Boxes gone from disambig templates?

I noticed the disambiguation templates don't seem to have those gray boxes behind them anymore. Is this intentional? Because it's confusing. -Mazenoise 08:16, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

Derik shifted the CSS styling into the stylesheet. Your browser probably had the old stylesheet cached, but a shift-reload should fix it. --abates 08:20, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, it did actually. Thanks! -Mazenoise 08:29, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

And they (well, the ones Derik hit anyway) sprouted a thick grey left border in the transition because...? - SanityOrMadness 11:34, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

I forget the reason. Rest assured that it did make sense though!

Main advantage of switching the disambig boxes to CSS: When you have multiple in a row, they stack prettier without a double-outline between them. -Derik 19:47, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

I forget the reason. Rest assured that it did make sense though!

If that's not a Derikism, it deserves to be. (And is the main reason why I'm scared of changing to external CSS rather than inline CSS - you having the keys to the styles virtually unfettered, since those admins who could either override or yank the emopanda CSS mostly either don't know how or are absent much of the time)

So now we have disambig templates that are unique amongst messageboxen in a particularly... nondescript way. Different enough to be irritating, not different enough to serve any real purpose. - SanityOrMadness 21:09, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

Eh? Oh, I thought I changed it back. (I remembered why they had a border on the left... I was testing something and decided it didn't work, I didn't realize it was still on.)

In theory Scout was going to make some changes last week to move us out of the existing CSS situation with much less living in my dev file... but she seems to have forgotten... -Derik 21:24, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

What was she planning to do? I can have a crack at it. --abates 21:29, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

Move a bunch of stuff to MediaWiki:common.css, I expect.

(Note the difference between Common.css [all skins, including the ones no-one uses like Simple and MySkin], Monacobook.css [Monacobook only] and Monobook.css [Monobook only]. Scout forgot about Monobook the last time common.css was edited. Incidentally, where did she ultimately put those changes? They ain't in the empty Monacobook.css.) - SanityOrMadness 21:44, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

I have a suspicion that the plan may be to create a new user class with rights to edit css files here (in which case I don't have the necessary access rights to do so)... --abates 21:59, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

That was the one. :) Either she forgot, or she tried and it didn't work. I'll bug her when I remember. (It's not like it's pressing... it's been needing doing for some time so it can wait a bit longer.) -Derik 22:33, 17 September 2009 (EDT)

And to answer the css question, the changes are in this file which isn't editable through the Mediawiki interface. --abates 00:03, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

"Scout, I have 3 requests."

"No, no, yes if I don't have to do any work."

-Derik 01:51, 18 September 2009 (EDT)

Did that ever get done in the end? --abates 19:45, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

WTF?

Why does Archive 11 even exist? ---Blackout- 12:35, 1 October 2009 (EDT)

Obscure BW comic, anyone?

Alright for the past while now, I've been looking up and adding in obscure Beast Wars products. I remembered both the Mutating Card Game and both Jigsaw Puzzles, and I've already taken note to add those in. But one piece of memorabilia that has still eluded me is a really old comic... My memory's a bit fuzzy on this one, and I can't quite recall if it was a seperate mini-comic from the two-pack of "Optimus vs. Megatron!" or if the scenes I'm remembering are part of that comic as well. The only scenes I recall from said comic are the opening, where a pre-earth mode Cheetor peeks through some vegetation to reveal a (very small) crystal. The subsequent dialog explained that they had to take on beast modes to overcome the toxic radiation of the crystal (much like the tv show). Anyone has any similar recollection? Or if anyone has scans of the "Optimus vs. Megatron!" mini-comic to clear up wether or not it is a scene from that comic that I'm remembering, I'd appreciate it. In any case, I hope I'm not going crazy and remembering a comic that doesn't exist, because as far as I can tell, it's not listed on the Beast Wars comics page. Thanks --Ascendron 14:23, 3 October 2009 (EDT)

It's not the "Optimus Primal Vs. Megatron!" comic, that one starts with Primal(in beast mode) flying in the sky, and then Cheetor running in the dark with a glow in his eyes. Unless you mistake the sparkle in his eyes for a crystal, it's not the same comic.--Sunjumper 13:41, 5 October 2009 (EDT)

I vaguely recall something similar to that being used to advertise the first Beast Wars video game on PC and PSX.--MCRG Again 15:23, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Categories for modes?

I've been trying to find out which transformer one of my old toys is, and I'd hoped I could compare it against each of the transformers with an aeroplane mode - but I couldn't find such a list. So I wondered whether it would be a good idea to have categories for the transformers' modes, so I could go to "Category:Aeroplanes" and look it up like that. Good idea? I'm not volunteering to do the legwork :-) 86.7.22.40 06:50, 5 October 2009 (EDT)

This external link might help. - Starfield 09:56, 5 October 2009 (EDT)

"Notes"

When did we start changing all the "Trivia" subheaders to "Notes"? ...And why even bother?--MCRG Again 20:17, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

Someone stated that they hated the header "Trivia" as it made the info seem inconsequential when sometimes it was actually useful/relevant, and those of us who thought they had a point started going along with that thought. (Although much to my annoyance I don't recall off-hand who said it or where, other than I think maybe it was on one of the Shattered Glass articles.) --Jeysie 20:34, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

It becomes irritating to me since "Notes" was solely confined to the comics and media articles and "Trivia" was confined to character and toy pages, so now we've got a bunch of random character pages with a "Notes" section (Hot Rod character page, for instance) and others with a "Trivia" section (Hot Rod toy page, for instance) for no particular reason. It looks sloppy and I have no idea whether I should be trying to track down and reset the headings to one or the other or if I'll get warned for it.--MCRG Again 23:32, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

"Someone" was probably me. -- Repowers 00:16, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, you're our resident cruft inquisition!--Rosicrucian^Talk 00:18, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

I think some page's contents in the Trivia sections is, um, mixed up with notes (relevant but can't be put in other section) and trivia (a little irrelevant BUT notable) things. So, maybe page like this would still need a trivia section, that is, separate their Trivia section into Trivia and Notes section. Of course, that may involve subjective view of the users who edit the page.--TX55^TALK 21:19, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

So are we going to decide on some form of consistent change or just use the two words randomly?--MCRG Again 02:31, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

I've been changing pages to "Notes" as I work them. --M Sipher 12:34, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

It'd also be a fairly easy bot request.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:38, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

Easy as long as you have a full list of the pages on the wiki. ---Blackout- 14:39, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

It's not as simple as it might appear - we have episode pages with Notes sections with Trivia subsections, so the bot would have to take that into account (and a blanket change of #Trivia anchors wouldn't be possible because some will be legitimately pointing to those Trivia sections). --abates 15:56, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

In the case of the bot request I made, I specifically said to replace ==Trivia== with ==Notes==. The pages you reference have ===Trivia===, which should be possible to exclude in a search.--Rosicrucian^Talk 16:54, 7 October 2009 (EDT)

Preventing direct image linking

As we know, the wiki costs a fair bit to run and early on in our post Bookworm crash server move, it used more bandwidth than our bosses calculated, so the last thing we need is people going around directly linking images off of our server for forums or even their blogs or whatever (The Mountain Dew Robots logo was one of our most popular articles... because some idiot linked the image to his website). Is there any way for us to prevent this? --FFN 11:54, 9 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes and no.

Yes in the sense that it's pretty easy to create an .htaccess file that redirects hotlinks in some way.

No in the sense that it might break the GoBoxes, if there isn't some way to make it so that the rewrite rules allow just the GoBox images to be hotlinked. Hrm. Although I think the GoBoxes are all PNGs, and we have very few PNGs as normal images, so it might not be that big a workaround problem. --Jeysie 17:40, 9 October 2009 (EDT)

Well, all the gobox images are in their own folder anyway, so it's simple enough to exclude them. This is probably a REALLY good idea; somebody give me a suitable (and tiny) replacement image and I'll try to make it so. --Suki Brits 08:45, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Depends on what you had in mind. You could either go the route of just making a one pixel GIF (i.e. smallest image possible), or maybe use our logo with "no hotlinking permitted" written on it. --Jeysie 09:01, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Goatse. Or the nearest TF equivalent of "ridiculous shock image." Hooper_X 10:00, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Anything from Kiss Players, then. ---Blackout- 10:09, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

...can we still let me inline images on my blog? Can we make exceptions? Because sometimes I do that, because it's technically me paying for the bandwidth anyway. --ItsWalky 10:17, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Whitelisting domains is easy. --Jeysie 10:36, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm not extremely savvy with that kind of stuff (most of my knowledge coming from archived talkpages on this wiki), so I have no idea whether it's possible.

What is a goatse, anyway? ---Blackout- 10:24, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

You don't want to know if you don't already. Trust me. --Jeysie 10:36, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Sorry I asked.

• remembers the vandal that came in and messed with some talk pages*---Blackout- 10:39, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

"Or the nearest TF equivalent" - Something like this, you mean? - Magnus Maximus 10:50, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Something more like this would be "the nearest TF equivalent", surely. [Or, potentially even more disturbing, this.] - SanityOrMadness 12:07, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Even Kiss Players is only about a 3 on the shock meter compared to Goatse. An image of Pat Lee might be appropriate... I suggest sticking to something small anyway, otherwise the bandwidth problem is still there. --abates 15:41, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

How about this with something like "You have found The Void." -- Semysane 15:52, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

I vote for Pat Lee. That's awesome. BANDWIDTH SUPERSTAR! Hooper_X 18:06, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

Well, the GoBoxes are fairly bandwidth-light, right? What if we did a variation on them, with the leeched image replaced with a notice that the image was leeched, and encouraging them to go to TFWiki.net to learn about Transformers?--Rosicrucian^Talk 15:57, 11 October 2009 (EDT)

I stand by my Kiss Players suggestion. That or the image of dead Prime from TFTM with a tagline at the bottom saying "This image is dead due to hotlinking." ---Blackout- 01:37, 12 October 2009 (EDT)

Rosicrucian has the right idea. We make it work for us, rather than just 'punish' the people doing it. We don't try to shock or dismay, just state that hotlinking is bad (m'kay?) and that tfwiki.net is the place to learn about Transformers. --Jimsorenson 11:44, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

FFN brought up an important issue! (FFN also totally forgot about this immediately after posting the original question and only just read this discussion.) And yeah, I totally forgot about the Go-Box. Since I'm not on the Allspark, I've never really seen the go box in use, other than Derrik Wyatt's blog. --FFN 01:22, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

This is about the most vindictively confusing thing you could spike someone with, IMO. -Derik 11:47, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

USE IT. ---Blackout- 11:58, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

So... did we get around to doing anything about this or what? A couple of readers on Kotaku (a popular gaming site) have direct-linked some images. The Allspark crashing yesterday because of Kotaku and other sites linking to it shows those game sites have major readership numbers, so I'm concerned people doing this sort of direct linking will cost us significant bandwidth, and I'm getting tired of asking people to do the right thing and just upload it elsewhere if they really want to direct-link an image. --FFN 17:30, 9 December 2009 (EST)

Enjoy having your bandwidth wasted. --FFN 02:38, 23 December 2009 (EST)

The only ones who can actually do anything about this are McFly and Scout, so unless anyone's talked to them directly about it... --abates 03:37, 23 December 2009 (EST)

GoBots on this wiki

Main article: Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots

Audio file problems - they don't seem to work

I don't think we ever resolved this when Derik brought it up a long time ago, but whatever script we use for audio files doesn't work, at least it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. On Wikia wikis, when you click on a "listen to this audio file", your browser should activate java, buffer the ogg file and play it. However, on TFWiki, the browser merely tries to download the file, not play it. If you choose to open the file via your browser's download dialogue, the file downloads into your temp files and plays it off the nearest compatible media player, which is a *remarkably*roundabout way of doing things. Is there any way we can fix this? (I'm using Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 6)--FFN 01:19, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm assuming that Wikia must have some embedded audio file player installed or something, which is probably doable via an extension. I have to admit I don't see it as a high priority... having the browser call up a helper file is a normal way of handling such things, plus I like being able to download and save the file.

Not only that, but we barely have any audio files to worry about... I think the Scene Transition page is the only article I've come across that has an appreciable number of audio files on it. Although now that I think about it, I wonder if creating WAVs of characters' main quotes where possible might be an interesting idea, to give samples of what characters sound like. --Jeysie 03:09, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

Downloading - well, there's the minor issue that the majority of our users will be unable to play .ogg files anyway, for even if codecs are easily had, it's a fairly obscure format. Hell, I never even heard of it until 2005. --FFN 03:27, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

WinAmp plays OGGs just fine out-of-the-box, among a number of other media players out there, so I don't see an issue. --Jeysie 03:35, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

In case we want to install an extension to handle this: [1] --abates 04:50, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

Editing Go Boxes?

I've utterly failed at finding a guide to editing a Go Box address, so I figured I'd just note that the Go Box for "Tankor (ROTF)" instead links to a blank "Revenge of the Fallen Tankor" page for some reason. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MCRG Again (talk • contribs).

Fixed. Someone put the destination page down as "Revenge of the Fallen Tankor" in Template:Goicons, thus causing the GoBox to send you to a non-existent page. ---Blackout- 02:51, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

When was the last Database backup?

Just curious. -Derik 12:10, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

That is exactly why we need that "Database last backed-up by: (insert-person-here) on: (insert-date-here)." thing someone suggested a long time ago. That way, we may avoid Bookworm Crash 2.0. ---Blackout- 12:15, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Of course, one of the major causes of The Bookworm Event was that corrupt or otherwise failed backups were being registered as successful. That backups are regularly checked is just as important as backups being made in the first place, and "(insert-person-here) on: (insert-date-here)" wouldn't prove that. - SanityOrMadness 12:31, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

At least we know if there is a backup to check at all. ---Blackout- 13:02, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

By us, manually? I dunno. We pay for automatic backups every week as part of our hosting. --ItsWalky 12:22, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Ah, that last one is slightly more reassuring.

I mean-- they're the same automatic backups Bookworm was theoretically making, but IIRC the current host was picked (in part) for having a good reputation for such things. -Derik 14:32, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

McFly confirmed a while back that the auto backups were working, so hopefully they still are. Good news for when we eventually upgrade the software! --abates 15:57, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Self-sufficiency

It's come up that the hosting costs for this site exceed the revenue generated by this site. That's a bad situation, not sustainable in the long run. Because I don't want to see the site go away, addressing it should be a big concern. Is there anything we can do to generate extra revenue? I see a few potential avenues:

a: more advertising or better advertising.

b: licensing out some of our content. This is tricky, since it's partially not owned by us. But what about something like an iPhone app that pulls in our This Day in Transformers History? That should be ok if we don't use the name Transformers - it'd be a kind of news service.

c: some kind of virtual gifts or badges perhaps? I'm thinking like the gigantion award for contributions, but where users have the option of paying a dollar to send another editor a token of some sort. Cons are that it would require some sort of transaction engine and coding.

Any other ideas?--Jimsorenson 16:53, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Another idea - best one yet, maybe. Add in amazon links to all products, and set up an affiliate account. --Jimsorenson 17:47, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

The hosting costs for this site SOMETIMES don't exceed the revenue generated. And the difference is usually by $5-10 if so. We're not in a crisis by any stretch. But I do have some ideas. I'm thinking of putting a minimum bid on the top ad. I've been told that having a minimum bid reduces the amount of bidders, but in my experience with Shortpacked!, the opposite is true. I lost a lot of money by removing the minimum bid for a few months, and stuff shot right back up to normal when I reinstated it. The only problem I see with that is that our top ad IS kind of unstandard-sized, so that means we're aiming it at a smaller pool of advertisers than most. But I'm gonna try this thing. The top ad's only bringing in $1.60/day at this very moment anyhow, and so that's not a huge investment to lose either way. --ItsWalky 17:59, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

The unfortunate underside to this is that you have to cancel all of the spot's current bids to change the minimum bid. It'll take a day or two for ads to show up again as folks return to it. But I'll throw up an ad on there myself to bridge the time.--ItsWalky 18:03, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

And just like that we're in the black. --ItsWalky 18:05, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Segue-touring out of crassly commercial concerns into site-content concerns that overlap crassly commercial ones...

Our "year" pages are a mess. No one works on them, and they're just kinda... there and useless.

For months I've been toying with a suggestion that we re-format them (dumping what we have, which isn't much in most cases) and re-do them as a cross between the old "annual assortment" pack-in brochures and the old TSarchive wave listings. (Which I always found useful for gettign a picture of what came out when.)

For the old pages it'd basically be a wave listing, but for the current year, you'd have a functional "What's out/what's upcoming" list, which could be updated with dates a wave was first sites, when a product was available online... Including Amazon-icon links after character names is a plus, because it give users the ability to see the gallery, read reviews, etc.

I just think it could be really useful, I often feel swamped by the sheer volume of TF merchandise being offered, and I'd love to have a large central page that keeps track of it all. That such a page might serve as a revenue stream is pure gravy on top. -Derik 18:16, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm willing to use my existing Amazon seller's account for this.--Jimsorenson 18:21, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

We could implement this idea without totally scrapping the year pages couldn't we? Split out the toy pages for more recent years so you don't have to browse way down the page to get to the Amazon links and such, while still keeping our other info. As for nothing being done with them, I've been looking for a new Wiki project to work on. I'll start tackling these, once we have a consensus on what to do with them.--Tigerpaw28 23:26, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

See, the difference between being in the red and in the black is like 50 cents a day. I don't think we need to try that hard. I don't think the Wiki needs to be a For-Profit business. What would we even do with the money? Advertise more? --ItsWalky 18:24, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Depends on how much money we get. I mean, dovetailing with the BG wiki idea... --M Sipher 18:53, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

The whole financial "crisis" came out of the notion that we might not be able to afford a GoBots Wiki. Thus bringing to light the sudden reality that we might not be able to exceed Super Jawsome levels and reach Mega Jawsome status because of cash strappitude. If maintaining the TF Wiki as-is isn't a financial bother, if the GB Wiki (should it ever happen) does turn out to create an issue, I'm still willing to donate and I'm sure a handful of chums around here are also up to the task. --DrSpengler 19:06, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah... I don't think that people are realizing that running another wiki on the same server, on a subdomain is literally free. I mean-- it will have to share bandwidth with TFWiki... but that's no different than if we documented the material within this site! They're just logistically separate. -Derik 06:25, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Analytics for October 2008 - October 2009

What are you squinting at this for? click on it to get the full-size version!

Discussing site promotion prompted me to take a look at our analytics again.

• Traffic dipped 20% in mid-September, finally shedding most of our movie bump... but stayed above where we were in May when the bump began. (Translation: We gained.) The economy's pinch on people's free time, plus the relative lull in TF news is probably a factor here.
• In the last 3 weeks, we've had a surge in search-engine traffic-- vast numbers of which (much moreso than normal) are leaving right after getting here, meaning we don't have the information they're looking for.
• This spike is almost certainly related to people searching for information about the ROTF DVD release. Not information on the film itself... because traffic on our film page has seen no corresponding spike.

I suggest we create a "ROTF DVD field guide" page, listing all the different versions, what features come with what, pictures of the box (if possible) where they're available, etc. (We're talking about ~2,500 people every day that come here looking for this, then immediately leave because we don't have it.) The traffic spike around the DVD promotion seems to be mirroring the one around the film (though to a much smaller degree) which means it's about halfway through. But-- these bumps have a "long tail," especially going into the holiday shopping season. We can expect a page like this to yield significant traffic dividends over the next 80-odd days.

So.... yeah. Revenge of the Fallen DVD field guide. Big blinking neon sign in the analytics. We should make this. -Derik 08:10, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

I heartily concur, my good man. --FFN 08:19, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Well don't look at me! I have no idea how many versions exist! Here, whoever wants to block it in can use this image. -Derik 08:51, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

You can put it back now, mostly, Derik. I put in the main details. It needs some pictures that I don't have, but it's ready enough to release, I think. Hooper_X 15:05, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

(Universe) identifier

See also: Talk:Transformers: Universe (2003 franchise)

We are currently using (Universe) as identifier for both characters from the 2003 line and the 2008 line. This does not look like a fine situation to me. Proposing change to (Universe 2003) and (Universe 2008), or perhaps something shorter. I'm not sure if and how this should effect such identifiers as (Universe Micromaster). Geewunling 02:54, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

I think "Name (Universe 2003/2008)" would be a nice idea. As for some characters who have two counterparts within a franchise... it surely need some discussion. --TX55^TALK 04:34, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

We already have a few with the year in the name, e.g. Treadshot (Universe 2008), which is disambiguated with Treadshot (Universe). I don't know if that's strictly a good precedent... --abates 04:42, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

That's a terrible precedent. If both toys are trying to occupy the namespace "Treadshot (Universe)" both get disambig'd, and neither gets the no-year slot. -Derik 17:13, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Well, what's the alternative? List the "series" and have (Universe Classic)/(Universe G1)/(Universe Cybertron)/etc? - Mammalian Verisimilitude 06:05, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Probably best (and simplest) to change any Universe tags to include the year. While not strictly needed if there is only one character of that name in any Universe line, it would save time if another character of that name appears in a Universe line later (Short aside to anyone who says the Universe line is over: Hasbro has stated that the concept is a good one, they may bring it back as Universe (2015) and store exclusives [such as Powerglide, Hardhead, and Skyfall] may be released under the universe banner even if no new Universe product is shipping). As for Universe Micromaster, this could probably stay as is but I'm not averse to changing it to something else. Khajidha 08:28, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Our existing policy had been "The line is called Universe, therefore that is the disambig." That Hasbro was obnoxious enough to gift us with a second Universe line, with oodles of name-reuse... hh.

Let us be clear on what we are discussing-- a proposal to change the disambigs of both the 2003 and 2008 lines, such that we will, in the future, treat them as is there was always an invisible qualifying subtitle (at least as far as the disambig is concerned) much like how "Star Trek" slowly drifted into being called "Star Trek: The Original Series" even in official products simply for clarity/sanity-- picking up an after-the-fact subtitle 25 years late.

I would generally oppose that kind of thing... because it errs to far on the side of "disambigs should provide information" (which inevitably leads to obnoxious "Deckchair edits"-- it's simply not the purpose of disambigs.) But both the 2003 and 2008 lines are sweeping toylines with a hodgepodge of mostly-absent fiction and a cast of characters creeping into the triple digits with a lot of name overlap. For our sanity, this might be a good move.

Phrasing this as an implicit subtitle of the franchise is important, IMO. Because it means we're not turning disambigs into information-delivery systems (e.g. "Prowl (Universe 2003)" even though he came out in 2004) but merely recognizing the need to more clearly seperate these two unrelated franchises.

So, um... tentatively in favor? Provided the actual move doesn't happen until November. -Derik 17:11, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Surely there's a set of explicit subtitles for the 08-09 line in the form of the classic/G1/etc series? - Mammalian Verisimilitude 22:16, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

So like how everything done before 1992 is retroactively "Generation 1"? Aheh. Seriously, though, I currently have no problem with (Universe 2003)/(Universe 2008) as opposed to a sloppier (Universe Cybertron) or (Universe Generation 1) or (Universe Classics). We've already done this for Ransack and Treadshot, and given that catch-as-catch-can store exclusives (not to mention the discount-market repackages) came out in 2003-style Universe packaging well until 2008, it's not insane to think that we won't get a continued trickle of 2008 Universe toys for a while. That being said, the biggest difference between 2003 Universe and 2008 Universe, to me, is that 2003 Universe has a specific attached fiction, with Unicron and the interdimensional battle and all that - it's right there on the package, whereas 2008 Universe is literally a catch-all line where it can be explicitly said "This is the same team of Aerialbots you remember from G1, just in new bodies" whereas with the 2003 line, you have a bunch of dudes whose origins are virtually unknown. When you look at it like that, it seems like "2003" vs "2008" is a reasonable breakdown, as if we get, say, another green construction vehicle named "Scavenger" in Universe 2008 packaging, it'll likely be marked "Generation 1 Series", meaning that we don't have to disambiguate between this theoretical new Scavenger and the Mini-Con wolf. Hooper_X 09:26, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

I agree with Hoop. Using (Universe Cybertron) and such would be terrible. --M Sipher 19:28, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes, because that would be the opposite of a franchise-identifier, that would be a continuity-identifier. Thus my long-winded schpiel above about re-naming the franchise identifiers. -Derik 01:59, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

You'll find, Derik, that I was pretty much agreeing with you re: "Universe (2003)" and "Universe (2008)," especially given that it appears, based on a thing from the DVD press junket, that we may be adding "Universe (2010)" to the mix. I'm assuming we're considering each one a new "Universe" series every time... there's a stop in product? There's a packaging change? What's the delineator? Like I said above, the 2003 packaging stayed in use until very very recently... Hooper_X 08:32, 2 November 2009 (EST)

I've kind of gathered that the delineator was the change in logo/packaging. But if Hasbro is going to trot out a new version of Universe every few years, perhaps that should be reexamined. Khajidha 11:41, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Just noticed this: when talking about anything called "Universe", we put the year in front in the disambig (like "Universe (2008 toyline)"). But the current Universe characters are dismabig'd with the year at the end (like "Treadshot (Universe 2008)"). Should this be made the same or is the difference between them good enough to keep things this way? Geewunling 05:46, 15 November 2009 (EST)

Nobody says "2008 Universe or "toyline 2008". —Interrobang 06:50, 15 November 2009 (EST)

And I see no reason to make disambigs longer than necessary, nor anybody agreeing with the point enough to move pages like Transformers: Universe (cartoon), which nobody talked about at all. —Interrobang 06:59, 15 November 2009 (EST)

I'm quite under the impression that the above conversation is about the year as invisible, retroactive name element to both and all possible future "Universe" franchises. Hence, even if there is only one "Universe" character/element, it will still get the franchise's year in its identifier as part of franchise's name. And no, nobody spoke about the cartoon, but is that such a different thing from character pages when only talking about its part in either of the Universe lines? Geewunling 07:38, 15 November 2009 (EST)

I'm so not going to let this discussion die off like this. Geewunling 01:49, 4 December 2009 (EST)

So, should we add years to any Universe tag or only if there are 2003 and 2008 figures? Khajidha 01:02, 6 December 2009 (EST)

No, because it's ugly and unnecessary. —Interrobang 01:28, 6 December 2009 (EST)

GoBots faction symbols?

Ages ago, I remember reading a toy review (probably by Zobovor) that mentioned the Guardian_(GoBots)s and Renegades had faction-symbols. Specifically, IIRC "tiny stickers with bad glue that liked to slide around and fall off."

I don't think they've appeared in TF Fiction... but how would I know? (Maybe an artist modeled one of Cy-Kill's cameos on a toy with stickers intact?) Can anyone tell me what they looked like? Are these them? -Derik 02:07, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

Hrm, this is the review I remember with "friendly" and "enemy" stickers of dubious relevance... I wonder where the slidy-stickers memory came from? -Derik 02:16, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

Not sure if this helps, but TFU's entry on Tonka GoBot Rumble has a 'Guardian' sticker on it, and ToyArchive's review of the Gobot Blast has a Renegades sticker on it. Not sure if these are the slidy stickers you refer to, but they do resemble some kind of formalized faction logos to my inexperienced eye -- G1MarvelBlaster 02:39, 31 October 2009 (EDT)

I remember them being triangular, so those are likely them! -Derik 01:44, 1 November 2009 (EST)

FYI,. the same symbols are on the Power Suit Combiners. So yes, they're definitely faction symbols-- however infrequently-used. -Derik 01:53, 1 November 2009 (EST)

Privacy policy

Since we currently have a link in the footer of every page of the Wiki which leads to a blank page, I thought I'd have a go at bashing out something resembling a privacy policy. Thoughts? Please feel free to make changes to it.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, however I did watch all of Boston Legal. --abates 01:29, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Can we write it as if we were Captain Kirk? --FFN 09:41, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Having a privacy policy is kind of a big deal. It's a legal document that 'we' the wiki have to follow. I'd recommend against having anything other than the most general text. There's little to gain for us (How many of our users, really, won't browse or edit due to privacy? Not a lot I'd wager.) but a lot to lose if we promise more than we can deliver. --Jimsorenson 10:34, 2 November 2009 (EST)

So it should be shorter and vaguer? --abates 14:59, 2 November 2009 (EST)

10000th page

Is there anything special planned for the ten thousandth "real" page? Khajidha 22:25, 2 November 2009 (EST)

I could see a little template to commemorate it.--Rosicrucian^Talk 22:47, 2 November 2009 (EST)

I don't imagine anything CAN be specifically planned, like say making a specific character or something the 10,000th page. It'll probably wind up being something incredibly obscure and wiki-tastic, like the manufacturer of the Optimus Prime lollipop from that one BotCon. Hooper_X 22:52, 2 November 2009 (EST)

Yeah, our last milestone articles were a TFCC TransTech character and a famous actor who got a whole one line of dialogue in a bit of TF fiction. If our 10000th article isn't obscure, I'll be surprised. --Jeysie 23:07, 2 November 2009 (EST)

I have created a proposal for what I wanna stick on the 10k article. It'll be smaller when we actually do it, though.--Rosicrucian^Talk 00:26, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Our article count is currently inflated by about 75 due to the macron issue, so it'll be when the counter hits 10075 or so. :O --abates 23:55, 2 November 2009 (EST)

G1MarvelBlaster asked on here about marking previous milestones. As accurate as I can work it out:

• 1000th: Shooting Star on 17 May 2006
• 2000th: Beast (planet) on 30 September 2006
• 3000th: Altered Image! on 3 February 2007
• 4000th: Noise Effect on 25 June 2007
• 5000th: Planet-Destroying Fortress on 2 November 2007
• 6000th: Larry Leahy on 24 March 2008

And then 7000 was sometime in September 2008, followed by:

• 8000th: Ego on January 25th, 2009
• 9000th: Michael York on June 28th, 2009

--abates 05:46, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Is it weird that both the 1k and 5k milestones I mentioned are space-based objects of some kind? --G1MarvelBlaster 13:28, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Ideally, I think we could make a milestones page that links to all of these, and the milestone icons on each of them link back to it for easy navigation. Maybe put it at Transformers Wiki: Milestones. --Rosicrucian^Talk 14:01, 3 November 2009 (EST)

More importantly... what will be the last article on TFWiki? Mu-hu-hah-ha-hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahha! -hx 15:42, 3 November 2009 (EST)

"Axanite". --ItsWalky 16:13, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Mr. Willis, you do realize that by including that red-link there, you're just begging for an editor with too much time on their hands to prove you wrong, right? --G1MarvelBlaster 16:20, 3 November 2009 (EST)

I don't think you understand what Axanite is. --ItsWalky 16:23, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Gah, here I am trying to pare down the wanted pages, and then you go and do something like make a fake link. DYW *Fixed*--Bluestreak7 16:25, 3 November 2009 (EST)

At least the author put an exclamation mark at the end of the title to make it easier to disambiguate with the character. --abates 17:52, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Surely the 1st page is also a milestone, but I suppose it is just something boring like the main page or something. 10,000 is a lot of pages! - Starfield 16:17, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Not counting the main page, the first article was (unsurprisingly) The Transformers (cartoon) --abates 17:52, 3 November 2009 (EST)

Hey, I made the 2000th article! I feel so special! Not really, but still. --DrSpengler 12:37, 5 November 2009 (EST)

A couple thoughts: One, if the count is off by 75 due to the Bookworm crash, I would think that means the 9000th article was actually something else, as it happened after the crash. Two, we should make a milestone list, some little icons for each milestone, and co-opt the custom Factions icons option. --Jeysie 18:00, 3 November 2009 (EST)

I just tried a little investigation as to what it really was. Unfortunately, the new pages log was extremely uncooperative. ---Blackout- 16:07, 6 November 2009 (EST)

FWIW, the 75th article after Michael York was Ryan Church on the 9th of July. --abates 23:45, 13 November 2009 (EST)

Wanted pages?

Yesterday we had over 4150 wanted pages. Now we have ~4012. I've seen nothing in the deletions or page creations that would cause such a sudden shift in the numbers. Is there anything odd going on here or did we really knock out over 100 wanted pages in the span of a day? I'll also take this moment to point out that we still have the duplicate "special character" pages cluttered up the orphaned pages since the bookworm crash. --Bluestreak7 12:04, 5 November 2009 (EST)

Name variations were consolidated and links made more consistent. —Interrobang 12:34, 5 November 2009 (EST)

I discovered that sorting the list of wanted pages alphabetically makes it a lot easier to spot duplicates. :) McFly has said that he'll apply the fix for the macron pages when he and Scout get the time to upgrade the wiki software... --abates 14:34, 5 November 2009 (EST)

Ah, so the upgrade is still in the pipe?--Rosicrucian^Talk 14:39, 5 November 2009 (EST)

Well, I'm only assuming, admittedly, given it's a couple of months now since he mentioned it. --abates 14:50, 5 November 2009 (EST)

Skin problem in Chrome

Have any changes been made to the site skin in the last 24 hours? It's currently misbehaving for me in Chrome (no problems in Firefox and IE though). Everything in the left-hand column from the navigation menu down is being pushed down below the content area. It was working fine last night! --abates 17:06, 7 November 2009 (EST)

After further investigation, it appears that Google recently released a new version on the beta channel, which is probably behind the problem. I'll have to see if I can find somewhere to report Chrome bugs. --abates 21:08, 7 November 2009 (EST)

An Idea

Would it be possible to somehow code a searchbox thingy for this community portal? Because having to look through tons of archives to find something takes a while. I tried stealing the code from Wikipedia, but (oh the horror) it's HTML. ---Blackout- 06:59, 8 November 2009 (EST)

Go to Special Pages>Search, uncheck "(Main)", check "Transformers Wiki talk", then run your search. --Jeysie 12:29, 8 November 2009 (EST)

Thanks. ---Blackout- 13:01, 8 November 2009 (EST)

No problem. Not that a Community Portal searchbox isn't an interesting idea, but with how slow our tech admins have been in responding lately, I figured I'd mention that workaround.

If you find yourself frequently searching other namespaces, you can change what you search in by default by going here and clicking "Search". --Jeysie 13:46, 8 November 2009 (EST)

As I said, I stole some code from Wikipedia, but apparently our wiki doesn't like HTML. ---Blackout- 13:48, 8 November 2009 (EST)

I've added a Community Portal search box to the Kired Tools utilities. Bug reports welcome. -Derik 18:13, 11 November 2009 (EST)

Well, here's a bug report for ya. I just spent five minutes reloading the site so it would work after I used your Kired Tools utilities. I may have screwed something up, so I'll keep trying. ---Blackout- 11:46, 12 November 2009 (EST)

Ignore that. It was caused by me screwing up. ---Blackout- 11:50, 12 November 2009 (EST)

Unreleased toy sections

I've noticed that on some pages unreleased toys are integrated into the overall toy sections, while on others they are separate. Personally I find it more useful if they are separate, as it keeps confusion as to what's really out there to a minimum. Is there a standard position? If not, should there be a standard? Khajidha 10:46, 16 November 2009 (EST) (sorry if this is the wrong place to bring this up)

Could you provide examples? From what I can tell, usually we integrate them and add a unreleased toy template (the one with Unicron). --FFN 02:05, 18 November 2009 (EST)

On the Unicron/toys page there is a separate section for the unproduced toys. While on Arcee (G1) the unproduced Headmaster starts off her toys section (which also includes an unproduced Titanium series toy). These are the two pages that brought the question to my mind in the first place, but I'm sure there are more. Khajidha 18:22, 18 November 2009 (EST)

The unreleased toys should be listed under their intended release toyline, not segregated under "Unrelease toys." Unicron's page in that section is really old and needs to be updated to reflect this. It's funny, because it's his template. --ItsWalky 21:20, 18 November 2009 (EST)

I just updated it. Still need pics of the Japanese version of G1 Unicron. --FFN 22:56, 18 November 2009 (EST)

That's what struck me as so strange, that his section of all the pages would be different. As I said before, I find the standard set up somewhat strange but consensus seems to be against me. Anyways, thanks for the clarification. I'll try to fix any more such problems that I come across. Khajidha 00:12, 19 November 2009 (EST)

CSS not working?

I'm not able to see the blue boxes around the disambig templates, and the featured characters template doesn't have lines around the columns. Neither Firefox or Internet Explorer display it correctly. —Interrobang 19:10, 17 November 2009 (EST)

I purged cache and refreshed, and am unable to reproduce the issue.--Rosicrucian^Talk 19:14, 17 November 2009 (EST)

That's what I did when it first came up. The issue persists. (My computer has been having file system problems lately, but I doubt that's the cause here.) —Interrobang 19:22, 17 November 2009 (EST)

I think Derik broke the CSS file on his server. --abates 20:19, 17 November 2009 (EST)

Wait, I did what?

...do you actually think that, or is that just the automatic first assumption? -Derik 06:23, 21 November 2009 (EST)

It was indeed an assumption, but it was based on looking at the tfwiki_tmp_global.css and seeing it ended with a couple of code fragments. Admittedly, since no one else has complained about anything being broken, I have to fall back on the assumption that it's a problem at Interrobang's end, so my apologies for the accusation. :) --abates 16:54, 21 November 2009 (EST)

Question

Is there a feature in the software that allows you to find all pages created by a specific user? Just curious. ---Blackout- 15:17, 20 November 2009 (EST)

Nope, I don't think there's even an extension to do that. I think the only way to do it at the moment would be to download a backup (if we had a way to do so) and run a script on it to check who did the first revision of each page. --abates 16:14, 20 November 2009 (EST)

Even if we could do that, sadly any page created between June and March wouldn't would just say that Maintainence Script was the creator. --Bluestreak7 21:45, 21 November 2009 (EST)

You could try simply scanning through the User Contributions pages of the user in question, as any pages they've created are marked a "New page:" prefix in the edit summary. Though as Bluestreak says, it'll only work so far back due to the crash. --Jeysie 18:57, 22 November 2009 (EST)

That would work, though it would be a very time-consuming process, depending on the user's number of edits. ---Blackout- 07:13, 23 November 2009 (EST)

And contribution != creation. The first page creator might not be the one who does the lion's share of the work on a given page. -Derik

True, but it's the only way I can think of to do it. Out of curiosity, was there any particular reason you wanted to know about new pages? (Maybe we can help?) --Jeysie 18:08, 24 November 2009 (EST)

Just wondering. ---Blackout- 08:09, 25 November 2009 (EST)

We're Number One!

Go to google.com and do a search for transformers wiki. For me, tfwiki.net is showing up first. Awesome! Can someone else confirm? (We're still lagging on Yahoo search.) --Jimsorenson 13:31, 24 November 2009 (EST)

Has been happening occasionally for months. If it's doing it consistently now, that's awesome. As I've said many times, we've got momentum on our side.--Rosicrucian^Talk 13:33, 24 November 2009 (EST)

Hmm, I'm still consistently getting wikia as the number one hit. Might be different since I'm Canadian. -- Semysane 18:03, 24 November 2009 (EST)

It's still Wikipedia then Wikia then us for me (Google seems to treat "wiki" and "wikipedia" as synonyms, which is a bit like treating "Windows" as a synonym for "operating system", but hey...) --abates 19:16, 24 November 2009 (EST)

Over on Google.ca, at least, we're now ahead of Wikipedia for Transformers Wiki. Still have Wikia to beat, though. --Detour 19:23, 24 November 2009 (EST)

First the tf-wikia, then tfwiki.net for me (then the dutch wikipedia, then the english wikipedia, then the dutch tf-wikia... there's a dutch tf-wiki???). Geewunling 01:24, 25 November 2009 (EST)

Always Wikia first down here. TF Wiki is fifth. --FFN 02:09, 25 November 2009 (EST)

Wikia provides multilanguage versions for all its wikis. Most of the non-English TF ones aren't very busy though. The largest seems to be the Hungarian version (hu.) with 661 articles. The Danish version was vandalized in 2008 and has been sitting that way ever since! --abates 02:20, 25 November 2009 (EST)

Was it the usual FUCK DETOUR guy I wonder? Has Detour been policing all the wikis? :) Drmick 14:41, 26 November 2009 (EST)

Actually, it was Kremzeek, our other notorious vandal. ---Blackout- 14:13, 27 November 2009 (EST)

I've got Wikia then their page for ROTF then us. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 90.196.71.97 (talk • contribs) 11:20, 31 December 2009.

Suggestion for a new project: The Quote Hunt

I think it's clear that there are a number of pages that really need decent quotes. Some lack them and some have terrible ones (case in point). I'd like to put forward an idea to go over as many pages as possible and ensure that any quotes used are suitiable and if not that where possible a good one can be found. Obviously, one person could do this but I thought a consensus on which quotes worked might be better. Maybe a systematic approach. People take specific eras and work with them. Opinions? User:Eire

Advice requested

Hi people. I'm relatively new to the Transfandom and I didn't really know where to put this. This seemed as good a place as any. BTW I think this wiki probably surpasses anything else as the repository of TF knowledge. If only we could fit all this into Furmans Ultimate Guide. A few questions:

1. What's the best and most widely used forum? I currently use IDW's but not sure if it's best 2. Is deviantart a good fanart display place? (my page is [2])

Thanks. Screamer 13:46, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Those sorts of questions don't really suit this site, since this is a wiki dealing in the TF fiction, its history, the toys and so on, rather than a forum for us to have a chinwag about things that are unrelated to this wiki. Besides, the first question is also unanswerable - there is no "best" forum. The "big four" TF sites seem to be allspark.com, TFW2005.com, tformers.com and seibertron.com. I do not believe we can make a recommendation for you. As for your second question, I assume so. --FFN 15:33, 27 November 2009 (EST)

Wal-Mart Black Friday exclusives

For those who haven't seen them, the Wal-Mart exclusives this year were straight repackages of the Target-exclusive Scouts from 2007 (Storm Surge, Clocker, Air Raid and Hardtop) in Universe packaging. This wouldn't really be a thing, except that they're all explicitly stated as being from Energon or Cybertron on the card back. So do we have to create four new articles or what? -hx 09:20, 28 November 2009 (EST)

That seems pretty unusual as far as I know. Usually if they are going to re-release a figure they slip it into the current line, and we don't consider them to be actually part of that toyline, just a re-release in different packaging (example: "Cybertron collection" legends Leo Prime). I don't know what to do in the case of repackaging into a past toyline. - Starfield 09:36, 28 November 2009 (EST)

They even have Sector 7 markings on some of the figures. Is there a Sector 7 in Cybertron now? Khajidha 10:33, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Taking a second look at it, it appears they were deliberately put into Cybertron. They are in the Universe "Cybertron Series" I believe. I think they are Cybertron characters. (I never did figure out what those Sector 7 insignias were supposed to mean, even in the movie universe. They don't appear to be part of the Sector 7 faction.) - Starfield 10:42, 28 November 2009 (EST)

All that needs to be assumed for movieverse figures with Sector 7 insignia is that the vehicles scanned were issued by Sector 7.--Rosicrucian^Talk 10:45, 28 November 2009 (EST)

But how does that relate to these new Cybertron releases? Khajidha 10:47, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Probably the same as Cyber Planet Keys relate to the Movie Universe. That is to say, just pretend they aren't there. - Starfield 11:05, 28 November 2009 (EST)

Proposal

So, in the wake of the Bookworm crash, we have had to reupload hundreds of images, perhaps more. A lot of those currently have no description save "Uploading image file". Couldn't we run a bot to at least append {{bookworm|5}} tags to them? ---Blackout- 12:30, 28 November 2009 (EST)

It'd be handy if there was some way to sort them into different categories by type, so we could have a "screencaps needing descriptions", "toy images needing descriptions", etc categories. --abates 18:47, 28 November 2009 (EST)

That would be very diificult. We'd need to have people running around listing all the toy images so we could then feed the list to Deceptitraan. ---Blackout- 14:07, 30 November 2009 (EST)

Sure, but if we simply stick the bookworm tag on them, all we're doing is shifting them from Special:Uncategorizedimages to Category:Recovery-5, which I can't see much advantage in. Sorting them into categories by type may be extra work now, but it should hopefully encourage more people to take a crack at putting descriptions to them later. --abates 15:11, 30 November 2009 (EST)

The advantage is that, Uncategorized images implies to me that only a category is lacking (since there are images that at least have descriptions, just no categories), while having it in Recovery-5 tells that the entire description is missing, and thus it's higher on the "needs attention" scale. --Jeysie 17:50, 30 November 2009 (EST)

That's one way to look at it. ---Blackout- 01:42, 1 December 2009 (EST)

Reprolabels

...my God. Finally they advertise with us. I love the company, but it was downright mystifying that they hadn't hit up our Project Wonderful before now.--Rosicrucian^Talk 03:05, 6 December 2009 (EST)

I don't think they do a lot of advertising, period. I can't say I've ever seen a banner ad for them or anything like that. 99% of what I've heard from them has been either because I'm on their mailing list, from Delta himself posting on various fan forums with updates, or from the various fan forums frontpaging his updates. Word of mouth, essentially. (I also can't believe they don't offer gift certificates.) -hx 05:20, 6 December 2009 (EST)

Bot activity

Deceptitran-ish (it's the new 'bot, but it's using Deceptitran's account) is currently adding images which lost their descriptions to Category:Image import error. -Derik 13:50, 7 December 2009 (EST)

That should help clean-up what's left of the aftermath of B-C. ---Blackout- 14:02, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Bot has finished sweeping. It may have missed one or two here or there (I'm working from an outdated list,) but the vast majority of the import-error images should now be listed. -Derik 12:44, 8 December 2009 (EST)

Some thoughts on Infoboxes

I've been picking away at some ideas for a redesigned infobox. The idea isn't to change what we have so much as to standardize it, clean up the code, make it more immediately useful, etc. The biggest change in this proposal would be some top-level metadata-- "type of media," "language," "year produced."

I'd also like to suggest we add a "Format:" (?) field the data below. e.g. ( SD/HD for videos, color/b&w for comics, probably size for books. ) I was flipping through some of our UK stuff yesterday and it wasn't clear if it had ever been republished in color... because we don't have a standard scheme for addressing republishing (which I only touched on in the abstract in the PDF above.) When republishing data was included at all on pages... there was no consistent section title, language or treatment to it. -Derik 15:14, 7 December 2009 (EST)

My suggestion for a tweak is that I wonder if there's some way to create production order/reading order lists that can be called up automatically by the series, prev, and next links in the infoboxes. Most of them match up OK, but there's things like the Timelines stories where it's getting kind of snarled up.

The continuity area also gets out of wack sometimes in terms of consistency. --Jeysie 16:07, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Part of that can probably be attributed to the fact we lack an example page that give a clear guideline how to implement these things. -150.253.70.235 19:15, 7 December 2009 (EST)

Transformers (2007) BD-live content?

So apparently ppls who picked up the 2007 Transformers film in blue-ray were able to access exclusive content starting in June, including the (previously IMAX-exclusive?) intro scene for Maggie and Fig's death.

Do we / can we have this documented and screencapped? -Derik 12:13, 8 December 2009 (EST)

Four of those things--Metal in Motion, Stunts 101, Choose Your Weapon, and Voices--sound like they might be the same as the four featurettes that were available on the Circuit City website if you bought the Circuit City version of the DVD.

If so, I actually have them on my YouTube account, as I uploaded them after Circuit City went bye-bye to ensure they were still archived somehow.

...which, er, doesn't help with your specific request, but I thought I'd mention it anyway in case someone else found it useful. *ahem*--Jeysie 12:56, 8 December 2009 (EST)

I agree the concent listed seems liek a lot of shovelware. (The walmart ROTF "transforming megatron case" videos are in there too) unfortunately these two deleted scenes are actually important. :( -Derik 13:04, 8 December 2009 (EST)

I will attempt to get a hold of this content once I can use my friend's PS3 as a player if no one else has done it by then. Could be tomorrow if I'm lucky. --Tigerpaw28 22:10, 8 December 2009 (EST)

Video game plot box?

Not sure how to actually title that, but what I was thinking was there are quite a few TF games where you play the same story potentially as multiple characters (the console versions of ROTF, the Armada game, the BW games, etc.) so theoretically most of those games' plot could happen to any of the playable characters. In that case, on each character's page, you put a rough summary of the plot and above it, a box like "This character was one of several playable options in a video game - the events described below form a very specific micro-continuity" or words to that effect. -hx 16:30, 8 December 2009 (EST)

Blocking Spam Accounts

First, apologies if this is in the incorrect place, but I am trying this on Walky's advice. I'm running a different wiki at The Mega Man Network called The Mega Man Universe, and we've been constantly plagued by tons and tons of spambots signing up and creating spam entries in the Wiki, trying to pawn medications and such. This has forced us to shut down registration, which has slowed production considerably. We have attempted to install anti-spammer software, but to no avail; Walky said that you all seemed to have something well in place, and so I've come for any help or advice on the subject that can be given. If this matter is bettered discussed in another avenue or by e-mail with one of you, please let me know where to go and I can proceed there. LBD "Nytetrayn" 20:43, 8 December 2009 (EST)

You'd be best off starting off by setting up CAPTCHAs on account creation. ---Blackout- 01:48, 9 December 2009 (EST)

Thanks, I don't know why it didn't work before, but this time seems to have done the trick.

--LBD "Nytetrayn" 18:29, 1 January 2010 (EST)

10,000 pages and numbering

So, we should probably make the main page say that this is an editable resource of 10,005 pages, rather than 10005 pages.--Jimsorenson 16:20, 16 December 2009 (EST)

*makes it so*--Jeysie 16:27, 16 December 2009 (EST)

Thanks for the quick response.--Jimsorenson 16:34, 16 December 2009 (EST)

You're welcome! :) --Jeysie 16:37, 16 December 2009 (EST)

What about users from those parts of the world that use periods for digit grouping instead of commas? Khajidha 16:30, 16 December 2009 (EST)

You'll have to take that one up with Mediawiki, unfortunately... the comma is the only option for place separation that I can see off-hand on the list of "magic words". --Jeysie 16:37, 16 December 2009 (EST)

Ah, wait, I see. "The input with decimal and decimal group separators, and localized digit script, according to the wiki's default locale." --Jeysie 16:42, 16 December 2009 (EST)

If possible wouldn't a space be the best option?81.108.237.26 03:48, 24 December 2009 (EST)

Foreign name format (3)

Old discussion 2

I've found a, um, problem? with the character foreign name. By far, it seems we have an old format and a new format — both seems contain respective problem, especially if the character have a bunch of name.

• Example
  • The old one is simpler in reading (in some way) but is vertically too crowd, sometimes it would just like building a tower.
  • The new one is simpler in format and suitable for a character with not-so-many-foreign-names. However, if it comes to a character with bunches of foreign name, it will became horizontally too crowd, especially for a character who has a tall picture (like Sixshot, but thank God that he doesn't have too many names.)

So, are we going to use the new/old format depending on pages or unification? For me, if I had to choose only one, I would choose "depending on pages". Or any better idea/solution is welcome. --TX55^TALK 07:10, 17 December 2009 (EST)

Redeco names for the same character.

It seems to me we could be doing more to highlight the different redeco names of characters. (Freeway Jazz, Buster Optimus Prime). People might be looking for them and there are no shortcuts to finding them. Suggestions: 1) give them a section heading to make them show up in the page's TOC. Also give their original name a section heading, so there would be a "Autobot Jazz" section and a "Freeway Jazz" section. 2) Make "Freeway Jazz" (etc.) redirects. Isn't it possible someone would try typing that in? - Starfield 13:01, 17 December 2009 (EST)

I sandbox-ed what Jazz would look like. See how the different versions are in the TOC? I think it works that way, but it does break up the size classes. - Starfield 21:48, 17 December 2009 (EST)

I don't like how it mixes the size classes together. Also, if you just put "Freeway Jazz" (including the quotation marks) in the search box it gives a list of pages that have that term on them; so I'm not sure if it is really needed. Khajidha 21:53, 17 December 2009 (EST)PS Maybe the redirects are the best way to go.Khajidha 21:55, 17 December 2009 (EST)

It would get crazy fast with someone like movie Bumblebee. I really like the clickable list of the different names in the TOC though. Too bad it is impractical. - Starfield 22:09, 17 December 2009 (EST)

This is not really something we should be caring about. —Interrobang 12:35, 18 December 2009 (EST)

Call me weird then for finding the redeco names interesting. Each one represents a version of the character with his own slightly different bio card. Seeing them in a list is kind of neat. Here is movie Bumblebee:

Images with no descriptions or copyright (mainly Marvel stuff) since the Crash

When we crashed in March, we lost the descriptions/copyright info for images we uploaded since July 2008, if I recall correctly. While we've cleaned up a significant portion of them since, most of the Marvel G1 US/UK images have been neglected since March. Might I suggest the people who uploaded those images or the ones who have the know where the images come from/what is going on fix these pics? For example Death's Head pics are unfixable by somebody such as myself (who has never read the Marvel stuff), because I don't know the context of what is happening in the panels, or the exact issue the panel is from. --FFN 02:37, 23 December 2009 (EST)

Server Slowdown

Still getting some periodic lag during access, though I'm not accessing regularly enough to discern a pattern yet. It's been transient enough most times that I wouldn't even mention it, but it lasted at least 10 minutes or so today, as opposed to the usual 5 or so. The error message I got was as follows:

ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://tfwiki.net/w2/index.php?

The following error was encountered:

* Read Error

The system returned:

(104) Connection reset by peer

An error condition occurred while reading data from the network. Please retry your request.

Your cache administrator is webmaster.
Generated Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:26:56 GMT by 174-143-26-81.slicehost.net (squid/2.7.STABLE3)

I'm guessing the lag isn't news in and of itself, but I couldn't find recent mention on this page, so I figured it couldn't hurt to bring it up.--Apcog 22:46, 27 December 2009 (EST)

The strange thing is that traffic isn't any higher than usual. In fact it's actually down, I presume because people are on holiday. So what's causing this latest spate of slowdowns is a mystery! --abates 23:30, 27 December 2009 (EST)

Maybe it's because of the direct image linking I was complaining about above? --FFN 02:39, 28 December 2009 (EST)

If it is due to direct image linking, someone should really o something about it. I checked archive 43 and it seems like the issue hasn't been fixed yet.Item42 11:30, 13 February 2010 (EST)

Okay, this is getting a bit frustrating]. Especially for someone who hasn't got a very good internet connection. I guess this means that I won't be able to contribute much for a while. Item42 12:54, 15 February 2010 (EST)

A question to all!!

Hi, I want to ask anybody! Today is a new kind of Russian youth folklore - the jokes about the Transformers. What do you think about to add such a page to the Transformers Wiki? I know a lot of these funny stories, and I'm ready to translate them to English…--Waz-z-z-zpinator59 03:15, 28 December 2009 (EST)

Since they aren't officially released material, they aren't really the sort of thing we cover. that being said, I know I think it sounds interesting - post them to your User Talk page, maybe? or create a break-off from your user talk and host them there? -hx 08:33, 28 December 2009 (EST)

Password Failure

Just tried to log in several times and the wiki wouldn't accept my password. My cookies are working, the caps lock is off, I'm typing the password correctly, and nothing in the computer's settings has changed since I logged in yesterday/earlier this morning. Do I just need to be patient until whatever it is passes? Or does this actually require some higher-level attention?--99.58.112.223 09:54, 29 December 2009 (EST) (Apcog, unable to log in.)

Addendum: The former, apparently. The problem's solved for now, but I don't regret mentioning it. It may be indicative of server problems that can be solved if they're pinpointed enough. Unfortunately, I can't offer any more info than I already have.--Apcog 11:17, 29 December 2009 (EST)

Default first strategy: Try Chrome. It's immune to (most) browser errors, so if the problem occurs under Chrome, then you can be fairly confident it's server-side instead of browser-side. -Derik 13:21, 29 December 2009 (EST)

It begins again...I can't log in right now. Maybe I should switch to Chrome...though this computer's already got a couple of browsers on it. (I tried Firefox and Safari, FWIW).--99.33.41.23 12:24, 18 March 2010 (EDT) (Apcog, again unable to log in.)

Aaaaand it's fixed somehow. For several minutes there, I wasn't even able to get the initial login screen, the one that assumes you have an account. Instead, clicking on the "log in" link called up the screen for making a new account, with the two Captcha security words and all. Sure enough, right after I posted the problem, I was able to get the proper log in screen. Feh...--Apcog 12:28, 18 March 2010 (EDT)

2010 for 2010?

Is it too late, and/or too cloying, to nominate Transformers 2010 for January's featured article? --Thylacine 2000 10:02, 31 December 2009 (EST)