User talk:Boblipton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

02:11: Mon 05 Dec 2011


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15:10: Mon 12 Dec 2011


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


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


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


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


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