MediaWiki:Community-corner/Archive

August 2011
New stuff on the wiki as of 05:39, August 30, 2011 (UTC) Because some users have complained about the new user page masthead is way too big for the page, we've implemented a slimmer design that's only about 60% of the vertical width of the default Wikia masthead. Users wishing to keep their masthead completely under control should remember to keep their avatars to a strict 150px X 150 px size. In addition to other recently added templates, we now have disputed to highlight potentially incorrect statements. If you find a statement that goes against what you know, this template can be used to flag it for other users to check over. The effort to restore the edit button drop downs to their former glory continues. You will likely experience odd behavior with the button for the next 24 hours at least. Users are encouraged to use their "MyTools" footer instead of the edit/leave a message/edit profile buttons at the tops of pages. If you are an IP user — that is, you don't have a registered account — your edit count is currently reading zero. This is a known bug in the new user page profile masthead. If having an accurate edit count is important to you, please consider registering today.

For those who don't wish to register, but do wish to have their IP user page to accurately reflect their edits, rest assured that the Wikia staff are working on it. Users may be unaware that Wednesdays are typically the days chosen by Wikia to upload the latest bug corrections. For this reason, they are affectionately known as "Wacky Wednesdays", because strange behaviour most often occurs on Wednesdays. Today, the problem has been made a little worse because we're also having issues with the Wiki servers themselves. Recent edits are not showing up on the Wiki Activity, Recent Changes, Page History and User Contribution pages. The problem has been corrected. Users will also note that all edit buttons and drop-down menus are behaving differently than they used to. This is a Wikia-related change, and not one that we are making. It is related to the loss of functionality we experienced last week on user pages. On the up side, however, user and user talk page edit button drop-downs now have the default number of options again. They had lost several Wikia-standard admin-related options from late last week. These have all been restored.

Unfortunately, we've completely lost the archive tool, as well as the ability to edit just article intros and to perform purges. A fix for this loss will hopefully be made available soon. Now that Wikia seem to have taken care of their end of the problem, we can return our customised programming to action. There are a couple of minor, but useful, new templates to announce today. what? helps you mark individual sentences that are so confusing they make you scratch your head and say, "What?" Thus, the sentence can be highlighted for further revision and clarification. imdb? lets you flag an imdb link at the bottom of a page that you think is linking to the wrong person. Both templates automatically categorise the pages that use them, allowing easier maintenance. As we've alerted you before, non-existing categories now create blue links, indicating that they exist. In every other instance on the wiki, linking to an un-created page creates a red link, just like that one. This change to categories is not a bug, but Wikia intent. (Those new to editing here at Tardis may not realise that there is an organisation called Wikia that has jurisdiction over this wiki. They can make changes to the software that runs the site, and are not obliged to consult us when they do so.) All users unhappy with this move are encouraged to register their displeasure at a petition over on the Community Central forums. We are experiencing a temporary alteration of the edit menu that appears on user and user talk pages. This issue appears to be the result of the changeover that Wikia recently made to the format of user pages. Amongst the things now missing from the user talk edit menus are the "refresh", "archive", and "edit intro" features. We are working with Wikia to resolve this matter. No other namespaces are affected by this. As we work to restore these menus to their former utility, you are encouraged to temporarily switch to the monobook skin if you need to perform an easy archive of your user talk page. This issue only affects the "new look" Wikia skin. As you've probably noticed, user pages now look slightly different. You're encouraged to read the message about it that's popped up in the bottom left-hand corner of your screens. Our own unique styling has been quickly applied to the new user page masthead, in order to make it better blend with the rest of our site. If you want to see an example of a user page that has their profile filled in more completely, but don't want to leave our wiki, please take a look at user:Ausir. Just to emphasise a point that Wikia Central are making, whatever you fill in to this new masthead goes with you across all Wikia wikis, so do consider carefully how you fill in those blanks. We're still looking for a new background, to be implemented on 27th August — the date of the debut of Let's Kill Hitler. New designs will retain the Rex Matheson that we currently have on the right side, but replace the image of Jack with a character from the current series of Doctor Who. Please submit your proposals at background image submissions Please note that wales crew is undergoing major surgery in order to accommodate the totally different credit style used by Torchwood: Miracle Day. Crew listings on TV story pages will be "glitchy" over the course of the next 24-48 hours. Listings will possibly look different on a momentary, or per-page-load, basis. This template is easier to change "live" — as opposed to using a sandbox — because each change needs to be viewed across several different shows' episode pages at the same time.

July 2011
There are a several simultaneous bot processes ongoing as of 14:36, July 17, 2011 (UTC) which will continue for at least the next day. All of the pages in category:real world people (and all the subcategories thereunder) are being worked on. One process is ensuring that imdb name is bulleted. In intermediate stages, you may see some pages temporarily having two asterisks in front of the template. The other process is stripping every page of real world, and then replacing it at the very top of the page. This solves the problem of real world colliding with infoboxen.

Editors should make sure in future that a) imdb name is always preceded by a single assterisk and b) templates meant to display at the top of a page go before infoboxes, not after. Preloadable formats for magazine issues have finally been updated so that they work automatically again. Check out Magazine issue preloadable templates fixed for more details. Local administrators and key Wikia staff members' names are now different colors and fonts so that you can find them more easily. Find out more at Why do some user names look different? New categories now create as blue-links. If you start a new category (say, the nonsense category of category:oiojdsfdieww it will show up as a blue-link. See?  Here's another one: category:sdlkjcxlj;k32023908dfj;xj,.zmpfsdf09i.  This is a Wikia change, not a Tardis one.  We are looking into ways of reverting this, but for the moment, understand that the official word from Uberfuzzy at wikia is: "It is not a bug."  You are urged to register your protests with Special:Contact.  It's plainly stupid for un-created categories to register as blue-links, so please take the time to protest this decision today. Wikia's new chat extension has now been enabled!  Generally, you can use it to talk live about whatever you want.  But do check our our chat policy so that you don't fall foul of the one or two inappropriate uses of the technology.  A new background has just been added. Please note that it is not necessarily the final design for the next quarter, but was added hastily so as to create some amount of harmony with the new advertisements that are appearing on Wikia for our site. (Thanks for those, Ausir!) If you want to submit a more permanent design, please do so at background image submissions. Last week, we had a bit of a wobble when opening up the page for The New World to general editing. The fact that Torchwood: Miracle Day episodes are originating late Friday night in the US had some unexpected results for the admin staff. It's just not a great time for most of us to be here to open pages up. Remember, the global premiere of an episode of Torchwood now ends at 11pm Eastern on Fridays. That's 3am London time/1pm Sydney time Saturday. As a result, some editors were left frustrated on July 9 waiting around for the page to be opened, to be helped only by the fact that not all our admin are in those three locations. (See Talk:The New World)

From here on out we're going to do things differently. The remaining episodes will now be opened for editing automatically by the system at 2259 Friday EST/0259 Saturday UTC/1259 Saturday NSW). If you experience any problems over the rest of this series, please send a message to CzechOut, cause it's his fault if it doesn't work.    We're looking for your help!  We need a new background image to go along with the current series of Torchwood.  See Help:Background images and then submit your artwork at Tardis:Background image submissions. Please note that Miracle Day is an in-universe event, but Torchwood: Miracle Day is the out-of-universe name of the current series. of Torchwood. There are a variety of little design changes that Wikia have made which we're trying to fix.  Amongst the things to be fixed lately were: sectional editing buttons being forced back to the right; the elimination of the double graphic on external links, specifying borders around thumbnail images to prevent random, weird white space around images.

If you see any other little oddities, please post them in forum:panopticon. An error was fixed at The Howling which was preventing template:forumheader from being automatically added to the top of new topics. If you've wondered what's happened to a topic you've started there, please read the message at Howling:Has your thread gone missing recently?.

June 2011
If you're having problems with drop-down menus, please read this thread at Wikia central. There is an issue affecting IE 9, a browser that's not particularly recommended for viewing this site. The problems are affecting all of Wikia, not just the Tardis wiki. A new button has started appearing alongside forum listings and bottom-of-page template boxes. It "pops" the area out, extending it across the whole width of your screen. It seems very useful for forum listings, but it makes the show/hide functionality of navigation boxes (like Companions of the First Doctor) completely inoperable — at least in some browsers. This feature has been added by Wikia, not by our admin staff. Users should now find that their Edit/Leave message dropdown on their talk pages no longer "collides" with the top of the main text area on the page. If you're still experiencing a problem with accessing the bottom elements of that dtopdown menu, please clear your cache and look again. A much-requested list of stub templates is now online to help people see what options are available to them. Though simple, the list has the virtue of being dynamic. Thus, when new stub templates are added, the list will automatically update. Work continues on getting the forum archives into some kind of useful order, and on getting the forums to be a little bit more than just a list of topics. You may notice some strange behavior in the way that topics are listed as modifications are made. Users may be aware that we have recently moved The Howling into its own namespace in order to protect users who didn't want to be exposed to its content. One of the advantages of this is that it allows for the whole Howling namespace to be turned off while performing advanced searches. An earlier "glitch" in the system that affected advanced searches has now been corrected. (Thank you, Uberfuzzy for your quick response!) The default condition of searches is to completely ignore the content of The Howling. We are now back to the Wikia default for advanced searches, which is to automatically check only main and blogs by default. If you want to search the Howling, you have to choose to do it. The possibility of accidental exposure to spoilers in The Howling has now been greatly reduced.

Still, the best way to make sure you're searching only the namespaces you want, is to override the defaults with your own personal preferences. Change your personal search preferences here. Don't know what a "namespace" is? Go here. The discontinuity discussions have been moved out of The Howling and into a new forum of their own. You will, however, see inuse tags up on those fora as some tweaking continues. If you see link problems or any issues resulting from this move, please contact our tech admin with your concerns.

Wikia Central have recently removed the "page history" drop down that once resided directly underneath page titles. They returned it to the "edit" drop down, where it had traditionally been. Because we had implemented a javascript workaround that placed the "history" key back into the "edit" menu, you may have noticed two "history" keys in the menu. The extraneous "history" has now been removed. Oddly, however, Wikia have still not put a "history" key on user: and user talk: pages, making it difficult to discover who's written you a note if they don't sign it. Therefore, you will now find a "history" button beside the "edit" menu on those two types of pages. Those users who prefer to use the "history" key found by customizing their tools at the bottom of the page will still be able to do so. We are investigating possible improvement to the discussion software that is used on forum and talk pages. These changes require the permission and help of Wikia central. Keep abreast of this ongoing effort by occasionally checking the Panopticon. In the meantime, you may notice a re-styling of the Panopticon's thread list, which is pretty much the limit of how "fancy" we can make the current messaging system. You will experience a shifting of backgrounds over the next couple of days as a tutorial is developed for the precise creation of future backgrounds. Background and colours have been returned to their default state. Details will be forthcoming over the next few days of exactly how backgrounds should be built. I thank whoever provided the intervening backgrounds for trying to keep the backgrounds current. Weekly changes to the background, however, are probably not the most efficient use of our editing time. An announcement will be made here when the background template is ready. It's very important that the backgrounds are in a very particular place and are a particular colour, in order for the background effect not to interfere with the reading of pages. Just to give one rule of thumb, the background images themselves should be simple, monochromatic line drawings, and they should be place on a background colour of #B0B0B0. More to come. . .  spoiler now replaces pre-broadcast spoiler and pre-release spoiler, as there's really no need for two separate templates. Especially since both the older templates slapped exactly the same category on pages. The two older templates will remain as redirects until this summer. NameSort, discussed below, is being implemented by bot. It is temporarily causing a warning message to appear on pages that already have a DEFAULTSORT key. This problem will be cleared up shortly, but must be addressed by a second run of the bot. A cool little sorting template has been added which will automatically sort articles about people by their last name. It's called NameSort. Be sure to go to the template page to read the documentation. A new range of stub templates has been steadily growing over the weekend. This greater specification of stubs should make it easier for people looking for ways to improve the wiki to find a subject in which they're interested. A new help page on these stubs is forthcoming once they're all implemented, but for now, you're invited to look at category:stubs and category:stub templates for an idea of the way in which this project is progressing. If you have additional ideas for stub templates, please send them to CzechOut. Top-of-page templates, like delete and update have all been switched over to the same glowy, pictorial style of real world and nc. Again, the goal here is a uniform look. One message box, conjecture, still doesn't have a picture yet because I can't quite think of a single image that iconically represents conjectural titles. If you have any suggestions for a pictorial representation of this concept, please send your idea to CzechOut. Image licenses have been switched over to a single style, controllable by a single CSS element. Since there was no genuine "colour-coding" going on — but just people choosing random colours for different licenses, it's all been switched over to a design that's in harmony with other message boxes. Following on magazine issue nomenclature changes from last week, the bot's been incredibly busy this weekend linking references to magazine issues to the new names. So, there's been a transfer of links from DWM Issue 1 to DWM 1. Random samples of various issues has allowed for the complete elimination of redirects that included the word "issue". People interested in this topic are directed to the page Magfix, which chronicles this project in greater detail. If you regularly edit magazine issues, please note Tardis:Manual of Style, the result of closing two forum discussions, Forum:DWM Issue 000/DWM and Forum:DWBIT: Odd man out. The short version: issue names should now be styled, [Acronym + number]. So DWM 1 or DWA 123 or DWBIT 34. No "issue", no long-form magazine name. When you're editing articles, and putting in new pictures, please use the format NOT. It'll really help out! For the reasons why, please see Forum:Tech note: Image nomenclature. Thanks :) Check under the edit pull-down menu for some new features that weren't there before! One of the coolest:  edit intro.  Now you can specifically edit just the lead of an article! Looking for a way to help do some much needed cleaning?  Go to Tardis:Duplicate images.  Look at any of the duplicate series and then add delete to the duplicates that currently aren't being used. reflist has been updated to the latest version at Wikipedia.  This means that it is now possible to define more than just two columns, and to define the widths of those columns. This feature still does not work in IE and (probably) Chrome, but it does work in all Mozilla browsers, like Firefox.  It's been improved, however, to now include Safari for the first time on this wiki! Timeline pages have finally gotten their navboxes styled. We've implemented a new navbox for the day pages, like 1st January. This means that all timeline pages now have new, elegant navboxes. It also means that these pages are now practically bare — since most of their previous content was just a list of days in a month or years in a decade. You can help by starting to write in-universe entries for these pages, such as the ones at January, September and April. In order to avoid clutter, some templates that used to go somewhere around infoboxes now are tags which appear just slightly outside page boundaries. Chief amongst these are wikipediainfo, protect and lock. All these tags are clickable, but they're fortunately not adding to the clutter of "template stack", that sometimes gets really out of hand, especially on shorter pages. navbox, an import from Wikipedia that allows for much more flexibility and uniformity amongst navboxes. I haven't gotten around to re-writing the documentation so it makes more sense for our particular wiki, but the code is fully installed and appears to be working perfectly. In fact, most navboxes have been switched over to the new format. There's only one major category of navboxes yet to be switched, and that's just because of a policy question that needs to be settled in the forum. If you haven't voted yet, please go to Forum:Aliens and enemies templates: the final battle and vote today! If you'd like instructions on how to submit a new background image, send a message to CzechOut. See something wacky on the wiki today that you didn't yesterday? Worried that, to paraphrase the Fifth Doctor, the site regeneration is failing? If you're nervous about the daily changes around this joint, you may want to follow our progress more closely, by reading the wiki's tech diary. We'll try to make daily posts to explain what's happened in that day's round of changes, and to note anything that's not quite working as expected. Page histories are now available under the "edit page" menus. This adds another convenient location for checking the history of a page, in addition to the history drop-down on the top left of most pages, and the tool under MyTools. This re-adds a history link to user pages in particular, which had theirs removed when Wikia radically redsigned their base skin. This new feature may not work in all browsers, but it does in Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers. It does not appear to work in Safari. Editors, please be sure to read our Manual of Style's section on article leads, which has recently been expanded. Now there are more examples and suggestions to help you improve your article-writing skills. The terms "First Doctor", "Second Doctor", and the like, 'are now specifically encouraged by our Manual of Style. The word "human" 'should no longer be capitalised. big toc} is now no longer necessary, because its functionality is now hard-coded into the site. All tables of content, on every page where one is automatically generated, are now on the right.