User talk:Mini-mitch/Archive Talk 5

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Lyrics
Lyrics are different from quotes. See wikipedia. Take care to differentiate. Thanks--Skittles the hog-- Talk 18:14, February 17, 2011 (UTC) ... and thanks for trying to mend fences with Fan555.

Promotional images
Hey, I notice that you've occasionally cited "promotional image" as a reason to delete a file. This isn't, technically, a reason to delete an image. Promotional images are allowed to exist here, but they can only be used on real world pages that aren't story pages. Let's look at that image of Rosita that you recently deleted. You couldn't use it on Rosita Farisi, cause that's an in-universe character page. You couldn't use it on The Next Doctor, because that's specifically banned by tardis:manual of style. But if you look at the second paragraph of that section, you see that


 * Real world articles may use practically any other relevant images that have been properly sourced and tagged with an appropriate copyright tag.

So you could use it on Velile Tshabalala. In other words, we have to police the use of promotional images; we can't just delete them for being promotional. That's why promotional picture isn't in the drop-down menu of file deletion rationales.

--The Thirteenth Doctor 21:57, February 20, 2011 (UTC)

Finisterman
I did notice when the similar user name turned up, but was kinda hoping the user had returned to add useful edits to the wiki. I've had a look through their contributions and have blocked it looks to be the same person them for 6 months (Finister2 was blocked for 3 months). Thanks. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:11, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Re: Small Notice
Yeah, sorry about that. Didn't even realize until after you fixed it. Figured he should have gone above the TBA folks, didn't know if the announced order for the actor was more important than the character itself. --Witoki 16:38, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Whoa
Hey, does the site look totally "unglued" to you right now? I'm not seeing much in the way of formatting at the moment. 17:44:56 Mon 28 Feb 2011
 * Heh, never mind. As soon as I sent that message to you, things snapped back into place.  17:46:47 Mon 28 Feb 2011

Big toc
Actually, I hadn't noticed, or I would have stopped you wasting your time. Big toc is effectively unnecessary now. It's been hard-coded into the site. It automatically happens on every page. Now, you can still use it, I suppose. I haven't really checked, but I imagine the effect of placing big toc on a page is that it allows you to control where the TOC will go. It normally goes after the lead, by the default of the new layout, but it might be that using the template will allow you to put it lower or higher in the article. So you're kinda wastin' your time to intentionally put it on pages. I use it sometimes on forum pages still, where there are less than the minimum number of sections for the TOC to automatically appear, but other than that, I stopped trying to put it out there.

And, yes, there is a known inequality in the way the various TV infoboxen are coded. That's why a part of the redesign is to eliminate the various infoboxen into a single TV box, a single audio box, a single novel box, a single comics box, and the like. Get all the code in one place and maintenance is extraordinarily easier. But that's a few days away yet.

In the meantime, know that big toc is automatic. And I apologize that you've wasted some time; if I thought anyone was actually going to be hand editing that, I would have put up warnings before the change. 18:45:22 Mon 28 Feb 2011
 * Hmmm, your last message has me worried. You're speaking in the future tense as if you don't see this change is already on the site.  Did you not notice while you were placing these big toc s around that the contents were already on the right?  If not, can I ask you to please clear your cache and look at the site again?  19:04:32 Mon 28 Feb 2011


 * The only effect using big toc would now have on pages is to force the TOC to appear at the point of insertion, as I've just done to your page. (Revert by deleting big toc from your page)  In the case of this page, that's an obvious difference.  However, on a lot of other pages, especially those with infoboxen, it wouldn't make much of a visible difference, because the infobox is going to wrestle it down underneath it, so long as you don't completely bury big toc in the depths of the article.  Just adding anywhere from the top of the page to, say, the end of the lead, isn't gonna do diddly, really.  19:32:58 Mon 28 Feb 2011
 * Heh, well, big toc will move the toc on your page if your page hadn't specified the TOC element within your archive box. I've temporarily removed the forced TOC to demonstrate.  You can put it back after you note the effect.   19:36:17 Mon 28 Feb 2011

Drop down
Please stop changing the "Individuals" drop down. I have reverted it (or rather edited it back) to its original form. Your guessing people come here for the here-and-now TV show. They may well be interested in the Doctor as a whole. The other individuals are the lead characters of their spin-offs.Skittles the hog-- Talk 16:30, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

Current companion? Really? You mean "current televised companion". In adding such link, you're opening up to other companions. I notice Rory Williams didn't make the list, and what about companions in spin-offs (SJS's gang, Torchwood 3, K9's gang)? I haven't removed it yet as I assume you must have a reason for this addition e.g. you might believe Who to be the only noteworthy show, you may think Amy to be the current companions over all, you may belief her to be the superior of the two current televised companions. However, this is very opinion based. I think it is better to merely have the main characters from each of the shows. Your opinion? Skittles the hog-- Talk 16:48, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

Well, until that day Pond should not be on that list. I know your a new series guy, but the BFA releases are current aren't they. Does that not make their companions current? If you want to have subcategories messing up a neat list I don't mind.Skittles the hog-- Talk 16:59, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I would prefer it to stay as it is. I think that the list is best left short and sweet. Thank you for your time.Skittles the hog-- Talk 17:25, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

Good, It looks better not sectioned.Skittles the hog-- Talk 18:08, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

The God Complex
I know the reason you keep on deleting the info on The God Complex is that it has not yet been confirmed. Have you actually looked at the front cover of DWM 432? The one thing I want to say is that when the DWM before the airing of the Series 5 finale says "Latest Info On Pandorica Opens etc" and I remember that it was then put on the Series 5 page and left there. Why are you getting rid of The God Complex? Look at the image next to the text on the front cover. It's the screenshot from the clip of Amy screaming IN the opening episode! Look at the evidence. How on earth can you deny it? --Ghastly9090 18:50, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

Things to consider before deleting
I reverted a high percentage of your deletions today, so I wanted to drop by here and give you a few suggestions. Please don't delete names that are:
 * working titles, like Black Ops or Sarah Jane Investigates. We should be working towards building a list of redirects for all valid, confirmable working titles.  Some people, generally on the geeky end of fandom, may get stuck someday in a trivia contest and want to know, quickly, what was the episode that began its life as Black Ops.
 * common alternate English words that you know must exist in some Doctor Who story somewhere. Deleting kitten was just cold, man :)  Especially when you know the word was used in at least Gridlock.  Same thing with canine and feline.
 * if you're going to give the rationale "unlikely to be searched for", please consider whether that statement is true. You gave that rationale for "kitten", but c'mon — people will search for ordinary English words, if given a chance.  Things that are unlikely to be searched for are phrases that are unusually long, complicated or simply misspelled, versus the primary name of the topic.


 * But the biggie is this. Please don't delete:


 * anything that is used as a valid alternate name in the lead of an article. Tony Head and season 27, etc., were all emboldened in the leads of articles.  Any time an alternate name for the topic is emboldened in a lead, it automatically requires a redirect based on that name.  Doesn't matter if it's never linked to.  As a valid alternate name for the topic, it must lead people to that article if they type it in the search box.  Simple as that.  Also, you may not personally like calling new series by a seasonal name, but this battle was fought long before you joined the wiki.  You're subverting a compromise reached long ago.  If you don't like references to "season 28" or "season 30", fine — but you'll definitely need a forum discussion to change current compromise.  As things stand, the series number gets preference, but the season numbers are valid redirects.

'Course, I didn't undo everything you deleted today. But you might want to consider these points before going through another round of deletion. 01:14:13 Sat 05 Mar 2011

Policy inconsistency
You've recently completely unprotected The King's Dragon without explanation. I'd like one, please, considering that multiple admins have been trying to protect the creation of Touched by an Angel (and Touched By An Angel, for that matter). The former book comes out in July, the latter in August. What's the difference? Both are future publications, but one is only slightly less in the future than the other.

Please justify your actions in light of tardis:spoiler policy. 00:01:22 Sun 06 Mar 2011
 * Thanks for explaining. And for catching my error.  I could've sworn Amazon said 2011, but going back to check, it appears that it didn't. That'll teach me to sit too far away from my monitor.  Thanks again :)  15:43:58 Sun 06 Mar 2011

Moving images
Hey, when you're moving images it's often easier to uncheck the 'leave redirect behind' check box (as I'm assuming you're changing the file names on the pages to what you're moving the images to). Unchecking the box means the redirects aren't created, which obviously means you don't have to go back after moving them to delete the redirects. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:35, March 6, 2011 (UTC)

SJA Page Mistake
Hello. There is a typo on http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sarah_Jane_Adventures that I cannot fix, because the page is protected.

It should say numerous, not numerours...
 * Bio dampers appeared numerours times, they debuted in DW: The Runaway Bride. Fbultimatrix 11:38, March 7, 2011 (UTC)

20:05:03 Fri 11 Mar 2011

Names of Episodes one and two
Thanks for finding the actual tweets for the eppisodes thanks :) AdricLovesNyssa

Template editing
Hey, just to let you know, every template will eventually be touched by the site redesign. I don't want to discourage you from learning things about how templates work or color design theory, so it may be that you might gain some knowledge as you tinker. On the other hand, I don't want you to feel badly if you see your changes swept away when the code of templates becomes more reliant on CSS. 20:40:04 Mon 14 Mar 2011

NA
NAs can actually have this character information on their pages. Please don't remove it. ThanksSkittles the hog-- Talk 09:42, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

Quotations
You removed a quotation from Melanie Bush last month and said in your revision note that it was against MOS. I've replaced your deletion because: May I request that you please read the MOS and/or policy pages before you take action on what you think they contain. As an admin, you, me, Skittles — we — have an especial burden to be right about our policies.
 * 1) You didn't even read the surrounding paragraph to note that you destroyed the sentence that preceded the quote. The quotation was grammatically tied to the sentence; its removal made that sentence nonsensical.
 * 2) You're flatly wrong about the MOS. In no way does this site ban  quotations outright.  It only bans them at the top of articles and sections.  As you can see it positively encourages them in the body of articles.

I don't really fancy going through your contribution history to find other instances where you mistakenly removed quotations. Therefore, can I ask you to try to remember where else you might have removed quotes like the one at Mel? Any such deletions need to be reverted ASAP. Thanks :)  15:34:34 Thu 17 Mar 2011

--Tangerineduel / talk 14:38, March 23, 2011 (UTC)

Headings
Thanks for your commments and criticisms. The reason for the change to all caps was a simple one. It's all well and good for the MOS to say that sentence case is preferred. But the fact is, people weren't doing it. And for every thousand pages that I could change to sentence case via the bot, there were hundreds of pages where the header was too individualistic for a bot to recognize. It's one thing to change every page that has "See Also"; it's quite another to change the one page that has the header "A Noble Return". Since I've spend well over a year on a campaign to get sentence case fully implemented — to at best only partial success — I naturally seized upon the opportunity to take care of the problem with one command. I wish I had known how to do it when I first started working on the style sheet, but I didn't. Therefore, I think what happened is that people had just gotten used to the initial round of changes when — wham! — I changed it again.

I'd strongly urge you to give this new font mix a week or so to grow on you.

As for your specific criticism about the size, I'm not seeing it no matter how much I magnify or zoom in the text. I spent a hell of a long time with the wikia menus on the very top row getting the text size just right. And as far as I can tell, there's none of the collision you're describing. Have you cleared your cache recently? Because there was a time where what you're describing was true. (An easy way to tell here is whether or not the links under Entertainment are in all caps. If they are, you're definitely looking at an old version of the site.   I should point out, too, that this wikia dropdown is notoriously difficult for all wikis.  Many wikis display some sort of collision, at one or more "zoom levels".  Don't forget, too, that if you're using Firefox, there are two types of zooming available to you, each of which distorts the page in different ways.  A simple font-size enlargement, however, does not distort any part of our site to the point of unreadability.

As to other points you've made:
 * I'm not going to ever recommend or support using the "single =" or h1 level of headlining. That's against the basic tenets of MediaWikia design, and will present many problems.  These are detailed at Tardis:Manual of Style and Tardis:Manual of Style/Headline test.  H1 is strictly for article titles.
 * I don't know what you mean by "continuous subheadings"? Do you mean having more than one subheading in a row?
 * A "website for the near-blind" is an interesting way of putting things. You've got to remember that 20/20 vision is not normal, statistically.  It might be normal medically, but most people don't have it, especially amongst the computer-using community.  I perosnally think that headings need to be readable and slightly oversized.  To my eye, which is actually 20/20, it gives a certain dramatic flair to things, and is a design feature that isn't present on any other wiki.  I realize that there will be occasional headers that are rendered on two lines now that probably wouldn't have been before, but honestly, if the header is that long, it's probably best to think about a way of editing the header down.  Specifically, this design looks pretty bad on magazine issue pages.  But then again, those pages looked awful before I started making any changes.  Those are just "list" pages, essentially.  They don't really have a design.  I think on most pages, where headers are of an appropriate, <6 word length, you don't get double-line headers.

Taking all that on board, if you're really thinking the headers need revision, there are some compromises we could go for. One thing is that the headers aren't really "big" in a font-height sense. They're w i d e. I've put in letter-spacing, which is not typically done on most wikis. I could dial that back a little. And we could drop the actual font size down minimally.

But I really don't want to give up on the basic design ethos of sans-serif cap headings/serif body text. 21:15:14 Wed 23 Mar 2011


 * Okay, i did indeed reign in the h2 headlines so that there's not as much space between letters. This will reduce the effective size of the top-level header by 2/5ths.  As for collission, I still don't see what you're talking about.  I've zoomed in and out to the full extent of both Safari and Firefox, and I get no collision at all.  Here's a pic of the sort of "average zoom" level for you to compare with your own results.  If your browser isn't giving something like this result, then it may be an indication that you, somehow, haven't actually cleared your cache.  22:43:33 Wed 23 Mar 2011


 * Hey, thanks for the screenshot so quickly. I'm not seeing any problems with it though.  I don't detect any sort of collision in the screenshot.  Oh, wait there is a tiny area of collision at your name in the upper right, isn't there?  Okay, let me ask you this.  Is this the normal zoom in Chrome?  Or have you zoomed in a bit?  And if you've zoomed, how have you done so?  See, in Firefox, you can get into trouble when you choose to zoom "text only".  By the very name of the command, it should be obvious that "zoom text only" means that you're distorting the text versus the rest of the page.  If you uncheck that selection, and then zoom the whole page in or out in proportion, you'll never get collision.  At least not so far as I can detect.  I spent a lot of time on the wikia header bar checking for just this problem, and as far as I can see it's a robust design.  Neither I nor any programmer can code things to prevent a page from strange effects when the text and page sizes are deliberately changed by the user to be out of synch with one another.  Go to any Wikia wiki page, try the trick of Firefox zooming with text only, and you'll be disappointed by the results.  Obviously, you're using Chrome, not Firefox, but you should check to see how you're zooming.
 * Please clear your cache (yes, again) and report your findings.  23:20:30 Wed 23 Mar 2011
 * By the way, we are just talking about the little bit of collision between your name and the three wikia drop down menus, right? You didn't send a screenshot of the menus themselves, so I assume that's not actually a problem for you anymore?  And since you're using Chrome, may I suggest you go here and try the second way of zooming that's described on the page?  We want to test zooming everything on the page and not just the size of the fonts on the page.  23:40:02 Wed 23 Mar 2011
 * Okay, clear your cache yet again. I've reduced the width of the three Wikia dropdown headers by half, and returned the dropdown lists underneath to an almost out-of-the-box state. The only styling placed there now is color and font, which is only imperceptibly different than the default Arial.  If you're getting any collision in this area, honestly, it's because of some kind of setting on your end.  I stress again the importance of understanding the difference between the two types of zoom that most modern browsers now offer.  One will distort text and one will not.  If you're now still experiencing distorted text with the top bar, I wouldn't immediately have an idea why — other than your own settings.  Nevertheless, if you are still having problems, please take a screenshot and let me see.   <span style="">00:09:26 Thu 24 Mar 2011
 * Oh yah! One important question.  When you zoom in, and the text gets larger, does the page scroll off the right side of the screen?  Or is the page width unaffected by zooming?  That is, do you get a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the page when you zoom, or . . . not?  If you're not getting a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the page, then you're zooming in a way that code can't help.


 * Here's another test. If you zoom and the stetson thing on the background really zooms out of view, then you're zooming "correctly".  If the stetson thing basically doesn't move, then you're just zooming the text on the page, and warping/collision is going to happen.   <span style="">00:19:05 Thu 24 Mar 2011


 * I'm really glad to hear that things are looking better for you now. Thanks very much for your help in diagnosing a problem that wasn't obvious to me.  Don't be afraid to speak up again if something isn't working for you.  <span style="">17:37:21 Thu 24 Mar 2011

Firefox "problems"
Hiya :) Thanks for your questions.  I'm gonna try to answer which ones I can, but there are some for which I need more visual evidence from you.  My general thoughts, though, are that you seem to be citing an awful lot of examples from the series 6 (Doctor Who) page.  Please remember that this is an extremely high traffic page which attracts the attention of people with various levels of skill at coding things.  You should in general not expect things to look "right" on this page, as people tend to markup this page with "what works for them" rather than using the MediaWiki language with skill.  Don't use this page, in other words, to judge whether your browser is "working".  That said, here are my responses: Final thought for now:  You are going to find that the wiki looks slightly different in Firefox.  It looks different in every browser.  But the areas that you see differently are particularly important to note and screenshoot. Such observations are invaluable (to me, anyway) as they help identify which coding practices are cross-platform compatible, and which are not. <span style="">12:51:45 Sat 26 Mar 2011
 * The guest cast table is the laziest damn piece of table-making I've ever seen. I'm sure Google Chrome doesn't recognize the border, because it's only defined with a single character — %. Firefox accepts that laziness, but other browsers don't.  Nothing's "wrong" with Firefox, per se.  It's just accepting a value of "%", where other browsers don't.  If you take away the border = "%" then you won't see a border in Firefox.  Conversely, if you define it sensibly with an actual numeric value, line thickness, and line type — then Chrome (and every browser) will see it.
 * I'm not seeing that the episode table on this page runs episodes 10 and 11 together so they appear as a two parter. The code in this area seems sound.  Could you take a screenshot to show me what you're talking about?
 * I'm unfamiliar with any "aliens and enemies of series x pages" that put a list into columns. The template pages don't generally use columns, and those are the only "aliens and enemies of series x pages" of which I'm aware.  Could you provide me with links to the pages that are giving you grief?  (I will say, however, that if you're talking about the pages in the category category:Aliens Navigation templates — don't worry, they're all being completely recoded within the next few days.
 * What version of Firefox are you using? That looks most unusual.  (If you're using a bleeding-edge Beta version, all bets are off as to precise rendering.)  Also, does every infobox look like this to you, or is it only infobox Individual?  In my Firefox, I don't experience this problem on the Amy Pond page (or any page).  I do note, however, there was a coding problem on the Amy Pond page, in that the editor who made the infobox with that ridiculous unorder list structure failed to close the list properly.  I've closed it properly now.  Does that affect your view of this page positively?


 * As for the table on the series 6 page, you are again getting different results to me. To determine whether this is a problem with prettytable, might I suggest that you go to that template, see what links to it, and go to other pages that use it?  That way, we can immediately determine whether it is the template itself, or something funky on the plague-ridden series 6 page.


 * All I can tell you at this point in the investigation is that it's clearly something particular to your setup. If this was more widespread, I'd have had everyone and their mother on my talk page by now.  Tangerineduel in particular would've noticed missing gridlines.  Saying that it's a problem unique to you, though, is not the same as saying it's not worth looking at.  We could well learn something valuable about your case that will strengthen overall coding.  Or at the very least help us to judge the utility of a particular version of Firefox.   <span style="">17:04:02 Sat 26 Mar 2011
 * Well, upgrade if you think you must, but do so only through the update feature within Firefox. Don't update manually to a beta version. As for the specific problems you're seeing, there's no such thing as a "random" problem on a computer.  There's always a repeatable problem. To resolve this, you just have to be systematic about it.  For instance, you say that prettytable seems to be wrong on every page, but that "different" lines disappear on different pages.  If you take screenshots of these various problems, we should be able to diagnose it.  prettytable, let's remember, is a very old template here, so I've never looked at it to any great degree. Since you're the only one experiencing the problem (apparently), you've got to do the research yourself, unfortunately.  But if you provide the evidence, I'll try to help provide a solution.


 * Also, you didn't quite answer my question before. Has the Amy Pond page resolved? And you've now identified infobox Individual and infobox Species as posing a problem for you.  Can you test other infoboxes and tell me which ones are working perfectly for you?


 * We can fix this, but we have to figure it out methodically. And unfortunately, the burden is kinda on you to do most of the leg work. <span style="">17:41:44 Sat 26 Mar 2011