Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive12

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template to make the lists of episodes less... listy, which I approve of. I'd like to see like a 3-or-4-column list of just the episode names on the cartoon page- but also (if it exists) link the the more verbose table format on its own separate page. Best of both worlds. -Derik 07:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I could go with the "best of both worlds" approach. Keep in mind that the "episode list" page is pretty standard for wikipedia, and the Beast Wars and Gen One have enough episodes to warrant one. --MistaTee 15:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I could get behind this approach as well. A bit more work, but once it's done, it's done. -- Repowers 15:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and created a page for the List of Generation 1 episodes. Please note that seasons 2 and 3 have incorrect info, but the correct # of episodes (I copied from the Beast Wars page) so these need to be fixed. Seasons 1 and 4 have been updated to reflect info on their respective pages. Some of the air dates appear to be off though. --MistaTee 19:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Stub template listings

Is there a help page where it lists all of the various templates we use for stubs and other stuff? Recently we've introduced quite a few, but I can't find a listing of them so I can use them, and if I can't find them easily, then new editors won't likely find them, either. I think we need to work on making this wiki more user-friendly and open to all potential editors. --FFN 02:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you tried looking at Template:Stub? Or Category:Templates? Revamping the help stuff is an intention I have, but I haven't had as much wiki time as usual lately and I haven't gotten around to it... --Steve-o 02:57, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I did eventually, but thinking from the average user's point of view, it's a chore to have to type exactly Template:Stub into the search box to get to the stub pages, since, as far as I know, the pages aren't linked anywhere. Hell, they probably don't even realise. It's also been my experience that people generally follow pages through links in articles rather than going through the categories. --FFN 03:07, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Just came to my mind. Is there any way or chance we can put the link Category:Templates into the insert-tool box in the edit page^{like this}? --TX55 08:09, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Image thumb borders are screwed up

Can Derik or somebody else fix ? I imagine it's related to the recent CSS changes. —Interrobang 23:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I found some border-screw issues seem to be much more obvious when using the IE than Firefox to browse the site. --TX55 02:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyone? Bueller? —Interrobang 20:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh sorry, I was busy wrestlign Vista into submission on my new laptop when the original complaint was made.

Yeah, Wikia recently made tweaks to its global CSS files. This appears to be one of the results. It should be simple enough to make a patch for our site Monobook file. I'll put in a request. -Derik 21:41, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Toy article

I've started laying out the structure for an article that's an overview of the toys as physical items, independent of fiction, brands and storylines. We need this as a place to unite all the scattered articles that cover the design and construction of toys. Currently they're mostly in Category:Toys, but there's a ton of other stuff in there, too, and it's largely unsorted. A real page for this stuff would make it much easier to find and digest. It's a BIG topic, though, so I wanted to get some input before starting the article. given how much info there is, I think it's unavoidable that a lot of it would be a list of sorted links to other pages. But there's plenty of general info that could go in as well -- what we've learned from Hasbro of the toy design and manufacturing process, an overview of marketing approaches, aspects of design, etc.Sample page is here in my Sandbox. In particular, some of my sorting choices for the link lists might seem odd, so lemme know whatcha think. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Repowers (talk • contribs).

Continuity / Timeline

I'm trying to make some sense of how the various major continuities are handled, overview-wise. Some have their own continuity page; IDW's just got a timeline, with overview stuff shoved here and there among the individual miniseries. Some don't have anything. Some, like the G1 cartoon, are not much more than lists. The ones that exist tend to be hard to find, aren't categorized uniformly, etc... is there a master format for this stuff?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Repowers (talk • contribs) 12:15, 29 October 2007.

There is no master format for continuity pages. Please feel free to make one! It would be a good thing to have! --Steve-o 00:55, show30 October 2007 (UTC)

You know, I think it would be hot if once we got more timelines up, we began putting Chronology links to the timetable on the story pages. Several Dreamwave comic pages have them, and I think IDW comics should too, since IDW really isn't telling the story in a linear fashion.--Zodberg 09:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. --MistaTee 13:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Would it make sense to have an overview writeup at the start of each timeline, a few paragraphs or so? Or should "continuity" be a separate page? Where should a chronological list of issues go -- publisher's page, continuity page, timeline page? That's not such a problem with, say, Marvel G1, but Dreamwave's a little messier, IDW's all over the place, and gods help you if you want to sort out the mess that is Marvel UK. -- Repowers 14:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

A continuity page should have the following (in my opinion):

* A one-paragraph description of the continuity, not more than a few sentences long.

* A list of what media belongs to this continuity (which can include some stuff that's vaguely contradictory, but should exclude stuff that's way out there, like Earthforce relative to G1 comics). This can be sorted by publication order, or internal chronology, but if there's a major difference between the two, it should be spelled out.

* An overall description of the main events in that continuity, focusing on the events actually chronicled (not the distant past). In particular, for most continuities, changes in the leadership of either side, the changing status (living/dead, present/absent, duplicated by Straxus/encoded on a floppy, etc.)of the big two leaders (usually Optimus Prime and Megatron), any events involving Unicron or Primus, and introductions of major teams or groups of characters (Headmasters, Fuzors) should be in the summary.

* If necessary, a timeline, which may end up integrated with one of the above parts.

* Pointers to important and closely-related continuities (again, such as Earthforce), discussion of divergences, etc. JW 15:14, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

All that sounds pretty good, though I wouldn't get too hung up on following individual characters too much, even the leaders. In Marvel G1, at least, they changed over on a pretty regular basis.

On a related note... this and a lot of other overview-type pages are really lost in the shuffle. They should be top-level pages, with everything branching off of them and linking back to them, but instead they're buried and nothing links to them. You start off reading, say, the article on Spotlight: Soundwave. Where do you go from there to find out more? The IDW issues category? That's the only link out of that page. If you're a newcomer, or even someone with an imperfect memory, how do you know what comes next? Either the individual issue pages need to link to the timeline and continuity pages, or the category page does, or... something.

Taking care of it on the category page might be simplest, like what's on the Category:Marvel US issues page. -- Repowers 19:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the site is sadly lacking in both "uplinks" and "sidelinks" for the media; links from a TV episode to the TV series, links from an issue of a comic to an overview of the comic, links from one comic to the next comic in that series, etc. JW 19:21, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm still poking around and figuring out what's been done and what's needed; it might take a while to figure out how to start cleaning things up. It looks like we've got some random timelines started (still need ones for the Beast era and a few others), as well as continuity pages for some but not all of the major storylines, so I suppose each major continuity should have both kinds of pages. I wonder if there's a way to use a category or subcategory to get individual episode/issue pages to quickly link back to the main overview pages?... -- Repowers 19:28, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

JW, we do have that comics nav template, though I like the comic infobox on wikipedia more. --MistaTee 20:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah... [[1]] ...so we do. Very useful. Now we just gotta propagate it over a few hundred comic issue... :S -- Repowers 20:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, the nav setup only can link up one level. So Infiltration #2 can link up to the main Infiltration page, but not to the IDW continuity page above that. Would putting a variant of this template on the main page for each miniseries, linking up to the continuity page, work instead? Then you're never more than two clicks away from an individual issue to the continuity overview. -- Repowers 20:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

That, or somehow add it to the main comicnav template, perhaps in small letters above the series name. I don't wanna step on anyone's toes though. --MistaTee 20:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

That'd make the most sense, to add a "Continuity" level to the template, or alternately a lower-end "Mini-series" option. But hell if I can make sense out of how these things work... that might be a rainy day project, figuring that out.  :\ -- Repowers 20:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Image Copyrights

I asked awhile ago, and nobody seemed to know, so...I've always been under the impression that images © someone else should be credited not just with a note that they belong to someone else, but a year, for much the same reasons we identify who the image belongs to rather than simply saying 'we don't own it, but it's fair use.' The more info we provide, the more 'seriously' the copyright is being taken. if we wipe our ass with an unadorned, {{fairuse}} clearly we don't think the holder of the copyright is important... or something.I have a script I've been poking at. It can run through every image detail page on the wiki through a regular expression and pick out which images don't have copyright owners (Hasbro or Takara-- you're supposed to ID which even if you're using {{hastak}},) which don't have dates, and which don't have any sort of copyright notice at all. (A significant chunk of our images have no notices that they belong to someone else.) It could also drop the offending images into categories to be sorted out and properly labeled. (I imagine I'd give it Steve-o and let it do so logged in as the bot to avoid the update-floods.)...is anyone interested in this? Does it seem like a good idea? Terrible idea? ...Bueler? -Derik 15:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Cartoon Episode Format Mark II

Picking up an old thread here... per some changes I just finished making to all the Beast Era episode pages, IMO:

• The one-line summary should be bold. It's the single most important thing on the page; your eye should leap right to it.
• It should be the very first thing on the page, above the nav box (barring temporary templates like "pics needed".)
• It should be free of links. They're distracting and ugly, and it's kinda absurd to think someone's going to click right off the summary to see what a "Maximal" or whatever is. Links can easily be integrated into the body of the plot summary.I'd also rather see Quotes before Stats, to keep all the in-universe stuff together before moving to out-universe stuff like writers, air dates, commentary, order of appearance, etc. -- Repowers 00:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with all of this, except for the one-line summary being above the nav box. Pure personal preference, though, rather than any sort of functionality - I just don't like the way it looks. In fact, I think putting it below the nav box actually helps its notice-ability - it "frames" the summary quite nicely between the nav box and the contents box. - Chris McFeely 00:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I see it the opposite way -- having the summary first provides a frame for the inevitable white space that accompanies the nav box. -- Repowers 06:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Picking up on what I said above, putting the stats section down below not just the extended summary but now below the quotes section as well is something I strongly oppose. Episode writers do not get the recognition they deserve. We should not be burying their credits like that. That section belongs above the summary. --KilMichaelMcC 03:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I do hear what you're saying, but honestly I'm less bothered by the recognition factor than by the inconsistency with comic format, where all that junk is up front (though it often looks pretty bad, IMO.) If it were just the writer credit, I'd be okay with having it up front (though I ain't gonna be the one who goes back through 78 Beast Era episode pages to change it!) But then you get into the odd condition of having that one bit of info up front, while the rest of the standard information external to the episode's events is much deeper in the article. Having much more stuff up front than that makes for a messy, unattractive, and harder-to-read format compared to having it all bundled in the Stats section... IMO, natch.

"If "recognition" is the concern, heck, think of the animators who slaved a lot more than the writers ever did to bring each episode to life. They get no credits at all. Neither does Robert Buckley, who provided music for both Beast series. The list goes on and on. -- Repowers 06:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The information I am suggesting be up front would only be three lines (Written by, Directed by, air date), which I don't think would be very intrusive at all. To my mind, before the summary is the only logical place for this information to be presented, as episodes themselves generally present those two credits up front, and air date is a known factor when watching an episode when it debuts.

On the issue of recognition, you make a good point, however my concern is a bit different. Robert Buckley may not get a lot of recognition from the fandom for the music of Beast Wars, but it's not like they give someone else all the credit on that score, pun semi-intended. But the writers? The fandom often enough acts as if Forward and DiTillio wrote every single word of Beast Wars, and Skir (alone, of course, as the Isenberg Uncertainty Principle remains in full effect) the same for Beast Machines. The story editors are obviously the most important writers, but they didn't do it all on their own.

Burying the names of episode writers down below the summary and quotes sections just doesn't sit right with me, is all. --KilMichaelMcC 04:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Hrm... combined with Steve-o's consistency argument, I suppose I could go along with doing it this way, with them all tucked together and separate from/below the one line summary. Written By and Air Date are in one little combined pair of lines now, an easy cut-n-paste to move up front. I don't think anyone's added Director credits to any of the episodes, by the by.

As I said, I'm in no great hurry to do it myself -- my main concern was that the Beast Era show pages had drifted into all sorts of different arrangements, some of which looked pretty sloppy. For better or worse, they're all uniform now. If we're gonna change the layout, let's work on getting one sample page just right, then we can worry about propagating it. To that end, have a look at "Chain of Command", see if it clicks for you. -- Repowers 05:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking if we could merge the Japanese title into the Stats section because it seems to fit the section better. --TX55 03:14, 27 January 2008 (UTC)I don't have much of a preference, personally, about how to organize these things. However, I do feel pretty strongly that it should be more or less the same for both cartoon episodes and comic issues. Having different organizational schemes for different sorts of fiction doesn't serve much purpose, and makes things harder to get used to. (On the other hand, I also feel strongly that all of our passages relating fictional events should be in the same tense regardless of if they happen to be on a character page or a story page, but apparently that makes me insane, so don't take my pleas for consistency too seriously.) --Steve-o 02:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Cartoon format mark II.5

Did we ever make a decision on whether to place the quotes area before the stats section? Because the sheer majority of episode articles (including old ones recently converted to current standards) place the stats before the quotes, but I notice some of the latest Cybertron episode articles are placing the quotes before the stats, which is creating inconsistencies in layout. Bear in mind it will create less work for us if we just leave things the way they are, with stats before quotes. --FFN 09:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Cartoon continuity headings

Have we decided on a definative format for this yet? most of the pages with characters who appeared in Sunbow's G1 through to the japanese series (and maybe Beast Wars as well) have quite different headings, and I recall we were worried about Transformers Animated causing problems with all the 'Animated continuity' headings on character pages. --FFN 07:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we had decided on using "cartoon" instead of "animated." So use "cartoon continuity," or for those who appear in more than one cartoon continuity, use "Generation 1 cartoon continuity," "Beast Wars cartoon continuity," etc. --ItsWalky 07:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Can we have Diagnostic Drone change all occurrences of "Animated continuity" to "Cartoon continuity"? That'll require some cleanup in the Animated articles, but there are far fewer of those than there are of G1 subjects that are currently mislabeled. - Jackpot 17:54, 17 January 2008 (UTC)