User talk:The Librarian

OK I had a bit of a clearout....The Librarian 01:36, January 21, 2010 (UTC)

REMEMBERS

 * Continuity: the story titles should be italicised. (The way to work out references from continuity is. References are in-universe and if there's a lot of them organised under category headings (see...Alien Bodies for an example), continuity is out of universe.)
 * Comic strips: check out Template:Infobox Comic Template:Infobox Other Comics
 * Unknown names: Just put the character in Category:Individuals with unknown names or Category:Humans with unknown names. Also put the individual in whatever additional categories also suit them (not just the unknown name category I mean). Also check out the two categories for the general convention and what not. If there's more than one scientist then it would be 'Female Scientist (Brain Drain)' etc. --Tangerineduel 15:41, September 19, 2009 (UTC)

Lee Sullivan - really nice guy!

 * Hi there - just passing through and thought I'd say hello - a really nice page on BiT. Was very amused that some of the isolated images I couldn't remember drawing :) Speaking of which - back to the drawing board for issue 59! Lee Sullivan 20:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have spoken with Lee on a number of occassions and he has been very helpful in sourcing some of the work and approving use of his artwork. :) A thoroughly decent chap! Im adding more content (hopefully) soon. The Librarian 01:19, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Just loved the imagery!! Creepy!!

 * To paraphrase the Dalek movies; Every move you make I see, every sound you utter I hear...(sounds a lot less creepy in the 60s Dalek voices with the lights flashing not in sync with the voices). I'm always around here. --Tangerineduel 07:48, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Passion / Contempt?! :)
I saw your message on TangerineDuel's talk page... Speaking as "some people" - yes, I am. Our pace of growth is much better than the despised mendicants of the Guild Wars Wiki. Bwahahaha! Monkey with a Gun 01:50, September 16, 2009 (UTC)

Image and illustrator
Added for both Template:Infobox Short Story and Template:Infobox Torchwood Short Story. Both fields are auto-collapsing so they can be added and they'll just collapse if they're not used, see both pages for a copyable template. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 13:03, September 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * But you might also find the Template:Infobox Other Comics might be more useful if it's appeared in a Magazine, as with all infoboxes the fields collapse if they're not used. --Tangerineduel 13:51, September 1, 2010 (UTC)

Templates and galleries
You can find all the templates (or do you mean infoboxes?), the templates are in the Category:Templates category, and you'll find all the infoboxes in Category:Infoboxes.

There is an infobox for music Template:Infobox Music which does have all the collapsing fields on it.

Also check out the Tardis:Layout guide which also has links out to the infoboxes and layout guides etc.

The galleries issue is one that's been going on for a while since a previous MediaWiki update. You can manipulate how the gallery images are laid out. Take a look at Doctor Who DVD covers/Region 2, all the galleries begin with  currently it's 5 covers across in its current layout, change it to 180 and you'll get 4 across (just change it and preview, don't save and you can see the difference). Try it on some of the other pages you're seeing a difference and this should probably help.

As for the 'search this wiki' function and other things like that, yes this wiki and wikia are going through some transitional phrases. But the 'search this wiki' not deleting thing seems to come and go (may be a browser thing), short answer is I don't know for sure. Sorry I couldn't be more help on this front. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 14:22, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

title
Hey, since you mostly deal with articles that are about things that should be italicized, could you please remember to start new articles with the new title template? Its usage is super easy. Just type:

or if only a portion of the title should be italicized

Most of the existing articles that should be italicized have already gotten this treatment, but new articles are a bit beyond my control. Since you deal with this type of article so much, you might benefit of reading the documentation at title, as well. Thanks :)
 * Oh I wish that merely italicizing the title of an article meant that every use of that title would be magically correct throughout the wiki. But, no, italicizing the page title is just that.  It has no impact on how the title is presented in in-line wiki links.

Can you test something for me?
Hey, by now you'll probably have noticed something different when you try to create a new page. I've started adding in a whole fleet of enw preloadable formats. Today, I've gotten around to something that particularly interests you: formats for DWA and DWM issues. Could ya kick the tires on the formats for me, and tell me if you'd like anything tweaked about them? I've based both on the most recent issues of the mags. I think the DWM one is pretty solid, cause I'm familiar with that mag, but it's been a while since I've seen an issue of DWA. I think that you'll like that both formats automatically fill in most of the infobox, and even automatically add categories and the previous and next issues. I'm a little less sure that I've got the subheads right on the DWA thing. Thanks for your help.
 * Thanks for your comments. I'm not sure I understand you very clearly, though.  When you say,
 * And the Option 2 bit ... cant make sence of why when I choose a red link it comes up as the page being created surely is the one headed at the top?
 * what do you mean? Option 2 would be the thing I'd have thought you'd have liked and understood the most.  All you do is just put in the name of a page you want to copy and, hey presto, you get it all copied over into your new page.  So let's say you want to create DWA issue 204 really quickly.  Choose to create that page, then go to Option 2 and enter DWA Issue 203.  It'll copy over the existing page and then you just have to edit in the differences.


 * As for the preloadables under Option 1 being confusing because of some of the code, I'd really prefer that you included all that when you're working in Word. It'll make your life way easier.  You don't even have to think about it.  In a sense you don't have to understand it.  It just works.  Maybe if you chose that format, then hit "preview", you'd see what it did, and therefore got more comfortable with it.  The whole point of having a preloadable format is that it automatically take care of some of the things that are standard to every page.  The coding does this, by automatically numbering issues, making sure a standard lead is attached to each article, and automatically filing the page in the right category.  I'd urge you to try to do the next issue using the preload, preferably not in Word.  Do it "live" so that you can preview it and see what the format is doing.


 * The question I really have for you is whether you think the sectional subheads in the format are good. Do you need more or fewer?  Would you choose different sectional labels?


 * If you haven't done so, you might want to read Help:preloadable formats. Maybe that'll make things clearer.


 * Oh, and the reason you can't extend infobox templates to include subheadings is that limits the utility of the infobox. It means you'd have to create an infobox for every single series, magazine, and medium.  Which isn't desirable.  An infobox is a component of pages; it's not the page itself.  It should be possible to use the infobox for audios, for example, on Big Finish, BBC and Magic Bullet productions.  That wouldn't necessarily be possible if the infobox also had sectional headings on it.

Preloadable format stuff
Okay, I've taken on board your suggestion for rewording the message that comes up when you start a new article. Take a look and tell me whether you think that wording is clearer. (Also, did you ever go to help:preloadable formats to see if you understood the language there?) 18:17:58 Sun 27 Feb 2011

DWA preoloadable
On the DWA issue preloadable, specifically, I've added in the A3/A4/A4 you requested. The cover dates were never removed from the infobox; it's just that in the format the cover date variable isn't defined. Any variables undefined don't appear when the article is published. In other words, if you were looking at template:DWA issue/preload, it would appear that the cover date wasn't there, because none is defined. However, if you actually start a page, and pull down to "DWA issue", the text you see while editing will definitely include a line for "cover date".

I note that you're apparently not using this format as of the latest issue in our library. Had you used the format, it would have automatically avoided the error you made with the second word in DWA Issue 205. It's impossible to get the issue number wrong using the new format. Also, it starts leads in the format that's required by the manual of style. Please remember that ll articles should begin with the name of the article in bold.

Please use the format to add new issues into the database from here on out. It really will make your life a touch easier. Obviously, if you prefer to work offline until you're finished editing an article, you can easily continue to do so. Just paste the contents of template:DWA issue/preload into Word and work there. To avoid what you described as "the ' is not word compatible", simply change the format of the word document to plain text. Then you can type anything without Word trying to "read" certain special characters, like the apostrophe.

Remember that with this new format, the title of the article automatically provides the title of the lead, and the previous and next issues. So you should never have to type in the words "DWA Issue XXX" anywhere in your word document (unless you're making a point about a specific back issue somewhere in the body of your article).

As for whether the bot will get involved in fixing back issues, the answer is a probable yes. I want to get you using the format first and making sure you're comfortable with it. Once got the kinks worked out, and we're sure that the format seems to cover the shape of most issues of the magazine, then we'll worry about imposing it on past issues. One thing the bot may do sooner rather than later is to strip all the back issues of their current leads and replace it with the one in the format — that is, the one that follows the MOS.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask. 18:37:23 Sun 27 Feb 2011

New formats aren't just for DWA issues . ..
Hey again :) Just noticed your latest creations in comic stories, and it appears you've not adopted the format given under the drop down menu.  Please do so, as it automatically places the appropriate templatess on the page, and it uses MOS-appropriate captilization for headers (it's External links not External Links).   Really improtant that all new pages in your sphere of interest have title and TitleSort on them, even if they don't appear to need them.   Feel free, of course, to just copy and paste the new formats into word and to work as you normally do.  Just thought I'd give you a heads up that your current offline templates are now out of date.   10:03:49 Wed 02 Mar 2011

Galleries
Galleries actually aren't meant to be used quite as heavily as you're using them. They're for a few pictures, not hundreds and hundreds on the same page, in a single gallery. When you attempt to put dozens or hundreds of pictures into the same gallery, you're going to run into problems, unless they're all roughly the same dimensions.

Because you didn't elect to specify a picture width for the gallery, the width defaulted to 200px. Thus, it's going to take all the pictures in the gallery and reduce them to 200px max width. It kind of tries to make the height reduce proportionally, but it's not very good at it.

Having many, many pictures of highly varying widths confuses this very simple gallery code. It tries to calculate a good overall dimension which satisfies the 200px width requirement without screwing up the height too much. That works well enough if all the pictures in your gallery have similar dimensions. If they have widely varying dimensions, though, it can cause problems.

One solution can now be seen at the DWM page. I've just broken up the page into multiple galleries. This has worked to give proper dimensions to the postcard pages.

Indeed, you'll note that the primary difference between Free gifts (Doctor Who Adventures) and Free gifts (Doctor Who Magazine) is that the DWA page had several galleries. The DWA page also has far more pictures which are tall and skinny. This helps eliminate the appearance of width distortion. But these galleries always create some level of distortion. file:DWAMFG031.jpg, for instance, is distoted on the DWA page, but the distortion isn't quite as obvious at the postcards on the DWM page. This is because the image has some quite skinny pictures around it, reducing the horizontal stretching.

But the truth is galleries, actively suck at accurately representing the dimensions of pictures. It's far better to build a table with pictures than to rely on . For instance, the pictures of new products on our front page doesn't use galleries at all. Neither does Character Options SJA action figures. You can use table code in a variety of ways to produce a gallery-like structure which behaves more reliably than gallery itself.

Of course, despite their shortcomings, galleries aren't forbidden. It's just important to recognise what they can and can't do. And the gallery command just wasn't meant to be doing what you're asking of it. It's not supposed to hold dozens and dozens pictures. Pages are supposed to be a mixture of text and photos. If you put a bit more description on the actual page, and had no more than a dozen pictures in each gallery, you'd probably never run into problems.

Finally, I'm very concerned over the sheer size of your pictures for the DWM stuff. Each picture seems to be well over 100kb and is well more than 800px in at least one of its two dimensions. Most of the pictures are needlessly in violation of tardis:image use policy. Remember that it will take someone with a slower connection or older machine longer to load each pic. All told, there's probably tens of MB of pictures on the page — which is really quite daunting to some connections. If you needed that size to adequately display the image, that'd be one thing. But you really don't. You could reduce the size of each of the pics by 50% and still adequately convey the image. If you're using Photoshop, consider saving as a web image, and reducing the overall quality to something like 20%. It'll make these pages load much more quickly for all users. 03:04: Mon 24 Oct 2011

End Game
Any chance you could upload a picture of the title panel for End Game (DWBIT comic story) to talk:End Game (DWBIT comic story) and/or my talk page? Thanks :)  01:29: Tue 25 Oct 2011

Images by story categories
Please be aware that images by televised story and images by comic story are now completely filled out with subcategories for each and every story of that type. So if you have an image from say, Thinktwice, you'll want to make sure that you put it in Category:Thinktwice comic story images. Or if you have something from The Mind of Evil, please ensure it gets into Category:The Mind of Evil TV story images.

These images by story categories are, of course, in addition to any other categories which may be appropriate, such as ones from Images by character, Images by object, or images by species.

Images by story will continue to grow over the coming weeks to include other media, but comics and TV were deemed the highest priority, since the vast majority of images will come from these two visual media.

Also, if you haven't noticed it for now, TV story pages now all have a little tab at the top left labelled "images". Clicking it takes you to the relevant category, so that you can quickly view our repository of images from that particular story All stories will eventually have this sort of link. Longer term, individual charactes might also have such a link. 02:40: Mon 20 Feb 2012

Thanks!
Just a note of personal appreciation for doing the work of creating the DWA and DWM pages. Boblipton talk to me 00:33, February 23, 2012 (UTC)

Table images query
Here's the thing. A lot of changes have been made in the last three weeks. I mean tens of thousands of changes having to do with images. The biggest thing is that I've been trying to enforce Forum:Thumbnail widths. In this endeavor, pics have been stripped of their XXXpx designation. In well over 95% of cases, this has worked without a hitch.

However, the one area of the wiki where there has been problematic are generally the pages you like to work on — real world pages about products. The bot simply strips out the XXXpx bit. It doesn't understand context. Very few tables actually have pictures in them, so very few pages have been affected. But I'm willing to bet that you know which pages have been screwed up. It would be helpful if you could remember which pages you've created with tables of this kind. Then, you could just go to them and undo the last edit by User:CzechBot. The page will instantly snap back into place.

It would further be helpful if you could supply me a list of the pages, cause there's not much of a way to detect pages with illustrated tables. Eventually these tables need to be converted into ones that automatically size pics, but I've never really gone lookin for such pages. I'm thinkin' you'd probably be the key to finding them.

Another thing that seems more prevalent in your editing pattern than others: you sometimes don't use thumbnials. You'll just do something like  It would be very helpful if you'd stop this. Always use a thumbnail, and always caon free-standing pics (pics not in a table/infobox). If they're thumbnails, our readers have more control over their size through Special:Preferences. If they're not thumbnails, then they're the size we say they are. We want to give our readers the ability to set the pic size as they will, except when there's an actual need to control things, as with an infobox.

You'll likely find that several of the pages you've edited have oddly-sized free-standing pics, because the bot removed the XXXpx, which would have the effect of putting the pic on the page at full size. We need to identify the pages where this has happened — and, again, you're in the best position to know where you've created your own thumbnails instead of relying on the  syntax.

Since you've been gong for so long, please do take the time to read MediaWiki:Community-corner, category:tech notes and other forum threads.

Just to highlight what you'll find there:


 * be aware that we're now categorising comic images both by the characters, species, objects and stories they depict. Check out category:Images for a look at the new categories.
 * infoboxes now automatically size and display pics. You just enter   not  .  This means that pics are always at 250px widths.  This also means that some of the really skinny pics from DWBIT and DWA that you've put up in the past are out. You've really got to try to get widescreen images only for infoboxes, except in the cases of covers.  See T:ICC and User talk:OttselSpy25 for a li'l tutorial. I know this is hard with comic stuff, and there are going to be times where widescreen is literally impossible.  But in those cases, you must get the length:width ratio no longer than a standard magazine cover.  The infobox cannot stretch to three and four times the height of the article, which it would do if you took at image at 1:4 (1 units of width to 4 units of height) and set it at 250px.
 * Because infobox pics are automatically set now, you can't add captions in the image variable. The image variable displays 1 image at 250px only.  I might be adapting the infobox to allow for an image2 variable for magazines and books, so I've retained those cases where you've added a second cover.  But they don't currently display.
 * Your practice of having 400-600px-wide pics in the middle of comic story articles has been abandoned. I've deleted all those.  In the first place, there's no way it was fair use to reprint several sequential images in a row.  In the second, it was destroying the text flow on those pages.  Basically those "comic strips" of yours were too fat to squeeze between the infobox and the left margin, meaning that the article didn't really start until after the huge picture.  It probably looked fine in Monobook, but Wikia just wouldn't wear it.  Please don't put these images, or anything like them, back.  Remember, all images outside of the infobox must be thumbnails without specified widths only.

Hmm, that last bit sounds like I'm being a bit critical of your work. And I'm not. I'm sure a lot of that probably never occurred to you. The BIT stuff is sufficiently old that you probably did edit in Monobook, but then never really came back to look a it in Wikia. As Wikia develops the software, we simply have to move to accommodate their changes. Unfortunately this can mean that previous work we've done gets invalidated overnight. Obviously, we appreciate your work around here! If you have any further questions, you know where I am. 02:55: Wed 07 Mar 2012

Your technical editing issues
Leaving all the specifics of editing images to one side for the moment, I'm most concerned about the report that you were actually prevented from editing/frustrated the point of stopping by some technical issues. I'm also surprised to har that you're not getting the "new messages" alert.

Since your problems, as described, are well beyond anything I've ever heard before, I do wanna ask a coupla questions:
 * What browser do you use (including version number)
 * What OS do you use (including version number)
 * What skin do you edit in (Monobook or Wikia — that is, do you currently see Bernice Summerfield's head peeking out from behind the page?)

I do want to try to sort your basic technical problems as quickly as possible before moving to anything else. 19:46: Wed 07 Mar 2012

DWMS covers
Got a li'l project for you, if you're up for it. For some reason, almost all the DWMS covers are <250px. They need to be a minimum of 250px to fit properly in the infobox. Any chance you might be able to easily replace the covers for us? Thanks. Also, if you know any other covers you've uploaded with <250px width dimensions, could you switch those out, too? 21:36: Tue 13 Mar 2012

Comic infobox
To answer your question briefly: 01:29: Fri 30 Mar 2012
 * You're encouraged to read Infobox Story to get a better grasp of how the new infoboxes work. Although the documentation is still being written up, there is considerable coverage for the comic story version of the infobox.   Also, there are lively discussions going on in the forums about the new infoboxes, which are centralised at New infoboxes and you.
 * The reason that the infobox at Picture Imperfect (comic story) doesn't work is because The Star Serpent (comic story) does not exist. You created The Star Serpent] without the disambiguation term of (comic story). Please remember from this point forward to create all comic stories with the form Title (comic story). If you now simply move The Star Serpent to The Star Serpent (comic story), the infobox at Picture Imperfect will "magically" work.  (There's a list of these now-mandatory dab terms at, um, dab term.)
 * Also, please take a look at Tardis:Guide to images. I've tried to create a lot of examples there of good and bad screenshots so that we're all working to a common standard.  You'll see a number of your own screenshots there.  They're mostly used as negative examples, but this wasn't to pick on you.  I simply went through recently-added images in reverse order and a few of yours popped up.  Still, I hope the guide will help the wiki achieve a more harmonious use of imagery.
 * You should indeed get a message to pop up, like the Game of Rassilon points notifications when I publish this message. If you don't, you should probably contact Wikia Staff at Special:Contact/bug.  If you're not getting message notifications, that's definitely something affecting you personally, not the whole wiki.  (I want to say that at one time it was an option under Special:Preferences, but that the option is no longer there.  Thus if you turned it off, you can't now turn it back on.  Talk to staff, though, to get all your options.  I would say that you could probably instantly fix it by just restoring defaults, but this may eliminate other options that you like, so I'd talk to staff first.)

Sorry, I just don't understand
I honestly don't understand anything you're asking under User:CzechOut. Please take as many screenshots as are necessary to illustrate your prolbem and ask again.

The only thing I can tell you right now is that there are no known bugs with removing categories. You might find it helpful to go into Special:Preferences and disable the category module. The check box is in the "Under the hood" tab, IIRC. You don't need an admin's help to remove a category.

If your category module is turned on (which is the default), then you'll find the category module on the right column. All you do to remove the category is just highlight it and click delete — just as if it were text in the larger editing area on the left. You cannot edit both the main edit box on the left and the category module on the right at the same time. When you edit the categories, the edit area naturally disengages. THIS should be relatively clear because the box being edited turns a light shade of blue when you're actively editing it. 03:58: Fri 30 Mar 2012

New Notes (2012)
I'm aware some of the above still need addressing - I'm working on it! The Librarian talk to me 21:27, April 2, 2012 (UTC)

Display queries
Thanks for the pictures. That cleared up the problems a lot. Yes, there is an issue on novelisation pages, which I will be correcting today. Basically, I just have to strip out the old way of doing the italicised titles and replace it with the new way. It's not a hard fix — but it is indeed a genuine error. So thanks for pointing it out!

The other thing you're seeing is not exactly an error — in that it's perfectly expected behavior, given the code — but it shows me why you can't seem to find categories. You're editing widescreen, which means that you're going to get that "funkiness" with the preload stuff. It also means you're not going to see categories, if you have the category module enabled in Special:Preferences (which is the default condition). If your edit screen always looks like this, this is why you were reporting earlier problems in deleting categories. You couldn't see them in order to delete them. The easy fix for this is to just don't edit in widescreen. Click on the thin, grey, border which frames your edit area on the right. There's a tiny, left-pointing arrow there on the right border, but it can be hard to see. You just have to click somewhere on that right border – doesn't have to be the arrow itself.

You might wonder to yourself, though, why not change the code with the preloads so that the "scrunchy" effect doesn't happen? The reason is because neither I nor the smartest codemonkeys on Wikia seem to know how — yet. And the truth is that it's a low priority. Since you can so easily collapse the edit box back to its normal shape, it's not that big a worry.

As for dab terms like (comic story), it is probably a good idea to get in the habit of adding the dab term. The move was made for the benefit of new users. Annually, we get the question, why is it sometimes Castrovalva (TV story) and other times The Reign of Terror? For the benefit of attracting and retaining new editors it was decided to make naming standard. Thus it is always correct to link to Hotel Historia (comic story). As we go forward, and initially create stories with the dab term, you may not be able to rely on having an un-dab-ed title around. That is, there may only be Future Adventure (comic story), but not Future Adventure. So you might as well get in the habit of using the dab term. (Remember, it's easier to link to a story with a dab term by pipe switching. You don't have to type  .)  That said, do I personally still type  ? Yes, I do. I know by heart which television stories require dab terms and which don't. So I'm more inclined to drop the parenthetical. But when it comes to audios, comics, novels, whatever, I'm much less inclined to chance it.

As for covers, or pictures generally, remember there are two kinds of size. One way of measuring size is the dimension — the literal width X height. Here it's mandatory that covers be at the very least 250px (but try for 300px). There's not really an upper number, per se, but the highter the dimensions, the higher the bigger the file gets. In this sense, I'm talking about true file size. That is, it's size in terms of kilobytes. Here, there is absolutely no need for a cover to be greater than 100kb. But there's no precise relationship between the file size and the dimensions. It's possible to have an 1000px wide picture be under 100kb. And it's equally possible to have a 300px file be 1.2mb. It all comes down to the settings you use on your graphics program. If you find you're having difficulty hitting the mark, let me know what kind of graphics program you use, and I can probably come up with some suggested settings.

By the way, DWA cover has been reworded to reflect the change in publisher. I don't think the change affects the copyright status much, though — the images are stil effectively controlled by BBCW. Also, I wasn't terribly clear what you meant when you said that image categories had been reduced. We've recently exploded the number of image categories. There are easily 1000 more image categories than there were a month or so ago. But categories for covers have always meant to be just for covers. Covers for interior art should bear comic copyright, but they should also bear the category associated with the story from whence they came, as well as any major characters in the image. So, if you have something from Hotel Historia featuring the Tenth Doctor and Majenta, it should be in Category:Hotel Historia comic story images, category:Tenth Doctor images and category:Majenta Pryce images. 18:19: Tue 03 Apr 2012