LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony

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Your friendly LGPedia admins, Brucker, OwenIsCool, and JayHenry enjoy an unseasonably warm March afternoon on Lucy's Balcony. Not pictured: Jonpro.

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.

Bottom indexes

We all like bottom indexes, right? At template talk:Bree's religion we have a prototype sitting around for the religion pages. My only concern with the Bree's religion index is that I don't understand what "related videos" means. Do we want to implement a bottom index for other types of pages as well? --JayHenry 23:01, 26 February 2007 (CST)

I ♥ bottom indexes. Last time I tampered with the one for Bree's religion, I took out the "Related videos" thing altogether. I think we should leave it that way unless someone proposes a good way of determining what a "Related video" is and how that would be useful. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)
In addition to a "thumbs up" on the bottom indexes, I'd like to say that while I think naming related videos is a good idea, it probably should be done in the body of the page. Rather than vaguely saying "Video X had some info on subject Y," which is what the "related video" concept meant to me, the article should outright say, "In video X, Bree said that her parents were always talking about subject Y." --Brucker 10:00, 27 February 2007 (CST)
Agreed. If it's related, then the article should mention it. I can see how we could use it with location pages -- you wouldn't call it related, but you would say the location appears in: Motel Pool, Breakfast In Bed, etc. Let's go ahead and implement the religion bottom index. --JayHenry 11:19, 27 February 2007 (CST)
hehe, thanks for adding the semicolon to my ♥ and nice work putting the template back on the religion-related pages. OwenIsCool 15:10, 27 February 2007 (CST)

In thinking about a bottom index for locations I tried to create a list of all the locations. Does anyone have input on the two proposed lists? --JayHenry 11:37, 2 March 2007 (CST)

Puzzles

I'd like to always include puzzles in the "Recent Developments" column. Good idea? It could be a way to increase visibility like OIC was talking about at Talk:Miss Me? puzzle. --JayHenry 23:11, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Good idea! I second. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)

i third, i know im not a admin, but i contrbute as much as i can. --TJ Marsh 01:22, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I like the idea, but just a thought: If a new puzzle comes up within the context of the latest video, the puzzle should be listed below the latest video just so the video is at the top of the list. For instance, the latest puzzle is fine, but it we had listed the "semiotics" puzzle, it should have been below Jonas Sucks. Just my opinion. --Brucker 10:03, 27 February 2007 (CST)
OIC also suggested somewhere that we could use Template:Init with puzzles and possibly all events. I'm wondering though -- puzzles don't lend themselves well to dates; they're not really events. Should we create a separate main page template for puzzles?--JayHenry 00:16, 28 February 2007 (CST)
We'd probably be ok just using the date that the puzzle was "posted" (via video, message, wherever it started). And even though the template is called "event", it looked fine when it was used for the puzzle. Maybe we could just add the Init and perhaps link to the forum thread, and keep them optional? If that's complicating things too much, we could just make a separate template. It shouldn't be too difficult since they're similar. I just care about adding Init, and perhaps the forum thread; it doesn't matter so much to me how we get there. OwenIsCool 19:51, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Vloggers

I've been cleaning up wanted pages and noticed a lot of them are the bloggers Bree mentioned on her early videos. Since they were influences on Bree and also used to gain popularity, I think they should have some sort of joint article. I'd like to start it, but not sure if the already existing "Vlog" or perhaps a new "Vlogging influences of lonelygirl15" or some similar name would be a better place for it?

Phunck! 17:00, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Taken care of, more or less. I should have done that a long time ago. --Brucker 17:51, 28 February 2007 (CST)
Well, first, I think it's a good idea for an article, Phuncknasty. I could help out. Thewinekone and paytotheorderofofof2 had real articles attached, btw. But, more importantly, I think we need to figure out what we're doing with tags. A lot of the wanted pages are tags. We don't really seem to have a clear policy on where tags should direct or even what videos should have tags. Phuncknasty redirected Lonesome and October to LonesomeOctober but since they were tags on a Tachyon video, OIC suggested this might not be a good redirect. But since we don't really have a clear policy, it's causing some confusion and lots of broken pages.--JayHenry 17:59, 28 February 2007 (CST)
I agree that the tags are sometimes confusing. Maybe we should ask Jonpro because it looks to me like he's the tag master. He has "the vision." I think I'll start work on a vloggers article at Vlogging influences of lonelygirl15, and if you guys want to move it, that's totally fine with me. And I also had another good (I think!) idea... how about a page on Jonas's movie references. I saw the four-letter words page and I thought it'd be cool to have a similar list with short entries of all the times Jonas mentions a movie. Who knows, maybe it adds up to something or maybe it will just be a fun list. But for now, I'm going to start doing research for a vlogging article.
Phunck! 10:05, 1 March 2007 (CST)
Thanks, Phuncknasty. I think the current policy for official LG15 videos is to put them in Category:YouTube tags and redirect them there if it does not have a page or there is no more logical place to redirect. I was thinking that perhaps instead of this each YouTube tag page could contain a list of which videos have that tag. Doing this manually would be a pain, though, and it would have to be updated for each new video. If there was a way to do it with a template or something that would be ideal. If not, I think the current set-up is fine as well.
For other (non-canon) videos, I see no reason for a category containing their tags, but I see the problem with the broken links. I think the obvious way to fix this is to only have a tag link if a page of that name already exists. The video What's in the Box/Bree & Daniel Update - NBR 3 is a good example, as it links to pages like Bree and danielbeast since they already exist, but not "charlie" and "horus" since they don't. If a useful redirect of page could be made of either one of those, then the tag would be changed to link there.
As far as where to redirect them, I think using disambiguation techniques is the best idea. If a word is clearly ambiguous, make a disambig page for it. Otherwise, simply add a disambig line at the top of the page to link to what the user might be looking for. If a template or something could be made to list the videos that contain a certain tag, then users "searching by tag" so to speak could look at that and find the video they're looking for. Sorry about the long post. Hope this helps.--Jonpro 10:27, 1 March 2007 (CST)

As I hinted at above, I don't think the tags on unofficial videos deserve links in general. If there is a page that's pertinent to the tag, then sure, link there. Sometimes, it might not be a link to what the tags says; for instance, the "house" tag on Where Is Jonas? - NBR 6 should probably be linked to Jonas's house if linked at all, instead of to house, where it currently links. On the other hand, the "squrrel" link probably ought to be dropped. That's my view on the matter of fan video tag linking. -BRUCKER EyeBlueSmall.jpg (Home/Talk/Contribs) 17:04, 1 March 2007 (CST)

I agree with Brucker on "un-linking" those fanvid tags that don't pertain to any particular article. OwenIsCool 19:53, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Recent vandalism

I've noticed that there have been a number of vandalism edits from various IP addresses that simply remove a large portion of content from a page. Here are some examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6. Anyway, I think everyone gets the idea. Does anyone know what could be the cause of this? It's not like all the vandalism is coming from one IP address so we can't just block it.--Jonpro 00:04, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, really the only way to deal with vandalism is to revert it when it happens and to block offenders. However, I do notice a similarity between all these addresses. They're all anonymous--a WhoIs lookup provides the country, but is unable to process any abuse reports. These addresses are originating from Mexico and Asia, from ISP's that don't release user information. This is just a shot in the dark, but it could all be the same person coming back through proxies. If this is the case, they should get tired of the molasses-slow internet speed that they must be putting up with, and it will all stop when they do. Then again, OIC is not psychic... this is for entertainment purposes only.  ;) OwenIsCool 01:02, 12 April 2007 (CDT)
Ok, well this latest streak was weird. Several IPs and a couple of nonsense account names each blanked one page, but not completely. I banned each for a month since they might not be connected, but I think they are. Should we go back and ban them indefinitely? I'm not sure what's up with the recent wave... might be a vandalbot. I haven't had the change to look up the IPs. OwenIsCool 08:32, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Spam wave

Yikes, any thoughts on how to stop something like that from happening again? --JayHenry 11:06, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

And here I was about to ask you that.  :-x
OwenIsCool 11:15, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
As far as I know there's not even a way to temporarily stop IP addresses from making edits. --JayHenry 11:18, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
We could look into this. I think we'd need to get TWJaniak to come back and install it because we can't get into the MediaWiki configuration settings. --JayHenry 11:29, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Hm, that might be helpful... so what that blacklist does is prevent edits containing those domains from being done? I guess BK could install it, he's the new Buka, isn't he? OwenIsCool 11:36, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Sounds like a good idea to me. I've encountered this editing Wikipedia when I tried to add a link that was apparently on the blacklist. It just gives you a message saying that the link is on the blacklist and you'll have to remove it before saving.--Jonpro 11:41, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Blacklisting links will be halpful, but I don't expect that it will completly solve the problem, my guess it that this was an attack from the fish taco guy, and he will just comeup with a new form of vandalism, I think he's more focused on vandalizing , than getting clicks. Also I checked the location of those IP Adresses using | Geobytes IP locator and they were comming from all over the world, so this guy has a major proxy network or know some other way to spoof IPs -misty 11:57, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
I think you're grossly overestimating that guy, misty. Using the web through proxies is really easy to do, he wouldn't have his own "proxy network" or anything like that. This spam was definitely from someone else's spambot, but I guess it doesn't matter who it was anyway, just whether we can find an easy way to control it. OwenIsCool 13:05, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
well if you think it was a bot, then maybe CAPTCHA verification will help, I think wikipedia uses something like that. And even though everyone disagrees, I still think logins should be required -misty 13:23, 28 April 2007 (CDT)


I moved yesterday's discussion into its own thread. I think we had even more spam this last wave. I was at the computer until very late (studying for finals) and I kept checking periodically. I reverted one spam thingie, but went to sleep soon thereafter and then it started for real! The same thing happened the night before! grrrr! Anyway, I think the blacklisting isn't going to work so well. If you look at the links posted by the spammer, the domains are harmless! There's Harvard (harvard.edu), Stanford (stanford.edu), John Hopkins (jhu.edu), U South Florida (usf.edu), Central Michigan U (cmich.edu), plus a few random domains, like forumhosting.org, jubiiblog.de, blogdiario.com, blogspot.com and more universities. Interestingly, if you click them, you do get redirected to a Samsung ringtone page like the link label said, it just gets routed through the Harvard Computing Society's website or whatever the REAL link is.
Instead of blacklisting, I think what Misty suggested (CAPTCHA) will be more effective for us. That, or find another MediaWiki add-on that lets us limit the amount of external links posted in one edit. I can handle the inconvenience of posting one at a time. In the meantime, perhaps we should limit anonymous IPs from editing. Less time wasted blocking them, more time to figure out what to do about it. At this point, spammers make more edits than other well-meaning anonymous users. I'm just suggesting it as a temporary thing while we figure out how to control this intelligently. Whether it's simple to implement, I don't know.
OwenIsCool 11:06, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Some (hopefully) helpful links. WikiMedia anti-spam features covers CAPTCHA, blacklisting, proxy blocking, and lockdown (blocking anonymous users). I think proxy blocking might be a good option. MediaWiki ConfirmEdit extension (captcha), asks you to enter verification codes when inserting external links. OwenIsCool 11:17, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
PS: I went through all the edits, Jonpro, and it looks like you got them all. *whew* another morning at the wiki...
I can't figure out how to install these. Can anyone make sense of these extensions? --JayHenry 11:55, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Hmm, Confirm Edit seems like it would be a good idea to me. By default it uses Captcha on new accounts and external links and that won't be too big of a hassle. As for installing it, the instructions don't look too difficult, but I don't know much about that sort of thing so I'm kind of lost. I'm assuming we would need one of the site administrators or something to install it. The way I see it, the sooner we get this done the better. This spammer is getting really annoying.--Jonpro 12:15, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
I'll PM Broken Kid and see if he has the access. If we add captcha and the spam blacklist that should shut the spam down... if it's a human spammer we're just going to have to hope he gets bored. --JayHenry 12:27, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Well, I've read through the mediawiki manual and I understand how to install it. It looks very simple. And there's no reason we can't go through and block almost all those sites he lists. On real wikipedia you wouldn't want to block links to Harvard.edu -- but there's no reason we need them here. We just need someone with FTP access to the site. Hopefully BK will get back to me soon and we'll be able to get it up later tonight. --JayHenry 18:50, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Mmmkay well... I still haven't heard from BK. I hate to leave things like this overnight, but I don't know what else to do... I'll e-mail Miles tomorrow if I haven't yet heard from BK. --JayHenry 23:10, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
How about that temporary (overnight) lockdown? I think all you need to do is use the User Rights permission stuff. I don't have access to that though, so I don't know how it works. Maybe it's not as easy as I think it is. OwenIsCool 23:21, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
We can't do the temporary lockdown either. It's an installation setting. The only thing I can do with regards to user rights is make people admins or bots. We could make the LGBot an admin and then have it go through and protect everything (or at least, I assume the pythonwikipediabots can do that). But, the spammer has the ability to create new pages, so it's not a very useful fix. We can't protect every possible page. --JayHenry 00:25, 30 April 2007 (CDT)
ah ok. we'll just have to hold out until someone with installation privileges comes to the rescue. we can wait, the spam is controllable, it's just annoying as heck. OwenIsCool 00:46, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Le sigh. Just when we thought the spamming was easing off... Maybe it kicks in on the weekends when less people are editing. I blocked a few spammers throughout the night, it looks like if you "nip it in the bud", it stops, waits, and then tries again like 30min. later. Otherwise it just keeps going. rawr, want lgpedia anti-spambot extensions. OwenIsCool 17:05, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Performance issues

I've noticed that the use of alot of templates or included page, can have a big effect on the loading of pages. This can really be seen on list of videos page. does anyone know something that can be be done to improve the performance. -misty 15:31, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I don't think it's templates or transclusion that's causing the problems on List of Lonelygirl15 videos. No matter how it's organized, with templates or not, the page is simply enormous -- more than 7 times bigger than the Main Page. Other than dumping the videxpand template or really reducing the number of images (or shrinking the size of the actual image files?) there's little we can do. --JayHenry 10:31, 13 April 2007 (CDT)


Fate of AphidPedia?

Now that OpAphid is no longer, official. should there still be an AphidPedia section or should it be downgraded to Catagory:OpAphid and removed from the left menu? -misty 02:32, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

We can still keep the OpAphid page, I'm sure. We have pages for other non-canon/non-official ARGs. I don't really know the structure of all the OpAphid pages, but we might want to remove the link from the left menu. I'm not really sure on that. The pages definitely need to be updated to indicate that OpAphid is no longer the official ARG if that hasn't been done yet.--Jonpro 21:43, 15 April 2007 (CDT)
Oh, I missed this conversation. I just came here to ask the same question. I don't think we should delete OpAphid from the Wiki, but we should be sure to note that it is no longer official. And I think we should take it off the sidebar, although if anyone has a good reason it should stay I would listen. --JayHenry 11:25, 17 April 2007 (CDT) 11:15, 17 April 2007 (CDT)
I wasn't suggesting getting rid of OPAphid, I was just wondering if it was still apropriate to call it AphidPedia, or if that should just be merged into the OpAphid article and not be so prominent. When it was the official ARG it made sense for it to have it's own main section, but now it's just another part of the of the extended Breniverse. -misty 10:31, 18 April 2007 (CDT)
I guess my vote would be to keep the AphidPedia -- it's still a good index for the material -- but move it off the sidebar and probably off the Main Page too. --JayHenry 14:19, 18 April 2007 (CDT)
I went ahead and removed it from the sidebar and the main page. I didn't make any mention of the scandal, because I think it's best to just move on. We really need some new stuff to add to the main page. Maybe links to pages about all these new girls?? --JayHenry 10:55, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

Excluding YouTube tags from Random pages

Is it posible to Exclude YouTube tags from the Random pages link,i noticed that half the time when i click on random pages i get a Youtube tag. I think it would be more interesting if it only took you to real articles. -misty 19:31, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Oh oh I'm with you there! If it's possible, my vote on this would be YES! --Zoey 20:23, 23 April 2007 (CDT)
Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to do this. --JayHenry 15:59, 27 April 2007 (CDT)
How about if we get rid of all the YouTube tag pages or combine them into one page -misty 16:04, 27 April 2007 (CDT)
I've been thinking about this recently and it does seem kind of silly to have a bunch of pages whose only content is the "tag" box. One possible solution is to make the "tag" pages with an associated page redirect pages, but instead of replacing {{tag|page=PAGENAME}} with #REDIRECT PAGENAME, we could incorporate the redirect in the {{tag}} template. This way, the box would still be on the pages, but you would only see it if you click on the "(Redirected from PAGENAME)" link after being redirected. That would save everyone from having to click on the associated page link, and I think it would keep Category:YouTube tags working fine. I'm not sure if it would fix the "Random Page" problem, but it might. Hopefully this makes sense. Any thoughts?--Jonpro 19:22, 28 April 2007 (CDT)
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and try this out. We'll see if it works.--Jonpro 15:07, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Well, it didn't work so I changed it back to how it was. Does anyone know if what I'm trying to do is possible?--Jonpro 16:10, 29 April 2007 (CDT)
Ok I found a couple things that can help http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_page and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces. What you need to do, is put all the youtube tags in a custom namespace -misty 20:11, 30 April 2007 (CDT)
That's way more trouble than it's worth. We'd have to redirect every tag in every video with a piped link [[Tag:Purple|purple]]. Plus adding a custom namespace isn't something that we can just snap our fingers and do. We have to get FTP access from Miles and then reinstall the wiki. Totally not worth it just so people don't have to hit the random page button twice. --JayHenry 23:03, 30 April 2007 (CDT)
Ok I think this will work without creating a new namespace. I did a little experimenting, by clicking random page dozens of times. I noticed that anything in subpage doesn't come up (e.g. List_of_Lonelygirl15_videos/redesign). So I think if we were to move all the tags to a subpage of YouTube_tags (e.g. people to YouTube_tags/people) , and modified the template to use the new location, then it would work. The bot could move all the pages, (but I think it can't leave a redirect in the old location for this to work). -misty 14:32, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
Actually, the random page button will get subpages too. Less than 1 percent of our pages are subs, so you'd expect to get one once out of every hundred random pages. --JayHenry 15:23, 1 May 2007 (CDT)
Well something needs to be done, I've gotten 15 youtube tags in a row. Why do we have Youtube tags anyway? -misty 21:40, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

At this point, I'm wondering if we should just do away with most of the YouTube tag stuff. I think that we might be able to apply our policy for fan videos to official videos. What I mean is that we could only make a tag a link if a page already exists. The way I see it, the point of a link is to find out more information about whatever you're clicking on. If I'm on the page for Quitting The Sauce and I click on sleep, it will take me to a page that is esentially useless to me. I could click on "what links here" but even that doesn't seem very useful. Also, if it's a page like Bree, it won't be easy to sort out the videos in that list anyway. We also run into problems like help which should redirect to Help:Contents but is also a tag. Then of course there's the "random page" problem that started this discussion. Anyway, enough with the problems. Here's what I'm proposing:

  1. Change most (if not all) of the tag pages with an "associated page" to redirect pages. (The bot can handle this rather easily.)
  2. Delete the tag pages that contain only {{tag}} and remove links to those pages on the video pages.
  3. Keep Category:YouTube tags (perhaps rename it), but have it include only tags that have pages, such as Bree, Drunk, etc.
  4. Keep Template:tag, but perhaps modify it to fit with the new structure.
  5. Keep all of the strange tag pages that still seem worthy of a page, and delete or redirect the rest.

With this system, if I'm on the page for Quitting The Sauce, I'll notice that sleep is "grayed out", so I won't have to waste the time clicking on it hoping to find more information. If I click on alcohol, however, I'll be taken straight to the drunk page where I can read about something alcohol related, which was the whole point I clicked on the link. As far as the amount of work involved to do all this, the hardest part would be #2, which will probably take a lot of time. I should be able to get the bot to help out somewhat, but I'm not sure how much. Anyway, what does everyone think of this idea? Is it worth it? Improvements and suggestions are also much appreciated.--Jonpro 14:27, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

I like this new approach very much, Jonpro. We started keeping a record of YouTube tags in the earlier days when it was thought that there would be special significance behind them, but over time it became clear that it was kind of a waste of time. Most things that need to be linked to will be mentioned in the notes anyway. If a certain tag is so irrelevant that it doesn't even have a related page, we shouldn't bother giving it a link. I almost want to just completely do away with tags, but that would be too extreme and I like your approach better. OwenIsCool 15:01, 3 May 2007 (CDT)
I don' think it's too extreme, but I also like the new approach -misty 19:19, 3 May 2007 (CDT)
Okay, perhaps it is just me, but I happen to really like being able to see which videos have used which tags, and etc. I do get that the tag pages are causing a lot of problems though, and I agree that it wouldn't be horrible if they were gone :P Can people other than admins delete pages? As always, I'm happy to help out in any way I can, so let me know if you need deleting help (as you said this would be the most troublesome part). --Zoey 23:22, 3 May 2007 (CDT)
Actually it wouldn't be too difficult to delete the pages, if the bot can scan the pages for the {{delete|youtube tag}} and delete the pages it's found on. Then the rest of us can just put the delete template on the tag pages without needing Admin privileges. -misty 00:55, 4 May 2007 (CDT)
Zoey, sorry but only admins can delete pages. And yes, the bot does have a "delete" script which would actually use my account to delete the pages. The simplest way it works is just by deleting all the pages in a category. And I'm thinking now that Template:tag doesn't seem very useful anyway, so maybe that can go too. The one thing the bot won't be able to do is tell the difference between a page that contains only {{tag}} on it and a page which has other content too. So, here's a sequence of steps that I think should work:
  1. Have the bot change all the pages with {{tag|page=PAGENAME}} to #REDIRECT [[PAGENAME]].
  2. Remove all instances of {{tag}} from pages that have other content as well (e.g. Bree, Daniel, Lonelygirl15). This would include strange tag pages.
  3. At this point only pages that have only {{tag}} on them will be left in Category:YouTube tags. So, I can run the "delete" script on pages in that category.
Steps 1 and 2 can really be done simultaneously, but step 3 can't be done until steps 1 and 2 are complete. Sound like a plan? I can run the script to do the redirects tonight if this sounds good.--Jonpro 15:33, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Distribution for LonelyGirl

I'm interested in talking with someone at LGPedia about additional distribution of Lonely Girl. Can someone please advise me who to contact? I can be reached at lannick@licensinganimal.com Thanks for your help.

Here at the LGPedia we're all just volunteers. We can't help you unfortunately. You need to contact "The Creators" of the series. You can send them a private message at the forum. Good luck! --JayHenry 15:17, 25 April 2007 (CDT)