Extraneous redirects

As y'all may have noticed, I purged a crapload of obsolete redirects yesterday. Most of them had parentheticals that we no longer use -- (TFU), (UT), double parentheticals, etc. I mainly wanted to ensure that they couldn't continue to spread.In the process, I found that we have an absurdly large number of redirects... something like 4,800 total. Of these, hundreds are parentheticals -- stuff like "Skyfire (G1)" redirecting to "Jetfire (G1)". Seems to me that most of these are unnecessary. Nobody in their right mind is going to search for something by adding a parenthetical to the end, and in most cases we shouldn't be linking to parenthetical redirects. I presume most of these are simply leftovers from moved pages. But before I go on another deletion bender, I wanted to get a feel for consensus on this. Is there reason to keep some of these? -- Repowers 17:50, 18 January 2009 (EST)

I don't really see any reason. The only redirects we should be keeping around are official alternate names (including mis-parsings, like Banzaitron, Snap Trap, etc.; can't expect everybody to know the "correct way" when some official material states otherwise) and other special cases I can't think of at the moment. I trust your judgement. —Interrobang 18:42, 18 January 2009 (EST)

Yeah, multiple parsings are useful. Likewise for punctuation-enhanced titles and common search terms (I added "Gi joe" 'cause I got tired of typing "G.I. Joe" all the time.) It's mainly the parentheticals I'm annoyed by. It's not urgent or anything, but it feels like sloppy housekeeping and I don't see much reason to keep most of them. -- Repowers 19:12, 18 January 2009 (EST)

I say purge. --M Sipher 20:08, 18 January 2009 (EST)

Chinese knock-off

There appears to be a mirror of our site (well, Wikia's site) dating from... mid-July 2008 (about 4 weeks after we left wikia,) that was created with the intention of translating the site into Chinese. It's got its own domain, so it's probably set up by fans not a wiki-farm.Project's dead, with no edits in the last month-- I don't think it ever got off the ground. They might still be using it for reference I guess... 3 sysops, one with a user page, so I'm guessing "Programus" is/was the guy who headed up the effort.Not terribly important, but kinda fun to see! -Derik 20:25, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Probably the same guy as User:Programus on zh.Wikipedia. (He's active there, unlike tfg2.com.) It says he's got an intermediate command of English. I mention it in case we ever need to touchpoint with someone in Chinese fandom. -Derik 20:32, 19 January 2009 (EST)

Back-of-the-box art

Just found my old copies of the G1 back-of-the-box art here. Some of them are gorgeous! It'd be sweet to use some snippets for character profile art, but... not sure who could qualify. Most of the good ones, we already have non-standard-source art for. Still, for your consideration:

• 1984: Starscream
• 1985: Grimlock, Sludge... Tracks is the wrong color, and Shockwave is at an odd angle. Venom, maybe, but he's the wrong color.
• 1986: Octane is the wrong colors. Broadside is off-model. You can't see Divebomb's head.
• 1987: Chromedome, maybe. Apeface, verrrry maybe.
• 1988: we're already using Landmine and Skullgrin.I miss anybody? Input? Back of box art scans may be seen here at Botch's ever-awesome site. -- Repowers 20:46, 19 January 2009 (EST)

From the Japanese art, Metroplex and Devastator look very good. The whole 1984 art is awesome in its alien-looking toy-based character models. - Starfield 21:38, 19 January 2009 (EST)

External link nofollow policy

Currently TFWiki is using the default Nofollow policy for MediaWiki installations — external links are set nofollow (unless they're interwiki links like the one I just made to Wikipedia). Personally I'm opposed to using nofollow, and thought I'd sound out the community to see if there is any support for removing it from the external links.As a side note, getting TFWiki listed in the default Interwiki map would help raise our profile... --abates 18:32, 22 January 2009 (EST)

I wouldn't have a problem dropping the nofollow in the main namespace, as we're picky about relevant links and generally diligent in zapping spam. --Jeysie 21:05, 22 January 2009 (EST)

I think I'd favor disabling nofollow in the main namespace, with the caveat that I'm concerned it might slightly raise our profile as a spammer target.

You think we can get on the interwiki map? What's the procedure? -Derik 18:55, 22 January 2009 (EST)

Supposedly you just drop a comment on the talk page for the Interwiki page I've linked to above, though I do notice that there are outstanding requests there dating from 2007. --abates 19:04, 22 January 2009 (EST)

I had the wrong URL is why, this Interwiki map page appears to be the right place to make the request. --abates 19:17, 22 January 2009 (EST)

FYI, I'm planning to approach Wookieepedia to see if they'd be open to partnering and link exchange. Materially, doing so would benefit them a lot more than it does us... they have relatively few articles that'd be linking here (wince they don't concentrate on the toys as hard,) but in that vein we can actually offer a benefit... for some crossover areas, our documentation of SW toys is better than theirs is.

You can see an example of what a template like this would look like @ Darth Vader. -Derik^Talk 22:36, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Mmm... TFWiki is officially in nomination to be a formal friend/life-partner of Wookieepedia. So if you know a Wookiepedian who can voice support, by all means lean on them. -Derik^Talk 19:55, 10 February 2009 (EST)

Did anything come of this in the end? I had a quick look around Wookiepedia but couldn't see any reference to us. --abates 16:05, 1 March 2009 (EST)

Can we hit 8,000 before they hit 7,000?

Doing one of my periodic scans of That Other Wiki, aka The Wiki That Was, aka Not Us Anymore, I notice they've crawled their way up to 6,998 articles. Currently we're on 7,944. I would love to see us hit 8K articles before they can turn over 7K -- there's definitely a nice symbolism to being a thousand articles ahead. Consider it a motivational campaign! -- Repowers 14:24, 23 January 2009 (EST)

If we were just creating article for the purpose of boosting our counts, sure! But those kinds of articles suck, and tend to have no content, eternally "coming soon." We try to create articles as we add the content, otherwise you can fall into the trap of the old G.I. Joe Wiki.

OTOH, we're lacking a page for the Armada Free Comic Book Day issue, and that's an oversight that's been bugging me for the better part of a year. Blocking that in would be completely appropriate. (Walky has it, and though I don't have digitals on-hand, I have the pamplet in my bookcase at home tonight if more scans are needed.) -Derik 14:47, 23 January 2009 (EST)

But there's still plenty of red links that need taking care of. Cities, for example -- I think we still don't have a Chicago article. There's a ton of G1 story and coloring books we haven't documented. The list goes on and on... -- Repowers 14:55, 23 January 2009 (EST)

I think it might be worthwhile to implement a "fifty states project" type thing. At least outline articles for every state in the U.S. (assuming that state has ever done anything) and the major cities that have appeared in fiction. If a city appears in three different stories, it gets its own article, I'd say. -hx 15:05, 23 January 2009 (EST)

I think own-articleness should depend on how full-up the state article is. If the only thing going on in the article is that city, then it should live there as a sub-section. (With the city name as a redirect.) -Derik 15:10, 23 January 2009 (EST)

I've been reviewing the Marvel series over on my blog, one issue per week. Your note inspired me to go back and add a couple of articles that occurred to me as I was reviewing but that I didn't have the gumption to create. Cheers! --Jimsorenson 16:54, 23 January 2009 (EST)

You know, I did recently dig up the old Rhino VHS tapes... the ones with two episodes a pop on 'em. I think wiki-ing those up would be easy... --M Sipher 17:39, 23 January 2009 (EST)Working on it. Doing it honestly, too! --Xaaron 21:50, 23 January 2009 (EST)

Ditto, though my choices of new articles are apparently interesting enough to be distracting to other high-value members, sorry. (I kinda have a list in the back of my head "Articles I want to do, but which will be a pain/complicated/need-translation-or-input"...)

We've been creating new articles at ~10 times the rate Wikia is..., so I made a random sampling of their "new pages" log. Oh, much merriment was had! -Derik 22:18, 23 January 2009 (EST)

TFWiki is the Transformers knowledge database of 8,003 files
Awwwwww yeah. Pat yourselves on the back, people! -- Repowers 18:33, 24 January 2009 (EST)

And IIIIIII helped! (Seriously, it was a good excuse to do some little niggly HM and MF articles I've been putting off. Woo, go us!)- Chris McFeely 18:54, 24 January 2009 (EST)

Well done guys. I think it says a lot that in 2 days we created 65 new articles, and in the same period, they evidently created none. --FFN 07:22, 25 January 2009 (EST)

And- er- they seem to be mostly quality articles too. (Well, not mine... but I'm highly distractible.) -Derik 07:28, 25 January 2009 (EST)

How can you tell how many articles there are (and, for that matter, the fact that Ego is apparently the 8000th)? Is that an admin thing, or can anyone see this information? - Jackpot 19:35, 25 January 2009 (EST)

There's a counter on the main page of our wiki.

Also- Wikia finally added a 6999th article! -Derik 19:43, 25 January 2009 (EST)

You can also go to the Statistics page for the number of articles and some other interesting, well, statistics.

As for how to tell which article was the 8000th... that I don't know. I guess you could extrapolate by looking at the time stamp to see when the "We have X number of articles" message was posted, then go to the New Pages list and count articles posted after that time stamp... but there might be an easier way I don't know about. --Jeysie 19:45, 25 January 2009 (EST)

That was a very "of the moment" thing. At the time, everyone was keeping a close eye on how many articles we had. We had 7999, then Ego got made. So we just know it was the 8000th because we were watching. - Chris McFeely 20:17, 25 January 2009 (EST)

'Curious, do these 8000 articles also include every redirect page?Geewunling 02:52, 26 January 2009 (EST)

See the Special:Statistics page that Jeysie linked to. If we counted redirects and suchlike, we'd actually be at over 34,000 pages. - Jackpot 03:02, 26 January 2009 (EST)

They deleted it! They deleted their 6999th article ROFL!—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.108.30.195 (talk • contribs) 10:23, 29 January 2009.

It was likely fanfiction or an unsubstantiated rumor.--Rosicrucian^Talk 10:58, 29 January 2009 (EST)

They've since deleted another page, and now have 6997 articles. Wikia is actually shrinking.

I was pleased to google "Edminson + deluge" today, and OUR page on Deluge came up first, and Wikia's second. We've added only ONE link to that page since leaving Wikia... but we've also made a few maintenance edits, which Google registers as updates. (If content is receiving regular updates, however minor, it's more likely to be up-to-date.)

What I'm saying is... judged purely on the merit of its content (since this is a low-traffic page,) Google has apparently decided that TFWiki.net has overcome the duplicate-content penalty it hands out for site-cloners... and that our content is (however marginally) better than Wikia's. That's a watershed shift- if you take away the traffic Wikia has in their favor... we have now pulled ahead in Google. And Google is now starting to direct more traffic our way.

The inertial mass of Traffic that Wikia has on the popular pages is still a big factor. (Especially with the movie coming up, people who google blindly will most likely end up at the first link-response-- widening Wikia's traffic lead.) That said, our content relating to anything after June 2008 is overwhelmingly better than Wikia's... to the point that even their traffic cannot convince Google to list them first.

Finally, wikis aren't like normal web sites. A normal web site's "Bounce rate" (how long it takes you yo 'leave' the site) is very high. Wikis are very LOW-- it's common to be drawn into all the inter-article links and waste HOURS reading about shit. I have to believe that Wikia's policy of annoying their readers, making the content less attractive, and the general UNFRIENDLINESS of their "Don't even think of editing anything you amateur" notice at the top of every page (with a gun to your head!) means users "bounce out" earlier there than they do here. Google analytics notices that too.

Basically what I'm saying is... water has started to flow from Wikia's bucket to ours. And that's just going to accelerate. -Derik 21:30, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I just happened on their Recent Changes page. Oh, heavens. The last 100 changes at this time cover everything from 10:15 a.m. on Jan. 27 to 6:50 a.m. on the 30th. That's 100 changes in the course of roughly 68 hours, or about once every 41 minutes. In contrast, the last 100 changes on our wiki at this time run from 10:17 p.m. yesterday to 7:23 a.m. today, a period of just over 9 hours, or once every 5 1/2 minutes. Wow.--Apcog 07:47, 30 January 2009 (EST)

Try enabling 'bot edits. They don't have anyone running a maintenance 'bot over there, so when someone (for example) arbitrarily moves Transformers (2007) to the "less ambiguous" Transformers (film), suddenly 98% of the incoming links are being routed via redirect. And if Transformers (film) were to ever be moved (because someone pointed out, for example, that it was a SHITTY article title,) then all those links are gonna break.

That's an extreme example... but on a SMALLER SCALE over there... people move article without bothering to update the links coming in. If it just BREAKS you can usually sort it out by hand, but it's eventually going to snarl as stuff gets moved over other stuff. -Derik 08:33, 30 January 2009 (EST)

No they don't, page moves on wikia can now update all redirects with the check of a box, and double redirects don't break any more either. --◄mendel► 23:06, 15 February 2009 (EST)

HUGELY GOOD NEWS!

I was idly browsing and decided to see how we were doing compared to wikia. I did a google search and we are still third (first is wikia's transformer site, second is that sites revebge of the fallen article) and I opened wikias site for no real reason (and I use google chrome by the way) and the page was utterly horrendous and impossible to navigate! Minutes later my computer blue screened me! That means that every chrome user who googles "transformers wiki" will HAVE to come here! This will be good for us and make a huge dent in wikias pride (or something). I have told them about this though and I'm now scared to go on their site in case I get another blue screen so can some one else who uses chrome check please?86.161.186.240 11:18, 24 January 2009 (EST)

Ahahahaha - that's hilarious :D --FFN 06:56, 25 January 2009 (EST)

Hoooooooooray! Another victory for us!81.108.237.26 12:40, 26 January 2009 (EST)

No problem viewing the Wikia site in Chrome for me, however Opera 9 consistently crashes trying to load their front pageany page on that wiki. --abates 21:29, 26 January 2009 (EST)

Rumor site

It seems that the old Teletraan-1 site has become corrupted, as on their ROTF page, they have REDACTED FOR CHRIST'S SAKE for characters. --206.253.51.107 19:05, 24 January 2009 (EST)

OH HAY LOOK AT THE SPOILERS RIGHT THERE IN YOUR THING. GOOD GOING FELLA. -hx 19:12, 24 January 2009 (EST)

sorry. really, really sorry. that's the last time i'll do that. I PROMISE.--206.253.51.107 19:16, 24 January 2009 (EST)

On a sidenote, it just...fascinated me that it'd been so stinkin' corrupted that they'd put big, FAT, JUICY rumors on my former favorite site. --206.253.51.107 19:21, 24 January 2009 (EST)
On a tangent, I love the way that someone's added a massive 5/6 page cast list to the article for the Sunbow cartoon. --abates 00:26, 25 January 2009 (EST)Speaking of corruption, see my post above /\ (sarcasm starts here) the place looks GREAT in google chrome! (sarcasm ends here)86.161.186.240 03:49, 25 January 2009 (EST)

Name addendum

Hello there editors of Transformers Wiki. I do not edit here, although I am a co-founder of Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki, over at Wikia. I do not know if this was brought up already, or if it even warrants discussion. Has anyone ever suggested the name of Witwiki, based on the surname Witwicky from the 2007 Transformers movie as a title for the Transformers Wiki, even as a subtitle? I know that this wiki covers all forms of Transformers media, not just the movie, however considering the significance of this human character, and that his name is very close to how one would spell "wiki", I just felt that I could not pass up the chance. What do you all think? -- Riffsyphon1024 72.150.116.190 04:21, 25 January 2009 (EST)

Something similar was suggested when a rename was discussed for the server move last year, but I think the consensus was that people would have problems remembering how to spell it. --abates 04:33, 25 January 2009 (EST)

There was a not-terribly-serious discussion about re-naming the site "Witwickypedia" (See, it's even funnier that way!) when we left Wikia.

While most agreed it was amusing, we decided against it. -Derik 04:35, 25 January 2009 (EST)

It was also decided that for sheer accessibility to anyone and everyone, it would be best to go with the simplest and most direct name... a move the Wikia JUST SO HAPPENED TO ALSO DO HMM WHAT ARE THE ODDS. (Has the Wookiee thought of moving? I mean. I know it's a pain, but come on, SW fans HAVE to have more dosh to handle server costs than TF fans.) --M Sipher 04:51, 25 January 2009 (EST)

Just for further information, Riffsyphon1024, characters named Witwicky have been in Transformers since the beginning in 1984, so we considered the name "Witwickypedia" because of the amusement factor and because of the family's long association with Transformers franchise :) --FFN 06:54, 25 January 2009 (EST)

I understand your reasoning. Since I wasn't too big of a TF fan, I had not known that the name was used back in the 80s. That would make it more appealing to use, but if only for the sake of name recognition, it is your decision that eventually lends to the final name of this wiki. As for Wookieepedia, we have developed a relationship with Wikia that assisted us in 2007 when they sponsored our table at Celebration IV and donated some funds towards the convention. For the moment, we are comfortable with Wikia, and still remain one of the sites largest Wikias, next to WoWWiki. -- Riffsyphon1024 70.149.134.83

Nameless characters

I've noticed some off-and-on confusion about how to treat nameless characters... Template:Noname is a bit counter-intuitive (to the point of arguably being misleading) when dealing with someone like Cyclonus (Shattered Glass)-- who clearly does have a name... but gets the template anyway because the name is unconfirmed.I propose sub-dividing Template:Noname into finer distinctions

• name-not-confirmed — ( Cyclonus (Shattered Glass) )
• No-name-but-has-term — ( Giant Decepticon Warrior has an official descriptor used internally, but his name is not known. Similarly Bobby Bolivia's mammy title is based on how she was referred to in the fiction... we don't have a name for her, but the terms we are using are at least "real." )
• colloquial name/term — ( ? Do we have any characters with commonly-accepted-but-totally-unofficial names? )
• no-term — ( Hideous giant brain guy and Decepticon medics, no official name/term/description, we have to make one up. ) Thoughts? We'd need shorter/neater terms for these divisions. (Rescue Force jet still heads up the 'no-term' template I think...) -Derik 14:08, 26 January 2009 (EST)

#3 and #4 seem redundant. No point in separating them - they're both equally unofficial. -- Repowers 15:58, 26 January 2009 (EST)

I was running into the same problem-- and more to the point, I can't think of any widely-accepted fan-names for stuff that haven't been canonized already. -Derik 17:12, 26 January 2009 (EST)

I'd be happy with that...I was running out of ways to say "He's not explicitly named but he's essentially Shattered Glass Laserbeak" in the notes on the SG pages. Something more succinct in the header would make more sense. --Emvee 20:57, 26 January 2009 (EST)

IDW live action movie/Revenge of the Fallen prequel comics section naming.

Lately I've been reorganising the IDW sections of the movie characters to (more or less) use the descriptive titles as the headings. For example, the original IDW prequel is

===IDW Transformers movie prequel comics===

while "The Reign of Starscream" is:

===IDW Transformers movie sequel comics===

and "Alliance" is:

===IDW Revenge of the Fallen movie prequel comics===

====Alliance====

I do it this way because the IDW comics tell stories before and after the 2007 movie, rather than being set entirely within their own continuity period like most comics (which can usually fit under one heading or one big uninterrupted section). However, for some characters, such as Vine, "Alliance" depicts events set before the 2007 movie and before his first appearance in The Reign of Starscream. In cases like this, should we put these events in chronological order under a generic "IDW Transformers movie comics continuity" heading (which will be inconsistent, especially for characters whose comic adventures weave in and out between the movies), or should I do the headings that I have been doing and put events that are depicted within Alliance (or whatever) under the Alliance banner and simply say it happened in the past?My apologies if I am not clear and this is confusing. Note: I use a sub-title for the ROTF prequel comics headings because "Defiance", set far in the past before the wars, is also sold as a ROTF prequel comic. --FFN 10:01, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Well... as I said when we first started discussing how to organize all of this, the problem is that the movies and comics are all intended to be a single storyline, so it's not surprising that separating out the comics is ending up being really confusing and untidy. (*resists the urge to say "I told you so"*) If you treat something as separate that's not supposed to be...

If we really have to separate the comics out artificially, I would recommend putting the RoS/Destiny comics all under a single "IDW Transformers movie comics continuity" with the issues in storylinks, or we're just going to end up with a mess. Basically, IMHO we should be treating them the same way we do the -ations, because that's how they're written to be treated. (Ideally we should be treating them the way we do The Arrival, but...)--Jeysie 12:50, 27 January 2009 (EST)

The point is organisation. If we didn't separate the different comic series we'd end up having character pages where it says "IDW Transformers movie comics continuity" several times in the fiction section, should we consider the comics to be in-continuity with the movie (and thus far it's the only non-movie fiction that's more or less in-synch with the events of the movie). Chucking everything under one big heading would present the story in the wrong chronological order. It would be like "this happens in the first prequel comic. Okay, now scroll down and read the movie section, then scroll back up and read The Reign of Starscream issue 1." --FFN 14:32, 27 January 2009 (EST)

If the wiki insists on separating things out by franchise even in the few cases when it strongly clashes with the fiction, this is the sort of thing you have to deal with.

The best compromise I can think of is to keep RoS/Destiny together, and duplicate summaries of any bits of the movie that are needed to "glue" the comic summaries together (probably putting said duplicates in italics).

But basically, you're going to end up either having to weirdly separate out into separate sections parts of the same comic issue/series, or you're going to have to reference movie summaries in between the comic summaries. I personally think the latter is probably going to be easier to not get screwed up, but it's probably a very small difference as both methods are pretty confusing. --Jeysie 15:04, 27 January 2009 (EST)

In terms of wiki work, I hate the movie. It's unique in how it forces you to handle major parts of articles. --FFN 12:23, 28 January 2009 (EST)

Well... yes. Most of the time a new franchise = new storyline. But here... the Movies and comics are really a single storyline, yet the way Hollywood works forces you to treat any movie as a single entity in terms of marketing. So we have a situation where the ROTF logo is being slapped on all the new merchandise as advertising, but the ROTF movie isn't actually separate in terms of fiction.

I would be strongly in favor of doing what will make wiki editing the clearest and easiest (ignoring the ROTF logo aside from the toys and just putting it all together), but... yeah, I don't expect any support there outside of a couple people. I do know I'm sure not trying to figure out editing any of the Movie character articles myself. :/ --Jeysie 17:39, 28 January 2009 (EST)

I would strongly favor putting the IDW MOVIE ADAPTION in that place, with a {{note}} that the events are ~= to the movie section above. -Derik 14:57, 2 February 2009 (EST)

That would entail somebody actually reading the first movie adaptation and write about it. You do it. *crosses arms*--FFN 01:01, 10 February 2009 (EST)

It also makes a difference in character categories. There is a category for "Revenge of the Fallen characters" but I'm not sure it is appropriate to put someone in the "Revenge of the Fallen characters" category just because they were in the Defiance book. - Starfield 10:44, 10 February 2009 (EST)

A new proposal - two sections of a generically named "IDW Transformers movie comics" where appropriate. Since the IDW comics are more or less the main source of background material, prequel material and "meat" for the movie franchise, I am uncomfortable with shoving them all under one giant IDW section, particularly as we'd be putting it before the actual movies section.

So what I propose is two different "IDW Transformers movie comics" sections, one placed before the 2007 movie to deal with all events that occured in the past, and one place after the 2007 movie (and before ROTF) to deal with The Reign of Starscream and Alliance. --FFN 08:52, 17 February 2009 (EST)