User talk:Badwolff

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We've got a couple of important quirks for a Wikia wiki, so let's get them out of the way first. British English, please We generally use British English round these parts, so if you're American, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card. Spoilers aren't cool We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details. Other useful stuff Aside from those two things, we also have some pages that you should probably read when you get a chance, like:
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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 talk page. Revanvolatrelundar ☎  19:30, May 11, 2013 (UTC)

Last name first name thread
Hi! I wanted to respond to your recent comment to Thread:130306. It's not really appropriate to sidetrack a forum discussion, so I've come here. I'm concerned that you feel your idea was rejected but then accepted when someone else posted it. I've read through the thread, but I'd like you to be more specific. You can leave a message for me on my talk page. Thanks! Shambala108 ☎  03:42, May 16, 2013 (UTC)
 * Just letting you know that I will take a second look at the discussion thread based on your reply to my talk page. I'll get back to you when I've finished. Shambala108 ☎  15:32, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

Navigation
There are a few reasons why we don't list all possible discussion boards in the top-of-page navigation. A big one is that the board list isn't dynamic. We drop in new boards as the situation arises. So we'd have to keep revisiting the thing every time we added a new board. Also, space is limited in that navigation area, and we need to make hard choices about what goes there. Finally, this wiki uses its discussion areas in ways that are different to the normal Wikia wikis. We are actively trying to promote the forum that is most emblematic of the kind of forum usage our local policies encourage.

To accommodate these various ambitions, we:
 * offer a link to Special:Forum (click on Community, rather than just mousing-over it). As more boards are added, we don't have to worry about updating the top navigation. However, perhaps it's not obvious that "Community" is clickable, so I will be taking a look at how to make that more obvious.
 * highlight Board:The Panopticon because it's the oldest forum and has been a part of the wiki, in one form or another, since 2005. As you can tell by a simple comparison of number of posts, it's far and away the most important forum we have.
 * include Howling:The Howling because it's a specialised board, wherein spoilers are allowed
 * give you a link to the Theory namespace, where you can then chose to go to either the Discontinuity stuff or the Timeline stuff.

In other words, the organisational "mantra" of that part of the navigation is to give links to the top level of our various discussion areas, with a nod to only the very most important single board.

That addresses the bulk of your message. But the last paragraph is a little mystifying to me. I don't know what you mean when you say that "admin are frequently telling people not to discuss the content of the episodes on the talk pages".

But let me take a guess.

We would indeed tell you not to discuss just the content of the episodes on the pages, but we wouldn't normally prevent discussion if it had to do with the editing of the article. Without seeing a specific example, I'm not sure, but if an admin has stopped just a simple, fannish discussion of an episode on a talk page, then they've correctly interpreted our discussion policy. Indeed, as is explicitly stated at T:NOT BOARD, this isn't a place that's big on social discussion of episodes. We do allow some discussion at Howling:The Howling, but even those discussions should be had with a view to somehow improving the wiki.

Our rules about discussion are much closer to Wikipedia's than the average Wikia wiki's. We discuss in order to improve our articles. Period. So making all the discussion board options more apparent on the navigation area likely wouldn't help the situation you described, if I've divined your meaning correctly. There is no forum where general chatter about an episode is allowed. If you want that, Gallifrey Base and other "pure forums" are out there. 21:20: Tue 21 May 2013
 * Here's the thing with Special:Forum. It's actually beta software, and we're one of the early adopters.  The vast majority of Wikia wikis don't even use it.  As new tech, it has bugs.  One of the biggest bugs is the fact that it offers no editable fields "above the fold".  We have a little message at the bottom of the list, but I'm quite aware that a lot of new users aren't even scrolling down for that.  I am definitely exploring ways of forcing a message onto the top of the list which will address most of your point #1.  But at the moment, because of limits imposed by Wikia, it's not quite so easy to get the word out about the Howling. And, no, we can't — purely for technical reasons — simply add the Howling and Discon areas in the existing list of Boards at Special:Forum. We're going to have to find some way to hack the existing page to change the current location of the message at the bottom of the page.


 * (As an aside, I think you have the wrong idea about the Discontinuity area. It's not like the section of Gallifrey Base where you discuss a particular episode.  Its purpose is best understood from the context of a story page, which is why the most prominent links are there.  It's meant to be a very narrowly-focussed thing where different points of continuity are allowed to be raised.  It's not meant to be a place where the episode is discussed in general.  So I'm not really eager to advertise it directly from Navigation.  Even so, it is pretty easily accessible from there. All you have to do is click "Theories". And the thing is, we want people who've bypassed the story pages to see that main theory page, so that hopefully they'll read it and understand it before moving on to the Discon/Timeline pages.)


 * As for your second point, yes, sure, new people are not used to our ways. There will be instances of people using a talk page to talk about the merits of the episode, rather than the editing of the article.  This is most profoundly the case while Doctor Who is in season, and particularly after the very best of episodes.  We do have warnings in as many places as we possibly can, though.  There are clear messages when you edit a talk page, at the very top of the editing area, which tell you what a talk page is supposed to be at.  We make the point throughout several policy pages.  People will always choose not to read anything, because, frankly, we have a lot of actual kids editing here who have no interest in reading rules or warnings.  And that's fine. All we can do is post the rules and then enforce as we see violations.  By and large the system works at least as well as it does on Wikipedia, so that's pretty good.


 * As for your general issues of not figuring out where to ask questions, or what questions to ask, may I suggest a different approach on your part? I'm assuming that you're talking about questions having to do with the content of the show.  We do allow some such questions at Board:The Reference Desk.  It's just really important that these questions not involve speculation.  Questions that start with "Why do you think" or "How did you feel", or any other construction that obviously invites opinion will be swiftly deleted.  So maybe take some time to look at the kind of questions which have been allowed to stand at Board:The Reference Desk and Forum:Reference desk archives.  I think you'll start to see a pattern, and then that'll help you figure out whether you can ask your question of us, or whether you need to take a trip to Gallifrey Base.  We're good for facts; they're good for theories.   22:52: Tue 21 May 2013
 * The perspectives of a new user are always welcome. SmallerOnTheOutside, as the name suggests, joined us only around the broadcast of The Snowmen, and his contributions have revolutionised the way we're going to be handling days of the year here. Shambala108 joined us only a couple of years ago, and she was rather quickly advanced to admin status on the back of a number of innovations.  Any number of other people have edited with us for a month or two and done a lot of great work in that time.


 * So please don't mistake us saying "that's just not what this site is about" for dismissing the voice of a newbie. There are simply things we do and things we don't do. Try another suggestion and you might well find it gets accepted.  I myself have a pitch:hit ratio of no better than 50%. Getting shot down is a part of using our forums and it happens to everyone.


 * I think you're absolutely right that people don't really use us for discussion. From the wiki's perspective, that's good!  Traditional fan discussion is just not a thing we do particularly well.  Our discussion software — such that it is — simply cannot compete with that found at a "proper" forum, like Gallifrey Base.  We are an encyclopaedia.  Our purpose is to write articles about the DWU as if it were a real place.  We're a reference that Gallifrey Base and other fan groups use to help formulate their heated arguments.


 * I should point out, as well, that IP users are particularly disadvantaged on the Wikia WallForum (WallForum being what Special:Forum is more formally called). Because IP users don't get notifications of any kind — alerts are classed a "benefit of membership" — the forum is particularly harsh for them.  If I close and move a thread, IP users will be totally confused what happened to it.  It just "disappears" to them.  There's nothing the admin staff here at Tardis can do about that. But if you're a registered user and we close and move a thread, you still get notifications.  You know what happened to it, instantly.  So it's basically built into the system that normal pruning and maintenance of the forum will look damned rude to an IP user.


 * But, there's a sense in which that's just tough cookies.


 * We have to behave in a way that confirms the benefit of joining or else people will have no incentive to register an account. We're not going to refuse to take normal administrate actions here just because IP users are disadvantaged.  IP users are disadvantaged — by the design of the software.  In fact, strictly speaking, IP users aren't even considered "users".  They belong to a group that's wholly without a name!  Heck, I recently attended a conference call with Wikia staff members in which I specifically asked for better ways to communicate with IP users, and all I got was "that's a tough one".  And it's because Wikia allows IP users, but everything about their particular installation of the MediaWiki software that runs the wiki is absolutely designed to encourage people to go ahead and register.  00:37: Wed 22 May 2013

Communication issues
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

OK, this issue is a bit complicated, so I want to make sure I cover everything. I see that User:CzechOut addressed some of the issues with IP users, and I don't really have anything to add to that.

As for the rudeness you've experienced, an issue we all have to deal with is that it's hard to understand someone's tone in an online forum like this wiki. We have no visual or auditory clues to help us understand tone. It's common to misunderstand someone's tone as an insult or rudeness. That being said, however, I am not dismissing your statements. The problem with many threads, including the Last name, first name, is that users get so enthusiastic about posting their comments that they merely skim over other users' comments. Or someone might be answering a post above yours but their post appears right below yours. I think one of these things might be what happened with your idea in that thread.

I did, however, come across a thread in the Howling where a user's comments to you would easily be taken for rudeness. I will keep an eye on that situation, but in the meantime, I have a couple of suggestions for you in future incidents.


 * If you think someone has treated you rudely, ask them about it on their talk page (it's better not to derail the forum conversation with this kind of thing). Give them some time to post an explanation/apology — and this may take some back-and-forth. Most of the time, this will resolve the situation.


 * If you think someone has attacked you, and please familiarize yourself with the definition of personal attack before determining this, then you can go straight to an admin, who will intervene for you.

Hopefully this information has been helpful. If you have any questions, just ask me or any other admin. Thanks for your patience! Shambala108 ☎  04:28, May 22, 2013 (UTC)