LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony

A couple of LGPedia admins (Jonpro & Psmith) take a breather to admire the view from Lucy's Balcony.

Your friendly LGPedia admins, Brucker, OwenIsCool, and JayHenry enjoy an unseasonably warm April afternoon on Lucy's Balcony.

Welcome to Lucy's Balcony, a place to ask questions or discuss general issues about the LGPedia. This page is intended to be a place where admins and active editors can discuss ongoing issues, ideas and concerns. To start a new thread, click here. Please remember to sign your posts by typing ~~~~ at the end.

For old or inactive conversations, visit Lucy's archive.

Zoey, one of your LGPedia admins, frolics with the doves on Lucy's Balcony.

FYI about the spamming

I've contacted Broken Kid. It turns out that there is now a Web site guy and he's been notified. I didn't even know there was a Web site guy (hence the red link!), and he hasn't contacted me yet, to either give someone temporary FTP access or to ask what sites need blacklisted. Apparently things are a bit hectic because MM&G are/were recently in London laying the groundwork for Kate. --JayHenry 22:09, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I noticed that we have a new spambot check in place :) Now we can see if its a bot or a person spamming-misty 23:38, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, at some point someone installed the ConfirmEdit extension. Nobody ever identified themselves as this mysterious Web site guy, but it's up and running. Did we have any incidents last night? It's only sorta annoying. There should be some way to set up a "whitelist" or, a list of sites that it won't ask the question for. This should include lonelygirl15.com, revver.com, youtube.com, IMDB.com, wikipedia.com -- can anyone think of other sites that should definitely be on that list? --JayHenry 08:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Perhaps myspace.com? Other than that, I don't know of any. And how does this confirm edit thing work exactly?--Jonpro 08:53, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

The feature doesn't apply to admin or bot accounts, I believe. When adding an external link it asks you a quick math problem -- "what is 11 - 6?" for example -- and apparently the bots don't know how to parse this. Has the spammer struck since last night? If this isn't sufficient deterrent I think we'll want to disable this and try the blacklist instead. --JayHenry 09:13, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

This is the last spam edit we've had, so I don't know when this was installed, but it might be working. Then again, the spam bot seems to be pretty sporadic, so I guess we'll just have to bide our time for a little bit to see if it comes back.--Jonpro 09:28, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

It doesn't seem to have a whitest of trusted URL's, but I could modify it to have one. -misty 10:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Wait, really? I thought only Web site guy could make the modifications. How do we add the sites mentioned above to the whitelist? Can anybody think of any other sites that should definitely be whitelisted? --JayHenry 15:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, I can modify the script, but the web guy (or anyone with ftp access) will have to upload it. I just need the list of sites we want included. -misty 16:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

whitelist

Gotcha -- the whitelist feature is built into MediaWiki, so we can just give him a list of the sites and it's simple. I think we need to whitelist

• lonelygirl15.com
• lg15.com
• youtube.com
• wikipedia.org
• hymnofone.org
• myspace.com
• revver.com
• imdb.com
• bebo.com

Can we think of any others? I'll make the request early tomorrow to give people time to think of other sites. --JayHenry 16:38, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

that list looks pretty much complete. I looked at ConfirmEdit.php and it doesn't use any global whitelist from the rest of MediaWiki. Instead you need to Hard code the white list, as a Regex, assigned to the variable $wgCaptchaWhitelist. on line 145. For the list above it would be:

$wgCaptchaWhitelist = '#^https?://([a-z0-9-]+\\.)?(lonelygirl15|lg15|hymnofone|wikimedia|wikipedia|youtube|revver|myspace|imdb|bebo)\.?(com|org|net)/#i';

--Misty 18:11, May 8, 2007 (CDT)

Any word on when the whitelist will be implemented? Has the web guy seen the instructions above? -misty 17:15, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

trusted users

Is it possible to create a group for trusted users (perhaps people who have over 200 unreverted edits), and give them exemption from ConfirmEdit and the ability to edit protected pages? -misty 22:00, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Anybody with an account should be able to edit any of the protected pages. As for ConfirmEdit, I think our best bet is to get the Web site guy to add the Whitelist. --JayHenry 11:23, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

This isn't true, I was not able to edit Glenn Rubenstein, until the protection was taken off. Any word when the whitelist will be implemented? ConfirmEdit challenges are fine for occasional edits, but when you are doing a bunch of edits in a row it gets annoying. -misty 14:01, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Let me explain. There are two levels of protection; protection and sysops only. Even if we created a new class they wouldn't be able to edit sysop only pages. The only time we protect anything to sysop level is when nobody should be editing it, as was the case with Glenn Rubenstein. You already can edit any page that's under regular protection, which is what I meant. I'll send an e-mail about the whitelist this afternoon. --JayHenry 14:54, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

New admins!

In case people don't know, Zoey and Psmith were recently made admins on the LGPedia. Congratulations to both of them and a big thank you for all of their hard work.--Jonpro 13:26, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Just don't let the power go to your heads :P Just kidding. Congratulations to both of you ----misty 15:28, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Yay thanks! And oh look, I get to be Snow White!! -blinks- Are any other admins female? Whoa.. strange. --Zoey 19:43, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

I guess it doesn't say who's who in the picture of OIC, Brucker and I. But apparently two of us are female. --JayHenry 21:53, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Image naming convention (for episode-related pics)

Just to finish off the discussion we had at Image_talk:Cassie.JPG a while back... Are you happy with 9999-Description.xxx being the convention for images taken from official episodes, where:

• 9999 = episode number;
• Description = brief description of who/what is in picture and what they are doing or where they are;
• xxx = file type, usually jpg.

E.g. "0169-JonasAndAlexHugging.jpg". If the picture is modified significantly (e.g. greatly reduced, resized, lightened etc.) then the convention I use is 9999-Description-Modification.xxx, e.g. "...-Cropped.jpg", "...-Stretched.jpg", "...-Detail.jpg" etc. (so as to distinguish it from the original whilst retaining the same name). I would like to put this type of guidance on the Special:Upload page but don't know how. Any thoughts on the above? Psmith 17:26, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, that sounds good to me. And since that's what you've been using, it only makes sense to stick with it. It will make images a lot easier to find, etc. To edit the upload page text, you just have to modify MediaWiki:Uploadtext. Just in case you're wondering, you can get to this through Special Pages -> System Messages then search for what you're looking for. It's probably not a good idea to just modify anything in there, but for something like this I think it's a good idea.--Jonpro 17:43, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

OK. I made the change. Tried to keep the extra blurb down so that there is no vertical scrolling... but if you want me to prune it further let me know. Psmith 19:42, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

I turned the examples into bullet points and this may cause a little scrolling at some resolutions... revert if necessary. Psmith 22:20, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Black Bands (for episode-related pics)

While we are on the subject of consistency for images, I would like to see consistency for whether or not we use black bands on widescreen pics. I could go either way, but I lean just a little toward no black bands. -misty 13:35, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

I'd say no black bands as well. There's no reason to have just black space in an image as far as I'm concerned.--Jonpro 15:51, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

ok I removed the black bands from a lot of images. I'll do more later -misty 20:34, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Please save at least one with black bands for the Notable Details page, thanks. :) --Zoey 20:37, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Ok Human Ransom is kind of in a class by itself. I can see leaving the black bands on that one, as well as the opAphid eyes. -misty 20:40, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I believe that My Parents... Let Us Go Hiking!!! was the first video that had the black bands (because it was filmed on Daniel's camera he got for graduation), so it'd be good to keep (or create) an image with the blackbands there. --JayHenry 20:42, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

No black bands in general sounds good to me. See Letterbox format#Letterbox_in_LG15 for guidance on pixel heights/widths for exact cropping of letterbox screen-shots. Psmith 12:52, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

New page look

Hey everyone, check out Template:Header and Template:Subheader that Misty designed based on the redesign look for pages like Characters and Locations. We're thinking about extending this format to all or at least most of the pages on the wiki so they all have that look. First of all, do people think this a good idea? Secondly, Misty pointed out that when using the template the "edit section" thing doesn't work. Does anyone know a possible way around this? I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this issue.--Jonpro 22:20, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

I personally like the look, although I will say I dislike the way Table of Contents now look. They are centered, which I think looks odd, and the first header of the page is right up against it. That's the only thing I would change. Great job, Misty! --Zoey 22:31, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm just learning how to do templates, and shit like that. Basically, I just look at other examples and try and figure things out, but sometimes, I spend hours trying to figure things out, only to fuck it up and have to undo it. I really need someone who knows what they arre doing to debug Template:Header and Template:Subheader. When they are fixed then they should work on any page ( I created a Redesign test page to try and see how to make it work for video blog pages). -misty 23:14, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

I really like the new character and location pages. I think they look snazzy, and the new designs makes them real gateways into the rest of the Wiki, they are effective index pages. But that's exactly the reason I really strongly dislike using this layout on video pages. It's just over-designed. Too many lines, too many colors, and no particular reason for it. The lines in the infobox clash with the header lines -- they are different colors, different styles. Incorporating this design everywhere really mutes its impact on the indexes and main page. It's bells and whistles and no substance. Other wikis that I am aware of do not incorporate their main page theme into individual pages, and for good reason, there is an elegance in modesty. I'm glad we're thinking creatively about ways to work on the wiki, but this isn't an area to focus our energies, sorry. The video pages work well, our contributors like and understand them, they are elegant pages, but also very flexible. I vote strongly for keeping them as is. --JayHenry 09:27, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

I disagree, i think that the video pages look pretty good, but if you think that the blog template clashes, we can modify the blog template to match. We Need to hear more voices on this. Either we go ahead and make it all over, or we revert the the text oriented pages like relationships and story so far. Can we get a final vote? -misty 17:34, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm going to have to go with Jay on this one. It's just a bit much for the video pages. I do like the look, but we have to limit it. I'm still not really sure about the Relationships page and The Story So Far.... Part of me likes the new look, but another part just says to keep things simple.--Jonpro 17:56, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I think the 'misty-style' design is great for the LGPedia gateway pages but agree with keeping most pages, inc. video episodes, in a relatively simple format. I see no problem in having both designs within the wiki but on different types of pages: the 'misty-style' for our showcase pages and the simple style for general use. Psmith 13:05, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

I think simple and elegant often looks better than fancy and overdone. I think the video pages look better the way the were originally. --truncatedslinky 14:06, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

How much fan stuff?

I've been really impressed with Zoey's (and others) work creating pages for the fan fiction and other fan stuff. But I'm wondering how far we should go with it? Should we have a page for every fan blogger we can find, and and a page for every video they produce? Should we have fan clubs for for fans of fans? Should we have pages for individual item's mentioned in a fan video? Personally, I'm ok with all of it, but given that I don't know the limits of the resources, I'm wondering if it could be over taxing the server. And I don't know what the Creators would think, if the fans stuff on the site became 10 times the cannon stuff. Do we need to be concerned about any of this? -misty 02:06, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

I personally think we need to go by a series by series basis. If it gets to be overwhelming, we can get rid of some, but till then, if they have a following, and are posting related to lg, what the heck, why not? --Bxman 08:00, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Unused images

In cleaning up location pages I've orphaned a rather large number of images. The location pages had an unfortunate tendency to just include random screen-shots from videos that had absolutely nothing to do with the location. I've been cutting them out. Do we want to have an unused image assessment of some sort? Use the good ones, and just delete the lousy ones? We really don't need to keep hundreds of unused images laying around. --JayHenry 11:06, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Well I think that you should delete the unused images, that don't look like they can be useful, to add to later articles or updates. Several times I went to an image category to find an image for an article. -misty 17:40, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

Sandbox

Hey, I was just wondering where I could get my Sandbox at/create it. Chelseyrl 00:54, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

User:Chelseyrl/sandbox --Zoey 01:01, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Ah! Thanks so much, Zoey. Chelseyrl 01:03, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Anyone can create their own user sandbox, right? --Bxman 08:01, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Yep, you sure can. Just make a subpage of your userpage called "sandbox" like User:Brooklynxman/Sandbox.--Jonpro 10:20, 25 May 2007 (CDT)

Transcribing videos

This is one of those things that really isn't a problem yet, but I can see that it might become a problem soon if we don't figure it out. In the past, transcribing videos would get a little messy due to the fact that many people would try to work on it at the same time (i.e. right when a new video came out), resulting in edit conflicts and a lot of wasted work. I've noticed that Zoey and others have sometimes put a little message requesting people to not edit while they write the transcript. This has seemed to fix the problem somewhat, but I'm wondering if there's a better solution. At heart, LGPedia (like any wiki) is a community effort, and I think some people feel left out when they are not able to help in writing the transcript. I don't like the idea of refusing people who want to help, but it's also good when things run smoothly and efficiently. Can anyone think of a possible way to reconcile these two things so everyone is happy? Oh, and I'm not picking on you, Zoey, please don't take it like that. I just figured I should mention this now rather than later :).--Jonpro 22:16, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

I didn't think you were picking on me :) I know full well that I have been doing this a lot. I mean hm... I don't really know how people feel "left out". When a new video is added, the transcript goes up.. and then people edit it mercilessly/make notes, etc.. so everyone is still contributing. And I've found it MUCH more frustrating when everyone tries to transcribe at once. No one's work ends up being of any importance because everyone saves over everyone else. And things end up messy because no one really knows who's going to edit over them, etc. It just seems so much more efficient to have one person initially transcribing. That way the transcript gets up neatly and in a timely manner. THEN everyone else can feel free to get at it :D. JMO. --Zoey 22:43, 30 May 2007 (CDT)

Okay, well, seeing that no one has responded yet, perhaps you're right. It is true that everyone gets to contribute this way, and maybe no one is really bothered by it. If that's the case, then I think we should by all means continue doing what we're doing. The other way definitely isn't any better. I'm really just trying to fix problems, but maybe I get too excited sometimes and see problems when they're not there :).--Jonpro 10:04, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, I sometimes get a little sad when someone else is already transcribing, but speaking from experience, it's WAY more frustrating to constantly be saving over each other. It tends to make you feel as though you have just done a lot of work for nothing. --truncatedslinky 14:00, 31 May 2007 (CDT)

General deletion/inclusion guidelines

As a result of the discussion on Template talk:HoverTOC and also somewhat on LGPedia:Tasks#LordGreystoke422's videos, I think it's high time we figured out exactly what our deletion and inclusion policy is here. Currently our deletion policy is rather minimal and very much open to interpretation. There was a discussion about this on LGPedia talk:Deletion Policy quite a while back, and most of that is probably still applicable, but I have a feeling people will have some new ideas as well. I think the best way to handle the inclusion aspect of this would be to create a list of criteria that are necessary in order for an article to be included here. What we don't want to do is turn into Wikipedia here, but having some generals guidelines wouldn't be a bad idea. Another issue is deletion, which I suppose is very related to inclusion. I guess we could also have a list of reasons for why an article should be deleted, and maybe another list for reasons that aren't enough for an article to be deleted. Really, this is very open-ended, but I would love if people would get involved in the discussion here. To put in my two cents, I think a good first point for inclusion would be that it is related to Lonelygirl15 in some way. How closely related it would have to be is a point of discussion I guess, but that's a start at least.--Jonpro 17:39, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

Okay, for me, I think that with fan videos, you should kind of look at what the purpose of the videos is, how they tell their stories, and what kind of stories are being told. Like I think videos that seem to be "going somewhere"... like distinctive stories with distinctive arcs may be better with just large summary pages that people can read. It makes it much easier to follow those kinds of stories when things are all laid out in one place. Like, LG422... and GC and such. Those are the kinds of stories I mean. However, with things like say... aaronbeast, where they're kind of... response videos.. or videos that don't really follow a specific story but kind of adapt based on what's going on in the Breeniverse, those should get their own video pages. That's how I would view it... although I'm not entirely sure that made sense... hopefully it did. :P I'd love people's thoughts please!! --Zoey 18:31, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

I've gotta say, while I did negatively notice this before, when I was looking through the templates to catalogue them, I was once more reminded how many fan-created series have pages here.

That is not bad per se, but, without going to sound arrogant or anything...many of them are just not noteworthy.

Example - chosen randomly, not a personal attack: Linsy. We have a page on her, three video pages with transcripts, and even Category:Linsybeast's blogs. And you know what? I have no idea who the fuck that is.

Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against fanfic, fan participation, or anything. But I think we should set a certain standard of "noteworthyness" before listing people here, at least on more than one general site. Stuff like HSAO gained a lot of user traction, and Dr. Immant's videos apparently were quite well done and well-received by fans (never seen them) - but we don't have to have entire catalogues of every video every LG15 fan once did, just because they pretend to be in the Breeniverse.

Another thing is useless occupation of space; example: There is a hardcoded sidebar-template for "GuillotineCalamity", which means that sidebar is fixed for that video series and cannot be used by anyone else. What's it used for? Two pages that contain barely more than "Transcript incomplete". Check out Category:GuillotineCalamity - the five season subcategories are all empty, and GC Seasons does nothing more than link to these empty categories. Apparently, at least according to the main page on that topic, there actually were quite a lot of these videos. Where are they? Why do we need five categories and a sidebar, if all we have on that series other than the main page are two video pages with no information?

Like I said, don't get me wrong - I have nothing against fan fiction. But what we're currently doing is like accepting every little essay a grade schooler once wrote into the Great Library of Alexandria. We are flooded with pages that, quite frankly, don't interest anyone but the authors...and maybe two or three other people.

I don't know exactly how to solve this problem, maybe by requiring a certain amount of hits on a single page, before branching out is allowed or something, but I think the overall quality of this encyclopedia suffers from this. While fan fiction most definitely is an important part of LG15, this is the official encyclopedia on the official site, sometimes visited by The Creators themselves through their Admin account - I think it should focus on important and official stuff first, and then on fan faction and trivia. Right now, we have some important core pages, like List of Videos, the video pages themselves, List of Characters and the character pages, and a whole lot of crap that is fun to have, but takes focus away from the efficient administration and care for the important pages. Do we really need a page on H.P. Lovecraft? As far as I'm concerned he has had no major influence on the canon. He has enjoyed, perhaps some passing references, but that's nothing special. Hundreds of videos everyday do that. But they link to Wikipedia instead of writing their own page about him. Dava Sobel. wtf do we need that for? It's a one line note, and it's been said on the video page for Proving Longitude Wrong. There is no reason to have that page.

Okay, I think you got my point here - it's late, so I'll move on.

Deletions. Yeeees. Zoey has ignored me for the past few days, so I guess it's evident I have quite some strong feelings on this topic. Most of them I have already posted, so let me just sum things up quickly:

I have nothing against deletions as such. In fact, I myself have given good reason for the deletion of both Template:PageHeader and Template:Clr, after this whole orgy was over - see the respective talk pages. What I was, and still am, annoyed by is the notion that a template should be deleted just because it's currently unused. A template is a convenience thing. A tool. Do you throw away your hammer just because you don't use it at a given point in time, and then get it back out when you actually use it? I think not.

If a template is useless and will most likely never be used, fine - kill it. But if it's a useful little thing, why delete it, just because right now nobody is using it?

The discussion also revealed a kind of weird view of deletion around here - apparently, it means nothing. The stance here seems to be to delete something if it's currently unwanted, and to restore it if it's wanted again. And that just takes the use and meaning out of it. A deletion should be a strong statement that the page is not wanted anymore. Instead, it's being used for a crude form of giving the appearance of order - similar to a child that gets the order to clean his room, only to shovel all his toys under his bed. Sure, it looks clean, but as soon as he'll need the toys, he'll get them back out.

I am not against restoring, I said that. But it should be a tool rectify a mistake - not an action as common as opening a page.

In fact, this stance is probably connected to what I mentioned above - we have too much crap lying around here. If pages were reduced to essentials and semi-essentials, it'd be a much harder decision to delete anything, simply because it'd have a major impact on the information presented. Instead, an admin can delete half the pages here without fear to destroy anything important - 90% of all users would still find exactly what they want.

It's two o' clock in the morning, so I'll stop here. I know I didn't present any solutions, but maybe it's better to hear your reactions first anyway. Don't be shy, and don't be afraid to use whatever language you might find necessary. Just remember that we're talking about administrative issues here, not friendship or community. This is not, at least from my point of view, about whether or not somebody's feelings might get hurt if his pages are deleted (be it "my" templates, Linsy's blogs, or carefully crafted pages over totally insignifcant details), but about how to get a certain sense of order in this thing, and setting a certain standard of quality.

You cannot accept everything if you want the average to be good. The question is just if you have the balls to turn people down if it's necessary.

~ Renegade (talk | contribs) 19:09, 7 June 2007 (CDT)

*looks up* ...oops. Template:Quote, if anyone is crazy enough to reply.

BAH, Zoey, out of my line of post! [Editing conflict resolved]

"Have your say" page

I just had a read of the problems mentioned above (deletions etc.) and thought of an idea that might be of help to both this and other problems that arise from "normal users" scanning the last 50 recent changes to see what has been happening (thereby missing out when there have been lots more changes since they last logged in). I would propose having a LGPedia:Have your say page listed on the right hand column, perhaps under the "Recent changes". This page would then have links to all current discussions and votes that users may be unaware are going on at all, e.g. pic/caption votes, redesign comments, delete-tagged pages. This may help getting more people involved in decisions than at present (because they wouldn't necessarily be logging in as frequently as an admin, nor would they be visiting the various log pages that we know about). In addition, the delete period between tagging and deleting should be increased to 2 weeks (except where an admin is just rectifying a mistake).

This may not completely avoid the situation with deleted templates mentioned above, but if in addition we admins think twice in future before nominating something unused for deletion than that's probably all else we can do.

Having said that, as both Renegade and Jonpro have respectively pointed out, it is neither a big deal leaving pages that are unused alone until they become useful again, nor accepting that some pages which are deleted through lack of feedback can be restored afterwards. Let us not get heated about this either way. Psmith 15:27, 8 June 2007 (CDT)