Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive31

Toy sizes

Can I suggest putting the height-in-robot-mode in each toy's section? We do mention that Animated Bulkhead is short for a Voyager, and Lockdown is tall for a Deluxe, but I think putting in actual measurements would make it that much more informative, you dig? - Magnus Maximus 17:22, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I don't think it's that important to note. In the instances that height is important, we do note it, and I think that suffices. --ItsWalky 17:27, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I think it's just as (un)important as anything else on a wiki that exists primarily to catalogue children's toys and the advertising thereof. Plus, it's interesting. For instance, I had no idea how big the difference was between Animated Lockdown and Soundwave until I got them both. It's not just Animated, either. There's Armada Prime, for example, where the Supercon is "a smaller version of the Super Base toy"... How much smaller? One inch? Three inches? Less than half the size? It pretty much means nothing when it's that vague. I just think that including actual measurements would mean a lot more. - Magnus Maximus 17:59, 29 January 2009 (EST)

But if we measure the height, do we do it from the head or the kibble? Also, would we also include how big they are in centimeters? --Sunjumper 07:57, 30 January 2009 (EST)

Either, so long as it's clear which. And sure, why not? Here's an example of what I had in mind: "Standing at 5½ inches (14 cm), kibble included, Animated Soundwave is comparatively short for a deluxe figure." So long as there's a picture, the reader can see that the kibble sticking up is roughly 1/10th the robot's height and figure out that he's about 5" without it. - Magnus Maximus 15:51, 31 January 2009 (EST)

Er, yeah. I think this idea is a little odd, esoteric, and of limited application. --M Sipher 09:37, 30 January 2009 (EST)

Seriously? I'm really the only person on the planet who might want to know how big a toy is before paying $50 for it? - Magnus Maximus 15:51, 31 January 2009 (EST)

I think it's sufficient to note the height when it is absolutely needed. I'm not going to go measure all of my toys. --FFN 16:15, 31 January 2009 (EST)

But if someone's going to spend all day photographing their toys anyway, it'll only take an extra few seconds to hold a ruler up next to each one. And as I said, merely noting "a difference" in size is meaningless in such vague terms. It turns into an abstract maths problem; Optimus Prime is bigger than Wheelie, but smaller than Unicron. Solve for x. - Magnus Maximus 19:20, 4 February 2009 (EST)

I only include toy sizes when it's really exceptional: WSTFs, Cityformers, etc. But if it's really important to you, [[1]] has all the measurements of the toys DVD has reviewed over the years, starting at late G2 and continuing to the present day. --Thylacine 2000 19:58, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Cliffbee's site has quite a few, too, but there are a lot of toys he hasn't got. That's the point of a wiki; several people can provide more information than any one person can on their own. - Magnus Maximus 21:03, 4 February 2009 (EST)

"But if someone's going to spend all day photographing their toys anyway, it'll only take an extra few seconds to hold a ruler up next to each one."

But hardly any of us photograph the toys here. Though we would prefer to use own photographs so we don't even step on any copyright issues, we generally use Hasbro/Takara's stock photos. Usually Walky, M Sipher or one of the other staff members photographs their own toys when the Hasbro photo is poorly transformed, or simply isn't available. Most of our toys listed have images anyway, so what you are proposing is thousands of toys to go through. And hey, if we have the info handed to us, that's still thousands of entries to edit for a rather boring reason. --FFN 09:16, 17 February 2009 (EST)

Okay, that suggestion wasn't popular. How about my original suggestion that most people ignored? I kind of get the point of only mentioning it when it's exceptional, but seriously, without any kind of context, it means nothing. Describing something as "big for a Deluxe" is useful only if you know how big the average Deluxe is. - Magnus Maximus 21:03, 4 February 2009 (EST)

This also entails grabbing every toy we have from every line listed since the dawn of size classes and measuring them and calculating the average height per line. That'd hundreds of toys. --FFN 09:16, 17 February 2009 (EST)

Admin Symbols in Recent Changes

... Are those... little hearts I see? --Jeysie 13:42, 30 January 2009 (EST)

I ♥ admin symbols.

If we're going to have admin symbols at all, can they be something a little more subject-appropriate? How about a spark? --Thylacine 2000 19:23, 30 January 2009 (EST)

More appropriate... like a scarlet "A" for Admin? -Derik 03:47, 31 January 2009 (EST)

They could sparkle! -Derik 03:17, 31 January 2009 (EST)

For what it's worth, I'm not seeing the symbols at all. Some edits have red exclamation points in front of them, the meaning of which isn't clear to me, but that's it.--Apcog 03:18, 31 January 2009 (EST)

It depends on how much of CSS3 your browser supports. -Derik 03:22, 31 January 2009 (EST)

...They're not appearing if you have "enhanced recent changes" turned on - I had to turn it off in my preferences to see them. Awesome! --abates 03:58, 31 January 2009 (EST)

New image naming whatever

This is something I've been doing with the toy images I've been uploading... and I think it's something that should be adopted in order to help better-organize our image files. I mean, if our image categories are going to have thousands of entries ("toy images" entails a LOT of stuff), I think some new naming can help organize and make browsing the categories far easier for people.
Basically, it's super-simple. Start with franchise, the type of image, then whatever descriptor is needed. Examples:

• BM-toy Scavenger.jpg
• RM-packart WreckerHook.jpg
• Ani-screenshot_GarbageIn-UniversalGreeting.jpg

This way, when looking through, say, the toy images category, everything is sorted by franchise. When looking at images by franchise, everything is sorted by type of image.
I think this will help out a lot. Image organization has been frankly one of this wiki's weakest points, making it hard to see if an image you might be looking for exists. I'll be re-taking a SHITLOAD of toy images over the course of whatever (I hate that we use so many blurry shots from Generations and inaccurate-to-final-product toy stock photos), and will be making sure not only the names are "standardized", but that they get all the proper image categories as well. And I'll also be going back over older stuff and tweaking the names as I update the relevant pages in other ways.
Man, I wish you could just "move" images to new names like you can articles. It'd make things a hell of a lot easier.
Let the good times roll. --M Sipher 07:36, 1 February 2009 (EST)

You can in the latest version of the MediaWiki software, it's a feature you can turn on. We'd have to upgrade to be able to use it. (I'm not sure why we didn't install the newest version to begin with... it has a few useful new features... moving images, automatic double-redirect fixing, built-in search suggest, etc., plus a ton of other tweaks and fixes.) --Jeysie 13:34, 1 February 2009 (EST)

That would be pretty goddamn convenient on many levels. How do we make this so? --M Sipher 13:50, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Oh hell yes. If at all possible we should do this. It would make things less frustrating for new users if we could just move images with bad filenames.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:58, 1 February 2009 (EST)

It's this option. I gave it a spin on my wiki, and it seemed to work fine, even to the point of changing the redirect regards embedding the image too. (Meaning the old name will be in the code, but the software displays the image from the new name so it doesn't break.) I run a tiny wiki, though, so I'd watch the results closely using it on ours if we used it.

We'd have to upgrade to some form of 1.13.x to use it, though. --Jeysie 14:35, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Preferable 1.13.3 so we get all the security updates. --abates 18:10, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Upgrading to 1.13 actually came up when I was talking to Scout last week- her thinking was that, in the absence of a compelling reason to upgrade now, we might want to hold off until after the movie hits this summer, so we don't have to the be adapting to system changes at the same time we're doing that. (Neither of us had strong feelings about the matter though.) -Derik 18:24, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Mrr... the movie's not for another five months, though... I think that'd be enough time to get settled in before the movie info rush. On the other hand, if we wait, there's a good chance there'll be 1.14.x or 1.15.x out by then with even more new and potentially yummy stuff. Choices, choices... --Jeysie 18:42, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Yeah, wouldn't we want to upgrade NOW so that we're as up-to-date as we can be BEFORE the movie hits? Five months seems like more than enough time, and with the image-renaming idea being floated... whyever not? - Jackpot 19:52, 1 February 2009 (EST)

So... what's the end result of this discussion? Yes? No? --abates 15:55, 3 February 2009 (EST)

The new naming rule is really nice, because it contains the basic info and convenience for users to see. ^^ --TX55^TALK 07:45, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Oh, and just for a sample of what I'm looking at... check out the toy images category. See how the BM toys are all nice and in one group? (Yeah, they need to be renamed to put "-toy" immediately after the franchise indicator, but still.) THAT'S the kind of thing I'm talking about. Look into an image category, and boom, everything's in nice groups based on similar content. --M Sipher 07:43, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Maybe we can categorize the image into various categories like Category:franchise-(***, the type of images), just like Category: Beast Wars screen captures. I think that could make images from different franchise not to stuffed in the same category. :) --TX55^TALK 07:52, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I proposed that long ago, and it was shouted down. --M Sipher 08:08, 1 February 2009 (EST)

If you're proposing renaming VIRTUALLY EVERY IMAGE ON THE WHOLE WIKI, then surely the saner option is "make new categories", yes? Amongst other things, it would let you do a proper category tree, so you could start in a master (e.g.) Beast Machines category, and go down from there to articles and images, then from there to different types of articles (synopses, bios, etc), and to different types of images (screencaps, toy pics, etc) just as easily. - SanityOrMadness 11:55, 4 February 2009 (EST)

I dunno. When I upload things, I put the character name first, then all the information later. Guess I have different browsing priorities. --ItsWalky 09:19, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I can hold off for a bit so we can work out if character name works better, but really, I think we should have SOME sort of organizational naming standard going. The categories are a mess. (One concern over "character name first" that comes to mind is screen captures and comic scans, where there'll often be multiple characters.) --M Sipher 09:45, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I've been doing this sort of thing since 2007 for most of my image uploads, though I usually use the franchise when it's toy photos (Franchise - name - what kind of toy). --FFN 12:20, 1 February 2009 (EST)

When I upload things, I try to combine a reasonably-clear prefix with an image name. "Ani14_sparkplugdies.jpg", for example.

But then- I think the purpose of filenames is to provide the minimal context necessary to diffirentiate them while editing, and to prevent conflicts. ("soundwave.jpg" is a lousy name all around.)

I'm vaguely concerned that the benefits of adopting a rigid file naming schema are outweighed by the negative impact of prescriptive guidelines on user participation. It's just another hurdle to prevent users from editing for the first time. file_bastard "No you stupid fuck, learn our arbitrary and unnecessary naming schema before you dare participate, or you'll be yelled at." You can create all the complicated guidelines for users that you want, but that doesn't mean that they're going to follow them just to fall into the neat little lines you'd prefer, and if you enforce those guidelines punitively, that just means users are more likely to choose to stop editing rather than deal with your shit. (Wikipedia has a semi-policy page on this... reminding people to keep "you must do this" as lightweight as possible.)

Finally, while I appreciate Sipher's goals... I think this is a back-assward way to go about them. We're considering applying a draconian file-naming standard so that files list in a logical manner in their categories? This way, when looking through, say, the toy images category, everything is sorted by franchise. When looking at images by franchise, everything is sorted by type of image.

Dude- you can apply manual category-sorts on images regardless what they're named.

And if the problem is really "Too many images in a category," then we should really look at sub-dividing that category. (Image categorization has been an issue we've avoided dealing with for way, way too long.)

And frankly, if we're adopting any draconian image standard to impose on users, I think that properly citing copyright holders should come before standardized filenames. -Derik 15:28, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Offhand, I'd say Sipher's idea is best implemented in conjunction with upgrading the wiki software to allow for moving already-uploaded files. It avoids the tension with new users that you mention, because we can instead say "Hey, I moved the file you uploaded to better fit our naming scheme, but have a gander at our image policy when you find the time." Much less of a problem, as the images wouldn't have to be re-uploaded, the old ones deleted, etc.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:59, 1 February 2009 (EST)

I was arguing for sub-categorizing images LONG AGO. I'd PREFER to have a "Beast Machines toy images" category and etc. But some people seemed to think "no no no there's no need just use a search", which isn't the issue. Instead, we just have a disorganized mess of images, assuming they even are in a goddamn category in the first place. --M Sipher 15:45, 1 February 2009 (EST)

That's sad. We should have good categories instead.  :( (Maybe a 'wizard' to use during upload...?) -Derik 15:48, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Oh, by the way. How often do new-new users NOT upload images that are shittily-named one way or the other, neccessitating a (currently) deletion? It seems more often than not, we get images with names like "Bumblebee" or "1mg365836593826529356723896". I'd say the lion's share of image uploads are currently done by people who seem to follow SOME form of semismart image naming. --M Sipher 19:40, 1 February 2009 (EST)I agree that this is a great idea. I just wanted to point out that, as I've just learned most painfully, that the capitalization and punctuation here is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for it to work. "Bw" does not sort the same way as "BW", nor will "BW-toy-dudeface" sort the same way as "BW-toy Dudeface". So, per Siph's examples:

• Capitalize the franchise abbreviation, just like our disambiguations.
• then a dash
• lowercase "toy"
• then a space
• then capitalize the first letter.CORRECT: "BW-toy Yourmom.jpg".
  

INCORRECT: anything else.DEVIATE FROM THIS IN THE SLIGHTEST, AND YOU SHALL SUFFER UNIMAGINABLY.This is one of those times when I really wish our help files were easier to reach (also for categories -- I can never remember exactly what our categories are, especially for images.) Also, if we can get file-moving enabled, that would be double-plus sweet. -- Repowers 17:20, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Yeeeeeaah. It's the "suffer unimaginably" that makes me want us to have the wiki software upgraded to allow for file moves prior to us adding this naming schema to the image policy. Tongue-in-cheek or not. Less stress for everyone involved, if you ask me.--Rosicrucian^Talk 17:25, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Yeah. And the other thing is... I'd really be more partial to having EVERYTHING be lower-case and dash-separated. "bw-toy-rattrap-basic.jpg". Simpler, more consistent, less to remember, and just as informative. -- Repowers 17:28, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Also also... there's no way to have it so that when you move an image, the linked pages are automatically updated... is there? That'd be awesome. Otherwise every move would require at least one page edit, often more. -- Repowers 17:33, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Unless I'm misinterpreting Jeysie above, 1.13.x extends redirect functionality to embedded files rather than just articles.--Rosicrucian^Talk 17:49, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Nope, you didn't misinterpret me. In my experiments, the image still showed up even though the wikicode still pointed to the old image title. So while we'd probably want to fix the code eventually just to be tidy, the image display shouldn't be broken by a move. (Although since this is a much bigger wiki than mine is, I'd still double-check after a move just to make sure.) --Jeysie 18:02, 3 February 2009 (EST)

What happens if you move an image twice? -Derik 21:37, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Answer seems to be: It'll still work server-side, however, it'll appear broken until your browser cache updates to reflect the changes. --Jeysie 15:18, 5 February 2009 (EST)

It's impossible to have the first letter be lowercase. Like regular article titles, the software automatically capitalizes the first letter. —Interrobang, who has nothing vital to contribute to this discussion 17:45, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Right, but since it's automatic for every file no matter what, nothing gets broken. We can still just say "make it all lower-case". -- Repowers 18:27, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Question on naming interiors from books (artbooks, magazines, manga, comics). What about those? For example, the naming scheme I use on the Henkei pack-ins is basically "Henkei 'volume number' cover.jpg", while the Henkei manga gets "Henkei chpt 'number' title.jpg".Well, that's for the chapter titles; interiors would be labeled in the fashion of "Henkei chpt 'number' pg 'number'.jpg", but that could change if/when it comes out in a collected form. It's what I've been labeling my scans (Galaxy Force included). If I had a scan from Phase Ignition, being an artbook, that'd get "phase ignition pg 'number'.jpg".If it was an IDW interior, "IDW 'name' issue 'number' pg 'number'.jpeg" too convoluted? We got which company that published it, the name of the issue ("Revelations", "Hearts of Steel", etc.), issue number and the page number for easy referencing. DW may be a bit trickier, I think... ._.;;; --Lonegamer78 23:02, 3 February 2009 (EST)

I thought that when you uploaded a new file, the wiki software changed the name to all lowercase. It keeps stopping to tell me "Your filename has been changed." -Derik 23:19, 3 February 2009 (EST)

First letter of my image files always gets capitalized automatically despite being lower-case. --Lonegamer78 23:25, 3 February 2009 (EST)

Creating and organising sub-categories really is a better solution. If you have a category that holds thousands of files, then regardless of how those files are organised within the cat, it'll still be un-navigable. You'll still need to put in sub-cats to be able to get to what you want, and when you've got enough of them the actual names of the files will become moot. -- Magnus Maximus 19:40, 4 February 2009 (EST)

^^Truth.

Moreover, if this WAS to be adopted, besides the insane effort it would take to move EVERY IMAGE ON THE WIKI, *and* you did the sane thing and sub-categorised them as well so as to have a proper category tree as I said above... you'd end up with each subcategory filled with names which started with the same X characters, specifically leaving the alpha-navigation within a category useless. - SanityOrMadness 21:13, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Image Categories

I find this conversation counter-productive. We're discussing adopting a RIGID naming structure the wiki doesn't need (and out EDITORS don't need-- we just need names distinct enough to keep them straight while editing a single article) in order to properly group them. And any name-standard system we impose would have to be draconian and absolutely enforced to do what we want. That's stupid, this is a job that should be done by categories-- it's just that no one wants to have to remember those categories.Sipher, if we adopted the image-categories thing you wanted us to have, what kind of categories would there be? Gimmie an example, a full drill-down for one area of the image categories hierarchy. I'll prototype a category wizard for uploading.  :p -Derik 21:35, 4 February 2009 (EST)

Okay, splitting off.

What I'm thinking is more or less the same categories we have for character pages. Franchises and some of the larger subgroups (Dinobots, Action Masters, Pretenders, Mini-Cons, etc). Just SOMETHING. ANYTHING. --M Sipher 01:07, 5 February 2009 (EST)

Hrm. So you plan to make me think as well as code?

• banishes this project to next month.* -Derik^Talk 03:54, 5 February 2009 (EST)

Well, following from the way the issues are categorised, it would go something like:
MarvelUK-331.jpg (to pick an example) Category:Marvel UK covers

subordinate to Category:Marvel Comics images

in turn subordinate to Category:Comic images AND Category:Marvel Comics

Cat:Comic images in turn subordinate to Category:Images

AND

subordinate to Category:Generation 1 images

in turn subordinate to Category:Generation 1 AND Category:Images

- SanityOrMadness 20:27, 5 February 2009 (EST)

Orphaned pages to be deleted?

Hello. Longtime fan, sometime editor, firsttime community portal-erI've been trying to help out and have been attempting to de-orphan many of the orphaned pages. While doing so I found that there are many listings from the "Orphaned Pages" page that are set to be deleted. We may have the chance to bring the orphaned pages down to less than 50 if these erroneous pages are finally deleted. Then we can go back and attempt to de-orphan the remaining ones into useful wiki-links and check off a section of the "Ways to Help Once You Know the Ropes" area.Awesome!Bluestreak7 15:50, 6 February 2009 (EST)

If the deletion seems legitimate you can flag them for speedy deletion and provide an explanation why.

{{speedydeletion|Article title is a spelling error}}

Items flagged for deletion are given a "grace period" for people to object or respond to the deletion request... they are nominated for deletion, so to speak.

As a result, the {{tobedeleted}} are gone through only infrequently, because Admins hate havign to stop at each one, figure out WHY it was nominated for deletion, if it's actually in use, see if there were objections etc etc etc.

{{speedydeletion}} puts all that information at the admin's fingertips. "Nominated in Nov 2007, no objections, no incoming links, content better covered in other articles." They can just speed through the list. -Derik^Talk 17:23, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Is there a rule of thumb as to when tobedeleteds should become speedydeletion articles after a grace period with no objections?

Bluestreak7 15:24, 10 February 2009 (EST)

Granted, to be fair, then again, still, however.

A style note: if you find yourself using one of these phrases, it should raise your eyebrow. If you find yourself with two in any one paragraph, you're probably dogpiling and definitely being sloppy. Go back and re-write without mercy, or I will do it for you. -- Repowers 02:41, 8 February 2009 (EST)

And again -- I'm adopting a shoot-to-kill mentality on this stuff. When someone writes a note that's intended to stand on its own, we should not be tacking on "But still" addenda to it. This is poor and sloppy writing, and it makes us look like retarded chimpanzees and fills me with rage and hatred and etc. & etc, so on and so forth. Rewrite the original note, don't just dogpile onto it. And if you can't rewrite it adequately, maybe your "cute" little addendum isn't worth writing in the first place. -- Repowers 11:26, 7 March 2009 (EST)