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
 * So Wikia have responded and they say that Mantrid was indeed the founder, on 11 November 2004 but he didn't make an edit for about five months. Freethinker appears to have an earlier join date because he edited before Mantrid.  Sp. what this means is that "date joined" on a user masthead actually means "date of first edit".  Still seems strange to me that Mantrid would have founded the wiki but not done even a single edit for five months.  I've changed the start date of the wiki on the front page to reflect this new, earlier-than-expected date of 11 Nov 2004.   <span style="">04:39:44 Sat 20 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

Safari and the site
To the extent that you use Safari to browse the site, do you ever notice that the site, in the Wikia skin, creates random blank pages? And no matter how many times you refresh, you keep getting a blank page? This happens to me a lot, in Safari, especially when I'm reloading a page that's been directed to a particular section. What this effectively means is that when I finish editing a section, the page will be unable to load successfully because it's trying to load an address that points to the section I just edited. I never have this in other browsers, nor in Wikia on other wikis, so it's something in the code. But nobody seems to be complaining about it, so I dunno if it's just something affecting my older version of Safari, or what. So if you're getting any odd behavior from Safari, please advise. <span style="">21:34:08 Sat 20 Aug 2011

User image policy update
When you can, cast your eye over latest revision of tardis:user image policy. <span style="">21:34:08 Sat 20 Aug 2011

Avatars
In the unlikely event that someone should be confused about what's happened to user avatars because of this latest user page fix, you may now direct them to Help:Avatars. I think most people can probably get it without help, but there are some details there about file format and size that may interest people. <span style="">23:07:09 Sat 20 Aug 2011 <span style="">16:57:30 Mon 22 Aug 2011

The Gallery and the licences.
With the small problem we had of Users upload images via the Gallery, which meant no licenses were add to the image, User:CzechOut and I have decide to contact wikia about it.

We decide it was best to ask if we could have the license drop down menu added to the "add a photo" window that pops up by pressing that button on the Gallery.

This is just to inform you of what we are doing in regards to this problem. MM/ Want to talk? 22:32, August 24, 2011 (UTC)

Acheivements
Achievements began within an hour of the BBC One broadcast of Let's Kill Hitler, so as to catch any new people who might have wanted to edit with us in the wake of the new episode. The basic infrastructure was all laid down today, but there are a number of editing tracks which I've prepared at tardistest which still have to be brought over here. As an admin at tardistest, you would of course be privy to those plans, should you desire to see them before implementation. Help:Achievements and Tardis:Achievements policy have been put in place, but we probably still need some sort of mechanism like Tardis:Quote of the Week nominations, for people who wish to suggest an awards group.

If you wish to check out the latest standings and the general level of activity alredy generated, you may click Special:Leaderboard. <span style="">02:01:38 Sun 28 Aug 2011

Achievements. part two (because I'm too lazy to put this under the old section heading)
Glad you like the direction things are going. I'm sure that as we go on a part of your fears expressed on the forums will be justified, however. Don't forget, I wasn't that big on the idea until Ausir, another reluctant adopter, said that they'd really helped on fallout. It's completely obvious to me that some people will always try to game the system. I had a blatant case just today. But I think if we just hold our fire and gently point them in the direction of the achievements policy, this won't have more abuse than any other feature of the wiki.

I'm already noticing an unexpected side benefit to the feature, in that the Leaderboard effectively gives you a snapshot of the people who are editing in the main article space. Edits elsewhere don't generally count for the game — I for instance have only 5 edits in the game, despite having well over 100 edits today, because I've been editing in Special, Help and Project namespaces most of the day. But it's very useful to see what people are doing on the site in an easy, graphical way. Just judging from the range of people who got the entry level edit awards, it does look like we had a bigger range of people editing today than on any other day of the week. This is altogether natural, of course, since a new ep of DW went out today. But it's still cool to actually see it without having to go to Special:wikistats.

aS for what the name of the thing is, I totally wish we could brand it on our own. Is there any more perfect name than "The Game of Rassilon"? As it is we're stuck with what Wikia call it. I think the actual, formal name is just Achievements. I've thrown in the "Wikia" just to sort of emphasise that it's a game ultimately run by Wikia itself. We can skin it here at Tardis, but we can't really alter much about the rules, the points, or much of anything else about its core functionality. So I just threw in Wikia to absolve us partially of things that go wrong with it. It's such an awkward name though. I hate singular objects which are in the plural. I guess the deal is that they've not actually named the game so much as the prizes. Very weird. <span style="">07:26:00 Sun 28 Aug 2011

DWM categories
Seeing as you organised many issue of Doctor Who Magazine by year, do you think it would be a good idea to categorise them in the same way? For example, there would be a category for "1980 DWM Issues". At the moment they're all in together at Category:DWM issues, so a new system would be beneficial in dividing them up. Thoughts?-- 08:02, August 29, 2011 (UTC)
 * This fairly radical and major innovation to categories really didn't get the kind of discussion and thought it deserved.  And I don't think Skittles really explained to you what he was going to do.  He didn't just add a cat like category 1980 DWM issues.  He actively removed the category:DWM issues.  This "broke" the Achievements editing track.  It should also be pointed out that there were several utilities to having all the issues in one category, beyond Achievements. It makes bot runs faster, and it makes the entire list of issues accessible to DPL coding.


 * I don't particularly see the uutility of by-year categories for issues of publications, especially since we don't do this for any other kind of publication. But, Skittles really seemed to want it. So I've done a deal with him.


 * First, I've put all the issues back into category:DWM issues so that the Achievements track will work. Out of fairness to our editors, it'll look pretty bad that Skittles and Revan got the awards in the category by . . . ensuring that no one else could win the awards. Day 2 of this game cannot be seen as "the day when a couple of admins totally cheated the game". Besides, of the two goals — categorising by year and getting people to edit DWM issue pages — it's pretty clear which one is more vital.


 * Second, he has assured me that he's committed to overseeing the pr:oject to do this "by publication or media, by year" category structure across all ranges, so that it's at least consistent.  Towards that end, he's announced the opening of the project at Forum:New paradigm for categorising publications and stories.  This new categorisation scheme must not interfere with the categories that are already present, but it can add another layer on top of what's there.


 * Obviously, you couldn't have known he was going to delete category:DWM issues from pages. That possibility wasn't proposed in his statement to you.  But with achievements now enabled, with the bot often running around the clock, and with the growing use of DPL, it's important to carefully consider the possible knock-on effects of major pruning of branches of the category tree.  <span style="">05:32:27 Tue 30 Aug 2011

Update
Hi remember when I told you about how I got ripped off with bootleg Doctor Who DVDS?

You agreed they probably were.

Well, I uploaded a photo of one of the DVD's... you have to see this.

It's so pathetic it's just ridiculous.

http://dartpaw86.deviantart.com/#/d48h1qj

Moogleknight24 01:34, September 1, 2011 (UTC)Moogleknight24

Thanks... I am rufus 16:53, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I changed my mind and deleted it. Sorry for wasting your time.

Moogleknight24 23:51, September 2, 2011 (UTC)Moogleknight24

Chat ban
User:CzechOut was very hostile towards me and kicked me of chatting. This is unfair. I simply forgot about the whole "not talking about it" scenario. He said he would block me if I complain. That is bad. Why? It's like arresting a protestor. Please sort this out. He acted very cold and bitter, and I had the impression he didn't like me. And that's true. He hates me. He doesn't want me anywhere near him. What's your assessment, TD, are you more sympathetic? BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:07, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

He was very scary and intimidating. The chat ban for a week. Are you sure? But how do you know he doesn't doesn't like me? BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:32, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to be chat-banned. I just won't use it. But I never swore at him, I never hurt him, In never abused him in anyway. And he treats me like I've done that. Why? BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:39, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I didn't know I'd be a member of a little gorup called BannedFromChat. It's bad for my image. I just won't use the service. Un chat ban me, and I won't use it. But anyway, it's like arresting a personal who protest. It's a free country, we complain if we need to. BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:45, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

I am. How am I not. Although I would like to recieve an apology from CzechOut, he really offended me. BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:50, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

But he offended me! He hurt my feelings! BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 17:55, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

He was not calm. I am not a liar. He was very intimidating. BroadcastCorp (talk | contribs) 18:05, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Rollback and inactive sysops revisted
You said earlier that you'd be happy with keeping user:Solar Dragon and user:The Thirteenth Doctor at rollback, but not adding any more in the future. I got to thinking about that, and decided that SD's rights really had to be stripped. He's not really monitoring his account much anymore, Wikia wide, so it's a bit of a security risk to have him account with additional rights enabled. So I stripped him of rollback rights.

Frankly, I'd like to do so with 13D, simply because we've decided to eliminate that position from our own hierarchy. However, as you made a specific invitation to him, and he's edited as late as today, I've got no security concerns about him. So I'll let you make the determination about whether to keep this one straggling rollback-only person here.

I think we should also consider, for security purposes only, whether it might be wise to at least block admin who haven't edited or even logged in more than a year. Again this a purely protective move, and is no way meant to suggest disrespect for our emiritus staff. Blocking them would prevent the misuse of accounts long disused. And I'm talking the the mildest form of blocking, too — the one in which we check none of the boxes. So they could still create another account or talk to us or in some way alert us that they've come back.

The people I'm thinking of are:
 * User:***Stardizzy*** (As I recall discussion from a couple of years ago, Stardizzy scrambled his own password so that he couldn't log in anymore. This means that he is not in control of this account.  This one is definitely a security risk.)
 * user:Freethinker1of1 (I know what you're thinking. It's painful to think about blocking the major guiding force of the early days.  But he's often claimed periods of internet outage, and we can't assume he's in full control of his account.  He's not even dropped by this year.)
 * user:GingerM (whose stats are REALLY weird and indicate some kind of previously compromised account)
 * user:OncomingStorm (whose stats are similarly weird)

I think there are a few admin that never deserved to be admin — much less bureaucrats — and we should pursue Wikia's help in de-opping them. Their names have been repeatedly mentioned to me when I've told users they need to get in a few more edits before they can be an admin. And it's hard to argue to someone that 500 edits isn't really sufficient to be an admin, and that they need to work harder to become an admin, when we've got these examples to the contrary sitting around. These bizarre anomalies include:


 * user:Nhprman — Yes, I know he's logged in somewhat recently, but he hasn't edited since 2006 and even then, he's had only 9 total edits here, 2975 wikia wide, almost all of it in the main namespace. Never written on anyone's user talk page.  Ever. We'd never allow this guy to be an admin today with stats like that.
 * user:Sean-Black, Like Nhprman, this guy is a full-on bureaucrat, and he's had exactly 72 edits here, 135 wikia wide
 * user:Wikia-Jaster. Seriously.  What's this about?  79 edits here, 984 wikia wide,  never logged in since 2007.  Total security risk.
 * user:Joker1138 just doesn't have enough edits to have ever qualified as an admin, much less bureaucrat. 365 edits here, 1,871 in total. More well rounded editing than the others on this list, but still, nothing about his work indicates why he'd be an admin.
 * [I would not include user:Josiah Rowe here for de-opping, despite his low numbers. As you likely know, he's one of the main organisers of wikipedia's DW project, and he's fairly active elsewhere on Wikia.  Besides he's edited here in the last 30 days.]

I know you're like me and are therefore reluctant to prune the past. But there is an actual technical threat posed by inactive accounts, and we should protect ourselves against account hijack, however unlikely that might be. <span style="">23:40:38 Sat 03 Sep 2011 <span style="">23:40:38 Sat 03 Sep 2011 23:40, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

Master merger
Thanks for that, at least on of us knows what we're doing. I'll just put the finishing touches to it later and it'll be up in a few hours or so.-- 15:13, September 7, 2011 (UTC)

CC-BY-NC-ND-2.0
He< i notice you've added the above template to MediaWiki:Licenses. I don't know for absolute sure, but I don't think you can do that at Wikia. I'm not sure if SA 3.0 is legally compatible with NC-ND 2.0. You might want to ask a question with Special:Contact to get a quickish answer whether we can offer that other license. If ya already have, and they've said yes, disregard this message :)  <span style="">23:18:01 Wed 07 Sep 2011

New editor
Well, the new editor was foisted on us today, and it's instantly created about a thousand things I neede to fix— not the least of which is a total redesign of all the newarticletext templates. And I was just enjoying being a normal editor working on, y'know, articles 'n' stuff.

Oh well.

If you see things that concern you about the new edit page, do let me know. I can't promise when I'll get to it, but at least if I know where there's a problem, I can start to rationalise my time.

The big, honkin' disaster of a thing at the moment is that all those "convenient" little icons under "add features and media" completely allow uers to bypass adding licenses. At this point, all I can think to do about that is just fire off a report to Special:Contact. So if you want to add your voice of complaint to mine and MM's, feel free.

During this period of transition, if you do happen to be wading through the forums at community central, and you notice anything that looks like an interesting custom fix to a problem posed by this new editor, please do send me a link. <span style="">23:24:58 Wed 07 Sep 2011
 * My head is pounding. Literally. I don't even know where to begin with this new editor.  I've retreated to monobook just to be able to do something.  I've spent a good portion of the day firing off various bug reports and having conversations at http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Sarah_Manley/New_Editor_Scheduled_for_Sitewide_Release, a central collection thread for complaints about the new editor.


 * I'm unsure of how to proceed in terms of how to communicate to our user base. There are so many bugs.  I'm not talking about changes.  I mean outright bugs, where the features aren't working even as the developers want.  We need to say something to our users, but I don't know what, exactly, or how.


 * This thing is not getting reversed. We need, therefore, to remain positive about it.  And it's clear that wikia are taking complaints seriously at this point.  I am seeing staff taking user comments seriously.


 * But what do we do here? Do we give users a list of things we know aren't working?  Do we direct them towards community central discussions of relevance?  Do we tell them to submit Special:contact forms when they run into problems?  Do we tell them to retreat to monobook for a week or so while the major bugs are being fixed?  If we do that, our users can't actually get to grips with the new editor and submit error reports, which helps develop the product to a usable level.  If we don't tell them to go to monobook, a lot of them are going to get frustrated with wikia editing.


 * I think ultimately wikia will get this thing working much better than it does today, but I feel like we need to do something to warn/help/advise our local user base, and I have no idea what the right tone is, because the Windows side of me is saying "test the bastard and send in bug reports", while the Mac side of me is saying "this is one of the worst and most obviously illogical interfaces I've ever seen".


 * I need you to help me figure out a way of handling the user fallout while I search for whatever I can find on the technical front that will improve the experience. <span style="">06:21:20 Fri 09 Sep 2011

Delete BroadcastCorp
User:BroadcastCorp who you apparently blocked for five years, wants his talk page and profile page wiped out. And as he is disabled he wants to be unblocked as well, just so he can move on. Thanks. 90.192.93.15 07:13, September 9, 2011 (UTC)
 * As this IP user is a likely sockpuppet of BC himself, the address has been blocked, and a note left of the user talk page to explain that we can't comply with the request. <span style="">13:58:40 Fri 09 Sep 2011

Very quick reply
I haven't even finished reading your message yet, but I did want to fire back with a request: please don't leave over this issue. Just use monobook until the storm of this thing passes. I'm going to be skinning monobook this weekend. You don't really need to see the site in wikia in order to enjoy it.

As much as I don't like the editor, they will get it to something more usable. In the meantime, enjoy some retro-editing – at new lightning fast speeds! — in monobook. <span style="">13:49:13 Fri 09 Sep 2011

Uncategorized files
The licensing of all images in Special:UncategorizedFiles has been completed. To the extent that there are images left there, they are most likely simply waiting for a cache update to whisk them off the page. By no later than Wednesday the caching will have cleared away any remaining stragglers.

I have taken some time to manually (well, semi-automatically, let's say) affix the proper licenses to a great many of the pictures that used to be there. From Wednesday forward, all pictures discovered in UncatFiles will be subject to completely automatic deletion. A number of warnings have been placed on the wiki to this effect. You may direct users to Help:Files should they come to you with the question, "What happened to my file?"

I plan to implement an automatic run more or less when I feel like, but on a weekly basis when any of our shows are in season; at least monthly when not.

user:Doctor Who 63, far and away the biggest offender, has now been put on what I would call a "final warning". If he uploads even a single new picture without a license, there are certainly adequate grounds to block him. I would suggest a block of no more than a week at first, just to let him or her that we are completely serious about needing image licenses. His latest offense comes from 4 September, well and truly after two or three warnings from you, so I think we're beyond the patience I urged in the past. If he had ever acknowledged you in the past, to let us know that he was having problems understanding what to do, the case would probably be different. But he's been asked several times, and yet continues to do break the rule. Yes, his behavior is being aided by the "add a photo to this gallery" bug, but since he/she won't respond we're left with only the option of taking some overt action. Again, you'll be looking for any uploads after 11 Sept without a license. Thanks. <span style="">23:06:39 Sun 11 Sep 2011

Sock puppetry confirmed
User:DomeSeven was absolutely a sock puppet of user:BroadcastCorp, according to a Wikia Central report. He is thus banned on both accounts forever, without the ability to send mail or write on his own talk page. Read more... <span style="">21:20:52 Mon 12 Sep 2011

Achievements now "the Game of Rassilon"
Please note that "Achievements" has now been totally rebranded the "Game of Rassilon" on this site. For those editors who only edit here, it will probably be confusing to make reference to "Achievements", as the word has all but been scrubbed from public view. Help and rules files are now Help:Game of Rassilon and tardis:Game of Rassilon rules. <span style="">13:33:04 Tue 13 Sep 2011

Image discussion
&mdash; Rob T Firefly - &#916;&#8711; - 13:43, September 14, 2011 (UTC)

how do u make templatees

Notable Aliases
Hey, Tangerineduel. Af forum: Notable Aliases, general conscensus has been to remove some of the more ridiculous names that have been appearing in new series characters Also Called section. It was decided that we should remove some of the really bad ones from Aliases of the Doctor, so I did this, noting the names that I removed on the talk page and pointing to the forum discussion and the talk page in my edit summary. Mini-mitch, however, has simply reverted the edits even though myself and Rob T Firefly both tried to keep the page at my version. Not wishing to start an edit war, I left a message on Mini-mitch's talk page, as did 70.36.140.19 and Boblipton. Is there anything that you can do to get mini-mitch to either join the discussion or allow us to make the changes? Thanks-Icecreamdif 02:04, September 19, 2011 (UTC)

Welcome message
The welcome message left behind by user:Wikia is going to be a bit wonky for about a week. There's a bug in that whole system which I appear to have finally nailed down for Wikia. However, it has to be left in a kind of "buggy" state for about a week so that the devs can look at it. For the time being, it won't be displaying our custom welcome message, because the error is in the hierarchy of welcome messages. For some reason, if the welcome message ends in -staff it overides other messages that don't end in -staff. So MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user-staff trumps MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user. At the moment the -staff thingy is overriding our non-staff message, so he welcomes are a bit blah. It'll be corrected in a week, or when I get the all-clear from Wikia, whichever is sooner. <span style="">15:50: Wed 21 Sep 2011
 * By the way, this is working again. Not through a Wikia fix, but through ours.  If you check user:wikia's recent changes, you'll see both IPs and registered users being welcomed with the sig of the admin who's most recently edited the wiki, and all the little $variables being filled in correctly.  If you wish to make changes to the text displayed, you must currently go to MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon-staff and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user-staff.  Changes within the template namespace do nothing, except on those pages where an individual user physically placed Welcome.  These days, it's doubtful that a user would actually be able to "beat the bot" and place the welcome message before it did. You'd basically have to place the welcome message before the new user made an edit to defeat the bot.   <span style="">14:57: Sat 08 Oct 2011

Firefox issues
Nope, that's my doing. The picture thing on templates I knew about, and had to leave for a bit. But I didn't know about the Firefox thing. It's probably something simple, but I gotta run it to ground. Sorry for the incovenience. And it's not just that the infoboxen have lost their formatting; it's everything on a wikia page. The only successful formatting coming through is the font. Probably have it fixed up in a few hours, at most. <span style="">16:00: Fri 23 Sep 2011
 * Just a note about my editing style. Firefox is now my least-used browser.   I used to use FF all the time, but I've found that lately it's just damn slow and aborts for no reason, no matter the website I'm on. And it's also the most finicky.  Safari will accept some syntactical leeway with CSS that FF won't tolerate.  So it's possible to be cruisin' along in Safari without understanding that FF is balking at something.  I do check Firefox, but not on a daily basis.  I was taking a few days' break from CSS/JS because I was going a bit round the bend.  But I see now that FF is having some problems that need to be addressed.  Will look into it over the weekend.  Please don't wait in future if you see issues in FF, as I won't pick up on them immediately.


 * The Hide/Show thing is a problem in all browsers. It works sometimes and not at others.  I haven't really been able to figure out why, but I think it has to do with importing the script, rather than having the script natively on the site.  It's about the order in which the various scripts are loading, and I think this would probably go away if I just had the native script directly on our site.   <span style="">15:32: Fri 07 Oct 2011
 * To keep you abreast of things, this Firefox business is at the top of my priority list. And the problem has been definitively narrowed down to some kind of (probably niggly) syntax error in MediaWiki:Common.css.  Problem is that common.css is a stubborn cuss.  Sometimes changes you make there are immediately reflected, and sometimes it takes hours.  As of yesterday afternoon, it was taking hours — which is not the responsiveness you need when you're tracking down a syntax error.  Hopefully it won't take longer than today to find, but I can't make promises on how long it'll take the wiki's cache to play nice.  I'll let you know as soon as I get to a revision that I think is working.  Sorry for the problems.   <span style="">14:51: Sat 08 Oct 2011


 * Clear your Firefox cache, please. You should find that the site looks much improved.  The CSS issue was found.  I'm still having some problems with Hide/Show, but these are javascript-, and not Firefox-, specific.   <span style="">05:00: Mon 10 Oct 2011

Doug87 Undefeated
You cannot stop me by blocking anon users at random.. Doug87 15:28, September 27, 2011 (UTC)

MM/ Want to talk? 22:27, October 1, 2011 (UTC)