User talk:Tangerineduel

Geoffrey Sax
Hey, since you've researched the production of the TV movie fairly carefully, is there any chance you could help me finish the Geoffrey Sax article expansion by filling in Geoffrey Sax? That'll be the section concentrating on Sax' contribution to the TVM. Thanks. 08:53:15 Wed 20 Jul 2011

Loss of edit button
Yeah, just checked it out a bit. Don't know why it's happening, but the edit dropdown is gone on both the user and user talk namespaces. It's nothing to do with the archive tool, though, cause a) it's happening to people who've never touched archive tool, and it's not happening on regular talk pages where archive tool has been used. It's also happened recently, as the message above was left via the edit dropdown. Seems like a wikia glitch to me.  I'll check community central to see if there's any chatter about it.   15:45:28 Wed 20 Jul 2011
 * And, like magic, it's back again. Didn't do anything.  It's just . . . back.  Yeah, that seems like a typical Wikia-generated problem.   15:55:26 Wed 20 Jul 2011

Updating a single file with the cover of the latest issue of a magazine
Didn't notice BroadcastCorp. was up to this. I'll have a word with him. It's a bad idea. Load times are an issue, but the more convincing is that eventually it won't work. He'll do an update and the pic just won't change, because of MediaWiki caching issues. I'm sure you've seen this before. You change a pic and it takes days for it to update. That's maybe acceptable on a regular article page, but the front page is meant to be "newsy". We want those pics to immediately update. Only way to ensure that is to just use the actual file at, say File:Dwm-issue-373.jpg, rather than uploading that pic to another file named file:Dwm.jpg  17:12:11 Fri 22 Jul 2011

Featured articles
I'm not working on an NA one. I'm pleased you approve of the new version of the nomination page; I was going to ask your opinion, but noticed you haven't been around lately. Tardis:Feature Article policy will need to be rewritten when the time comes, but other than that, I'm ready to begin the changeover when you want. Just give us a shout if you have any feedback or criticisms that need attention. Thanks-- 16:07, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

So from that, I take it, I'm free to implement the new version? Yeah, the only part of the policy in need of (major) attention is the section on voting.-- 16:32, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Right, I've rewritten the policy and put it in this sandbox (ignore the template at the bottom). Could you take a look if you have a min as it's not... that great.-- 17:12, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Okay, both the policy and nomination pages are up and Thanks for helping-- 17:49, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Sounds great. Do you need me to do anything?-- 18:13, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, that wasn't very clear at all. Definitely a sub page. I never thought of that. On a side note, I'm off to the lakes for a week, so I'm handing all responsibility for this project over to you :) -- 18:22, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Chat feature
Thank you. You have been more persuasive than User:Skittles the hog has ever been. At least someone gives a reason! :) BroadcastCorp 17:17, July 29, 2011 (UTC)

Re:Why create talk pages?
Why not? --MrThermomanPreacher 13:18, August 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see. --MrThermomanPreacher 13:22, August 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * I only did it as I was on the Wanted Pages, and there were dozen and dozen of links to them. So it was easier to just add the talk template and clear out the wanted pages. Also it stops Users from using the template talk page as a way of using general discussion (i.e "I really liked the Daleks in this series"). MM/ Want to talk? 14:19, August 7, 2011 (UTC)

Category:Templates
I'm not experiencing the same problem as you reported. All things directly under category:templates are either in the category or template namespaces. Nothing within the article namespace at all. Here's a dynamic listing of current contents: category=templates columns=4 order=ascending I don't see anything there that shouldn't be there. If you saw a random selection of articles, then it most likely was a glitch. Problems resulting from user changes (as opposed to Wikia-based glitches) typically aren't random. 15:37:36 Sun 07 Aug 2011
 * Well, as it turns out, there was some damage done to real world last week. Boblipton inexplicably blanked the whole "business end" of the template, leaving behind only usage instructions.  I guess that would have meant that every page which carried real world would have then carried the usage instructions.  This was somewhat fixed by 23skidoo, but oddly he didn't do just a simple "undo".   He then went to another revision, fixing a problem of his own making, and then Mini-mitch got in on the act the following day.  I've now gone back and simply reverted to the last known good version, since none of the intervening versions added anything useful to the template.


 * Anyway, all this does provide an explanation. See, when Bob blanked it we were left with this:

Usage
This should be the first "word" of an article, unless the article has an infobox. If the article has an infobox, then it should be typed immeidately after the closing curled bracket of the infobox, without spaces or linebraks. The first word of the article proper should then come immediately afterwords, without line breaks or spaces. Hence: The reason for the difference with infoboxes is that infobox code interferes with this template, and the closest you can get the template to the top of the page is to put it directly underneath the infobox.
 * }The article name is a thing the Doctor ...


 * As you can see, he snipped the opening, leaving only the closing command behind. This meant that everything bearing {{tl|real world]] was suddenly put in category:templates.


 * Two very quick revisions by 23Skidoo almost certainly caused confusion in the cache. This meant that when you saw the category, the MediaWiki cache was still struggling to catch up with contradictory revisions.  Some of the real world pages were still heading towards the Boblipton revision, while others were speeding towards Skidoo's first revision, and others towards his second.  As a result, there was apparent "random"ness of pages in the category.


 * Sadly I still don't know what Boblipton was originally trying to accomplish, since he left no revision note.


 * As for the dynamic category stuff (DPL), no, it's not terribly new. It's kinda what's behind other somewhat obscure functions like #categorytree.  And it's at the heart of the forum software.  Well, I say "forum software", but really "forums", such as they are, are just a very slightly specialised usage of DPL.  In fact, because the forum version of DPL has a category limitation which regular DPL doesn't, the Panopticon archives use a mixture of forum and pure DPL coding to get around forum limitations.  I suppose I just got stronger at using it in the wake of redoing and categorising all the forums.


 * Another point is that it was the original impetus for re-organizing our category tree last year. You may remember what a mess it was before that.  DPL would have been quite difficult to use in those original conditions.  And, yes, there are still limbs of the category tree which need pruning, but, on the whole, we're finally "DPL-ready" in most categories.  It took me forever, for instance, to straighten category:timeline, which is why Doug's deletion of most of the structure has been so very disappointing.


 * Categories are the heart and soul of a wiki. Hopefully the next year will really start to show that off.  {{user:CzechOut/Sig}} 16:16:17 Sun 07 Aug 2011

BFA (or is it BFAMonthlly?)
It's such an arbitrary question you're asking, if I'm understanding it. I'd say, though, that you should go strict, rather than broad, on this one. Featuring only those stories which were in the numbered, monthly range makes the template logically unassailable. You start letting specials in and you're on a slippery slope. Yes, The Four Doctors is a bonus to subscribers of the monthly range, but No Place Like Home and Cuddlesome aren't. Your navbox is for the range, not the Doctor. The fact that you've arranged by Doctor doesn't mean that you have to then let in every BF story done with each Doctor. If it did, you'd have to put in Companion Chronicles and Short Trips and technically some Gallifrey stories. Your sanity — and readers' comprehension — will be improved by going for purely numbered, monthly releases. I'd advise, however, that you do include a little note at the bottom of the navbox explaining your position. 20:36:46 Sun 07 Aug 2011

MM/ Want to talk? 20:34, August 9, 2011 (UTC)

Genesis of the Daleks and I, Davros date
REF: Doctor Who: The Dalek Handbook states that the Thousand Year War began in 450 and ended in 1450.

GusF 14:22, August 13, 2011 (UTC)

Doctor Who 63
Please allow me some time to perform an independent audit of User:Doctor Who 63's contributions, and I'll get back to you. 17:22:37 Sat 13 Aug 2011
 * Okay, I've checked his contributions, and I see why you're frustrated. However, my inkling is that he's not doing it deliberately.  Please see Attack of the Cybermen.  You will see there an incongruous picture of the cover to The Resurrection of Mars.  I put up this picture, file:Testytesttest.jpg, using the "add a picture to this gallery button".  You will note that it doesn't have a license.  That's because this button triggers a series of pages — none of which allow for the placement of an image license.  You can't even manually type in a template call anywhere.  It just gets posted directly to the gallery and you never see the page in the file namespace.


 * Looking at this user's contributions, they're all things in galleries. My guess is that Doctor Who 63 has only used this "add to gallery" button to upload pics. Well, almost only — we know that he's uploaded new versions of an image, so he knows what a file: page is.  But still, my money is on the fact that he's not doing anything malicious, and that he's not responding to you because he likely doesn't quite understand what you're talking about.


 * So that leaves us with a quandry. It's possible to use a feature of the wiki, in exactly the way Wikia intends it to be, and to fall foul of our own policies.  I think we can safely rule out stern measures against this user.  But we do need to figure out how we're going to close this loophole.  Do we want to try to disable this button altogether?  Do you want to try to keep the feature, but modify it, like we did with the "add a photo" button on the right rail of pages?  Do you want me to look around for a solution, or do you want to handle it?  Let me know how you want to play it, and we'll move forward from there.


 * Also, on the question of uploading dissimilar pictures as new versions, well, ya may have come across a bit harsh there by threatening a ban. After all, the history of the file, if you just looked at the series of images there, isn't very clear as to what is the file's true nature.  It's not the most forthright name, either.  You've helped things by moving it to a different name, but when this user encountered it, it was 1.jpg, and it had three very different images in its history.  He probably didn't know what to make of that, and so thought nothing of adding yet a fourth image to the file history.  Now,I know you were consistent by telling one of the other users who put up a dissimilar image that they shouldn't have done that, but it takes research to see that even-handedness.  Just going off the immediate evidence, file:1.jpg wasn't really about anything specific.  I'm not sure it's really vandalism, what's gone on with this file, because he did give another DWU image.  It's not like he replaced it with the image of someone's ass or something.


 * What we really should be worried about is banning the use of purely numeric, or "jibberish" alphanumeric, filenames for pics. That makes it much easier to understand what a picture is meant to be, and then judging whether the picture is an appropriate representation of that thing.  file:1.jpg should only be a pic of the number 1 or, and this is unlikely, the year 1.  An image of Sarah Jane is just as nonsensical as an image of an Andrew Skilleter image of the five Doctors.   18:12:15 Sat 13 Aug 2011

Rollback rights
User:CzechOut asked me to contact you about me having rollback rights. Do you think I will be able to? BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:30, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Master refers to it, but doesn't advocate removal of image
You should tell that to User:Skittles the hog, as that's what he said when he removed the Doctor image. BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:54, August 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * I would contest that talk:The Master does not specify "the Doctor" to be in need of attention. In fact, it mentions it to be in the same boat and it clearly is. I assume you reintroduced the image because there isn't currently a discussion about that at talk:The Doctor and no replacement is available. If this isn't the case, why is it back?-- 18:11, August 14, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think the Doctor image is the only one in need of major attention. Perhaps Rassilon as well, but Romana is just a two-piece split and that look pretty nice as it is. A similar discussion at talk:The Doctor would probably do the job.-- 15:30, August 15, 2011 (UTC)


 * Don't worry, I didn't know either :) -- 15:39, August 15, 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism policy
I've given tardis:vandalism policy a major structural overhaul, but haven't changed that much of the substance of what it says. The major excpetion to this is that I've deliberately changed what you said about user talk pages. In my view, it is actually vandalism to remove what other people have written on "your" talk page, as you have no reasonable expectation of ownership of the page. Wikia owns the page, and at any point, they can kick any of us out. Bigger point, though, is that all discussions on user pages are as public as a forum page.

Let's imagine you'd put the statement, "I'm not in favour of changing tardis:manual of style" on my user page. Under the way you had written the vandalism policy, there was nothing to stop me from editing your comments so that they read, "I'm in favour of changing tardis:manual of style", and thereby completely changing the meaning of your statement. Just take a look at any lengthy discussion you have in your talk page archives and imagine the impact of removing one entire comment from that discussion. It could well change the course of the discussion, or at the very least, the way that a person reading it later might understand that conversation.

So I've definitely, substantively changed that part of the policy. Aside from that, though, I think the current revision maintains the basic sense of your original concept. Could you take a look at it and advise as to any problems you have with it? Thanks. 15:33:07 Tue 16 Aug 2011
 * Okay, I've edited according to your notes. However, I should say that the article did already note an exception on user talk pages for archiving the page.  Now, though, that's strengthened a bit by including a link to the archiving policy.  Tell me if you see anything else you want changed. Or, y'know, just change it yourself :)  16:14:39 Tue 16 Aug 2011
 * Nope, a critique's exactly what I wanted. Just didn't want to imply that you couldn't do the changes on your own :).  Hey, so I've now gone to tardis:archiving policy and given that one a bit of a spruce up.  I notice there, too, you had the explicit allowance that people could just blank or edit their talk pages as they see fit. Again, I don't think that's right.  So I've brought that language into harmony with my revision of the vandalism policy.  Allowing people to delete or blank their talk pages is a recipe for madness, I think.  Cause if you commit a revision to the wastelands of the page history, you make it an act of positive research to figure out the original shape of a discussion.  And, y'know, it's no big deal to look at a history if you're talking about a recent revision.  But if you're trying to figure out whether a person with an active talk page substantively altered a discussion to make it appear that another user swore two weeks ago, that can be quite a chore.  So we've got to make it clearly forbidden to change one's own talk page, to protect the interests and reputations of the people who post on user talk pages.  If I know that a particular user is inclined to change or delete my edits of his talk page, I'm not going to be terribly inclined to post on that page.  We've got to make sure that all users are confident that they can spend their time responding to another user without the danger that the recipient will disrespect the sender.  Otherwise, the whole system of discussion breaks down.   16:48:30 Tue 16 Aug 2011
 * I don't think any policy says you have to archive. Archiving policy currently says that if you want to remove things from your talk page, you can only do so by archiving.  But I don't think it can be reasonably interpreted as saying, "Okay Doug86 — just to pick a reluctant archiver — the time has come that you MUST now archive your page."


 * I think it's awfully important to prevent users from selectively destroying a discussion page. There is no difference, from a technical standpoint, between a user page and a forum page.  They're both completely public conversations.  The fact that most people carry out conversations across multiple user talk pages, means that third parties wishing to trace a conversation already have to do some detective work.  In order to follow this conversation, people would have to go to my page as well as this one, and check the timestamps to make sure they're following it all sequentially.  If we say to people, "Do what you want, it's your page.  Delete or blank it as you see fit because it's all in the history", then you're just handing people the ability to distort, change or obscure facts at will.  They could take out one comment, one word or a whole page — all of which would be equally devastating to understanding what's actually gone down on a user talk page.


 * Here are just a few situations that would be complicated by having no ban on talk page deletion/editing:
 * It would be completely allowable to edit my statements on an issue so as to support the completely opposing view. You could then direct other people to "my" comments on your page, and, by the time I'd figured out what had happened, your alteration of "my" opinion would have become entrenched in other users' minds, and I would have a devil of a time convincing them otherwise.  In other words, character assassination would be made simple.
 * A user offends, say, tardis:image use policy. You give them a warning on their talk page, but they think it makes them "look bad", so they remove it.  They then commit the same offence again, but I notice it this time.  So I go to their user page and, seeing no record of a previous offence, I give them another warning.  They sweep it under the carpet again, and then Mini-mitch finds them in violation for a third time, but he finds a blank page.  So the editor gets away with it again. I don't know about you, but I don't check a user talk page history before I begin posting on it. I look at what's there and expect it to be the sum of what's gone on with them.  If we're to enforce the rules fairly, we need to ensure that we have a clear, obvious record of user warnings — not stuff buried in a hitory.  Users want, and largely deserve, warnings before we block them.  What's the point of saying in various policies that we will try to warn them if we allow them to just delete the warnings?  The onus should not be on us to investigate a page history to see if we're taking the appropriate response to a rules violation.
 * Let's say that I was talking to Ausir about editing some Torchwood-related thing. And we went a few rounds on it, but then figured out that maybe we should open up a forum discussion on it to get more opinions.  When we do this, we say, "Hey check out our discussions on our talk page" for an understanding of the background of this argument.  The conversation goes cold, until a year from now when someone searches the forum for the topic, finds a thread, and tries to piece it all together.  They go back to the links on our talk pages and . . . Ausir has now blanked his page.  It's not there in an archive; it's only in the hisotry.  But a year has passed.  It's an awful lot of history, and as is typical on talk pages, there's not a revision note in sight in the history.  At this point, the investigating editor stops, cause it's frustrating.  All he has is the half of the conversation on my page, and the promise of possibly finding the rest of it, if he decides he can be bothered to look through Ausir's history.   In other words, blanking a page only technically preserves a conversation in the history.  For all practical purposes, it buries the conversation beyond the reach of most people's wiki-searching abilities.


 * Those are just three examples, but I think each one of them is reason enough to directly prohibit the alteration of user talk pages. Look, most people aren't going to need this rule.  Most people are simply too lazy with their talk pages to bother altering it.  But we need a clear prohibition in policy so that we have something we can use when get a clear case of "page tampering" — just as I had yesterday with BroadcastCorp, who has taken to removing whole conversations from both my and his talk pages, and as has happened with Special:Contributions/90.215.45.50, whose subtle edits to a user talk page (maybe yours?) made it appear that I was signing my name to something I never wrote.


 * It's interesting that you point out Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, because I think that policy is essentially what I'm saying. It says clearly:


 * The basic rule — with some exceptions outlined below — is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission.


 * Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page.


 * Now, I know that one of the "exceptions outlined below" is the user talk page, and it does say that "deletion of others' comments on your talk page is permitted". But to me, that's not a reasonable exception, but an irreconcilable contradiction with the main rule.  Deletion of a comment, especially of a portion of a comment — which this exception would allow – fundamentally changes the meaning of of someone's comment.  Even if you do delete the whole comment, you're changing the meaning of the conversation as a whole, because all that remains is the half the conversation that remains on the other correspondent's talk page.  I just don't see how this exemption could, in practice, work.  So I do strongly disagree with this stated exception to wikipedia policy, and would prefer that the "basic rule" for all talk pages simply apply to user talk pages.


 * There's just no good rationale for user talk pages to fall under a different rule set than other talk pages. A talk page is a talk page is a talk page.


 * As for the archive tool itself, yes, that's open to general use. The reason you're not seeing it at w:c:harrypotter is simply cause they've not installed it in their javascript.  15:15:23 Wed 17 Aug 2011


 * Oh, and I should point out, too, that Wikipedia doesn't have ArchiveTool, or anything like it, as a standard feature of the average user's site experience. (You can add it, but I'd wager the majority of people don't.)  Given how easy it is to archive on our site — seriously, it's five seconds outta your life — there is no reason we can't demand removal of comments only by archiving.  Seriously, you can archive a page here faster than you can type out a link to Raxacoricofallapatorius, so why not require it?   15:27:39 Wed 17 Aug 2011


 * Well, it's certainly not just BroadcastCorp's shenanigans that are triggering this. Indeed, I'd point out that while we might be discussing what you can do to your own talk page, there's absolutely no question that BC's tampering with my page was unambiguously wrong. But as I say, he's just one in a train of incidents,. The little war that earlier this year went on between Mini-mitch and Bold Cone was damnably difficult for an objective third party to follow.  Both of them have this stated "thing" on their page that warns that rude comments will be removed, and they were both considering the other's comments rude.  If, in your administrative capacity, you're trying to figure out if someone's crossing the "no personal attack" line in such an environment, it can be awfully difficult, because they're both just zapping the other's comments.

Also, in making rewrites to the manual of style based on archiving forum threads, I've been on more than a few talk pages trying to track down the origins of certain discussions, in an effort to represent those precedent discussions in the policy as well — only to be severely frustrated by the number of dead ends I hit. And, yes, I know you blank your page from time to time as I've gone to look for things I remembered being there only to find that they're not there, or in your archives, any more.


 * Now, of course, I understand why all that has happened in the past. After all, archiving has been a bit of a mystery up to now.  A lot of users don't know anything about subpages, so they didn't know how else to "wipe the slate clean".  But with it made so easy, I just don't see   a legitimate reason not to do it. There is no difference in the number of clicks needed to archive, versus those needed to blank.  And both functions are started from the same drop-down menu.


 * As for a disconnect that might be caused by two users archiving at different times, sure, that will almost certainly happen. But it's still much easier to click a few times through an archive than it is to unearth a point buried deep in a revision history — especially given that almost no one leaves revision notes for their own talk page.


 * I just can't get away from the fact that we need to preserve discussions. I know that you were just playing devil's advocate in your last post, but I would genuinely like to know how you respond to the three cases I outlined last time.
 * Shouldn't it be obvious when someone has been cautioned? Do we as admin have an added burden of responsibility to search through a user talk page history just to see if they've been warned about something before, but are now hiding that earlier warning?


 * How do we protect an editor from having his meaning changed on another user talk page except by banning the editing or blanking of a talk page?
 * How do we help editors researching a topic from having to dig through a revision history, unless we say, "You must archive if you want to clear your page"?


 * Again, I know you're playing devil's advocate, so you may personally be in agreement with me, but just to run through this whole "your user page isn't yours" thing, well, it's wikia policy. If you look at w:c:community:project:Central user pages, you see that Wikia basically defers to wikipedia:wikipedia:user pages, which makes very clear:
 * Note: "Your" in this context means associated with you, not belonging to you
 * I can appreciate that the word "steward" may need a rethink. But it's a long-held philosophy of wiki editing that a user page isn't owned by the user.  This is the concept which allows for them to be regulated at all.  (it's also the reason you don't want to use your user page for creative expression, because a user page is governed by the same license as other pages; i.e. you give up copyright by writing your original story on your user page.)  So maybe "steward" isn't a great word, but the concept of non-ownership is definitely there, as is made even more explicit by wikipedia:Wikipedia:UP.  15:28:08 Thu 18 Aug 2011

More on featured articles
A couple of weeks ago, Czech suggested that the admins come together and select the five (including August) featured articles taking us up to Jan 2012. The idea behind this is that it allows for time in which the nomination process I suggested can be carried out to a high degree of quality (or, till it's good). Thoughts?-- 15:29, August 18, 2011 (UTC)

Could go with suggesting a few and then culling, that sounds like the best method. How about Tardis_talk:Feature_Article_nominations for the discussion?-- 15:39, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

Done. It's on the talk page.-- 15:54, August 19, 2011 (UTC)

New user masthead: founder?
You may have noticed that the new user masthead gives admin, staff and blocked users a flag. It doesn't differentiate between bureaucrats and admin, by deliberate Wikia choice. However, it does identify the "founder" of the wiki from all other admin. And here there's a real oddity. It's calling Mantrid the founder, rather than Freethinker1of1. This doesn't make much sense to me because a) Freethinker certainly seems to think he's the guy who started it on his profile page and b) Freethinker has an earlier join date than Mantrid. So I've sent in a tech support question to Wikia to see if they can explain this minor anomaly. 17:00:37 Fri 19 Aug 2011

Knock-on effects of new user masthead. You'll love this one.
Okay, so right in the middle of our discussion about how incredibly easy it is to archive a user talk page — Wikia pulled the rug out from under that point. Somehow the new user masthead has screwed with the dropdown available on user talk pages, and all our custom options, including "archive" are gone. This issue doesn't affect any other "talk" namespace. It's probably something simple, like they called the button a different name or something. But for the moment, archiving is down on user talk pages. Poetic justice, really. I think I can fix it on my own, but just in case, I've put out a feeler to the developer of ArchiveTool. Worst case scenario: it'll be down until mid-September when he returns from vacation. <span style="">17:20:11 Fri 19 Aug 2011
 * Well, no, ArchiveTool has been around for almost 3 years now, and is supported on Wikia's official development wiki (W:c:dev). It's been resilient through several modifications of the base wikia code.  There's nothing terribly "sensitive" about the code that argues against relying on it — except for that really random bug in the core MediaWiki software that prevented me and a handful of other users from using it without a workaround.  Which reminds me, I suppose I should eliminate the possibility that it's a problem with the workaround that only I'm using.  So, is archive tool there for you or not?  <span style="">17:46:54 Fri 19 Aug 2011