Battlestar Wiki:Galactipedians Quorum

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Welcome, newcomers and baffled oldtimers! If you have a question about Battlestar Wiki and how it works, please place it at the bottom of the list, and someone will attempt to answer it for you. (If you have a question about life, the universe and everything, go to the reference desk instead.)

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Questions and answers will not remain on this page indefinitely (otherwise it would very soon become too long to be editable). After a period of time with no further activity, information will be moved to other relevant sections of Battlestar Wiki (such as the FAQ pages) or placed in one of the Wikipedian Quorum archives if it is of general interest, or deleted. Please consider dating and titling your discussions so as to facilitate this.



Create a page box[edit]

What do people think about adding a "create a page" box on the Main Page, so that it's easier for contributors to create new pages? Basically, how the "create a page" feature would work is it would be much the same as the input box on the Think Tank page: type the name and press "create this article". Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New 19:02, 29 June 2007 (CDT)

Fine by me. I'll never use it, of course, but it would make life easier (and more obvious) for other contributors. --Catrope(Talk to me or e-mail me) 03:12, 30 June 2007 (CDT)
Update: This'll be implemented in a few days. -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New 15:18, 28 September 2007 (CDT)

Additional changes[edit]

Since we've changed the nomenclature a bit around here, we're going to be changing the names of a few of our locales as well to mirror this.

For backwards compatibility, we'll be keeping the original names and shortcuts as redirects.

As for the reference desk, I'm thinking we should just merge the content into the appropriate guidelines and policies and get rid of it, since it's hardly used. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New 15:18, 28 September 2007 (CDT)

Isn't that supposed to be Galactipedians' rather than Galacticapedians'? As for the plan itself, it's fine by me. I've never seen any activity at the reference desk since I came here, but it sounds like a place to ask questions. Isn't that already covered at the noticeboard and the Quorum? --Catrope(Talk to me or e-mail me) 15:32, 28 September 2007 (CDT)
Right. :P And the reference desk is a holdover from my experiment in trying to get some WP stuff over here. There's also those FAQ lists which I think can be merged into the project namespace as well. -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New 15:40, 28 September 2007 (CDT)

WP's tlx template works here now[edit]

I've ported over Wikipedia's w:Template:Tlx to Template:Tlx. Tested. It works. If you check back a long way in my edit history here you'll see I've done this with various other very useful WP templates. Tlx in particular is very, very handy for template documentation, since you don't have to manually do a bunch of <code><nowiki> stuff (and I note that many if not most templates here remain undocumented, so perhaps this will help inspire some documentation). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:33, 8 February 2008 (CST)

Nice! Thank you! As for the templates, about half are documented (mainly the major ones) while other smaller ones aren't. Of course, they should be all documented, but it's a matter of prioritizing which one's need to be documented the most. -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus 10:38, 8 February 2008 (CST)
Note that we already had this template, just under a different name. You might wanna copy the documentation, though. --Catrope(Talk to me or e-mail me) 12:33, 8 February 2008 (CST)
D'oh. One being a redir to the other, with dox preseved seems to be in order. Wikipedians like me think in terms of "tlx" and are unlikely to remember "tlp". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:48, 9 February 2008 (CST)

Rewrote Council Security[edit]

I did a pretty much total rewrite of Council Security. Hope it passes muster. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 10:35, 8 February 2008 (CST)

Looks good in general. Nice details of their appearances. Though we generally write the article bodies themselves from a strictly in-universe perspective and confine real-world references to notes (unless it's an article dealing with an obvious real-world subject of course). -- Serenity 10:45, 8 February 2008 (CST)
Yeah, I re-read the policy on that last night (after like 3 months); will re-re-write the article so that the real-world stuff is in the Notes section, unless someone has beat me to it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:47, 9 February 2008 (CST)
I removed it. It was mainly about the comparisons to the US police or Secret Service. The article is fine without that. Saying things like "In episode so and so they did..." is ok if it can't be avoided. Since the article partly deals with their different depiction in various episodes, that's appropriate in this case. So a completely re-write isn't really necessary. -- Serenity 08:54, 9 February 2008 (CST)

"Spoiler follows, highlight to read"[edit]

Does anybody else find the "highlight to read" style distracting and kind of unprofessional? Why can't we just use a little CSS to make a pop-down spoiler box:

(This is GFDL code from Wikipedia, I can copy it over to a template and give credit where it's due.) Evan 16:59, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

I don't see any problem with this. :) What does everyone else think? -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus 17:17, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
Format's pages wrong. Shane (T - C - E) 17:40, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
In what way? -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus 18:11, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
Colours don't work in BsgMonoBook, alignment is off in BsgBook, I don't see anything wrong in the default skin though. Evan 18:22, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
Nvm, the colours work in MonoBook. Actually I don't see anything wrong in any of the skins. Evan 18:38, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
If it doesn't screw anything up, this would be far better than the highlight thing we have now. -- Serenity 18:54, 20 March 2008 (CDT)
The drop down does not format on lists correct. Like before, it would create a new line and interrupt the list numbers. Also, from our previous discussion on javascript expanding boxes in the middle of episodes pages (which are not at the top), templates that expand huge things of text change the entire format of the page layout when they expand. Images get shifted and it creates an unnesseary new lines that were not there before. It's always 100% width. Shane (T - C - E) 09:30, 21 March 2008 (CDT)

OK, the template is created as Template:Spoilerbox, add it if you like. I'm not going to replace the existing spoilers since... I don't want to be spoiled :) Evan 07:39, 21 March 2008 (CDT)

Nice template. Less is more for me on some pages, especially now. --Spencerian 11:42, 21 March 2008 (CDT)
Uh, one question...what's the input format for the template? I can't glean that from the description. --Spencerian 11:45, 21 March 2008 (CDT)
I've updated the page, but the syntax is {{spoilerbox|This is a spoiler! Muhahahahha!}}. -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus 13:55, 21 March 2008 (CDT)
I like the idea, but I'm not sure it's universally better than the current method... Especially if it will create problems like Shane mentioned. As dumb as it seems, I think the current method does have some advantages: Depending on how someone highlights the spoiler, they can control how much of the spoiler is revealed. Also, people can gauge how much content the spoiler contains just by looking at the amount of unreadable text. --Galjamspe 00:40, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

Proposition for new article[edit]

Hi! Quite new here, and since I don't find a button for creating a new article, I figure I must go through the Quorum?

I'd love it if we could open a small article for adding notice for Caprica Six's unborn baby. There's no actual article for this person yet, and I have to write my mentions about it, in already existing articles like Gaius Baltar's and Caprica Six's.

Thanks for the attention! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Iniovan (talk • contribs).

Do we really know anything about the baby enough to write an article? At this point, we just know that Caprica-Six is pregnant and that the father is Saul. Other than that... any analysis on it could probably fit in the episode guides. -- Joe Beaudoin So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus 18:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Question on editing etiquette[edit]

Hi,

I'm a newbie here. So this is a question so I can hopefully avoid stepping on anyone's toes. If you see an existing article and wish to add to the information and content, would it always be best to ask the original contributor before doing so? Especially if to do so, I would have to move some items around in the original article.

For example, I want to put in a new reference to supplement the article, however, it would need to go before an existing article, requiring renumbering of all of the references.

I'm just trying to get a feel of what is good editing and bad editing before I put foot in mouth.

thanks! Jeff Rabb

In a word, no. In addition to greatly slowing down the ability for the community to keep things up to date, it also ignores the fact that once you hit "save page" your edits become community property. There really isn't an "ownership" of articles, outside of perhaps articles in the "User" namespace. So feel free to be bold and get in those edits. If somebody takes issue with your edits they can either change it back themselves, take it up in the talk page of the article in question, and/or potentially bring it up on your talk page. New references are almost always welcome, as they're the glue that binds this place together. --Steelviper 23:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! Jeff

How Can This Not Be Canonical?[edit]

On the unnamed battlestars page, there is section dealing with the Berserk Class Escort. A notation notes the specific information on this class of ship is non-canonical. Presumably because it comes from the ship designer's own website vs that from one of the sanctioned websites or sources. But the ship WAS used in Razor. So how can one on one hand use it in the show and on the other hand say that any specific information on it from it's creator is non-canonical simply because TPTB never bothered to put it with a sanctioned source? It either is or isn't in my book. I'm sure this discussion has arisen many times before, but I'd like to find out the final arguement that finally determined why this source, which straddles the line, should be excluded as non-sanctioned? Jeff Rabb

The ship described on the website is on the show, but canon starts from the aired content and trickles down from there. So while we do see the ship, we aren't given any in-show identification of the ship. Also, there's nothing from the producers on the matter. However... the information coming from "crew" does seem to place it somewhere in category 3 in the source hierarchy, so it should have some weight (IMO). Anyway, I can see where the note was coming from (in that none of the information about the name of the ship, etc., came from any aired info or from RDM, etc), but I think you've got a decent argument. Given Joe's edit to the article, it appears he at least checked out the source website enough to correct the spelling to match it. Personally, I'd consider replacing the "canon" note and just replace it with a reference pointing to Chu's website. I do have to agree that it's not necessarily a battlestar, and in fact given the escort designation it's likely not a battlestar. Battleships don't "escort" battleships, and likewise with aircraft carriers. --Steelviper 01:35, 12 May 2009 (UTC)