening up the full DPL forums, since it's been a month. The temporary forums are working decently, but the permanent solution would be preferable. Obviously no worries if not! With that said, one of the threads that has been raised for discussion in Tardis:Temporary forums involves the 10,000 Dawns crossovers, such as White Canvas. There was a thread over three years ago, one before I joined the wiki, that discussed this issue and got a bit heated. I believe the individuals who were involved in the major points of drama have left the wiki, but User:CzechOut stated that the matter was going to be referred to FANDOM to deal with, and even when we had forums at the time they were shut down based on this reason, we weren't supposed to discuss validity even when the individuals in question had left. We've never heard back on this issue, and, I get it, you all are busy. But could you look into this issue as well please? Najawin ☎ 15:06, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello! So sorry for missing this, talk page messages sometimes get lost in my notifications. Will do better next time! Re update on the permanent forums, unfortunately I don't have one currently. It might be worth you messaging Czech on his talk page? Re that issue above, I'd love to know a bit more context on that as that was before my time on this wiki. Are you on Discord at all? I'm at Spongebob456#7402 if that's easier? --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 09:53, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't really use Discord, and it was before my time on the wiki as well. The thread was deleted, and so I can't see the specifics of the discussion, and, well, the forums are gone, so I have to do the dribs and drabs that were referenced by memory. But I believe the issue is that one user, then an admin, was vehemently against their validity due to not thinking the publishing house in question was an actual publisher. Another user, still technically on our list of admins, was very much in favor of their validity. This made the first user suspicious, and so he ended up doxxing the second user in the thread, accusing him of having a conflict of interest because the second user was going to be writing for the publisher on a later, unrelated series. The thread was deleted as a result, and the first user, since they were held to be doing this in good faith, was merely warned. The second user left the wiki as a result, feeling it stressful and unhealthy to where they were in life. The first user later demodded themselves and left on an unrelated matter.

Anyone who was actually involved in the discussion and is reading this is more than free to correct me. Incidentally on an unrelated matter, while we're using the temp forums a proposal is in the early stages of development that uses namespaces for some stuff, as well as restricting access to the namespace to specific users. The ideal situation would be to tie these perms to a relatively innocuous user group that already exists, so I figured I'd ask. Is there a way to give "Editors (Semantic MediaWiki)" access to a specific namespace? And who precisely assigns that role? At Special:ListGroupRights nobody seems to be able to grant it. Najawin ☎ 19:35, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I was also not there for the discussion, but I do know that the user that was doxxed was not an admin. I also would like to add that Fandom's legal team was involved which is the reason for the caution here. Bongo50 ☎ 20:13, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah, the doxxing and the admin feeling so stressed he had to leave must have been two different consequences of behavior of the first user. (Who is now no longer on the wiki.) See what not reading the actual thread leads you to miss? But yeah, we were explicitly told not to discuss this by Czech whenever the subject came up on the old forums, and that Fandom would get back to us. Najawin ☎ 20:29, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Also adding that the user responsible for the doxxing received more than a mere warning, actually being blocked for a few weeks, with the conclusion that he acted in good faith the reason his punishment wasn't more severe.

Czech said this matter was "tripping alarms" at Fandom in March 2020 (soon after the incident occurred) but three years on, with all four original threads on the subject inaccessible, I can't see how it would affect the tangentially-related question of the stories' validity, though confirmation from you would be nice. Borisashton ☎ 23:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey all - just to confirm, what would the new thread on this topic be about? I see the 10,000 Dawns (series) page exists. What would the proposal be? I agree we need to be cautious on it of doxxing was involved and Fandom legal got involved too. Discussing the broad strokes of what you want to achieve with a new proposal would be fine though.

Re the namespace issue, we typically don't restrict certain namespaces to certain user groups as that goes against the general values of wikis - it's community driven and everyone gets a chance. We do allow admin protection of pages, but typically to prevent vandalism. Are you able to explain more what you wanted to achieve with this please? I may be able to help find alternatives. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

So while we mention 10,000 Dawns and have a page for it, since it's a series with DWU crossovers, the crossovers like White Canvas are to this day considered invalid, so we don't use information from them on in-universe articles. We segregate information from them off from the rest of the wiki. The thread's been proposed at Tardis:Temporary forums and has 12 votes, so it's pretty close to the top of the docket. All it seems to be asking for is discussing the validity of these stories, treating them as we do most stories on the wiki and using their contents on in-universe articles. As Boris says, there shouldn't be an issue, given the user in question has left the wiki. But we were explicitly told not to discuss this by Czech on the old forums, hence why I'm asking.

As for the namespace issue, I'm not sure how much I can say without violating our spoiler policies. Roughly speaking, the idea is that as part of the preparation for the upcoming era, as well as past that, it might be a good idea for us to work on guides to different parts of the DWU, how to easily start getting into the show, or Big Finish, or catch up with the current series, etc. But these would necessarily need to be more curated than the rest of the content on the site. So there were two options I thought of on how to do this, and one of them involved creating a new namespace with restricted access to specific users who were both trusted and opted in. (The other involved admins locking a bunch of pages and much more labor on their end.) Najawin ☎ 17:41, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I see what you mean. For the user group, we're not really making custom ones as it can lead to complications. Re the namespace restrictions, that wouldn't usually be allowed due to going against the spirit of wikis being editable by everyone if that makes sense.

Our usual recommendation there would be to make the article(s) and if vandalism persists, follow the usual vandalism measures such as autoconfirm only editing or admin-only editing for a while. You never know, the 'good' edits to those articles may out weigh the 'bad' ones. Not dismissing anything necessarily though! Abuse Filter for certain areas is also an option.

The best play is to start small and add steps as you need it, rather than adding a lot of restrictions too early. Best to assume good faith and that the community will help first as if that happens, it's a win for everyone. Does that make sense? Lemme know if you have any questions! --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 12:16, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. Alright. Please let us know if you hear anything back about the 10,000 Dawns issue. Najawin ☎ 23:15, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't see these last couple of messages. As the person who originally proposed another 10,000 Dawns discussion, I can clarify the intent of the thread is to grant the Doctor Who crossovers validity as Najawin describes above. This would not be a really major change as most of the information from the stories is already on the Wiki, just in behind-the-scenes sections. I know you said earlier a new thread would probably be fine but with all the relevant information now in hand is it possible for you to confirm for certain? Borisashton ☎ 17:55, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Redirects and SEO

Hey, just a quick question. We're currently having a discussion about how to name some of our articles in a forum thread, and the issue of SEO has come up. Do you know if google considers redirect names when you're searching for something? We discussed subpages recently and we know that google explicitly recognizes them as related to the main article. I think there was some suggestion at Talk:Interference - Book Two (novel) that it doesn't. Najawin ☎ 21:04, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Heya! I know internal search and link suggest take into account redirects, can double check if Google does too. On a related note, you are better to use pipe links in article pages than use the redirect link. As loading a page via redirect takes a few seconds longer to load, this takes a Google crawler longer too and may have a small effect on SEO. Redirects should still exist as they're useful for internal search purposes for search suggestions. They're just better not used as links in pages. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 06:30, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Hey, just wondering if there's an update on this. It'd be really useful for a discussion we're having on our forums. (So, specifically, if we have [Redirect Page] -> [Actual Page] and someone searches for "Redirect Page" with or without quotes, whether it will pull up the actual page on Google. It's rather important for a new policy proposal going either way, when you have the time.) Najawin ☎ 09:37, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Hey! So sorry for the late reply again. What's the proposal in question please? Is it still going? If you have a link to it, that'd be great. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 10:30, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion has closed but a decision hasn't yet been finalized. It's at Forum:Relaxing T:HONOUR. SEO is brought up as a specific reason we might make the change. (If it doesn't work this way.) Najawin ☎ 11:11, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, going to be transparent and say I don't fully understand the proposal xD are you able to explain it in simple terms please? I asked someone from the SEO team about it last week about it but they're on holiday currently. Just want to double check what the proposal's about and may be able to help before then. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 18:37, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It's a lot of weird technical details on our name policies, but basically we just need to know if we have a redirect page, say, [[Godfather Sabbath]] that points to [[Sabbath (Movers)]] and someone searches the name of the redirect page on Google will it (consistently) return the actual page the redirect page points to on Google? It does on Fandom search, but does Google understand that redirect pages are just different names for the same page on Fandom? Najawin ☎ 21:09, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Aaah right! So the answer I was able to get last week is that Google draws from multiple sources and is very good at making connections, with or without redirects. To use Sabbath (Movers) as an example, Godfather Sabbath is named in that article multiple times. Google is already making that connection between that name and the page title. Google searching godfather sabbath doctor who puts two Tardis Wiki articles at the top, including "Sabbath (Movers)". While it isn't the only thing Google uses, the redirect wouldn't do any harm at all and would only improve search exposure. --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 07:48, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps that specific example did more harm than good. Suppose we have two pages, [[x]] points to [[y]]. If I search 'x', not 'x doctor who', just 'x', and 'x' isn't already mentioned on page y, does Google understand that 'x' is just another name for 'y'? Najawin ☎ 08:39, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

(To clarify, 'x' and 'y' may or may not in our google search appear near the top of the list. I'm just saying we don't specifically search for 'x doctor who'. Does it gather information about the page [[y]] in order to rank 'x' for if someone searches for 'x'? (And potentially vice versa, insofar as that anything linking to [[x]] is actually linking to [[y]], but you indicated above that Google does understand this bit.)) Najawin ☎ 10:42, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey! Could we have an update on this? (Not urgent, just making sure it hasn't slipped your mind.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:15, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey, so sorry I missed this (again)!! Seeing Najawin's example, Google does indeed take a hollistic approach so it will associate 'x' with 'y' and vice versa. It will take into account a variety of factors, including redirects, the page content, page names etc. It crawls the wiki as a whole and makes connections. Hopefully this helps! --Spongebob456 ^talk <staff/> 08:06, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

QuickAnswers

Oh, I am but a simple wiki editor, all of these concerns are far above me. But, Glaucon, if you might indulge me, what is the nature of justice, suppose we take an example from the Quick Answers help section.

Good question- what planet is Ahsoka Tano from?

Now, for something like Star Wars, this may be a good question, but for something like Doctor Who, this is a very, very bad question. I ask you, what planet is The Doctor from? How would the AI answer this question? Well, if it pulls solely from this page, my guess is that it would give one of four answers. Iwa, Earth, Trenzalore or Skaro. Only one of these is in any respect accurate. If it's pulling from the whole of the site it's most likely to say Gallifrey, but this is an egregious violation of T:NPOV. As I referenced on my criticism on the blogpost, which you're pulling the quote from, we have an entire page devoted to the contradictory accounts of The Doctor's early life. (And, I note, this particular question I chose isn't even fully solvable by looking at that page!) Any answer that places one origin for them over the others does seem to this humble wiki editor to be in violation of one of our oldest policies. (For another fun trick, think about what would happen if the AI tried to write quick answers about the page Time (planet). - "Time was a planet that existed outside of time" Yikes! And that's just the opening sentence!)

And this does seem to be something that the help guide considers to be a good question, does it not?

Well. Are there other ways that QAs, as currently being implemented, are broken from the word go for TARDIS wiki in particular? Well, only a few people can edit them. The wiki makes it a point not to place people at rollback, and the reasoning given there by User:CzechOut extends to other forms of "lesser" mods as well. Does this seem to negatively impact large wikis in particular? It seems to me it does. Ideally on large wikis you don't need as many admins / editor, or admins / page. Yes, you still need to increase the number, but not linearly. This seems to this humble wiki editor to penalize those wikis that tried to consolidate their admins. This is especially salient for us because we attempt to wikify everything that appears in the DWU, no matter how trivial, insofar as it relates to the DWU. See, for instance, Mangaka. I think QA is likely, though not guaranteed, to generate fine answers there. (There might, ironically, be so little info that it has problems, and if it pulls from the BTS we're gonna have issues.) But why on earth would it need three QAs? Why does it need QAs at all?

And, well, what if we did give every user here admin perms or similar? I'm probably being foolish when I think this is worrying and has the potential for misuse. Well, per Special:ListUsers, there are only 138 users who have been on in the last month who have over 100 edits. Let's suppose every single one of them gets rollback perms, which I find worrying, but I'm sure I'm being silly. Bongo estimates that if we do a bare minimum edit on each of the mandatory three questions per page, say, 10 seconds each, just to check them and do a tiny rewrite if needed, it will take 37 days to edit them all. Or, >6 hours per person. And that's if we only do 10 seconds per question and if every person in that list edits, if we have 138 people with rollback perms. Consider the two examples I just tossed out above. Do you trust an AI to give even remotely accurate answers to that? Even if we can write 1k character answers to some of these questions that don't violate our policies, which it's not 100% clear that we can, it will take monumental effort on the part of editors here to even make sure that the AI did it's job properly, and when it breaks it will take an order of magnitude longer to correct it. All the while the wiki will suffer because we're not working on the rest of it.

And I really do want to stress, these problems I've laid out are the tip of the iceberg. It's tempting to think that they're resolvable by saying that only certain types of pages will need QAs. But, like, again, one of the examples is that The Doctor doesn't have a clear, unambiguous answer to what the guide for this considers a good example question, and it's not at all obvious that we can give a quick answer that doesn't compromise our policies. And even if we did, our wiki is just riddled with issues like this and we simply don't have the manpower to find them, regardless of how restricted you make the module. We have sources that explicitly tell you they're speaking in metaphor or are unreliable narrators. How does an AI take these into account when it's writing a QA? It can't. We'll have to stumble upon it months or years later and correct it, and who knows how many people it will have misinformed in that time. It doesn't work for this wiki, the franchise that Doctor Who has become is simply too weird for something like this to work with. I'm not a Gen AI hater. I'm really not. I know a lot of people are. But I'm not. But it just doesn't work here, and forcing it will only harm this wiki. Najawin ☎ 12:11, 9 February 2024 (UTC)