User talk:OttselSpy25

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Welcome to the OttselSpy25!

We hope you'll enjoy being a part of our community! If you're new to either us or wiki editing in general, you might want to check out some of these links:
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Thanks for becoming a member of the TARDIS crew! If you have any questions, see the Help pages, add a question to one of the Forums or ask on my user talk page.

Cybermen
I've done it after the discussion at Talk:Cybermen. I don't see how they can be considered "entirely different" anymore. And Mondasian Cybermen are definitely not any more notable than Cybus Cybermen according to this wiki's policy. The main page should either be an overview of both types of Cybermen, like now, or a disambiguation page. Ausir(talk) 05:19, June 15, 2011 (UTC)

Nice Job, RiverLover
Good job on the River Song page. I like your photo you added. Keep it up! Chris! 22:16, August 27, 2011 (UTC)

category:season 6b
Hi :) Thanks for your efforts to add categories.  However, please do not add categories which do not apply to the entire contents of a work.  The Short Trips collections to which you've been adding Category:Season 6B do not contain only stories set in 6B, making the category you wish to apply inappropriate.   I have rolled back the few of your efforts that were immediately apparent to me.  However, if you can think of other instances where you've similarly added this (or similar) cats, I'd appreciate it if you'd roll them back yourself.  It's very important that we maintain a clean and accurate category tree on this wiki.  Thanks!  :)  00:17:57 Sun 28 Aug 2011

Please don't make frivolous edits just to get Achievements
Hey, the Achievements thing is brand new, so we're all just trying to understand how it all works. Still we do have some rules in place at tardis:achievements policy. Please make sure you read and understand these.

The important point of those rules is that we want to avoid making edits just to get awards. It's pretty obvious that your message on user talk:Skittles the hog wasn't a real attempt at communicating, but rather so that you would get the Churchill award and thereby pass Skittles for the night. I mean, you didn't even sign the post, which is required under tardis:discussion policy.

Now of course it's cool in the first day or two to test things out. But I just wanted to make sure you understand that the point of Achievements is to encourage genuine editing that makes the site better.

Thanks for editing with us today, and I hope you continue enjoying Achievements! 03:35:35 Sun 28 Aug 2011

Note to Self
The Amateur

Pictures
Hi :) Thanks very much for your recent picture uploads. A couple of points, though, that will improve your contributions in future.
 * We don't allow the .gif format. At all.  Please don't upload this format in future.  Any current .gif-formatted pictures that you may have uploaded are subject to immediate deletion.
 * All pictures must have an image license attached. We recognise that the new editing page that Wikia dumped on us yesterday allows you upload a picture in a way that bypasses the normal upload page altogether, and so you may not even see the licensing drop-down menu.  Until we can get this corrected, we recommend that you only upload through Special:Upload or Special:MultipleUpload, so that you have convenient access to the licensing drop-down. (Both of these pages are linkable on the user toolbar which strips along the bottom of every page.  Also, the "add a photo" button in the right column of most pages links to Special:Upload.)  Images without licenses are subject to automatic deletion by bot through a routine process which is not monitored by a human being.

If you haven't done so, please consult tardis:image use policy for a more complete list of policies affecting image uploads and use. Thanks :) 12:09:17 Thu 08 Sep 2011


 * Okay, you've had the nice warning. Do not continue uploading .gif files.-- 15:01, September 10, 2011 (UTC)

It appears the image I was referring to was anomalous.-- 15:05, September 10, 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello again. I note that you have today uploaded yet another image without a copyright license: file:Silurian.jpg.  I do thank you for helping us with our project, but copyright templates are very important.  You cannot continue to "forget" putting them on.  Remember, we do not own' these images.  We have a duty to give a picture's copyright status if we want to seriously maintain any sort of "fair use" argument.


 * Please do not upload any more images without ensuring that one of our copyright templates is attached.  06:58:02 Mon 12 Sep 2011


 * Thank you very much for your recent efforts to add copyright templates to your uploads! It seriously frees up time the admin staff can then use on other matters.   20:49:58 Thu 15 Sep 2011

Categories
Please do not add the category Uncanon stories to articles. For starters, uncanon isn't word, but more importantly, each of the articles you added it to was already categories under non-canonical stories, so I'm not sure why you were doing this. In future, please ensure you are not adding unnecessary categories. Thanks-- 14:33, September 12, 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, I did relise this after a little while. The cofusion was caused by, and you can check this for truth, that I was editing The Invasion of Bash Street when I noticed that there was no Category on it for the fact that it was uncanon (other than the parodies and pastiches category) so I typed in Un canon (yes, I was not ware that it wasn't a word) and found no Category's for it. Thus, I decided to create one. Once I relised that there was already a Non-Canon Catigory, however, I ceased adding pages to it. OttselSpy25 00:09, September 13, 2011 (UTC)

Nice Badges

MM/ Want to talk? 23:05, October 1, 2011 (UTC)

GREETINGS
Hi, I'm Patrick Watt, Esquire... whatever that means. I'm delighted to make your acquaintance, provided you've read this message, which, as per my pessimistic nature, I've already assumed is a "no".

But... what was I talking about? Oh, yes, I was asking if you like South Park. I'm assuming that based on your avatar. Well, do you? What are your favorite TV shows?

file:500.jpg
There are several flawss in the upload named above. First of all, it violates the tardis:Manual of Style and tardis:image use policy by being a colour photo of the black and white era. Because it's in colour, that means it can't possibly be a screenshot. It's therefore a publicity shot and out of universe. Therefore it can't be used to illustrate an in-universe page like 500 year diary. The only page this particular image could possibly be placed is Patrick Troughton. Because it's a publicity image — and again, we know this because it's a colour pic from the black-and-white era — the only place you can put it is on the page of the actor seen in the photo. However, shots of the actor in costume are not particularly desirable on out-of-universe actor pages, as we generally want to see the actor out of costume and makeup — in their street clothes, really.

So I'm deleting the pic.

More importantly, however, it's really important that you put not just any copyright template on your files, but the correct one. You called this pic an image from a comic book, which it clearly isn't. I thought that you were beginning to understand our image licensing policy, but it appears you're just trying to technically satisfy the requirement, withotu actually caring so much about accuracy. These copyright templates also add a category to a file. If you put the wrong template on the file, it will go into the wrong category, which makes it harder to maintain the database. I urge you to please take copyright templates seriously, if you wish to retain the privilege to upload photos here. 04:05: Tue 11 Oct 2011

Sorry, I got so used to uploading Comic files that I seem to accidentialy put that category on alot. I've done it before, but gone in and fixed it, however it seems I have forgotten this time. Sorry for the confusion, I'll try and do better next time. --OttselSpy25 talk to me 12:42, October 11, 2011 (UTC)

Block
Sorry about this, but I have to block you so that I can be sure that you have read and will understand the following. You must be dreading to see my name on your talk page already, but this is really important. I've just noticed that you have a very unconventional editing syntax that's literally destroying the fabric of the wiki.

Here's a snippet from your merry little edit war over at Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors
 * This story takes place somewhere in between DW: The Android Invasion and The Leisure Hive.

You cannot edit this way. I'm not quite sure where you picked up this style, but it completely goes against fundamental wiki markup. You should be linking using the following:

That's it! Isn't that a lot easier? Unless you use standard wiki markup, it's impossible for bots to find and properly change linked text. So you must use standard wiki markup. Your block allows you to edit this page. Please acknowledge that you have read and understood this message, and that you are willing to edit here using only standard wiki markup. If you do not acknowledge this message in 24 hours, your block will be extended indefinitely, until you do promise that you'll use standard linking syntax.
 * This story takes place somewhere in between DW: The Android Invasion and The Leisure Hive.

Hate to come down so harshly but your current style of editing is really quite destructive. I know, of course, that you didn't mean to do anything wrong — I certainly don't think you're a vandal or anything — but I still can't let you edit further unless you agree to standard markup. 04:56: Tue 11 Oct 2011

I have read over the message, and I promis to use the proper standard wiki markup until The End of Time. --OttselSpy25 talk to me 12:51, October 11, 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) In that event, I shall now remove the block.  12:59: Tue 11 Oct 2011
 * By the way, have you been linking using URLs from the very beginning of your time with us? Or is it something you just started doing recently.  All instances of URL linkage have to be found and changed.  I'd appreciate it if you could do it yourself, because you know better than anyone else where this kind of linkage exists.  17:59: Wed 12 Oct 2011

Possibly Non-Canonical stories
Hey, can you please remove this category from all the pages you added it to and then suggest the idea at the forums. This should always be standard procedure with such a big addition and, I for one, am strongly against the idea. Thanks-- 17:13, October 12, 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, and sorry if this seems a little harsh. Perhaps that wasn't the friendliest of messages, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.-- 17:17, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

Deleted scenes
Well, generally you'd look at tardis:canon policy, but it's being rewritten at the moment, specifically because it doesn't contain references to forum discussions about things like deleted scenes. The prefiguring forum discussion is at forum:Are deleted scenes canon?

That discussion concludes with the notion that deleted scenes aren't canon, but that they may be referenced in "behind the scenes" sections of articles. To put it simply, the version of a story that made it onto the airwaves of the broadcaster of origin is deemed the "prime" version of the story. Generally, this means that we preference what happened on BBC One, but in the case of K9, it would be the Net10 broadcast, or for Miracle Day, it would be the Starz broadcast. 17:53: Wed 12 Oct 2011
 * Having a prefix for deleted scenes wouldn't be helpful, in my view. Deleted scenes may only be referenced on the story page themselves or in "behind the scenes" sections of articles.  They should never be referenced in the normal, in-universe parts of articles, which means there's no need for a prefix as you suggest.  Any information about deleted scenes should be made unambiguously clear, as they would be in the sentence construction, "In a deleted scene from ..." We don't want to make it at all obscure to our readers that this information was deleted.   23:40: Wed 12 Oct 2011

Second warning about proper wiki markup
I note that you have again linked by use of url rather than standard wiki text at Forum:Possibly Non-Canonical stories. I'm going to assume, however, that this is because you didn't quite know how to link directly to a category name. So let me go through some basics of help:wiki markup with you.


 * Most things link simply by putting two square braces around the word. First Doctor, Forum:Forum Name, Talk:talk page name, user:user name, user talk:user talk page name
 * If the namespace does something — like add a page to a category, or place a picture or video on a page — then you'll need to precede the page name with a colon, like: category:category name, file:file.jpg, video:videoname Putting the colon in front of the namespace means you'll make a link to the name of the object, rather than make an action happen.

I hope that makes sense. If you have questions, please ask. It's both possible and required to link to everything on this wiki using a  syntax of some kind. 02:55: Thu 13 Oct 2011

Destiny of the Doctors
Hi there. No worries about etiquette, this is the Internet and such things are prone to not translating well to an online context.

I am indeed replaying Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors. I had to get a Windows 95 virtual machine running for another project, and after that it seemed like the perfect excuse to throw the game back on for the first time since the 1990s. It's not the best game in the world but it's quite impressive for its time (especially now that I have a computer that can run it at full steam, the one I had back then was slowed to a crawl trying to render it) and since I'm a huge TARDIS fanboy I enjoy it just for the opportunity to run around in the two TARDISes. :-)

Since it'll be faster than playing through the game (which I only get the chance to do every so often) I'm going to directly go through the dialogue and movie files on the disc to see what references I can find. As I mentioned on the Destiny talk page, I don't think we'll get all that much we can actually use in the article for timeline purposes; if you have any info which would help please add it to the game's talk page. &mdash; Rob T Firefly - &#916;&#8711; - 06:03, October 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * I cleaned up the sections you added to the game's plot section. I wish to mention a few points about that material.


 * A) I have to point out that a large amount of your spelling needed major work. While minor things could be overlooked (this wiki requires the use of UK spellings such as "manoeuvre," which definitely looks odd to American eyes, per Tardis:Spelling policy) there were very many other basic spelling errors which could have easily been avoided by running everything through your choice of spell-checking software before posting it.  Your use of capitalization was also fairly random and required a lot of correction.


 * B) It's generally "the Graak," not just "Graak." Like the Doctor and the Master, he's a "the" in all the game's text apart from when someone talks directly to him.  I've just moved the Graak's article to the Graak in deference to this point.  Also, it's the "Great Divide," not "Devine" or "Divine."


 * C) You made many references to the Graak "waking up" in various places.  The game never indicates that the Graak was knocked unconscious; you simply appear in the next area.  It could be any manner of transporting; much more accurate to say "the Grak finds himself in..."


 * D) Most importantly, the Doctors' levels can be encountered in any order and any manner of things can be skipped over or done differently.  The only parts we can use in the "plot" section are the story elements which are unchanged no matter how the player completes the game.  I invite you to look over the discussion at Forum:We need a policy on videogames and its conclusion; what that means for Destiny of the Doctors is that we can't include things like the blue diamonds or specific bits of random dialogue that the player might not encounter if they take another path.  We can only use the unchangeable beginnings and ends; we can't say exactly what path the Graak took to picking up the Metebelis Crystal, we only know for certain that he was sent to get it and that he got it and brought it back to the Master.  We can't say what order the Graak freed the Doctors in, only that he did individually free them and the endgame happened.


 * Please note that I'm not intending any of this to be an attack on you or your work on this wiki, your efforts are certainly appreciated. I offer this here as hopefully constructive feedback which will improve your further contributions to the TARDIS Index File. &mdash; Rob T Firefly - &#916;&#8711; - 03:48, October 18, 2011 (UTC)

Heavily manipulated photos
What are your plans for file:2nd oc.jpg and file:1st oc.jpg? These are obviously not just screenshots, so the licensing is at least incomplete. Before you waste too much time going through all the Doctors (if that's your intent), you should be aware that "Photoshopping" is not allowed in the main namespace. If you intend them for your user page, you should be aware that you are at the limit of the number of user images allowed. 15:34: Fri 14 Oct 2011
 * No, no, I did not make these, these are screenshots from Destiny of the doctors, where Graak tries to speak with the Doctors, I swear. --OttselSpy25 talk to me 15:36, October 14, 2011 (UTC)
 * SO, lemme get this strait. YOu see images, thing they look weird, presume they are for my User page, and Ban me again. In other words, I'm blocked because you decided what I was doing. You didn't even ask me whatthey were for, HELL you didn't even wait two minets to see where the pictures would be put, you just decided what they were, and Banned me. Whatever, see you tommoro. --OttselSpy25 talk to me 15:44, October 14, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, look at the license template again.

This image is a screenshot of a television programme, movie, video game, web broadcast or DVD feature over which the BBC have some level of ownership. It should therefore be considered the BBC's intellectual property, likely as administered by BBC Worldwide. Other parties may enjoy intellectual property rights over this image, as well. Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Sarah Jane Adventures, K9 and Company, Doctor Who Confidential, Torchwood Declassified, Totally Doctor Who and associated names, titles, logos and screen captures are © BBC Worldwide, Ltd. It is believed that the use of this image on the TARDIS Doctor Who wiki, hosted on servers in the United States by the non-profit Wikia, Inc,

qualifies as fair dealing under the laws of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and as fair use under United States copyright law. Other use of this image, on Wikia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement. See Wikipedia:Fair use for more information. To the uploader: please add the source of the work and copyright information.


 * See the note at the bottom? It's your responsibility as the uploader to make clear where the pictures came from.  Now, I'm not gonna lie and say that I always give sources every time I upload a screenshot, because most of the time it's pretty obvious where they come from.  These images, though, weren't from a common source and they look heavily pixellated and distorted.  Believe it or not, people do regularly upload pictures that look better than these, which are nevertheless their own creations.  I got it wrong in this case, and I'm sorry.  But you could have helped a lot by clearly identifying these pics.  In fact, I saw before the block that you were posting them to Destiny, but I just didn't believe that they were un-retouched photos.  The feathering effect seemed too inconsistent to be anything other than an amateur job.


 * But here's the bigger point. Even though these pictures may indeed come from a valid source, you gotta stop.  The job of a page about a story is not to be a host for every possible picture from the story.  Destiny is not any different than any other story page.  Do you see a gallery at The Wedding of River Song or Sky?   No.


 * When editing a story page, you have to be able to balance text versus graphics. At present, I count that you have a minimum of 30 pictures for one page.  Now, I'm generally all for pictures, but that's just totally beyond our standard practice.  There aren't, I grant you, specific rules about the number of pictures possible on the page, but Destiny is obviously inconsistent with our general practice.  The worst offense on that page, however, is that all the pics are lumped in a gallery.  Look at any other story page.  Pictures are sprinkled throughout the text, not bunged in to a massive great gallery at the end.  Pick the five or six most representative shots — and put delete on the rest, please.


 * I will now lift your block on the condition that you immediately start marking these shots for deletion. 16:06: Fri 14 Oct 2011


 * I promise to add the Files to be Deleted Category to the files. --OttselSpy25 talk to me 17:40, October 14, 2011 (UTC)

Picture of the Master
You probably aren't aware of this, but the infobox picture at The Master was the subject of the single most intense community discussion about a picture in the history of the wiki. The picture was carefully vetted over the course of months. Many alternate designs were proposed and considered. The version which you replaced was the one that emerged from that process. The discussion is at talk:The Master and/or its archives.

Though I don't think you meant any ill-will, it's most improper of you to do an end-run around that discussion by just uploading a new revision at file:TheFiveMasters.jpg. Your revision has been reverted, and your uploads will soon be deleted. The file itself is now locked to new revisions. Please do not place a new primary image at the Master, companion, the Doctor or really any character played by multiple actors without discussion. Generally, all these collage images have been the result of some level of community discussion.

Thanks :) <span style="">23:16: Wed 19 Oct 2011


 * I have added it to discussion, however, I dobt it will recieve any attention. In truth, I think it is a minor change, technically still being the "Five Masters" Pic, just with some size alterations. I dobt anyone will notice it.

Oh, and You're welcome! --OttselSpy25 talk to me 23:20, October 19, 2011 (UTC)

Destiny of the Doctors
From a purely visual standpoint, the article looks way better. Thanks for eliminating the gallery. I'm a bit confused where the images went, though. I only count 7 in the bin, 8 on the page, so where are the other 15-ish? <span style="">04:45: Sat 22 Oct 2011

Timeline information
Please be aware that a current timeline discussion seems to be leaning heavily towards eliminating DWRG from use on this wiki. It really never should have been a source for timeline information, anyway, as it's just a fansite, and therefore isn't a valid source, per T:SOURCES. I notice that you're putting a lot of timeline information into pages, and that this information matches what's at DWRG. It'd be helpful if you stopped doing this, as it appears this information will soon be eliminated, anyway.

If you'd like to participate in the discussion, please do so, rather than adding more dubious timeline material. Thanks :)

<span style="">04:45: Sat 22 Oct 2011

Dimensions in Time pics
Thanks for trying to better illustrate Dimensions in Time, but your recent uploads are not of an acceptable quality, and will be deleted. The black bounding box around them, and the general resolution problems, combine to make the pictures too weak to be included on our site.

Please note that it may not be possible to better illustrate this story, as there will never be a home video release. Thus, unless you have a first generation off-air recording, you really don't have a good enough source for screencapping. For this reason, this is the one story for which we allow a publicity still in the infobox. <span style="">01:59: Fri 28 Oct 2011

Cybermen template
Thanks for the heads up. Feel free to report any more issues you come across.-- 12:36, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry
I deleted your work on the Doctor's Scarf infobox, didn't realise that it had been played by an ACTOR.Dragonmaster79 talk to me 18:35, November 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * It's okay. I should've been more clear in the infobox. OttselSpy25 talk to me 18:36, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

Stevie Wonder
Well, if he brought along Kanye West as a sideman, who'd notice?

It's not a great picture, but it's the only one I could track down. Feel free to replace it.Boblipton talk to me 11:35, November 13, 2011 (UTC)

Color versions of monochromatic comic stories
Please note that color versions of comic stories that were originally published as black-and-white strips are generally disallowed. They may never be used in the infobox. A color image doesn't faithfully represent the original story, and would be confusing to people unfamiliar with the publication history of the comic. Your image at Timeslip, now deleted, implied that the strip was originally in color, and would be especially confusing if a reader were clicking through the Fourth Doctor DWM stories chronologically. Please consult T:ICC for more quick tips about our rules regarding pictures.

If you have recently posted color pictures to other monochromatic stories like Timeslip, please return to those pics and place the delete tag on them. Thanks. <span style="">16:24: Mon 14 Nov 2011

Disambiguation rules
Please familiarise yourself with T:DAB RULES before creating further disambiguation pages. Importantly, you should not create dab pages for terms with only two examples of that name. Three is the minimum threshold for dab page creation.

Additionally, if you create a page with an obvious spelling or punctuation error in it, please put a delete tag on the bad name so that we're alerted to the need to delete your naming error.

Thanks :)  <span style="">17:11: Fri 18 Nov 2011

I'm Sorry For Changing Those Photos On Episode Pages. Though Will I Still Be Able To Add Photos To Pages That Don't Have Any?

PS. Your Birthday's A Day Before Mine!

Season 6b
I notice that in October you put every single Second Doctor TV Comic story into the category Season 6B. Please note that this isn't at all accurate. Action in Exile clearly establishes itself as the beginning of the "Season 6b" stuff, both by title and narrative. If season 6b is understood to mean "those stories which occur after the sentence in The War Games but before that sentence was fully executed", comparatively little of the TVC run explicitly "fits" into that definition. Indeed, only these stories are 6b:
 * Action in Exile
 * The Mark of Terror
 * The Brotherhood
 * U.F.O.
 * The Night Walkers

It's an easy mistake to make, because sometimes people talk casually and say things like "the season 6b TV Comic stories". If you haven't actually read the stories, then you might not know that this phrase is talking about 5 stories, not the whole lot. So don't worry about correcting the mess. The bot'll take care of it.

However, I would urge you to exercise caution when editing about topics for which you don't have the full text in front of you. Remember than fan sites, from which you apparently took the pictures you placed on on various TVC pages, are not valid sources under T:SOURCES. They may be mistaken, vaguely written, or written in a way that assumes you've read other parts of the site.

If you'd actually had the Action in Exile comic in front of you, you'd have seen that the panel immediately to the left of the one you posted to the article said, very clearly, "Exiled to Earth by the Time Lords, Dr. Who books into a swanky London hotel to take things easy for a while..." (And if you had the whole text in front of you, I think you wouldn't have chosen that image as representative of the story as a whole.)

Even on a Doctor Who wiki, which is obviously about a silly li'l fictional show, it's really important that any information you put up — even something as seemingly trivial as a category — be something which can be verified. <span style="">18:59: Sun 04 Dec 2011 <span style="">21:04: Tue 20 Dec 2011

Mentions
Mentions have been deliberately turned off. Notice was given at Forum:"Mentions" field being deactivated.

They render in a very confusing way in the mobile skin that Wikia recently launched, such that they seem to be appearances on most mobile devices. But it's not just mobile issues. Ordinary desktop displays are flummoxed by these super-long mentions fields. As the infobox grows vertically, photos in early sections of the article are seriously displaced. That's two significant tech issues, so they're outta here without further debate. There's no forum discussion that makes right a technical problem -- much less two.

Moreover, there was user dissatisfaction with the field anyway. A big problem was they were notoriously incomplete. Infoboxen should really contain only solid, simple facts. They're not places to build lists, especially ones where "what counts as a mention?" is at issue. Removing them was the prudent course of action.

Basically they're junk clogging up the design, and the info is too insignificant for its own article. So the "info", to the extent it was actually informational, goes. .  <span style="">03:33: Sun 25 Dec 2011

Sig
Please comply with tardis:signature policy by including a clickable link to this page. <span style="">03:33: Sun 25 Dec 2011

Thanks!
....for putting the bells and whistles on the 4398 page. Looks spiffy. Boblipton talk to me 15:24, December 25, 2011 (UTC)

Navboxes
It is vital that you edit navboxes with great care. It cannot be done safely with the vsual editor, if that's what you're using. You MUST use the normal editor mode (source), as this gives you a monospaced font, so that you can see every space as an equal-width character.

The following edit of yours -- http://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template:Master_stories&diff=next&oldid=736515 -- had disastrous consequences for Template:Master stories. //the fact that you failed to put any space around the  expression added a stream of extra vertical space to the bottom of the navbox, radically displacing the categories and toolbox strip on every page on which it was located.

You might not know what this command does. It prevents a line break. It literally means "non-breaking space". If you put it without spaces either before or after (or both) two expressions, the whole thing gets treated as a single, non-breakable word, and the navbox code can freaks.

Here's the skinny on the usage from an HTML textbook:
 * Its intended use of creating a space between words or elements that should not be broken. The only problems that can be associated with this use is that too many words strung together with non-breaking spaces may require some graphical browsers to show horizontal scrollbars or cause them to display the text overlapping table borders.

Basically your edit created the worst-case scenario described above.

There's actually not much of a point to nbsp as we're using it. Browsers are better now, obviating its usage. And most of the time, we surround, as at Master stories we surround the expession with spaces, meaning only that the bullet is stuck to the nearest space. This isn't originally what we were trying to do with it. We could go with bare bullets now and achieve the same effect.

So for the future, I'd say either eliminate the nbsp expression altogether or make it harmlessly conform to other usage on the page (i.e., a space before and after).

<span style="">17:20: Sun 25 Dec 2011

Doctor Who: Cybermen
No. Just no. Doesn't matter that it has a part written in "an in-universe style". It's not actually in-universe. It's fact-written-as-fiction. It would be massively hard to administrate this rule on a case-by-case basis. We can't have some reference works allowed as primary resources, and others not — much less some parts of reference works allowed and other parts not.

Doctor Who Discovers is written in this "narrative style" — i.e., the ramblings of the Fourth Doctor about subject whatever — but it's clearly not a proper narrative.

Here are some questions that act as a litmus test. If the answer to these questions is "no" then you might well have a narrative on your hands: Obviously, your example fails questions 1, 2 and 3.
 * 1) Is it the recitation of facts from the perspective of a character or narrator?
 * 2) Is it merely giving facts already known in other narratives?
 * 3) Is it in a book that is otherwise written from a behind-the-scenes or non-fictional perspective?
 * 4) Is it accompanied by an elementary school-level riddle, puzzle or crossword?
 * 5) Is it only one page (or a double-page spread) long?

And here are some questions to which a positive answer means you probably have a primary source on your hands: Your example fails all of these.
 * 1) Does it have a narrative beginning, middle or end?
 * 2) Does it appear in a publication with other, clear narratives?
 * 3) Is it a part of a well-established, recurring, narrative section of a publication that is otherwise non-fictional, such as the DWM comic strip?

Failing one of the questions doesn't necessarily doom the thing you're considering, depending on which one is failed. For instance, it is possible to have a one-page narrative, as we know with Brief Encounters. And it's possible to have a character study that has a more subtle beginning, middle or end. Or to have a "preview", which deliberately teases a narrative. But when you start failing a lot of these questions, like your piece does, you've got to call it a day. <span style="">15:02: Wed 28 Dec 2011

Vandalism
Thanks for alerting me to suspected vandalism. Please continue to do so. However, it is not necessary for you to output the vandalism itself onto my user talk page. Basically you're just propagating and repeating vandalism. Users who come to admin's page should not have to be confronted with swear words. So, in the future, please just list the pages on which you've noticed vandalism and the user whom you suspect. Thanks :) <span style="">22:06: Wed 28 Dec 2011

Canon
The Brilliant Book 2012 is cannon.Tirenifs talk to me 23:34, December 28, 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant Book
Hi there - great work with the Brilliant Book info and good job for keep you cool earlier on when all you work was getting undone. That User is now blocked so he can think about the policies.

I have left my feelings over at the forum discussion on the Brilliant Book - here - which includes information on what happened last night and a request for it to be added to the manual of style as a direct reference for it not to be used - I just thought you should know :) Thanks and keep up the great editing! MM/ Want to talk? 16:13, December 29, 2011 (UTC)

Master stories template
Gonna need more than just your say-so that these are Delgado stories. Please put forward your evidence at template talk:Master stories. <span style="">15:08: Fri 30 Dec 2011

Brilliant Book
Please stop writing that the Brilliant Book is non-canon. It isn't. It's a book that contains non-narrative information. This is different from non-canon. Non-canon is Curse of Fatal Death, or Doctor Who Unbound, it's other universes that make a deliberate break from the DW universe. The Brilliant Book (and countless other books) are merely presenting non-narrative based information. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:35, December 31, 2011 (UTC)

Block?
Right. K. Sorry. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 02:26, January 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, won't be a full day. You just complicated the cleanup process by making intervening edits.  It could have been a one-button fix.  Needed to stop you before you did more editors.  The block will probably only last another few minutes.   <span style="">02:37: Sun 08 Jan 2012
 * It's okay, I needed to make some progress on my own Wiki anyways. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 02:44, January 8, 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, all done. All Master pages returned to their pre-Sinefirt titles and move-protected.   Actually, his changes were made in good faith, and he had some good ideas.  But there's an ongoing debate about what to do with all these Master pages, and we should let that process go forward.


 * Oh, in future do remember that this sort of situation is what rollback was made for. One click and the whole thing gets undone.  Also your intervening edits mean that I have to check whether there was anything of significance that you added to the article, which just takes more time.  That's the only reason for the block.  Just a time saver.  Nothing to do with "punishment" of any kind. Good catch, by the way; I wouldn't have noticed any of this.   <span style="">03:20: Sun 08 Jan 2012


 * Hey, I looked, and you have unblocked me, but I still can't edit and my page still says "blocked" at the top. Is there a way to remedy this? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 13:42, January 8, 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant book and template
No.

The canon policy still stands, we're not about to have pages for stuff that's in non-narrative. The idea of a template is to alert people so they don't create pages based on stuff that's in the Brilliant Book or the Technical Manual. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:55, January 14, 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation
With reference to your October move of A Christmas Carol, please note that standard dab rules state the following: Also, note that (novel) is the dab term for real world novels, and not novels from the real world. (For the distinction see FTRW and this overview). Thus the implication of the title A Christmas Carol (novel) is that there is a novel set in the DWU with the title A Christmas Carol. No such novel exists. [Incidentally, the disambig term for "a novel within the DWU" is (book), but that's rarely needed. A novel set in the DWU that fans can buy at their local book store is (novel)].
 * You need at least three things to start a dab page.
 * In-universe concepts take precedence over out-of-universe story titles

You might be scratching your head over why this distinction is important. To a bot, (novel) is completely different to (book). Database maintenance is therefore compromised if you use unexpected dab terms. Also the reason you need three terms is because of human interaction. A human entering "A Christmas Carol" into the search bar should get the Dickens work, on top of which should be a link to the 2010 Christmas special. Thus, people referring to the Dickens work can just link to "A Christmas Carol" instead of "A Christmas Carol (book)|A Christmas Carol", which saves keystrokes for editors, and involves exactly the same amount of mouse-clicks for readers trying to get to the TV story. It is simply more efficient to go without a dab page when there are only two terms around.

I am therefore deleting your dab page, reverting the Dickens book to A Christmas Carol, and returning any top-of-page dab notes to their original place.

If you have made any other disambiguation pages with only two entries, please give me the links so that I can revert your work. <span style="">15:55: Mon 16 Jan 2012

Pics on actor pages
Please immediately stop putting pics on pages by using the thumbnail option without also adding captions. This is a violation of T:ICC. You must use a caption if you're going to use the thumb option. Also, please remember that you may not set a px width if using the thumbnail option. The format must be  Please now go back and correct what you have done, on every page that you have done it.

Thanks. Block lifted. <span style="">08:04: Wed 18 Jan 2012
 * Note, too, that if you use an in-universe pic, you must cite the story from which it comes within the caption, also per T:ICC.  <span style="">08:08: Wed 18 Jan 2012

Novelisations are not novels
Please immediately suspend your efforts to put all novelisations within categories that have the world novels in their titles.

"Fourth Doctor novels" are not "Fourth Doctor novelisations".

There's a key difference between the two types of work which this wiki is keen to make clear through strict categorisation. Novels are stories original to prose. Novelisations are adaptations of television stories. Plus almost all of the Target novelisations don't fit the common, everyday understanding of the word, novel. Their word count makes some of them long short stories, and others, bare novellas.

Categories are the very lifeblood of a wiki. They're what makes it work. But they only work if they're strictly maintained. You've now polluted the "Xth Doctor novels" categories with these novelisation. This will make it harder to run accuratre DPL reports and to any sort of maintenance on novels. To avoid this kind of problem in future, think about what you're doing with categories. Ask yourself the following questions:
 * If this category is obvious to me, why hasn't it occurred to anyone else in the 8 years this wiki has been open? Is there a chance that this category hasn't been added for a reason?
 * Am I actually going to to be able to add this category to all the pages that need it? If not, will the net effect of only partially completing the task be worse than just not doing it at all?
 * Do I really want to waste my time doing this? Why not just give it over to CzechBot, who can complete the task in a matter of minutes?

If you're going to embark on a category add of more than 25 pages, it's probably a good idea to ask me about it. The main reason for this is a very practical one. If I don't think that your work improves the wiki, I'll undo all your category changes in a fraction of the time it took you to add them. For instance, your work on these "Xth Doctor novels" categories will now be stripped by the bot. I don't mean to sound egotistical. As this wiki's technical adminitrator, I have specialised responsibility to ensure that things are working smoothly at the category level. Therefore, it is simply a non-negotiable reality of this wiki that you have to make me, personally, happy with the soundness of your category changes. A sound category tree is absolutely vital to the successful administration of this wiki. <span style="">14:38: Thu 19 Jan 2012
 * No need for you to clean up this one. Your work was reverted about two minutes after the above timestamp.  <span style="">15:03: Thu 19 Jan 2012

Disambiguation
Your creation of Brittany (individual) violates perhaps the most basic rule of disambiguation on this wiki. All in-universe individuals who need disambiguation are disambiguated by the story in which they appeared, not by any sort of personal characteristics. Readers must have a consistent disambiguation scheme in order to make sense of our wiki. Thanks :) Block lifted.  <span style="">22:16: Thu 19 Jan 2012
 * Well, I also created London (Lord), although that was already on T:EDA Char... OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 22:19, January 19, 2012 (UTC)
 * T:EDA CHAR is a very old document which no one has really policed in any way. It's meant to be a guide, rather than the absolutely pitch-perfect, by-the-book document.  Plus, it's in the tardis namespace and therefore exempt from many of the rules of T:MOS. But, thanks, I'll sort that one out.  <span style="">15:21: Sat 21 Jan 2012

Reply
Kay then.

Nyssa from audio covers
You pose an interesting question. I would say that in theory you could, but in practice you can't.

If you had anything like an in-universe-looking picture you could just about get away with it. But there are only six covers to help you in your cause. If you look at Rat Trap and Heroes of Sontar, you immediately see the problem. Sutton is always looking straight at the camera, when the other characters aren't necessarily doing that. Then if you go to the other four stories, you again find that she's always looking straight to camera. All the "Nyssa" shots are really "Sarah Sutton" shots that were taken at "Big Finish Towers" one day after a recording session. So they're all of her looking directly into camera, which is a big no-no. Why they didn't at least have Sarah look away from the camera, I dunno. But they've basically just used bog-standard "high school yearbook" framing. These are pictures of Sarah Sutton — not Nyssa.

That alone means you can't use them, as explained by T:DWUP. However, there are other problems. Because all these covers are trying to fit in at least four people, plus some kind of visual depiction of a plot element, the total area in which Sutton appears is tiny. Any attempt at cropping her out of the pic would probably leave you with a very skinny pic, well short of the 250px minimum — unless you personally had the cover and could scan it at outrageously large dimensions. Even then, though, I don't think you could do it successfully because the covers have a lot of other graphical elements. I mean Rat Trap has that whole energy ribbon thing and its brightness really drowns out the Sutton pic, in particular.

According to my experience, I just don't think there's a way to remove Sutton from any of these covers without it looking horrible.

But, as I said, the question of being able to successfully crop her is almost beside the point. They're publicity shots of the actor and therefore disallowed. <span style="">15:18: Sat 21 Jan 2012

Please don't interfere with the bot's page moving processes
If you see that I'm doing a disambiguation name change, please do not move the base page. When you suddenly see redlinks appear in articles that suggest a page is being moved, as you did with the name Donna, please go to user:CzechBot and check his recent changes. If he's recently completed a series of edits that obviously indicate a name change, please do not interfere with the process in anyway. Once I move the base page, that's usually a good sign that the automated process has completed, and it is now safe to begin editing articles that include links to that page. <span style="">16:07: Sat 21 Jan 2012

Please stop adding categories
Please stop adding categories that absolutely do not belong. Jamie, Peri, etc... did NOT travel with every Doctor. They are only allies of their respective Doctors. Your edits are out of control. NileQT87 talk to me 16:24, January 24, 2012 (UTC)

Caution
You need to be careful about simply reverting what some other user has done, since he has given a reason for his actions. Please take care not to let this dispute escalate into a violation of editing policy. I'll investigate the issue, now, but I'd ask you to please stop re-adding categories that have been removed for cause, until the matter can be checked out more thorougly. <span style="">20:30: Tue 24 Jan 2012
 * What are you talking about? He hasn't contributed to user talk:Tangerineduel at all this year.  In fact, no one but me has contributed to that page since last Thursday, well before this dispute arose.  So where's this "lie" that User:NileQT87 is supposed to have told TD?  <span style="">20:38: Tue 24 Jan 2012
 * I'm most displeased with you. You've completely gone against the basic principles of tardis:discussion policy.  Sure, you're not actually in violation at the moment, but you're very close.  When a person has edited in a surprisng way, but has taken the time to leave edit summaries and messages on your talk page, you don't just go and do something contrary to their wishes.  That's obviously gonna start a fight.  You've just taken this teeny, tiny spark of a problem and poured gasoline on it.
 * It's far more time-effective, not to mention nicer, to just go the forums, start a thread about the problem, and then invite others to consider your actions versus those of the other party. In the meantime, you then go and edit something completely different, popping back into the forum thread from time to time.  Eventually consensus will emerge, and action can then be taken.
 * Additionally, I'm not sure why you brought up some kind of deception to Tangerineduel without having proof of it. Did you really think I wouldn't check?  The only user talk pages to which NileQT87 has ever contributed are User talk:NileQT87 and User talk:OttselSpy25.  Moreover, Nile hasn't contributed to any regular talk page since May of last year, and has only ever contributed to one category talk page, category talk:Multi-Doctor stories.  That really only leaves chat as a likely spot for this communication between Nile and TD — and chat, as we know from policy, is just chat.  When it comes to editing decisions and the formulation of consensus, chat doesn't count.   <span style="">21:07: Tue 24 Jan 2012
 * I don't think I've ever had a discussion with Tangerineduel. What is this about now? I mostly just edit and have only discussed anything on talk pages and at the Panopticon on VERY RARE occasions. I mostly just go around editing companion pages and such. I'm very confused about this conflict. I also have not reverted anything that was put back in after initially taking them out and Mini-mitch putting them back in. NileQT87 talk to me 18:03, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
 * After a discussion over at my talk page, we now understand what needs to be taken out of the categories, as it was Brilliant Book information. Also, some of the companions had their same categories (correct ones) duplicated about 3 times in a row! They only need to be listed once, of course. Just a note: I'm female. NileQT87 talk to me 20:52, January 25, 2012 (UTC)
 * Well... Okay, I guess. I'm a teenager, if it changes anything...


 * Actually, as I noted on your talk page moments ago, the BB2011 cats were on Winston Churchill, not Jamie McCrimmon. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:24, January 25, 2012 (UTC)

Redirects
In many occasions it is better to fix the originating link than to create a redirect usually by pipe switching. Such as Band member to John Lennon. That is never going to be the only usage of the term "band member". I've changed the Forever Dreaming link to John Lennon. Please consider this in future, as we try to point people towards the correct page in editing and it also helps people find stuff easier when searching. Thanks. --Tangerineduel / talk 15:48, January 26, 2012 (UTC)

I have been doing a massive editing of the Tird Doctor and just had an editing conflict with you in the Jo Grant section. I installed all of mine afterwards. I hope I didn't destroy anything you were fond of. If I did, please let me know and I'll try to fix it. Boblipton talk to me 01:23, February 2, 2012 (UTC)

I did a light edit of the your latest edition and, now that that is done, am putting work on D3 aside for a few days, then will come back to clean up superfluities rather than just the language. I apologize for pushing it out earlier, but I didn't want to have to do the whole section over again. This was a long and messy one. Boblipton talk to me 02:56, February 2, 2012 (UTC)

Third Doctor page
Please calm down with the pics. The Third Doctor page has an insane number of pics now, and yet very few are actually of Jon Pertwee. Obviously, comic pictures are allowed, but they should be visually arresting at 250px, of high contrast and quality, and with no titles or clipped speech balloons. No offense, but you seem to have harvested one of the very richest periods of DW comic history and come up with some of the worst examples of its art. Are you actually working with the full comic strips, or just pictures that other people have served up on sites like Altered Vistas? Because — and again, I'm not trying to be mean here — there's not a single comic picture you've added to the page that I would say is worth keeping — not when there's so much better stuff out there.

If you're only working from Altered Vistas, or another similar site, I need for you to immediately stop. We're trying to build a unique site, and frankly whoever's doing Altered Vistas pics chooses the weirdest, crappiest part of the stories for his illustrations. Frankly, we can do a hell of a lot better with very minimal effort.

Aside from artistic considerations are the technological ones your over-zealous addition of pictures causes. Yes, we want to well illustrate our articles. But we must be aware of the total download strain we're putting on users. A page with 20 pictures at 100mb each will obviously take longer to download than a page that has 5. But if the 5 are particularly good, that's all we need. Remember, we are increasingly getting mobile users, and they're downloading on cellular or WiFi connections, both of which have to be concerned with picture number and size. <span style="">05:54: Fri 10 Feb 2012


 * "Worth keeping" is a somewhat subjective term, but there are, I think some obvious things that compel us to keep a pic, or to use the pic in one situation but not another. I'm a little hampered at the moment by the platform I'm on to demonstrate it to you, but I'll give it a shot now, and if there are questions later, I can add illustrations.


 * In my mind, all the pics you've put on Third Doctor are "worth keeping" in the larger sense of "what pictures should comprise the wiki in general. That's why I've gone to the trouble of going ahead and categorising them under category:Third Doctor images.  In other contexts, they might well work, such as if the comic story from which they're drawn gets a better plot sction that then requires illustration.  One or two I see as particularly appropriate for the page about the artist in question, so as to demonstrate his approach to drawing the Third Doctor.


 * So I'm not at all advocating deletion.


 * I'm saying that on a page about the Third Doctor, illustrations should be of uncompromised top quality. What makes something "top quality" or  "best" is a mixture of objective and subjective criteria.  Objectively, it must follow T:ICC to the letter.  In particular, the images should render good, strong, clear representations of the Third Doctor at default, unmodified thumbnail size.  Some of the early TVC stuff just doesn't work in that regard, because you're talking about simple, largely unshaded line drawings.  Generally, pictures on a character page should dominantly feature the face in frame, unless you're trying to make a point about the Doctor's clothing.


 * You must then figure out balance. As the article was when I discovered it, the page was dominated by Polystyle images of the Third Doctor.  Yes, that's an important part of his era, but it doesn't deserve that much attention.  When there's more Polystyle Third Doctor than Pertwee Third Doctor, the page is seriously imbalanced.  So you have to use some judgment and figure out how to represent the era more accurately.  Before you arrived on the page, Third Doctor was woefully under-illustrated.   What it needed, though, wasn't such a lot of TVC/TVA stuff, but rather more images from TV and some images from comics.


 * In concrete terms, I'd recommend finding the very best single image of the third Doctor from the pre-Countdown TVCs. Then I'd go with maybe three or four pics from TVA, and maybe another from one of the latter-day Pertwee things.  Something from that Adrian Salmon Third Doctor thing would perhaps be good, because it's such a strikingly different style.  Get a broad mixture of artists and interesting things from the comic stories.  I think you've hit on one with the "Lincoln v. Three" pic, so keep that.  You'll also want to get him in a frame with one of the many "boy companions' of the era.  There's a good one I plonked down in the infobox of one of the later TVAs.  Forget which at the moment, but there's a really striking Thrid Doctor/boy companion one if you just flip through things.


 * Another big problem in some of your pics is that you chop off word balloons. This is actually against T:ICC, thouh I know you'll find similar pictures around.  i'm slowly trying to delete these.  Either you keep the whole balloon in, or you crop around it.  One of the other.


 * I'd also kind of avoid any comic representations of anything that's already on TV. For instance, you've got a comic representation of the season 7 team.  I'd scratch that, in faovor of something from the television show.


 * The keys, it seems to me, are these:
 * Strong, well-cropped pics
 * Giving a smattering of different artists, if there are extensive comic archives
 * Showing things about the comics that challenge the typical notions fans have about particular character. (Again, the Lincoln thing is great, because the average fan doesn't associate Pertwee with travelling back in time, and they certainly don't consider him as a Doctor that went to America.)
 * In the case of Doctors, capturing the particular Doctor with non-televised companions.
 * Any pics that show the Doctor doing somethign they didn't typically do on television. For instance, I've illustrated Hat with the Fourth Doc in a sombrero, rather than his typical hat.  Everyone knows he wore a fedora; they don't know he toyed with a sombrero.


 * Hope that helps. If you have any more questions, you know where I am.  (Oh, btw, I'm engaged on other projects at the moment, so I'm in no rush to remove stuff at Third Doctor.  Why don't you give it another go?  You know the comics pretty well.  Just spend a little time rummaging around the complete stories for pictures that are really killer.  I'm sure you'll find them, specially there in TVA about 1972/73.  <span style="">00:56: Sat 11 Feb 2012

Time & Davros Again
None of the Time & Time Again stuff strikes my eye as particularly great for viewing at thumbnail size. Plus, it's just really crappy art, generally. I'll grant that it's an important "moment" — though contradicted by other stories — but it's just not rendered well enough.

Also, I note that you seem to have a penchant for uploading whole pages of comic art. Please don't do this. There's no way it can be defended as "fair use". Please mark that image, the one currently in the infobox at Time & Time Again, and any others that you've uploaded for deletion.

Not sure why you're saying the FASA stuff is "now" non-canonical. It's been non-canonical according to T:CAN, at least as far back as 2007. The pic you've uploaded is fine to remain, so long as it's clearly in "behind the scenes" sections, as you've done at Davros. <span style="">06:12: Sat 11 Feb 2012

Giving sources
As we've discussed before, it's imperative that you give sources for images. Yes, you might be able to slide by without one if the image is of a televised adventure, and the subject is something pretty memorable from that show. But in the case of something like File:Terror of the autons.jpg, the average person won't be able to make sense of that, because it's obviously modern coloring techniques, but there's no obvious reason why there'd be something modern adapting Terror of the Autons. It's not a comic strip. It's just something done in a comic style. Now, we know it's from DWM 164, but the average person who might stumble across the image outside the context of the article won't.

So, just to make this easy to understand, please put a source onto every single illustration or comic panel you upload. Doesn't have to be much, even just DWM 164 will do. But give us something. <span style="">21:53: Sat 11 Feb 2012

Thumbnail size
I noticed in the above-named pic, and in several others of yours, that you're given to defining the thumbnail width. Please don't do this. It contravenes T:ICC. See forum:thumbnail size for the technical reason why. <span style="">21:53: Sat 11 Feb 2012

Please give sources when you upload
You've been asked before to ensure there's a proper link to the source of comic images. A number of the files you've uploaded in the past couple of hours do not have such a link. Instead, you've given nearly a good link. You must now go back and clean up your work. It's very important that people be able to access the page for the comic story from the file page, especially now that we are actually categorising images. We now have to be mindful of the fact that some people will want to get to the story page from the file page, rather than from the story page to the file page. <span style="">01:08: Tue 14 Feb 2012

Enough with The Five Doctors
Dunno what's wrong with your source for The Five Doctors, but it's clearly inferior to the 2008 specieal edition. If you are using the latest release, then your image capturing software is mis-calibrating colours somehow. Either way, stop trying to get images from that story (and maybe others), cause your images, which might have been acceptable in 2006, are realy quite washed out and "tired" in 2012. <span style="">03:48: Tue 14 Feb 2012

Third Doctor
Dear Ottelspy,

Over the past month I see that you have vastly increased the size of the Thir Doctor article -- despite my occasional hacking at it -- from about 30K to 75K -- I guess that's computer bits or bytes instead of word count, which is how I tend to view things.

Because you have been working so hard at it, I don't feel right about simply going in and trimming. However, I have issues. While you seem intent on getting every Third Doctor story in every medium mentioned and that is judged hereabouts to be a good thing, I feel that there needs to be more than sheer size to these pages -- they need shape, too, to tell a story or evince an attitude. It's often very hard to discern these matters -- it took me about six months of work before I could see clearly River Song's story and begin to get life in some sort of order, and I am still working on Amy Pond -- while her life up to leaving with the Doctor has its plot, the rest still seems like random incident.

That sense of random incident is what I get from the current mass of the Third Doctor story. At one point it was about escape from exile, with his turning into the Fourth Doctor the crowning achievement of that. Now it is just shapeless. So what I'd like to know is if you see a pattern in these things that can be used to draw the entire article into a more aesthetic whole, or are we stuck forever in this morass of random incidents by the usual collection of creative people and hacks that actually produced the tv show, comic strips and novels over the last forty years. I'm hoping your enormous work has given you some insight you can pass along that will enable me to edit the current mess sensibly. Boblipton talk to me 13:58, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

I've just read an article by Roger Zelazny about issues with his writing Eye of the Cat. He notes that if you make a description too detailed, the reader can't take it in and it becomes less descriptive. Certainly in my work -- stock selection -- an ability to focus is very good. So three running themes..... anyway, it's something to brush through the writing. Boblipton talk to me 17:54, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Image categories
Hi, you've been adding the wrong Master category to the images. You've added Category:Ainley Master images to things like File:Doomsday Weapon novel.jpg it should be Category:Delgado Master images. Please check the Category:The Master images category for the different subcategories. Thanks. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:23, February 15, 2012 (UTC)

Image selection
I'm kinda swamped around here at the moment, so I apologise for the time it's taken to respond to your pic changes at Third Doctor. Let me say from the outset that I appreciate that you've been genuinely trying to learn and improve things. I do immediately notice that your recent uploads include full word balloons, for instance, so that's a great improvement.

However, I've deleted a lot of your additions to Third Doctor and given reasons why at the point of deletion.

Just because they're comic images doesn't mean that you are absolved from trying to follow the other provisions of T:ICC. Specifically, you must make an effort to get a widescreen image. I know this is hard with some comic images, because comics just aren't oriented that way. But there are a number of cases where I wonder whether it wasn't possible. You should also try, where possible, to avoid word balloons altogether.

Though we do allow some flexibility with comics on the widescreen images, there are a few rules that must always be followed.
 * Pic size must be a minimum of 250px width. (Thus File:The Soul of a Cyberman (one guy).jpg will be deleted regardless of the fact that it's a very well-cropped image.)
 * Pic size cannot be greater than 1mb, and must generally be less than 100kb. You're actually pretty awesome at following this rule these days.
 * Word balloons must be "all in or all out". Again, you've been following this rule faithfully.
 * If a picture must be longer-than-wide, it shouldn't be any longer than absolutely necessary to illustrate the point. This you're not doing so well at, but it's a subtle point that I'll illustrate below.
 * The picture must clearly illustrate the topic at the thumbnail level. This is the thing you're falling down most often with. It was the number one reason for my deletion of your recent Third Doctor images.

A part of the reason I've waited to respond to you is that I knew it would be best to give practical examples, which means this post might take a while. So strap yourself in as I take a tour through some of your recent pics.

Okay, I could go on, but those are some representative issues that you could work on with your images. I hope you've found this little tutorial helpful. If you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask. <span style="">18:08: Fri 17 Feb 2012
 * Nice job with the recroppings here.  <span style="">02:15: Mon 20 Feb 2012
 * Please stop changing all of the pictures all over pages that have been there for ages (especially when it's a personal vendetta against a user) when the former ones were a) better, b) just because you feel like changing them all (which I guess is your main reasoning). Try to just add images where they are needed rather than replace what is already there. Thank you. I really think we need a second opinion before you keep changing everything all over the wiki. NileQT87 talk to me 03:40, March 8, 2012 (UTC)

Basil Brush
Please read and understand T:VID LINK. Didn't really think I had to make something like this explicit, but your additions to Basil Brush proved that I did. <span style="">18:35: Fri 17 Feb 2012

Happy Deathday
8 pics for an 8-page strip? 4 pics on the page about that 8-page strip? That's definitely overkill. You've got one pic that's primarily two characters with their backs towards us! How does that illustrate anything? You've done a good job trying to go for widescreen images and/or very short portrait-oriented pics, but please have a sense of perspective. Don't just upload everything on your computer. Figure out the best pics — the ones that really illustrate the thing in question — and upload them only. The pics that qualify on this score, btw, are File:Happy Deathday - Fwaz.jpg and File:Happy Deathday - End.jpg. They're both really nice and all you need to illustrate the comic. <span style="">04:02: Sun 19 Feb 2012

Gallery at Who Killed Kennedy
As we discussed early with the Destiny of the Daleks page, galleries are not generally allowed on story pages. They are only for use with galleries of cover images. Per T:GAL RULES, I've therefore removed the gallery you created at Who Killed Kennedy. I've also outright deleted the pictures, since they are monochromatic versions of pictures originally in color. These are obviously disallowed in the same way that colourised images of monochromatic pictures are.

Also, please note that if you do create galleries, and there are very few instances where they may be created, you must hide the "add pic to gallery" button, as described at T:GAL. <span style="">02:13: Mon 20 Feb 2012

Image by story categories
Please be aware that images by televised story and images by comic story are now completely filled out with subcategories for each and every story of that type. So if you have an image from say, Thinktwice, you'll want to make sure that you put it in Category:Thinktwice comic story images. Or if you have something from The Mind of Evil, please ensure it gets into Category:The Mind of Evil TV story images.

These images by story categories are, of course, in addition to any other categories which may be appropriate, such as ones from Images by character, Images by object, or images by species.

Images by story will continue to grow over the coming weeks to include other media, but comics and TV were deemed the highest priority, since the vast majority of images will come from these two visual media.

Also, if you haven't noticed it for now, TV story pages now all have a little tab at the top left labelled "images". Clicking it takes you to the relevant category, so that you can quickly view our repository of images from that particular story All stories will eventually have this sort of link. Longer term, individual charactes might also have such a link. <span style="">02:34: Mon 20 Feb 2012

Cat TV story images and novelisation images
I've rolled back your removal of Category:The Ark TV story images as on the category page it states "The images below come from, or are related to, the Doctor Who universe televised story, The Ark", while the novelisation cover isn't from The Ark it is related to it. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:26, February 22, 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd totally concur with this. All the story image cats are meant to include covers of the story in all its forms, as well as in-universe screenshots, telesnaps.  They can also include policy-allowed publicity images, where it is clear those images came from a particular story (as with, for instance, Galaxy  4).  That's precisely why I included the phrase, "or are related to".   <span style="">17:31: Thu 23 Feb 2012

Referring to categories
When you refer to categories, please remember to add a preceding colon. produces a clickable link in the text, as category:planets. However,  actually places the page in the category and therefore produces a "gap" in your sentence that will make it nonsensical. , for instance, will render as, which makes no sense.

This "adding a colon" trick works with files as well. When you want to provide a link to a file, rather than bringing up an image of it, add a preceding colon:. <span style="">17:25: Thu 23 Feb 2012

The Five Doctors
Please don't touch anything to do with The Five Doctors — and particularly don't make any new links — as the switch is made. <span style="">17:25: Thu 23 Feb 2012
 * Move has been completed.  <span style="">06:22: Sat 25 Feb 2012

Take the rest of the weekend off
You have been specifically warned on this page at and  that you are not to set thumbnail widths. Yet, inexplicably, you continue to do so. One such recent example, after both of these previous warnings, can be found at http://tardis.wikia.com/index.php?title=Last_Great_Time_War&diff=prev&oldid=970162

Apparently you don't see this as an important issue, so you leave me little choice but to block you. You do a lotta great work around here, but you must stop doing this. Take the next 48 hours off. I again urge you toplease read the technical reason why it's important to leave thumbnail widths unspecified. <span style="">06:22: Sat 25 Feb 2012


 * Okay, that's fair I suppose. Just when I'd found all the DWM preludes too! Well, see ya Monday. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 20:43, February 26, 2012 (UTC)

No colourised images
You continue to upload colour images of comics that were originally monochromatic. This is contrary to T:ICC. And I think it's something I've mentioned on this page before. Please stop.

See, you're just creating a lot of work for the admin staff. For every good image you're giving us, you're creating more work for the admin with your other images. We have to go back and delete some of your files and then go back to correct the page on which the file was placed.

At this point, you've been around more than long enough to have thoroughly read and understood our rules. I don't mind helping you with cropping and other more subjective or hard-to-understand issues. But I do really need for you to follow our most objective, black-and-white rules. And they don't get much simpler than "comic images must be from the original printing; colourised images are not allowed".

Please remember that DWM didn't go colour (except for the very rare gimmick in the early 1990s) until Ophidius — deep in the Eighth Doctor's run. If your image comes from a previous Doctor's era, and it's colour, you probably cannot upload it. Thanks :) <span style="">04:11: Tue 28 Feb 2012

According to one source
Please see talk:First Doctor. <span style="">16:48: Wed 29 Feb 2012

Image names
If you make a spelling error with an image name, please don't just leave it as is. No one would be able to find something like File:Retuen of the Daltor.jpg. Please use spelt to indicate to admin that the file needs to be moved to something more intelligible, like File:Return of the Daleks TVC.jpg. Thanks :) <span style="">14:10: Sun 04 Mar 2012

watch the rudeness please
"you have appeared to do nothing useful here".

I don't mind that much, but come one, people on the 'net have feelings too. --74.94.186.19talk to me 22:16, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

BBV
So are you telling me that you actually have a copy of this video yourself, and that you personally have taken the screenshot? Seriously? If you haven't, please don't upload it. The rule of T:IUP DWIA basically applies to any other webiste with images. Unless you can personally verify that a picture comes from a source, because you've actually seen the source material, you shouldn't be uploading it. Fan websites are often wrong, and you can always get a better picture by taking it yourself. Move on to other pastures, please. If you genuinely are watching Zygon now and taking screenshots, please confirm, and then we'll talk about hwo it should be categorised. <span style="">00:11: Tue 13 Mar 2012
 * Five minute block to get some time to reverse your most recent changes. Things released straight to the home market should, with the exception of special features on DVDs, always just be the cover, as with books, CDs, etc.  Gimme a second to figure out what you've been up to lately here.  Lots to say.  <span style="">00:27: Tue 13 Mar 2012
 * Okay, a lot of great new pictures today! But also, some that were just obvious duds and had to be immediately deleted.  Again, please be mindful of the following:
 * No "black bands" framing the picture on any side. They're easily cropped out so don't keep them.
 * If the image is generally blurry (that is, no intentional pulled focus) don't upload it. No picture is actually better than an indistinct one.
 * Ya gotta be mindful of how these pics look at thumbnail level. If they get indistinct at small widths, don't upload 'em.  Most of the pictures you uploaded today were nice, strong images of a closeup on a person.  These are fine.  But things like that Demos Rising pic?  Nah, can't make it out at all.  Remember, if your pic requires hitting the expand button just to basically identify it, it's probaably no good.
 * Never upload a portrait-oriented picture when it's possible to upload something that's at least 4:3 or widescreen.
 * <span style="">00:46: Tue 13 Mar 2012
 * Alright, now back to your original question. Sorry for seeming so incredulous, but it's been years since anyone around here actually subjected themselves to the crap that is BBV.  As you've discovered, it's painful viewing.  But, since you're a glutton for pain, the least I can do is let you in on future plans.  I hadn't gotten around to doing a dab term for these BBV things cause they're such a minor part of the DWU. But overall I think the best dab would be (BBV video).  This then makes the category: Category: BBV video images.   Similarly, there would also be category: RP video images.  This unusual use of the prefix makes sense here because there are so many connotations to the word "video" that this helps to focus things down.  Also, this allows us to use the same acronym whether it's a documentary or a story.  We don't really need two separate dab terms when there are so few releases of each type.   <span style="">01:16: Tue 13 Mar 2012

Please make valid links
You have again made a blatantly, unmistakably, there's-no-way-you-could've-missed-it bad link on an image page. Because you are such a prolific editor, it's really important that you edit accurately. I and the rest of the admin staff can't keep up with you at the rate you're making totally careless errors. The odd error is understandable, but you seem to make more errors than correct links on file pages. It's very important that you don't create erroneous links.

Please take a look at File:C'rizz.jpg and consider what it is about your editing practices that would have allowed you to make two such obviously incorrect links.

You may not realise it, but there's a report called Special:WantedPages. Some editors use this as the basis of their editing. If you're creating bad links, without seemingly caring about whether you get it right, then you're making it harder to find the genuine page requests on that report.

Please double-check your work on each and every file that you upload.

(Also, with something like this C'rizz thing, spend a little more time on the description. Remember, the point of the description is to clarify things.  It's not just satisfy a requirement of policy.  DWM: The Last is an inaccurate and very confusing citation.  There's no such animal.  What you want to say is "From comic preview of BFA: The Last found in <whatever issue of DWM it was>".)  <span style="">02:26: Wed 14 Mar 2012

Stubs
Please do not add to real world pages when there is also a more precise real world stub in place. Your edit to David Bishop was unneeded as it was already in. There are numerous stubs categories that are part of the real world stub tree, I suggest you look at them. Thanks. MM/ Want to talk? 20:09, March 15, 2012 (UTC)

Again with the video links?
You've been warned at not to provide video links. Yet you did it again at Forum:BBV and canon policy. You therefore leave me few options. T:VID is absolutely the single most important policy on the wiki. Typically, even first time violators get multiple-month-long bans. I let you off before, which I don't always do. But, even though I don't think you meant any harm — and despite the fact that I think you were trying to add something helpful to an important conversation — I just can't let it pass twice, or else the rule will be meaningless. The most lenient I feel I can be is to now block you for a week. <span style="">21:52: Thu 15 Mar 2012


 * Okay, that's fair I guess... What about the vid links at Doctor Who parodies? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 21:05, March 16, 2012 (UTC)

Hey, if I was blocked until 17:55, then how come at nearly 20:00 I still can't edit? OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 19:26, March 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmmmm, I don't know. I've checked back through your block log and there wasn't another block in place. I wasn't monitoring your talk page at the time, so I don't know when exactly it was lifted.  But it does look like it should've been at :55 past some hour.  The only things I can figure are:
 * You did the time zone offset math wrong (the block listings are in your local time, whereas your signature is in UTC)
 * You thought Britain was in Daylight Savings, at which point there would be an hour's difference between GMT and UTC. Britain hasn't gone into DST yet, which means you might be off an hour, if you mistakenly reset your clocks last weekend.
 * If you actually do live in Versailles, France, then you're an hour ahead of UTC.  If you commute between France and the UK then you could easily be screwed up by an hour, particularly as clocks change this weekend in both countries.  Remember, the time setting on Wikia has nothing to do with your computer's internal clock.  It's a setting you elect under preferences.  If you set it in the UK but are now in France (or vice versa), it'll be wrong.
 * There's a fault in the MediaWiki software. This is doubtful, however, and I'd need more info to diagnose it.
 * All things considered, my guess is that you just did the math wrong. According to your contribution log, you were able to start contributing within a half hour of your theoretical block expiry, so it looks like there was no functional error in the block removal.  <span style="">16:27: Fri 23 Mar 2012
 * Hmmm, I really don't think that there was an error in this case. Again, you were able to edit within 30 minutes of the expiry time, so that indicates a properly timed ban lift.  The clock at the top is in UTC. Anything you read from a log (which is where you'd be getting the ban expiry from) is done according to the timezone you have set in Special:Preferences.  If there's a difference between the two, then your ban will not be lifted  "on time".  I have no idea how you've set your "Wikia time", so I can't speculate what sort of offset you have.  But my guess is that your "Wikia time" is not UTC, so therefore the clock at the top of the page doesn't match the counter on your ban expiry.  If you're actually in North America, then you're doubly screwed on 22 March, because you'll be at a different offset from UTC than you think you are, because you'll have changed to Daylight Savings, but London won't have.


 * As for these past problems you're now describing, I dunno. I do generally check to see that a unblocking was successful by looking for the removal of the "blocked" graphic.  I don't recall ever unblocking someone and ever sensing that it wasn't successful. (In the most recent block on you, however, it was all computer-controlled.  I didn't manually unblock you.)  <span style="">17:55: Fri 23 Mar 2012

Please stop editing Worlds in Time subjects
We haven't at all decided how we're handling Worlds in Time from an in-universe perspective. Currently a discussion underway at Forum:Doctor Who: Worlds in Time. Please don't add anything else to the database until we've decided how to proceed. Thanks. <span style="">15:17: Fri 23 Mar 2012

Human
Please be aware that T:HUMAN forbids the capitalisation of human. It should always be rendered in lower case, unless at the beginning of a sentence, or a line in an infobox. <span style="">15:58: Fri 23 Mar 2012

What's wrong with these pics?
I do very much appreciate your file uploads. Most of what you do improves our visual database. And I hate to keep coming back here to tell you why I've had to delete your work.

But as an admin it's my job to ensure that standards are upheld. That's why I really need you to please, please, please, take notice of the things I've pointed out to you on this page, as well as the simple instructions you'll find on T:ICC and T:IUP.

It's not even that I feel like I have to check behind you. I do have to check behind you. Every single time you upload a series of pictures, there's always a hefty percentage of pictures that I have to delete. Which means you've wasted your time, and I've wasted mine. This little game has been goin' on for six months and it needs to stop. I didn't mind explaining things a couple of times at first, but the fact that you keep making the same mistakes is frustrating.

If you're having questions about best practises in screencapping, please let me know, so that we can clear up the confusion. I'm hoping that your continued problems with screenshots are down to a genuine lack of understanding rather than a wilful disregard for the rules, which are designed to elicit high-quality images.

For today's images, I'm gonna take a different approach. Instead of me telling you what's wrong, I'd like you to tell me. I know this all seems very school-ish and academic, but I'm hoping that if you're forced to look at the pictures critically you'll spot the problems and remember them. Please post your answers on my talk page before 0000 25 March (UTC). Thanks. <span style="">16:48: Sat 24 Mar 2012


 * Yeah, that's basically it. 1 & 2 shouldn't have "black bands" around pics, and these could be cropped to 16:9, really.


 * (That's the technical problem of the photo itself. I have to tell you, though, that there's another problem with 1 in terms of text flow on the Fifth Doctor page.  Naturally, it would go high up on the page, but the text doesn't always support a photo in the first section of the main body of the article. On Fifth Doctor, you got lucky, but I know I've removed some of these "post-regen" pics on other pages, simply because they ride too high up on the page, and they're often the least important pic on the page.  So the text flow issue doesn't affect this particular picture but it does affect other similar images that you've uploaded.  Placement of photos is something you're also having a problem with, but that's not what we're talking about now.)


 * But I think you've rather missed the point of 3. It can't, in any way, be salvaged. It's from a poor resolution copy of the film, obviously.  That immediately disqualifies it.  But what's really wrong is just the composition, which you can't change by getting a better copy of the film.  It's half a car behind (I guess) a truck.  It doesn't illustrate the topic well at all.  Most importantly, it's not even at 4:3 dimensions, which is grounds for immediate deletions.   So don't bother trying to fix 3; it's beyond repair.


 * Thanks for humoring me and taking another look at these photos.  <span style="">17:19: Sat 24 Mar 2012

Widescreen, widescreen widescreen
I've just run across your comments at User talk:NileQT87, and most of your points are great. It does seem like you've been listening. But then comes your last point:"it is best for images to be at 4:3ish shape, not 16:9ish shape"

- you

C'mon, buddy. Help a brother out. The single most-repeated thing I've been trying to tell you is that we're aiming for widescreen. Yes, 4:3 is acceptable. But, no, it's best for images to be at 16:9. Especially in infoboxes. Especially now that the infoboxes have all been standardised. Once again, widescreen is what you're looking for, in almost every instance. Yes, there's more leeway in comics, but widescreen is still mostly possible, even in comics, and you can come a lot closer to widescreen than you do at file:Jamie and the Doctor.jpg. Lopping off the bottom third will also make the remaining bit more prominent at thumb levels, reinforcing your point that images need to be as clear as possible as thumbs. <span style="">17:05: Sat 24 Mar 2012

Companion
If you like. As I said, I'm not 100% on all of them (in fact, I'm just going by the commonly given names of televised companions -- you don't especially hear Sixth Doctor with Mel, Peri and Wells much). I've actually not seen either Wells or David Campbell's appearances, given that I only started watching classic Who a year ago, so you probably have a better idea than I do. The fact that that list I put on CzechOut's talk page has 50 people on it, basically all of them single-story, and keep in mind that's pretty much only including TV characters, really stretches the term though I think. -- Tybort (talk page) 01:32, March 25, 2012 (UTC)

Unnecessary uploads
Please stop uploading the 3rd/4th Doctor comparison shots. These are no longer necessary, since the top-of-page template, WhichDoctor adequately illustrates the concept. We don't need an example from every single story to illustrate the concept. Also, please remember that these Polystyle comics should be considered primarily 2nd and 3rd Doctor stories, not 4th Doctor stories. Information in the infobox should be primarily concerned with the original printing. <span style="">19:26: Sun 25 Mar 2012