User talk:Boblipton

Grasshoppers
I actually deleted both your attempts, because neither was really possessed of the minimum requirements for an article here. Here are some tips for the future.
 * T:BOLD TEXT requires that you embolden the topic of the article in the first sentence of the article, but T:NO HTML forbids you from doing it with HTML, as you tried to do. You must use ordinary wiki markup.  This means: Giant grasshoppers were ...
 * Plural nouns may not be used to entitle articles, except in extraordinary circumstances. Thus, of the two articles you tried to write, giant grasshopper employed the correct title.
 * When citing a source you must link it, every time. Please review T:CITE.
 * T:TENSES requires the exclusive use of the past tense. Your attempts were both written wholly in the conditional tense.  When writing about things which are mentioned in a tentative way within narratives, the best approach is to frame it in terms of something a character said.  For instance, it might be correct for the article to read:
 * According to the Doctor, giant grasshoppers were . However, he also admitted that they could have been.
 * As I don't know the cited novel well, I couldn't rewrite the article. Since you apparently do know the novel, skim through, figure out who supplied the info about grasshoppers, and rewrite accordingly.

Hope that helps :) 03:42: Sun 06 Nov 2011

Stevie Wonder
Hey, your image on Stevie Wonder's page is not very good.

1) It's an out of univurse pic, thus I doubt it is usuable.

2) It features too many people. How do I know Stevie Wonder isn't a Woman? He might be the Blond one there. The main issue is him and who I think is Kanye West. If I was ignorant, it would be very difficult for me to tell the two apart, exspecially sence both have glasses. OttselSpy25 talk to me 05:46, November 13, 2011 (UTC)

Timelink: Volume 1
In my 100,000 Post/Article it's saying that it is the Nerva Station not the Beacon

TimeTraveller34 talk to me 11:40, November 14, 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thank you so much for fixing the picture problem with the "Tenth Doctor" page; I couldn't find a suitable photo in my attempt previously. Thanks! Patrick Watt talk to me 23:21, November 18, 2011 (UTC)

Thanks
I'm not being sarcastic; a few hours ago, the "Tenth Doctor" page was missing an image. I tried to solve the problem, but to no avail. Thanks for solving the problem for me. Patrick Watt talk to me 23:27, November 18, 2011 (UTC)

Hey there. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I have blocked the user for a month. --Revan\Talk 17:17, November 20, 2011 (UTC)

Individual Rutans
I removed "Individual Rutans" from Elizabeth Winters because it's a non-existent category, and there aren't enough pages linking to it to require such a category. -- Tybort (talk page) 00:50, November 26, 2011 (UTC)

Pic suggestions
I've noticed recently that you've been uploading some pictures at or near 250px. I think you've slightly misunderstood T:ICC/image use policy. When we say that the minimum width is 250px, that doesn't mean to take a pic which is available at a larger width and shrink it to 250px. We mean that the absolute minimum is 250px, since that's infobox width. But really, a better minimum to shoot for is 292px (or, better, just remember 300px), since that's the width of an advertisement. You probably don't see a lot of advertisements, because you're always logged in, but in some Wikia configurations, advertisements have appeared above infoboxen at a width of 292px. Having all pics at 292-300px means that they can be still be used in infoboxen if Wikia decide to go back to such a layout.

For this reason, if you have the option of saving at a size greater than 250px, please do take it. Also, please be sure to crop out any watermarks or logos.

Futhermore, when placing a picture on a page, please include caption text, like so:

02:11: Mon 05 Dec 2011


 * Hmmm, well, consider this. If a new editor saw that you, with thousands of edits, placed a picture that violated our rules, they'd probably think it was okay to do that.  More, similar pictures would proliferate.  The knock-on effect of our more experienced editors failing to follow basic rules is significant.


 * Also, you say it's just a placeholder, but what's the likelihood that you personally are going to go back and replace it? If the answer is "not very high", you probably shouldn't place the picture.  In my experience, people usually don't put in alternate images on low traffic pages for years.  So we'd end up with a "placeholder" for a very long time.


 * I understand the argument that it's better to have something than nothing, but I'd argue that it's more harmful in the long run to have something that's not up to spec than nothing.


 * Think of it this way: would you deliberately insert "placeholder grammar"?   02:38: Tue 06 Dec 2011


 * By "placeholder grammar" I mean the deliberate introduction of poor grammar with the intent that someone else might fix it later. It's one thing to add an incomplete entry, or to make a genuine mistake.  It's another thing entirely to deliberately circumvent the rules of the wiki on the theory that someone else will clean up your mess later.  It's really important that low-traffic pages, in particular, have pics that follow all the rules of the wiki, because these pages are entirely unlikely to receive much attention later.   03:12: Tue 06 Dec 2011
 * Yes, Bob, it's wrong for you to put in images that you "feel are appropriate", when those pictures violate our rules. Just turn it around and look at it in terms of language.  I might feel that it's "appropriate" to render all titles in lowercase because I'm a fan of e.e. cummings.   But that doesn't make it right.  You might feel it's appropriate to add thumbnails without captions, but it's not.  It's a layout eyesore. You can't just do what you "feel is appropriate" and hope someone will fix it later.  The point of having a manual of style, and the policies that flow from it, is to establish conventions and minimum standards that need to be followed by all editors.  In short, it is better not to put up an image, than to put up one that doesn't completely follow the rules listed at T:ICC.


 * Now, I'm not telling you to stop putting up images. I'm just asking that you take about one ounce more care with your pictures.  Given the obscurity of the pages to which you've been adding pictures, you should consider yourself effectively the only editor of those pages.  If you work from that assumption, you'll see that you should do your best with the pictures, rather than assuming someone else will come behind you and fix things.  13:39: Tue 06 Dec 2011

Don't revert legitimate edits
My note in "The Wedding of River Song" about the Silent at the end was legitimate and I even provided a link. -- MisterRandom2 talk to me 23:40, December 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'm glad we sorted this out. -- MisterRandom2 talk to me 00:01, December 9, 2011 (UTC)

"In youth"
I dunno, maybe I phrased it incorrectly, but "in youth" sounds kind of ambiguous as to whether they mean the youth of the Doctor or his companion. That could be just me though. -- Tybort (talk page) 00:55, December 12, 2011 (UTC)

250px
I again ask that you not upload your pics at 250px, as you did with 250px-David Spenser as Thomni.jpg. Clearly, that image is easily available at widths well above that, so it shouldn't be cropped down by the uploader to 250px. Let the thumbnail feature take care of any necessary cropping. As I tried to explain above, a better minimum to shoot for is 292px, or the more easily-remembered 300px.

Again, 250px is the absolute minimum width. It should be the goal only when there are no other options, as happens with a very few cover or comic images.

Additionally, naming your files with the prepending "250px" makes them harder to find through autosuggest.

The other thing, of course, is that this David Spenser thing is a duplicate image, which should of course be avoided. All you've done is saved the thumbnail of the image David Spenser as Thomni.jpg to your computer, then uploaded that image again. That's why there's a prepending "250px", and, actually, the system should have asked you whether you were sure you wanted to do that. In future, the proper answer to this question is "no". If you really felt the need to illustrate David Spenser with the picture at Thonmi, then you should have just used the existing picture by typing

The above matters are, again, questions of policy which are covered at T:ICC and tardis:image use policy, amongst other places.

There's also another thing to consider, which has never been addressed by direct discussion, but is worth a ponder. It may not be the best idea in the world to simply duplicate the picture of a character at the actor page. We have thousands of minor actors in the database whose articles are not illustrated. Do we really want to set the precedent that these pages should be illustrated by a picture that already exists on their character page? And if we're not going to do it for all of them, should we even start with a random few? Also, many hundreds of minor actors had multiple roles over the years. Which one do we choose as representative of the actor?

It is therefore probably sufficient that these pages have a clear, lead-sentence link to their character(s), which will allow the reader easy access to any available pictures. I don't know for certain if that's the best approach, of course. We probably need a forum discussion on the topic to shake out some good ideas. But I do know that there's little question it would be a hell of a lot of boring, repetitive, and must-be-done-manually work to illustrate these thousands of minor actors using pre-existing character images. And the end result of that wouldn't necessarily be that much more helpful to readers than just the character links. After all, many of these actors won't be recognisable from their characters, either due to makeup or the fact that most minor actors haven't appeared in Doctor Who at the absolute top of their careers. David Spenser, for instance, is awfully young in Snowmen, and readers might not recognise him from 68. This is why the best pictures of people are from publicity stills or things otherwise drawn from outside their DW appearances. The pictures we choose to place on actor pages should probably provide additional information, not just a duplication of something the reader can see by clicking a link on the same page.

15:10: Mon 12 Dec 2011


 * Man, for someone who prides himself on concision, you have a roundabout method of self-expression. Perhaps it's my fault for musing a bit in the previous post, but you seem to have ignored the important, policy-based part of the message.


 * So let's cut to the bone. What I need from you is your agreement that you will not:
 * upload pictures pre-cropped to any width less than 292px, unless it is physically impossible for you to do so
 * upload any more pictures which are merely smaller versions of pictures that exist on the site already; and, that if you wish to use a pre-existing image, you will place it on the page using traditional thumbnail wiki markup.
 * give files anything other than plain text names
 * I also need to make sure that you will:
 * read and abide by T:ICC and tardis:image use policy.


 * If you could indicate your agreement on my page, that'd be great.  21:14: Mon 12 Dec 2011
 * I'm very confused. Why aren't you willing to follow these simple rules?  I'm not asking you to stop posting pictures.  I'm just asking you to abide by some fairly simple guidelines.  21:31: Mon 12 Dec 2011
 * In what way do you disagree with them?  21:35: Mon 12 Dec 2011
 * Bob, you're kind of putting me in an awkward position. You seem to be saying that you feel at liberty to ignore any rule that you don't like.  Is that what you're saying?  Also, if you think that the rule regarding pic width is "too simplistic", how exactly would you change it?  21:50: Mon 12 Dec 2011
 * Bob, I'm sorry, but you're not leaving me an option to keep this "private". If you were an administrator and someone told you straight up that they didn't feel bound by our rules because "they were old" and made by "strangers", what would you do?  The age of a rule isn't really a reason to disobey it. In some cases, rules have persisted precisely because they are sensible.  I'm not sure how much luck you'd have in an American court saying you only felt bound by laws passed by people you personally knew.


 * You say you're not going to place any more pictures because you disagree with the very sensible and non-controversial rules as to minimum size and non-duplication. If that troubles you, what else won't you follow? I'm sorry you find compromise distasteful, but that is what wiki editing ultimately is. There are plenty of rules I find to be absolutely stupid around here, T:ITAL chief amongst them, but collective decision-making went against me.  All admin have at one time or another floated balloons that got shot down.


 * We need your help in changing bad practises. You have a wealth of grammatical knowledge that we desperately need.  But you can't just choose to disobey the rules you don't like.  Please, if you don't like how things are set up around here, argue the case for change.  Let us know why our rules are outdated.  But equally, be prepared for  the possibility that our rules may consider things you never thought about.   22:27: Mon 12 Dec 2011

04:20: Tue 20 Dec 2011 18:23: Thu 22 Dec 2011

Re:Thanks
Your welcome! Thanks for all the nifty edits you make around the place! --OS24 15:27, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

Actor pages
Please learn how to format actor pages correctly. You should put the title of the show, i.e. Doctor Who in full then the name if the episode. You must then add a heading called 'External links' and place the actor's IMDB link there or if you cannot find it, place 'to be added' under the header and mark the page as a real world stub. Also, you msut use the real world template at the top of the page. Thanks. MM/ Want to talk? 22:08, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

I have been considering this for some hours. I have failed to figure out whether it is better to live in MM's world where you can give an order like "Invent the nuclear bomb" or "Achieve world peace"  and everyone knows how to do it. On the other hand, it might be frustrating when they defy your clear instructions and keep on not making the Bomb or let there be fighting. Perhaps someday someone will deign to explain how to do these things to me in a fashion I can follow. In the meantime, I will go on my my awful fashion fixing bad grammar, bad writing and filling in gaps that no one else seems interested in filling at all. I will also go on thanking folks like Ottelspy, who is happy to make himself useful by filling in the technical details and whoever was kind enough to tell me how to do simple links. Any time this anti-social behavior on my part becomes unbearable, I understand I can be banned from editing. You're welcome. Boblipton talk to me 00:29, December 26, 2011 (UTC)

What? No Geronimo?
Hmm, maybe. I suppose that's much more tangible a concept.

Although given how few times he said it post-Beast Below, I'm not even sure if that specific one counts as a catchphrase. -- Tybort (talk page) 23:43, December 29, 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. I think you've got the totally wrong end of the stick. I didn't say anything even mildly approximate to, "Why do you have a problem with this if Bob thinks it's okay".  Your name was mentioned simply because you had signed the post which brought up the point in the first place.  You factually did imply that he would have a problem with Geronimo when you said,
 * "I understand your reasons for being annoyed at the page for 'Geronimo' . . ."
 * so I'm not quite getting your complaint. Please re-read my statement carefully.  At no time did I appeal to authority, or browbeat Tybort into some kind of rhetorical submission, or harp on actual policy.  I merely pointed out that as we already had Gordon Bennett in the system, we had precedent for Geronimo.


 * Why would I possibly see you as either a "bad example" or a "higher authority"? I was merely attributing.  Hopefully, you'll be able to see that when you re-read.  04:08: Sat 31 Dec 2011

Latest changes to Amy Pond
Yeah, I sort of see what you mean by that. Not sure what my specific reasoning was for doing it that way given how tired I was at the time, just that it seemed to flow better by saying it more chronologically (Meets the Doctor, grows up with Mels and Rory, finishes waiting twelve years later). -- Tybort (talk page) 12:31, January 4, 2012 (UTC)

Howling:Are Stories in Paralell Universes Canon?
Your contribution of 19:53, January 5, 2012 (UTC) produced an edit conflict with mine. Usually, I'd have inserted mine after yours but, this time, I think yours would make the better "last word" on the subject, so I put mine above it. I'm not confident it will be the last word -- but it ought to be. --89.241.69.54talk to me 20:23, January 5, 2012 (UTC)

Commas
On putting a note at user:Mini-mitch's page, I noticed your opinion about the proper use of commas with dependent clauses, and I'm a little worried about your advice.

While I agree with the analysis that  does not require a comma, you have to weight the benefits of "absolutely correct" punctuation over "consistent, understandable punctuation". Remember that this is a site that voted to use italics on every type of title because it was easier than following standard English punctuation. It's my opinion that the user base is simply not going to readily appreciate the difference between:
 * 1) ; and,

Though you and I easily grasp the grammatical distinction between these two sentences, the difference is incredibly subtle.

The question then becomes, "Which of these two is the bigger problem for the website?" I think that the tiny amount of overuse of commas in near appositive, but dependent, situations is worth having, if it means that appositives will always get commas. In other words, it's far easier to remember the rule, "Use a comma any time you define a noun", than to remember the subtle cases of dependency. Consider this example: You might not even blink at this optional omission of an appositive comma. But then, you've been runnin' around the site for a while now. You may have come across the page for Qetesh and the page for Ruby White. You might understand instinctively that Qetesh is likely a species name and Ruby White is a person's name.

But imagine the casual DW fan, the non-editing user of the site who may not have any exposure to SJA. All they see is a straight line of three blue words in a row. Without a mouseover, they'd be unsure where to put the comma in their minds. Is it ? Or. Or is there no comma and the whole thing is the name of a species that doesn't add an -s to indicate plurality. The word "white" is there. Maybe this is a shark-like thing. Maybe it's like saying,

The point is that the sometimes-optional appositive comma is actually much more important on this site than it is in sites that aren't so concerned with aliens. When you read your sentence about the Partisan, you still understand what it's talking about, even with the according-to-most-grammarians extraneous comma. To the average reader of English, it doesn't parse as incorrect or confusingly punctuated. You get the one and only sense of the sentence with or without the comma. But the lack of the appositive comma in my example is much more confusing. Since none of those are words with unambiguous meaning, the comma makes all the difference in the world.

Thus, my philosophy is that commas which name or rename a noun are compulsory on our site, even if they may not be in general English usage. They add a great deal of clarity to sometimes impenetrable sequences of words, by at least indicating part of speech. We need to get people in the practice of using commas every time they rename a noun, even if they occasionally put a comma on a dependent clause.

Now, understand, I'm not saying that you should punctuate against your training. Obviously, according to most people, example #2 is wrong. I'd expect you to fully try to correct such extraneous commas as you see fit. This isn't like the italicized title thing, where we've had a clear consensus for the "improper way" of doing things. It's not currently wrong to withdraw a comma preceding a dependent clause, in the same way it is to enclose a short story title in quotation marks. But do consider, as you admitted on MM's page, that it is a very subtle point which, if made, may stop people from using the comma appositively, which is actually especially needed on this site. 17:34: Mon 09 Jan 2012

IMDB
Never had a complaint of a 404 issue with any of our IMDB templates. Not sure which one you're using, but it's recommended that you use imdb name if you're dealing with a person. (imdb is a bit more complicated to use, and can accept links to any type of imdb listing, such as titles and companies.) If creating a new page, I'd suggest that you use the standard preloadable formats, and pull down to "actor or crew member". This will put the IMDB template on the page in a VERY user-friendly way. Just follow the instructions provided and you really won't be able to screw it up.

If adding imdb name to an existing page, it's actually really easy! Here's how. Just cut and paste the following onto pages:

External link
Then, insert the IMDB number after  but before   and you're done!

Just to explain the fields:
 * The  number is the purely numerical string which follows the letters   in an imdb.com URL.  You should include any leading zeros.  So, David Tennant's is 0855039.  Put that into imdb name and you'll have a working link to DT.
 * There is a "hidden" variable of  here.  It assumes that the name of the actor/crew memeber is the same as the name of the page.  In well over 99% of cases, this is true.  Very occasionally, though, you'll run into a person whose name is disambiguated, like Andrew Collins (writer) or Adam Smith (director).  In these cases you'll have to add the name field manually, as in

So that's straightforward enough, I think. As for your 404 problem, well, I dunno. The only way you could get a 404 with this template is if you simply didn't put in the right id number. If you want me to diagnose a particular 404 you're getting, I'd have to have a link to the page that's giving you grief. Without seeing an example, though, I dunno specifically what you've done wrong. I can only imagine you've transposed some digits, or that you've actually included the "nm" prefix before the actual id number.

I looked a little bit for an example in your contributions list, but instead noticed another problem. It seems you've become so frustrated with attempting to put in the IMDB link that you've resorted to just putting a blank section called "External Links" on pages. I know you have a theory that "every little bit is progress", but this is a case where that philosophy definitely doesn't hold.

Two problems. First, all headers should be in sentence case per T:HEAD SC, So even though you're adding text, you're actually introducing a problem the page didn't have before. Second, putting a completely empty section is rather worse than having none at all. It makes it look more incomplete than having nothing there at all. You'll notice that most blank sections around the site at least have the phrase "to be added" underneath. This lets readers know that we didn't just "forget" the information in the section; we just don't have that info yet.

However, I would urge you not to even include a "to be added" external link section on actor/crew pages. Please take the time to use imdb name or don't do anything. It's such an easy template to use — literally you're just plugging a seven-digit code into it — that there's no reason not to just finish the job.

Hope that helps! 16:49: Tue 10 Jan 2012

Minimum standards
Please take a look at the following code for your recently-created page, Ciera Payton: Ciera Payton played Janet Rae Tanner in TW: Miracle Day.

External link


I urge you to just cut and paste this format. It is important that our articles about cast and crew adhere to certain minimum standards. <span style="">16:14: Sat 14 Jan 2012

That's what it is called in the audio play. No further information is given so that's how the page must stand for the moment. --Revan\Talk 14:17, January 15, 2012 (UTC)

--Tangerineduel / talk 14:21, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

SJA crew
category:SJA crew (and for that matter category:Torchwood crew and category:Doctor Who crew) are top level categories. Please do not put individual people into those categories. Instead, please find the most appropriate subcategory. You may have to create the category for SJA or Torchwood, as those are not as well-developed as the DW categories. But one should try to be more specific than just "[prefix] crew". That's essentially no better than not categorising at all. <span style="">23:23: Fri 27 Jan 2012

MM/ Want to talk? 21:34, February 1, 2012 (UTC)

Well, actually, you do appear to have accidentally removed my added info about Death to the Doctor!... Sorry we both appear to be cleaning up the page in diffrent ways at once! OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 01:27, February 2, 2012 (UTC)

IMDb
Great work with the categories, keep up the good work! Just remember that if you add an actor's IMDb page, please remember to bullet-point it, per manual of style. Thank you, and keep up the good work! 15:56, February 5, 2012 (UTC)

Third Doctor
Well, I'll admit, that project is very hard to discern, however, looking at the article, I have noticed a few similarities, but they are far and in between.


 * The "Futher Adventures" TVA stories are mostly about the Doctor's attempt to get his TARDIS working, and is sucseesful for a small time.
 * Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Numb, Death to the Daleks, and Neptune (short story) are all about the Doctor and Sarah trying to reach Florana, and they get there in The Hungry Bomb.
 * Alien Bodies, Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two, and The Ancestor Cell all have to do with the alternate timeline created where the Doctor was killed early.
 * The Man in the Ion Mask, The Switching, and The Sea Devils all center around the Master escaping from his prison...

Besides these, I have not seen any more connections... I will keep looking though. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 16:37, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Visual editor gone
I'd advise that you take some time to read a few help files before editing further. Please see T:MARK, starwars:Help:Editing and. I strongly suggest you to watch the video there at. It'll help you in the long run.

Templates are formed by typing. Most templates here have pretty explicit usage instructions. If you find one that's not got great instructions, please let me know, and I'll write them up quickly.

In the case of namesort, you just literally type NameSort. For imdb, you just type

I'm sorry you're confused, but I did try to prepare you for source editing. I've explicitly gone over how to use imdb twice on this very page at and. That said, it can be very briefly daunting to go from mostly visual editing to 100% source editing, so if you need further help, please let me or another admin know.

I know you were strongly opposed to getting rid of the visual editor, but I hope you'll stick with it for a few days. Before long, I think it'll become second nature to you. <span style="">22:29: Fri 17 Feb 2012
 * Sorry for the delay in responding.  I've got several projects underway simultaneously.


 * I think you're just making it too hard on yourself, Bob. It seems like you're psyching yourself out, or that you're scared that you'll make a mistake.  It's not really about relearning from the ground up.  You've seen this code before, surely, because the visual editor has been dumping people into source mode for as long as you've been a registered editor here.


 * I think if you just accept that this is how it is, instead of wishing that visual mode was still enabled, you'd see it's really not difficult.


 * As far as your "work" is concerned, there are preloadable templates which have both imdb and NameSort already included. They're super-easy to use.  Just pull down the menu.  But you don't even really need assistance for the kind of work you're doing.  Just type  and  . It's no harder than typing any other word.


 * You can also just copy and paste it on pages if you really can't be bothered to type it out.


 * Couple of things I don't understand from your message:


 * I don't understand what you mean when you say "the wisdom of learning how to do it the new way is questionable when it may very well be changed". I think you're laboring under some false notions.  First of all, source mode isn't "the new way".  It's the only way.  The visual editor was merely a different face for wiki markup.  It was never actually "a different way" at all.  Best to think of it as another skin, or a new perspective on the same way of editing.  But it still was using wiki markup.  Wiki markup will always be useful, as long as you're editing here.  The more you know about it, the more stuff you can do.  The wiki "language" is  something at the software level, far deeper than Wikia, Inc. can touch.  As long as we're running MediaWiki, wiki markup will always be useful.  You're not being asked to learn something that will go away.  This is a time-honored platform that created the wiki revolution.  The basics of this language have been around since the 1980s.  It's not going anywhere — and if it does, this wiki, and all of Wikia, will be gone, too.  Wikia can do all that they want to in terms of giving us new interfaces and new skins, but they can never, ever strip away the utility of basic wiki markup.  They can never, ever prevent source editing — not unless they write their own software and completely divorce themselves from the MediaWiki platform.  Course, if they did that, all of the content that was created with MediaWiki would then be useless.  So moving away from MediaWiki would essentially mean the destruction of Wikia.  They're not going to do that.
 * The line "you are aware that first line of most of the stuff is not easily manageable" mystifies me. I've been trying to figure out what you mean, but I'm drawing a blank.  What's hard about the first line of articles?  Is it the fact that there tend to be a few templates at the beginning?   If so, you can usually skip all that by just editing by section further down.  Or you can just remember to not edit anything above the last closing curly braces.  But I'm just taking a guess at what you mean, really.


 * On the whole, I'd strongly recommend that you just learn it. It'll take you a day, tops — so long as you're actually trying.  Wikipedia have never entertained anything remotely like the visual editor, and yet they're the biggest wiki on the planet.  Somehow, millions of editors figure it out.  You really can, too.

Again, if you get into specific problems, just ask for help. We will all help you, because we want you to stick around. <span style="">00:13: Sat 18 Feb 2012

hi

Laurence Payne
Thanks, the text shows up now. Americanwhofan talk to me 18:41, February 24, 2012 (UTC)

IMDB
Thanks for fixing the link. Americanwhofan talk to me 05:45, March 7, 2012 (UTC)

Whatcha talkin' bout?
Your latest post on my page is a little obscure. You seem angry about something, but the object of your ire isn't clearly stated. Mind filling me in, with at least a link to the page you're concerned about? <span style="">21:29: Sun 01 Apr 2012
 * If you're talking about Antonio Dimaggio, I didn't start that page. You did.  And you provided no proof that he appeared in either of his alleged two serials.  Yet you removed the template alerting people of the article's deficiency.  Baseless removal of templates can be viewed as vandalism, so do please be careful of this sort of thing.  As the template states, "Remove this message only when proof has been given."    <span style="">21:38: Sun 01 Apr 2012
 * After re-reading your message, I feel I should point out that articles on tardis.wikia.com are not valid sources for other articles on this wiki. Just because you clicked a link on The Abominable Snowmen to create a new article doesn't mean that this original link was valid.  Abominable offers no proof of Dimaggio's involvement, either.   <span style="">21:45: Sun 01 Apr 2012
 * Bob, you can't seriously be editing from the point of view that whatever is on a page prior to your encounter of it is true. Check, double-check, re-check and verify again later has got to be the motto of any serious wiki editor.


 * But we are much closer to genuine accuracy with these story pages than they were when I first started editing here. They still have one or two problem areas, however.   We've only started to pay attention to this uncredited crap in the black and white era in the last few months.  Forum:What to do with uncredited cast lists was the first community discussion about the problem.


 * I've been pulling these lists of uncredited actors from TV pages to the talk pages, like Talk:The Reign of Terror (TV story), but I've been trying to do so systematically, in broadcast order. I've only got to about season 3.  For your future reference, the word "uncredited" should be an immediate red flag.  Unless there's some kind of reference for the uncredited actor or crew member, you should definitely be dubious of the claim.


 * That said, the problem with this issue is that there were, in fact, a ton of uncredited actors, especially in the 1960s. It wasn't until Equity started putting its foot down in the 1970s that cast lists started to grow to "modern" lengths. So a lot of this information could be correct.  We just need to consult the info text on DVDs or various issues of DWM to tease the verification forward.   <span style="">22:06: Sun 01 Apr 2012
 * It's a convention of wiki editing that admin and other concerned editors give some period of time for the community to address informational deficiencies. Moving information from the main namespace to the talk namespace, as I did at Talk:The Romans (TV story) doesn't immediately delete the information from view, but it does put the community on notice that deletion is imminent. Wikipedians regularly use the method to talk about a bit of text and figure out, collectively, whether it could be be legitimately re-inserted into an article. It would thus be completely within normal wiki practices, and ones that predate the existence of this wiki, to remove from Abominable, but keep and flag Antonin Dimaggio.


 * But notice what uncredited does. It puts the page into a category called Articles whose lack of citation makes them a candidate for deletion.  So it will be very easy to delete if no one comes through with citations.  For the moment, our goal is merely to flag a problem area.  We'll excise it later if no one seems to be that interested in figuring it out.  Consider this "phase 1" of a cleanup project.


 * As for the point about verification, you should of course' never assume that anything you read here is true. That's the only way the wiki improves.  This position is not circular; rather, yours is.  It's a basic tenet of wiki edting that the wiki itself cannot be its own source. See . Deleting all information on the wiki because you haven't personally verified it would be an extreme application of this rule, and literally the definition of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".  What it practically means is that when you read an article here — as an editor — you should naturally question every aspect of the article and improve the factual accuracy to the extent you can.  All I'm really saying is, be reasonably critical.  If an aritcle says that someone was uncredited, but then provides no citation, as yourself how the statement could possibly be true.  The answer is, we don't know whether uncredited people were in a production until and unless we get verification from somewhere.


 * You should also be wary of starting new articles simply on the basis of a red link on any element from any story you don't personally own.  Relying on other people is exactly how most false information seeps into the wiki.  This is why you can't just go to somewhere like the Doctor Who Reference Guide, look up a term, then create articles based solely on their synopses.  Their synopses may be (and sometimes are) wrong, or at least poorly written.  You must double-check information from fan sites against the actual story itself.


 * So it's not really a case of "let's delete everything we haven't personally checked out". Rather is that old Reaganism of "trust, but verify".   <span style="">23:34: Sun 01 Apr 2012

River Song
You've aimed at the wrong person, I think. The revision you reverted was by 72.198.77.139, not me. I agree with you completely, and tried to fix the same problem you were trying to fix. Your argument should probably go to the anonymous user who deleted the other actress's names instead. Thanks for taking the time to explain things to people anyway! -- Rowan Earthwood talk to me 23:26, April 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * I hope you don't mind, but I forwarded your message to the talk page of the anonymous user that your message seemed to be intended for. -- Rowan Earthwood talk to me 23:39, April 1, 2012 (UTC)

Stubs
Please do not add a stub as a category, instead add the template to the page. i.e, etc.

Also, please do insert any additional spaces between the and an person's IMDb link. Thanks. MM/ Want to talk? 12:54, April 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * Infact, please do not inset any additional space between the article information (i.e. Person X played Person Y in Story X) and the external links. It makes the article look truly awful. There should only be one space, not two. MM/ Want to talk? 13:03, April 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * Disagree with what? I not asked too much of you. The least you can do is do stuff properly and give me a reason why. MM/ Want to talk? 13:15, April 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * You do know adding will automatically add the category TV crew stub. To add a stub, you must add the template. The white spacing was also part of a forum discussion, which was decided we should removed as much of it as we can, and you are going against it. MM/ Want to talk? 13:29, April 5, 2012 (UTC)

Block
You have been blocked from editing for three days. In this time you will still be able to edit your own talk page.

Reason: The reason being you block is, quiet simple. You have violated T:SPACING and also you have decided to not obey the rules of the wiki. YOu have also decided to ignore what myself and User:CzechOut have told you to do in regards to an actors or crew-persons page.

I would highly recommend that you use this time to read through the Manual of Style and familiarise yourself with the workings of this wiki.

Bob, you can be a great editor at times, but you cannot go about disobeying the rules which are set down on this wiki. Thank you, and I hope you come back with a better attitude to editing. MM/ Want to talk? 12:26, April 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Just for your information, your block has now ended and you can resume editing. MM/ Want to talk? 14:39, April 9, 2012 (UTC)

Sentence case
Please remember that you must have all headings in sentence case. This means only the first letter of the first word in each heading is capitalised, unless it's the name of a person, place etc.

Some examples:

== External links ==

not

== External Links ==

and

=== Adventures with the Doctor ===

not

=== Adventures with the doctor ===

Also remember to insert a single space between the last = of the heading and the first word, as you can see above.

Lastly, please actually do this. Failure to follow the manual of style will, again, get you blocked. Thanks. MM/ Want to talk? 12:47, April 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * Moral superiority? How? I would practise what you preach. Seriously. If you have a problem with the grammar, raise it in a forum discussion? Also, you could go to the person that wrote/edited the article you disagree with and explain why their wrong, inside of acting better than them - you have done that once with me - and I was thank for it. It would be great if you did this more in the future. MM/ Want to talk? 13:04, April 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I do apologise for boring you. But it is my job, in fact everyone's job to enforce the Manual of Style, and it sounds like you are flatly reusing to follow it. MM/ Want to talk? 13:14, April 10, 2012 (UTC)

Manual of Style
I have seen your latest comments at user talk:Mini-mitch and, while I feel they could have been more gently phrased, I was intrigued by one of the central points you were trying make. The Manual of Style does need copyediting. The difficulty is that — like almost every page here — it is an evolutionary document that contains a mixture of authorial voices. It would be beneficial to have someone completely objective to give it a good, top-to-bottom cleanup. I think you're just the objective eye the page needs. I will open it to editing for 48 hours — though it will still appear to be locked because it will retain the "locked" tag. Please take advantage of this opportunity. If you do not actually intend to seriously copyedit the page, though, please let me know so that I can again lock it against vandalism.

Oh, and please stop with the harsh recriminations against user:Mini-mitch. The dude's just trying to do his job, the best way he can. If an admin points to part of the manual of style, isn't it overall easier just to accept the criticism and adjust your editing behavior accordingly? Of course we appreciate your unpaid efforts. But do try to remember that our efforts are similarly unpaid. We're all on the same side.

Now, please, go give the MOS an intensive deep shag clean. <span style="">13:40: Tue 10 Apr 2012
 * I understand what you're saying. I agree that it would be preferable to live in a world where we could just say, "We've got formats around here; please try to use them", and people would simply do that.


 * But here's the thing. You're not only an adult; you're a person who has made a living off of using the English language.  You are therefore an atypical user of the site.  Most of our editors don't have your advantages.  Many are actual kids — which is to say under the age of 16.  Those that are older aren't necessarily possessed of strong English skills.  And Doctor Who is genuinely global, so it attracts people from several different English language conventions, as well as several editors who don't use English natively.


 * The upshot is that we have an unusually diverse editing base, which a largely American-only wiki like w:c:30rock, or British-only wiki like w:c:dadsarmy, wouldn't usually attract. Somehow we've got to bridge the gap.


 * Thus the MOS must, I think, be detailed. Whether it has the right voice is another matter, and one that I struggle with when writing it. (Oh, yeah, if you didn't know, I am by word count probably the major author of the document, so the fact that it is "impenetrable", full of "omniscient mumbling to itself", and a "morass" is something for which I personally accept responsibility.)


 * Style and perspective aside, the content of the MOS must, I think, be detailed to some degree. It's not reasonable to assume a 14-year-old from Idaho is going to understand what "British English" means — certainly not in the detail necessary to actually use it. Nor should we necessarily expect that a 35-year-old housewife from Liverpool is going to get how to create sectional headlines.  Is it one equals sign or two?  Does it matter?  Is it possible to put a # sign in the title of an article?  Or, to use the current thing you're struggling with, does it matter whether you use sentence case in sectional headlines?


 * You say that it's not "real editing", Bob, but surely you'd agree that it would be a valuable bit of copyed to do this:




 * Or are we just giving into "text speak" and not giving a damn about proper capitalization around here? One letter, one numeral, one symbol — they all make a difference, especially within the context of the MediaWiki software that powers this joint.  Besides, have you seen any magazine, book or professional website where they just don't care about the case of headlines?


 * I'm mindful of the danger of instruction creep. Really, I spend a hell of a lot of time trying to edit back my own words.  But even though you're characterising the fact that you walked away from the MOS rewrite as being motivated by your disdain for "this sort of buttheaded pettifoggery", the truth is that the balancing act necessary between verbosity and over-simplification makes the MOS just damned hard work.  Since I personally have struggled with the document too — and I'd estimate that my  English language skills are roughly equal to yours — I'm guessing you actually got to the point where it got hard. And then you gave up.  And then, just to satisfy yourself, you convinced yourself that you were philosophically opposed to the document.


 * But, you're not. Not really.


 * You know that manuals of style are important to the running of any collaborative effort. You know that somebody somewhere does actually have to, as you put it, supply the troops with No. 2 pencils. You know damned well that there is a reason for No. 2 pencils, and that, although it is bureaucracy, it's not mindless.  It's so the computer can actually read your test and score it properly.


 * Just to give a few examples, the reason for T:DOCTORS is so that readers with all different levels of knowledge about Doctor Who will understand who the hell you're talking about. The reason for T:SPACING is so that all pages look the same. The reason for T:MAGS is because of limitations of the software.


 * And, to focus again on your recent boo-boo, the reason for T:HEAD SC is so that people performing sectional links can know how to make the link without difficulty (Graeme Garden is not the same thing as Graeme Garden). But since they both show as blue links, you can't know which one is right.  If everybody edits to the same standard, we will know what's right.


 * Other manuals of style are exactly about the kind of thing that ours is. They are nitpicky.  They are extremely detailed.  They do concern themselves with the number of spaces after a period, and the difference between a dash and a hyphen.  A lot of them are wordy enough to need tables of contents and some kind of actual binding.  So while ours isn't completely satisfactory, neither is it atypical.


 * I was genuinely hoping you might be able to help make it better. Instead, you just disagreed with the assignment.  But thanks for trying.  Maybe something you did, but reverted, will give me an idea of how to improve things.


 * I do feel obliged to make clear, however, that your disdain for the MOS doesn't give you license to simply disobey it. You might not like the tone of the document, but I'm fairly confident that it actually makes sense.  So, even though you don't want to help cure what ails it, please do try to follow it.  I also would say that you're not terribly in danger of being blocked again for an MOS violation.   Most people who get blocked do not get blocked for violations of the MOS.  The reason for your block appears to be that you repeatedly flouted T:SPACING and showed no signs of obeying it.  So the way forward would seem to be to, yanno, not do that.


 * In other words, I don't think MM's out to get you, Bob. All you have to do is just try to obey the rules, and if you disagree with them, ask for a change to them in the forum. And don't try to show your usual disdain for consensus; you're in the forums as much as anyone. Please talk about what you don't like rather than simply showing contempt for the system.  <span style="">20:48: Tue 10 Apr 2012
 * Those are helpful insights. I guess the thing I'd say is that I don't think the MOS is trying to accomplish what you allege. It's not meant to be taken as a guide to writing.  It's purely about style — yanno, typogrophy, punctuation, capitalisation, wikification.  It's not meant to show you to how to write well.  To me, it's there to settle the most arbitrary of decisions, like "Is it K9 or K-9?", "Is it Mr. or Mr?", or "Is it okay to use just one equals sign to create a subhead?"


 * In other words, you suggest in the experimental, first-person lead that I apologise for the MOS for containing arbitrary decisions. But I can't do that, any more than I could apologise for a wiki having wiki links. 'That's what it's there for.''


 * You've got me thinking, though. Some things in the document are going beyond the mandate, and these should be split off into their own, much shorter articles. Like maybe T:SOURCES really doesn't belong in the MOS so much as it does in a separate discussion of its own.  Perhaps in pruning away that which isn't arbitrary, and creating a system of smaller, bite-sized articles, it will be less of a morass.  Which is a word, incidentally, I don't begrudge you.  This part of the wiki has always been a morass.


 * And I think your fourth point was particularly keenly observed. It's not really that I particularly chose third person omniscient.  It's kinda just that I wasn't there at the beginning, so I've added around the skeleton that existed.  And the thing just needs to be blown apart and wholly rebuilt.  Tangerineduel is not especially fond of the "royal we", as he puts it, but the first person may indeed be at least a useful starting point to rewriting it.  In any case, there's certainly precedent for wholly destroying an article to build a better one in its place, even if that approach is sorta against the wiki spirit.  I completely blanked companion, and seem to have provided a stronger article in its place.


 * Now, here's a challenge for you. What if we did have an article about general suggestions about how to write?  In picture editing, there's a whole handful of help files.  There's the boring policy bit at T:IUP.  Then there's the shorthand chart at T:ICC.  There's also Help:Images and T:IMAGE MARK But then recently I've added Tardis:Guide to images, which I think is probably the most helpful of the three, because it actually shows side-by-side comparisons.  I know you're an editor more than a writer, but would you be interested in writing a guide to the grammatical constructions that bother you?  This wouldn't be a wrote, paint-by-numbers thing.  But just a "here are some suggestions" thing.  I know you're interested in this kinda thing or you wouldn't bother with the blog entries.    <span style="">23:20: Tue 10 Apr 2012

MOS
Just read through your conversation with User:CzechOut, and you must forgive me for enforcing you to the manual of style. I only encourage you use the manual of style because we must. If we never enforced it, why have it?

We have it for so have basic editing standards, and myself and numerous other Users enforce these. Some more than others. Sorry if it's has upset you that I have asked you to do this. MM/ Want to talk? 23:05, April 10, 2012 (UTC)

Punchellion
Punchellion is correct and I added a note for the Punchellian page to be removed after I had done it. On my tail again - but thanks for keeping an eye! The Librarian talk to me 04:48, April 11, 2012 (UTC)

Use of template code
Hey, Bob. According to this diff, you're the one responsible for introducing an underscore in the template call for real world. Please note that, although it will work to have an underscore — like real_world — it is completely unnecessary. Worse, it makes basic maintenance of the wiki a bitch, because it means I have to consider someone would have employed this highly unusual syntax.

And no, I'm not asking you to correct your usages of this form. The bot is already switching them all over. I'm just asking that, in future, you just use the form:

Also, real world should not be used on pages where nc or unprod already exist. nc and unprod are merely more specific forms of real world. I'm also not asking you to correct these instances; they, too, are being taken care of automatically. <span style="">15:53: Thu 12 Apr 2012

CON and "alongside"
By the way, meant to drop you a line about something from last week. The phrasing on the leads for CON articles was done rather deliberately. I notice that you changed the word "alongside" to "after" as in,
 * Do You Remember the First Time? was the episode of DWC to broadcast after Blink.

The reason that I restored "alongside" is because the preposition was originally quite carefully considered. There are a few episodes of CON which, completely stupidly, were not broadcast after DW episodes, but during. Yes, for reasons that make no sense, one or two of them actually started during the last five minutes of the episode they were documenting. Because DWC is on another network, it's therefore grammatically possible to use the rather more British preposition alongside and still be basically accurate. I'm fairly confident that most British viewers would consider the thing "after" DW to be Strictly Come Dancing or the National Lottery Results or Over the Rainbow or whatever other banal crap actually follows DW on BBC One. You actually have to "switch over" to DWC, so therefore it's alongside. Moreover, the further you get away from the date of first broadcast, where they are actually proximate to each other on the schedule, the less you tend to look at one of them being after the ohter. As you go throughout the week of first broadcast, the DWC and DW eps aren't one right after the other, but sort of just companions beside each other. <span style="">16:08: Thu 12 Apr 2012