User talk:Tangerineduel

Fun new toy
Useful bit of new kit for you at: Forum:Monobook users: please install this code. Lets you switch between skins without going through Special:Preferences. Perfect if you want to bypass java-heavy Oasis for a bit, but still keep your pulse on oasis. 22:56: Wed 11 Apr 2012
 * I don't think you're the odd man out. I was just telling you so you'd know what to tell users who may have a preference for monobook (as a number of people who came from Wookieepedia and MemAlpha still do). It's really important that we stress the fact that people who do edit in Monobook occasionally take a look at Wikia.  For instance, the new you may and dab away templates work totally differently in monobook than they do in wikia.  user:Doug86 was unaware of this because, I gather, he rarely looks at Wikia.  He therefore began moving around instances of the template around so that it fit in with what he thought looked good in Monobook.  But this had terrible implications for Wikia.  People like Doug need to have an easy way to check their work in Wikia so that they can keep editing in Monobook, but not destroy Wikia.   16:17: Thu 12 Apr 2012

Unproduced TV story images
No idea. I've just discovered one part of the "unproduced story" mess. I haven't even gotten around to the image part. How are there genuine images of these stories, anyway? They're unproduced, right? Does it count if someone, years later, does a concept illustration in DWM? 16:17: Thu 12 Apr 2012
 * Yep, I totally agree with you. They are illustrations of the article not concept art done in pre-production of the story.  That's a huge difference, to my mind.  These categories, and all references to them, have been stripped.  We don't want to get into the business of "pictures of what might have been".


 * Now as to the validity of the articles themselves, I think they should definitely stay. I know what you mean about wanting to sort of fold them into a single article, but there is utility to having them separated out, since the infoboxes now allow us to track adaptations.  It's more convenient for there to be Ice Time (TV story) and Ice Time (audio story) so that we can distinguish between the two.  Sure, in some cases there's not a lot to say about the unproduced story, but in others, there's quite a bit known — and it's very different from the version that got produced.  Crime of the Century (audio story) is significantly different to Crime of the Century (TV story), and it's useful to have free-standing articles for this kind of highlighting.  And you might as well just live with the small articles so that we don't have to come up with a rule defining the word "significant".   17:11: Thu 12 Apr 2012

Expanded navigation
Four words: Over. My. Dead. Body.

Well, okay, that's a little harsh. But I really don't want to enable it unless Wikia shove it down our throats. The main reason is that it will involve a good deal of restyling on my part, which I don't wanna do. I've just spent a week intensively revamping the monobook skin. I am totally loathe to having to now go back and restyle huge parts of the Wikia skin. There's nothing really wrong with the navigation we have now. It fits in with our general styling in an elegant, unobtrusive way. And it's easy to use. Sure, it doesn't offer the same number of levels of navigation, but it's just a plain, simple drop-down menu. Everyone gets how to use those. Down and to the right navigation is slightly trickier for end users, and I'd have to be convinced of the actual utility of those extra levels of navigation. Also, if we employ it, we'll be sacrificing a bit of the screen real estate we're currently not using, but which we could use. We could put an additional background element (well, two actually) behind the wordmark, running the whole width of the page. I'd like to reserve that for potential use, rather than giving it over to the new navigation bar.

Expanded navigation is enabled at w:c:tardistest. You can take a look at it there in all its ugliness. I will at some point take a look at styling it at tardistest, just because I may have to have something available if Wikia make it mandatory. But I really don't like it. Not one bit.

That said, I am speaking primarily from a design standpoint. If there's a compelling contentual argument you'd like to advance, I will of course be willing to listen. But given the time I've put in lately on monobook, I really don't want to start another big project for at least a month.

Here are my current priorities:


 * 1) Finish up a few touches on Monobook (est. completion: this weekend)
 * 2) Finish up stray infoboxes not done (est. completion: this weekend)
 * 3) Make categories for all comic stories. I didn't expect user:OttselSpy25 to just start making them in a hodgepodege fashion on his own because there's a freakin' huge note saying not to do that.  But whatever.   They all need to be done. (est. completion: 20 April)
 * 4) Complete work on title dab away so that there's a single tool people can use to italicise titles with dab terms. (est. completion 20 April)
 * 5) Implemnt standard, easy table-making CSS, along the same lines as the code simplification of infoboxes.  Basically, all tables should have a standard look, and "mouseover effects" for maximum readability.  (est. completion 1 May)
 * 6) Do a wholesale rewrite of documentation on infoboxes as well as Tardis:Guide to infoboxes (est. completion: 1 May)
 * 7) Full automation of the DYK thing. I know, I know.  Don't roll your eyes.  There's a way to do it so that it's random on each page load, and I think it would be so cool.  People might sit on our front page for a while just reloading the page for new facts.  If it works, we might conisider doing the featured article like that, too.  Just have a pool of 100 articles and be done with it.  Once you set it up, it'll be just like the QOTW: completely hands free, but dynamic.
 * 8) Tackling the MOS. Once and for all making it easier to understand.  User:Boblipton's recent criticisms are valid.  The thing is a rambling mess.  It must be ripped apart, refactored, illustrated, and just made clearer.  Things which are genuine stylistic minutae can stay; things which are more "guideline/policy"-like need to be split off.  The MOS has got to be about tiny details such as T:HONOUR, not broader policies, like T:SOURCES.  Not proposing losing any of the info, just making the MOS a more approachable, better-defined document.   (est. completion: hopefully early May)
 * 9) Tackling the T:CAN rewrite. Again, this is a document which is central to our existence as a wiki community, but recent discussions about video games, Dimensions in Time and other things make it clear to me that it's not communicating the point we're trying to make.  I had started a rewrite last year, and you annotated my changes, but I never got back to the rewrite incorporating your notes.  I want to get back to that, so that we have something in place that's a bit clearer before the new season starts. (est. completion: 1 June)
 * 10) Implementing some sort of progress track for articles. We've got to have some way, as a community, of pushing articles down an at least loosely defined path of improvement, as at Wookieepedia and MemAlpha and Wikipedia.  I recently participated in a FA nom process at MemAlpha and it was enjoyable and highly productive.  We need something like that here.  Skittles was a big advocate of it, but we never got around to it while he was active.  We really shold have something in place by the start of the new season.

So, point is, I've got a lot more to worry about than restyling something which, basically, we already have. But I'm not completely closed to the idea, if there's a valid contentual reason to do it. 18:48: Fri 13 Apr 2012


 * Sorry. My bad. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:09, April 13, 2012 (UTC)

Monobook toy expansion
I know you weren't terribly interested in the skin-changing tool before, but its functionality has been expanded to also allow desktop viewing of the wikiamobile skin. Code has been updated at Forum:Easy switching between monobook, wikia and wikiamobile. 00:49: Fri 20 Apr 2012

A dangerous precedent may soon be set here
One thing I appreciate about this wiki is its open acceptance of what is considered canon. Like the BBC, it's pretty flexible and with a little creativity - or simply paying attention - it's possible to work most licensed works into the in-universe discussion. Even Death Comes to Time. So you can understand why I am distressed to see this discussion in which one of your admins is proposing the wiki unilaterally declare a fully licensed novel (The Infinity Doctors) as non-canon, simply because it's too difficult to rationalize it with the in-universe stories. That's a ridiculous suggestion, and in my opinion will set this wiki down a slippery slope. If we're going to declare things willy nilly non-canon, then let's just delete Season 18, Miracle Day, anything with the names John and Gillian in it, Fear Her, etc etc. You see where I'm getting at. I wouldn't care if it was just some general user making the suggestion, but it comes from one of your admins. How about giving editors a little credit to be able to work with the material provided? 70.72.223.215talk to me 19:46, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

Randomness
Okay, the technology is in place for having the front page display something different on each page load, which will free us from having to remember to change it.

It also has the potential for making our front page perhaps the most dynamic on wikia, since we could randomise every module on the front page. It will look different to every person on every page load. People will potentially be mesmerised by it, if we implement it in a big way.

For instance, if we put in about 100 featured articles, 50 more quotes, a DYK section that randomly selects each of the five separate pools of facts of apparent randomness. All five 'slots' will be separately randomised so that every user will get a totally unique front page on each pageload. Yes, it will take some work to build the infrastructure, but then we'll never have to touch the front page again.

Here's an example. Just reload the page to watch it change. 02:08: Tue 24 Apr 2012


 * Cool! Well, I don't see how it would make load times slower, because I deliberately avoided the javascript solution.  This is just a simple random number generator triggering a page load through completely ordinary wikicode. The downside, to the extent it is a downside, is that we'll (okay I'll) be creating a ton of template pages.  Like seriously thousands. But that's not much of an issue, since they'll all just be subpages and rather neatly tucked away.  I'll let you know once the infrastructure is in place. As always I'm juggling several big changes at once.


 * That said, however, I can tell you exactly what we're going to need:
 * 47 more quotes to bring us up to an even 100 quote pages.
 * Intros for 100 "featured pages" (And I don't see any reason why we can't reuse things from the past, so that's gotta be about half of 'em lying in the page histories.)
 * 500 factoids for DYK, broken down into 5 groups of 100 facts. Groups are: "old series BTS", "new series BTS", "species", "technology/object/concept", and "facts about main characters (something interesting about an incarnation of the Doctor, a companion, Sarah Jane, Captain Jack or K9".   These cats aren't hard and fast; they're just a starting point for building the five pools of information.


 * I'll soon have a "proper" home to deposit this info, but until then you could just dump the info on a sandbox or something.  Hopefully I'll have something more permanent up by the time your computer situation is settled.


 * Work continues apace on the great manual of style restyle. I'll pop the new {{tl|tardis manual}] on your page here so you can take a look at the attempt to get something going.  It's very much still a work in progress though, so it's changing all the time.  Obviously, your comments on its progress are valued.  But basically the deal is that everything not under layout will be peeled away from the MOS and put on its own page.  The idea is that the MOS will now be just about niggly little formatting issues.  Everything else will go on bite-sied pages of their own.  So there will be a page for T:DOCTORS, a page for magazine naming conventions, etc.  Things that are in within one of the tardis manual headings will get an additional template that'll say something like "part of a series of articles about ".  So all the naming stuff will be additionally linked by a small template like looks like, that'll sit on top of tardis manual and not collapse.  That way people won't get lost, and they'll hopefully red all the little naming things one at a time.  Basically it'll create "reading topics", so people can take steps through each topic, rather than being overwhelmed by everything presented all at once.  Essentially, the {[tl|tardis manual}} will be the table of contents for the whole book, and the little tardis manual topic will be a chapter in that book.


 * (BTW: If you're viewing on an ipad, this box will still be there and usable, but it doesn't look anything like it does in wikia/monobook. Temporarily switch to regular view to view as intended.)


 * Oh, and as you can see — if you're not viewing with wikiamobile — I've had to add infobox collapsibility to the wiki. This might mean that we can now just have appearances reintegrated into the infobox, rather than on separate pages.  Dunno what you think about that, but it's definitely possible to eliminate the appearances pages now without making the infoboxes grow one millimeter.  18:27: Tue 24 Apr 2012
 * The series logo buttons at have now been randomised to cover the "little" problem of 3/4ths of the shows being no longer in production.


 * As for what I'm doing with the poll data, I dunno. I've preserved it at Tardis:Poll archive, but beyond that, nada.  It's unfortunately not possible to save it into any kind of format that would be useful by any bot process, magic word, or (known) template, so if we wanted to "pretty up" the raw data, we'd have to do it manually.   13:58: Wed 25 Apr 2012
 * Okay the structure for the "featured article" randomisation has now been created at (meaning, "article of the minute", consonant with the recent re-labeling of the "quote of the week" to "quote of the minute" on the main page.


 * Also, the template has been expanded to allow for 100 entries, but it's still working perfectly because I've not changed the actual math of randomisation. It's still just looking for 53 possibilities until all 100 are entered.  21:05: Wed 25 Apr 2012
 * And now the infrastructure is in place.   02:44: Thu 26 Apr 2012
 * DYK is now back on the main page. Although there are still a lot of facts to create, there are enough in that the randomisation thing "works" to a sufficient standard.   15:07: Sat 28 Apr 2012

Page needs to be protected
I haven't been around much, but a situation has arisen away from the wiki that should be noted as it could impact an article here. A few fan groups have been fooled by a hoaxer claiming to be Miranda Borman, the actress who played Stellar in the McCoy story Dragonfire. It got so far that I actually interviewed this person thinking it was the real actress and put it on a blog. Multiple reliable sources indicated that this was likely a hoaxer and the person confessed last night to being a "bored college student". Anyway, this individual has been impersonating Miranda on multiple occasions. And during my conversation with her when I thought she was genuine, I let her know about "her" page on the Tardis Index File. So far nothing's been added to the page, but I strongly suggest the page be given full protection and be policed for any changes made in case the hoaxer isn't done, for the sake of our equivalent of Wikipedia's BLP. It appears the photo on the article is of the real actress (who now goes by the name Mindi Buttons) so at least that's correct. 23skidoo talk to me 13:57, April 29, 2012 (UTC)