LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony/archive

From LGPedia
< LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony
Revision as of 23:16, 7 May 2007 by Misty (Talk | contribs) (Vloggers)

Jump to: navigation, search

This is the archive of discussions from Lucy's Balcony that are no longer active or have been resolved. To revive an old issue, please start a new thread at Lucy's Balcony.

Bots

This might be way out of our league here, but has anyone thought about creating a bot for LGPedia? It could do things like add Template:Tag to all the articles in Category:YouTube tags, make renaming categories easier, and other tedious tasks. I have some programming experience, but I'm not sure what programming language would be needed to make a bot. Does anyone know or are there any thoughts on the idea?--Jonpro 23:06, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Creating a bot is way out of my league. Hell, I'm proud when my templates don't explode upon first use. Here's the wikipedia guide to bots: [1]. I can authorize a bot if somebody else can program one. --JayHenry 23:14, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Having a bot for certain tasks might be nice. I was under the impression that you could "borrow" bots from Wikipedia... as in, use their source code somehow. It's so way out of my league though that even if I were given the code for the bot, I wouldn't even know what to do with it, or how to run it. Hm... I should start making friends at Wikipedia. OwenIsCool 23:24, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Thanks for the link, Jay. I did some researching, and it appears that OwenIsCool is right. I'm going to try to get a bot set up using the 'python wikipediabot'. I'm still not sure exactly how to do it, but I'm working on it. I'll go ahead an create an account because it seems like that's one of the first steps to getting it to work. The username is User:LGBot.--Jonpro 23:55, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Sounds cool! Keep us posted. Once we've tested it, and if we're sure it's not going to malfunction, then I can authorize it as a bot. The advantage of officially making it a bot is that its edits won't automatically show up in recent changes -- that way if you edit 500 video tags it won't flood recent changes. The disadvantage, is also that its edits won't automatically show up, but we can see them by clicking on (show bots) or by checking: Special:Contributions/LGBot. --JayHenry 00:40, 14 March 2007 (CDT)
Ok, cool. Just to make sure, the language code for this wiki is 'en', right? I haven't gotten everything to work yet and want to make sure that's not the problem.--Jonpro 12:05, 14 March 2007 (CDT)
This may not look impressive, but I finally got the bot to work with this edit. I'm going to try to test it out in a few other ways to make sure everything is working correctly.--Jonpro 15:00, 14 March 2007 (CDT)
Ok, I think the bot is working fine now. I had it run through some of the video transcripts and replace ''(whatever)'' with (''whatever''). I have to verify every change before it makes the edit, so it is unlikely to "go out of control" and start making crazy or unproductive edits. Other than that, are there any suggestions for more testing that should be done before this can really be put to use?--Jonpro 16:00, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

Cast and crew template?

Would a cast and crew template be a good idea? We could have picture, name, birthday, role in series, first appearance/credit and a link to the newly organized production credits. I was thinking it should look like Template:Person, but I'm not crazy about the person template. Perhaps a snazzier "person" template and a new Template:Crew? --JayHenry 22:50, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Yep the Person template could use a little TLC, huh? How would the Crew template be different from a Person template? If it's not too different, perhaps adding a couple of fields to the "snazzed up" person template would do the trick. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)
I whipped up a potential look for a new character template. If people like, I could adapt it to real people too. The preliminary version is here at Template talk:Test. It looks best in Firefox. --JayHenry 17:30, 5 March 2007 (CST)
I put up a first draft of the crew template at Template:Crew. A test run of it is in place on the Mesh Flinders and the Jackson Davis pages. Input, as always, much appreciated. --JayHenry 12:35, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Looks goo to me!-BRUCKER EyeBlueSmall.jpg (Home/Talk/Contribs) 16:04, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Sidebar

I was thinking of changing the sidebar a bit. My proposal is to break out another "community" section:

  • lg15 links the same.
  • navigation
    • Main Page
    • List of Videos
    • AphidPedia
    • Recent Changes
    • Random page
  • Community
    • Welcome
    • Community Portal
    • Lucy's Balcony
    • Help

Any other ideas? Does that seem like a good idea? --JayHenry 17:32, 5 March 2007 (CST)

Maybe Caping lg15? other then, it would look great. --TJ Marsh 18:40, 5 March 2007 (CST)

I'm sorry, what does "Caping lg15" mean? --JayHenry 10:41, 6 March 2007 (CST)
Capitalizing, perhaps?--Jonpro 14:34, 6 March 2007 (CST)
Ah, so it says LG15 links instead? Good idea! I agree! --JayHenry 14:37, 6 March 2007 (CST)
Yeah, all of them should be capitalized, I think. Those options look good to me, Jay. -BRUCKER EyeBlueSmall.jpg (Home/Talk/Contribs) 18:04, 6 March 2007 (CST)
Well, it turns out that the small capitalization is hardwired into the MediaWiki software. It can't be fixed from MediaWiki:Sidebar. Perhaps there's another way to do it, but if so, I don't know how and I don't feel like tooling around all night at MediaWiki.org for the answer. --JayHenry 21:42, 6 March 2007 (CST)

New admin -- Jonpro

I'm pleased to announce that Jonpro has been appointed the newest administrator on the LGPedia. Jonpro has been a reliable contributor to the LGPedia since first arriving in November. He's undertaken the massive task of organizing the YouTube tags on all the LG videos, on top of hundreds of edits fixing pages, keeping our style consistent and keeping things categorized. Congrats, Jonpro. --JayHenry 13:56, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Thanks JayHenry, and I hope I can be a help to everyone. I'm new to this admin thing, but I'm sure I'll catch on :) --Jonpro 15:32, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Kongrats man! --TJ Marsh 18:36, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Template:Tag

What do others think? Would a template like this be helpful? I'm not very good with wording and such, so that might need to be improved, but what do people think of the general idea? Basically, it would be put on every YouTube tag page and |disambig would be added for pages that are also disambiguation pages.--Jonpro 20:15, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

I think it's what we should have done when we first made the tags link 5 months ago. I def like it, but won't it take forever to swap out? I feel bad asking anyone to do that. How many tags are there? 400? More? --JayHenry 20:18, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
At least that many. I wouldn't mind pitching in though, and if we can get a few more volunteers, it really won't take that long. Anyone up for some tedious work?--Jonpro 20:37, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Hmm... I just thought of one other thing, not sure if it matters. But I think these will all become "articles." That raises two issues: 1) anybody using randompage will get a tag about half the time and 2) it will say that we have over 1,000 articles. Unless anyone knows away around that. Just a thought, i don't really see it as a reason not to go ahead with it. --JayHenry 20:50, 13 March 2007 (CDT)
Yeah, good point. No solution for #1, but I don't think #2 will be a problem. I'm guessing they'll be part of the "articles that aren't really articles" (stubs, redirects, etc). Not sure, but that's my guess.--Jonpro 20:57, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

The party guests

So as of Uncle Dan and Uncle Dan (D-Bone Remix), we have like 10 new characters. Most of these now have their own articles, which consist of one or two sentences saying that they were at the party. This is bad form... perhaps we could have a page called "party guests" and list them there with short descriptions? Then we could just make their character names a redirect to the party guests page. If one of the characters turns out to have a larger role, we can move their info to a separate page. OwenIsCool 16:44, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

I actually think starting off with a picture would be a great help. I'm having trouble putting faces to the character names.--Immortal1 16:56, 16 March 2007 (CDT)
I got a few pictures up on a few of the pages. -BRUCKER EyeBlueSmall.jpg (Home/Talk/Contribs) 18:43, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

costs of a site like this

Just wondering how you guys are doing on donations and what it costs to run a site like this?

Traveling around, doing videos about basic or not so basic life situations sounds like a blast!!

Any hints of how to get started?

thanks! 12.27.187.199 19:03, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Tasks

What do people think of having a page to list tasks that need to be done on the LGPedia? For example, right now there are lots of images in Category:Images of fans and spinoffs that could be subcategorized to make them easier to find. While I could just do this myself, if I don't have the time (or don't want to spend the time), are there other people who are just looking for things to do? Sometimes I think it can be a little unclear what needs to be done on the LGPedia, so having a place that lists things might be helpful. People could add things they want done to the list (maybe these should be verified that they actually should be done) and then when the task is complete it can be removed from the list. Any thoughts?--Jonpro 21:41, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Hey look, we have a Community Portal. What do you know--I kind of forgot about that. It doesn't look like it's being used that much though, or at least it's not being updated very much. Hmmmm.--Jonpro 23:09, 12 April 2007 (CDT)
Okay, I made LGPedia:Tasks. I guess we'll just see if this works or not. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this.--Jonpro 23:37, 12 April 2007 (CDT)
I like what you did with LGPedia tasks. You're right, a lot of times there are editors at the LGPedia that aren't sure how to contribute. They either don't do much, or they create other random (though perhaps less needed) work. The Community Portal was supposed to help with that, but you're right, it's not used much. Perhaps something that should be added to tasks or community portal is pages that need to be updated frequently, such as character pages. I don't just means in terms of "last appearance" but as to the content of the article. OwenIsCool 23:40, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

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)


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)
Sounds good to me -misty 23:03, 4 May 2007 (CDT)
Okay, I'll go ahead and start changing the ones that need to be into redirects and removing {{tag}} from pages with other content.--Jonpro 13:31, 5 May 2007 (CDT)
The redirects have been created and content pages have had {{tag}} removed. Next, if everything thinks it's a good idea, I'll change everything so it uses {{tags}} then delete all the other tag pages.--Jonpro 15:56, 5 May 2007 (CDT)
is this a bot task or a manual task? if it needs to be done by hand, I'll work forward on the official List of Videos, someone else can start with the fanfic videos -misty 16:25, 5 May 2007 (CDT)
It's a bot task actually. I just wanted to make sure it sounded like a good idea. I guess I'll go ahead and run the bot script.--Jonpro 16:39, 5 May 2007 (CDT)
Thank you Jonpro, you did a great job. Everything seems to be working great. Maybe we can archive this topic.-misty 00:10, 6 May 2007 (CDT)
One more thing before archiving. I managed to convert most of the video pages to using {{tags}} with the bot, but I ran into a few problems so I couldn't get them all. If anyone sees any pages where it's not being used, it shouldn't be too much work to convert it. Other than that, I think this is pretty much resolved.--Jonpro 11:43, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

Okey, I manually went through all the Category:Videos and added the tag template where it was missing and fixed up the pages it was messed up on. I could have missed a few, but I'm pretty sure I got them all. I even did the LG422 videos even though I still don't think they should be transcribed at all.. xP. So um, yes. Hopefully this works out better! --Zoey 15:23, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I double checked your work, and if you missed any, then I missed the same ones. -misty 18:40, 6 May 2007 (CDT)