LGPedia: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.
Contents
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)
- 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)
- 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)
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';
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)
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)
- 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)
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)
- Please save at least one with black bands for the Notable Details page, thanks. :) --Zoey 20:37, 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 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'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)
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)
