User talk:Joe Beaudoin Jr.

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Archive from March 6, 2006

Design Improvements

Just a few minor design improvements.

• 1. On the image pages the mime/type text is white font on white background. The text of this or background box colour should be changed in the css to be black. http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/4151/bsgdesignimprovements11xv.png
• 2. The tiny little logon man perhaps changed to something more relevant, bgs logo or viper insignia http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/2377/bsgdesignimprovements27up.png
• 3. Redirect image should be inverted, this is how it look right now http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1546/bsgdesignimprovements30lv.png
• Mercifull 08:13, 29 March 2006 (CST)

When considering design changes, please keep in mind that not everyone reads the site using the default theme. I, for one, find the black background with bright text extraordinarily hard -- downright painful -- on the eyes, particularly in contrast with just about every other program and web site I use. I'm using the straight Monobook theme in my preferences. As a result, there are already some boxes that are all but unreadable unless I highlight the text in them.

(Ironically, I used to feel just the opposite, but the predominance of white-background websites and GUIs has shifted my preferences. It's easier to go with the flow than to find ways to change every single GUI system I use). --Uncle Mikey 10:20, 29 March 2006 (CST)

Would it help on the boxes if we specified the white foreground? Granted, this would go against the rest of the text on the page, but I'd think that it'd make it look closer to how it is intended. However, you still have the blue links (unless that can be specified as well). --Steelviper 16:12, 29 March 2006 (CST)

Might help. It seems to me that there ought to be some way to make sure that template boxes &c integrate with the theme (using style-sheet names for things, &c), but I haven't messed enough with Mediawiki themes to know exactly how you'd do it portably.--Uncle Mikey 16:16, 29 March 2006 (CST)

You're absolutely right. That would be the correct way to do it. I too, however, lack that [[1]], and so I end up reaching for the quick/easy/ugly hack. Day has mentioned looking into such things in the past. --Steelviper 16:25, 29 March 2006 (CST)

Good host

I saw about your hosting problems... 1&1 is a good host, I've been using them for a while. Their monthly transfer rates start at 250GB per month for 3 dollars. (although that plan is lacking in a few good features... ) Anyhow, I'm not meaning to spam or anything... I just really like my server. --Aggie

Originally we had 1&1 -- however, as they limited the size of their MySQL databases to 100 MB, we were forced to move. -- Joe Beaudoin 13:04, 5 March 2006 (CST)

Memorabillia

Replaced Memorabilia category with Merchandise, using the method you explained. Category:Memorabilia can be deleted. --Undc23 05:18, 6 March 2006 (CST)

Error Message

Copied from User talk:Steelviper by Steelviper 09:07, 9 March 2006 (CST)
I got this error message when saving the miniseries page yesterday, what does it mean?

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 37704 bytes) in /home/admin/domains/battlestarwiki.org/public_html/en/languages/LanguageUtf8.php on line 92 --Grafix

Is it still occuring or is it a one time occurance? -- Joe Beaudoin 20:49, 9 March 2006 (CST)

This only happened once when I was saving the miniseries page. It could be because this page is too long. I think it could do with splitting up into 2 pages: one for the story and the other for comments. It is also missing a summary. I would be happy to do the split but I would need a summary from somewhere. --Grafix 03:08, 10 March 2006 (CST)

I was able to reproduce this error today. I ran into it on the Recent Changes trying to load all 500 at once. (I wanted to go back and block all the spammer accounts indefinitely). That would point towards a large page issue (as the 250 worked fine). Also, on the Mini-series article... Spencerian had discussed chopping it up earlier, but has never gotten a chance to yet. You might start a discussion on the talk page of that article to discuss how to approach such an undertaking. --Steelviper 13:58, 10 March 2006 (CST)

link to solve all your problems... :) --Shane ^{(C - E)} 17:50, 19 March 2006 (CST)

I cannot view the solutions page as I am not a member of experts-exchange.com. Unless you can copy and paste the pertinent info then the link, sadly, is not all that useful. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:09, 19 March 2006 (CST)

if you have access to your php.ini file incrase the value in this line

memory_limit = 8M  ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (8MB) --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 21:19, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Thanks Shane. Fixed. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:29, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Spam Alert

I've noted a recent surge in spamming here. As cool as it was to get my first blocks notched on my admin belt, it is starting to look like an ip range block might be needed (if in fact they are coming from a particular band of addresses). --Steelviper 12:29, 9 March 2006 (CST)

Could be please ban Scofco. Everytime I reverse his spam he puts it back. --Grafix 05:14, 10 March 2006 (CST)

Sorry. I was sleeping on the job. He's gone for a week (for now) and he's going on "the list". Thanks for the heads up.--Steelviper 06:09, 10 March 2006 (CST)

Japanese

I wanted to ask you about something I noticed. The people that created the episode guides in other languages had not created their own Episode List in a seperate language. I saw that you wanted to eventually create seperate wikis in different languages so I was under the impression we should create the articles as seperate as possible. Should I be creating a list for the episode guides or should I keep them as connected to the main wiki as possible? --Zareck Rocks 18:15, 10 March 2006 (CST)

When translating the articles, we should try to avoid linking to articles on the "English" Battlestar Wiki. This helps makes the process of moving articles to the separate wiki easier, which is something we are all for. :-) Any other questions? -- Joe Beaudoin 18:21, 10 March 2006 (CST)

I'm sure there will be more in the future, but none right now. Thanks! --Zareck Rocks 18:30, 10 March 2006 (CST)

No, thank you. :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 18:36, 10 March 2006 (CST)

Request for Administratorship

Joe, I need your help setting up Battlestar Wiki:Requests for adminship/The Merovingian; I laid the groundwork but I need proper formating and a vote or two (in any category) to start it off; we use these so rarely I'm not sure how to properly set this up. Then I'm going to fill in all of the questionaires. Thanks,--The Merovingian 15:18, 11 March 2006 (CST)

Portal's

Hey Joe!

I done some research into the "Portal" problem. It seems there is a file, that has this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:$wgExtraNamespaces where you need to add Portal. It's the same place you did "Battlestar_Wiki". Then you need to run a file under maintenance/namespaceDupes.php to make sure there are no dupes of any type. Since there is possailbly only a few, but do not have any contact it would be ok to run. --Shane 11:41, 15 March 2006 (CST)

The IRC Channel for the Wikimeta software wasn't that helpful so that's is much as I can give ya. They said to read the manual, but I am lost in looking for it. --Shane 15:05, 15 March 2006 (CST)

I created a namespace for the portal yesterday. So technically the portal feature is up -- I just am not certain about changing the tab name without changing the name of the article tabs as well. -- Joe Beaudoin 06:42, 16 March 2006 (CST)

I been working with Steelviper trying to figure out the latest problem with portal sub-templates to auto-form and carry over the the design. From what I been talking with the MediaWiki group, the only way for the Portal's to work right is get them to say Portal" where article is. Now we could upgrade to 1.5.7 (fixes some secuirty areas) and then go from there. Now this page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces gives me some new info which I never found before. The people in the IRC channel are a real pain. This may or may not fix the sub-portal template problem that we are having. --Shane 12:44, 16 March 2006 (CST)

The problem is they are not becoming "Sub-Pages". When you create something like {{/box-header}} which is why the portal headers arn't working, is that it never became a sub-page. It became it's own page that is not connected to Portal:Characters but is rather Portal:Characters/box-header. Some new revelent information. If you get a chance, I can show you the difference so you can ask the right questions now on the Wiki mailing list. --Shane ^{(C - E)} 11:31, 19 March 2006 (CST)

We think we may have nailed down the problem. For Wikipedia, the User, Talk, and Wikipedia namespaces have subpages turned on; the main (article) namespace does not have this feature turned on. From Matt: looks like Joe may just have to turn on subpages for the Portal namespace. --Shane ^{(C - E)} 18:25, 19 March 2006 (CST)

We are getting closer. I had someone from outside of this wiki take a look. He said that the wiki is blocking certain types of HTML code. I have no idea where the "filters" would be, but if you have any filters for HTML, if you remove them we might be golden. Also, we get this alot: [{{fullurl:{{{editpage|/}}}|action=edit}} edit] during our travels. Somehow fullurl is built into the wiki code on the php side and is not on the template side. So if that can be enabled also that would be perfect. :) --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:07, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Actually, just FYI, a lot of the issues we're coming up with are because Wikipedia is using the 1.6 betas. We're using the 1.5 stable versions, and there are differences. Other than that, I'm working out the other problems. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:32, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Signature Link

Hey Joe, I was noticing how my signature doesn't link to my user page. I spoke to another wikipedian about this and they didn't know why my sig didn't work either. I normally use the signature button but that doesn't link to my page. Do you have any ideas how I can get around this? --Zareck Rocks 17:21, 15 March 2006 (CST)

Check your preferences page to see whether or not the "raw signature" checkbox is checked off. If so, uncheck it. -- Joe Beaudoin 06:44, 16 March 2006 (CST)

Bots

Do we have bot ability? Because there are some Wikipedia bots that we could use over here. --Shane 19:59, 16 March 2006 (CST)

I need to assing bot permissions to users, but I should be able to get bots going. Which ones were you looking into implementing here? -- Joe Beaudoin 18:09, 18 March 2006 (CST)

Just wondering if they were possaible. I'll get a list complied. (New Project! heh) --Shane ^{(C - E)} 23:23, 18 March 2006 (CST)

.....The entire "moral" behind Battlestar Galactica is that we should not hand over power to BOTS! :) --The Merovingian 00:22, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Hah. yeah. Cylons.. Machines. Yeah. heh. --Shane ^{(C - E)} 00:34, 19 March 2006 (CST)

As long as the bots weren't programmed by Gaius Baltar, I don't see any problem. ;-) -- Joe Beaudoin 11:49, 19 March 2006 (CST)

I posted up something in Battlestar_Wiki:Bots. I am currenly going over a bot's code to make sure all the changed that would be needed are done. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 16:19, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Make "Task Bot" with the bot flag. :) Getting it all setup with the cookies it needs on my end. Also sent you an e-mail on setup procedures. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 23:12, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Template:Characters

I'd like you to take a look at how I've refactored it. I hope you agree that it can peacefully coexist with the portal now that it's taken a minimalist turn. Philwelch 03:18, 17 March 2006 (CST)

RFA

The election has ended. What is the result? --The Merovingian 13:28, 19 March 2006 (CST)

I need to review the issues surrounding the RfA before I make any final decisions. -- Joe Beaudoin 16:05, 19 March 2006 (CST)

What? When will you make your decision? Please advise. --The Merovingian 21:31, 19 March 2006 (CST)

You'll know when I do. Worry not. :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 21:38, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Has to be before Friday. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:45, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Why? -- Joe Beaudoin 21:46, 19 March 2006 (CST)

If it's not, the Cylons will gain the backdoor codes to the new nav computer stuff and wipe out the entire navy easily, then nuke us into near-oblivion. *wink* --Day ^(talk) 21:51, 19 March 2006 (CST)

A) An hold with no time limit could be dragged out indefinately, and would set a bad precedent, B) (I'm far more concerned about this:) I'm going to I-CON, Richarch Hatch will be there and there will be BSG discussion seminars, and it would be going with my pants down if adminship were decided days after the event. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:52, 19 March 2006 (CST)

That makes no sense. How will being an admin or not have any material impact on your comments to Mr. Hatch? --Peter Farago 21:54, 19 March 2006 (CST)

It doesn't, and in fact I plan on remaining silent. There's other BSG stuff going on, but I digress. Actually, the bigger problem now that I think about it is "this sets bad precedent". --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 21:56, 19 March 2006 (CST)

It would be a worse precedent for Joe to act rashly. --Peter Farago 22:02, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Your second RfA didn't succeed this time. (4 for, 2 opposed; 67% were for your adminship -- however, according to BW:RFA the consensus should be 75%-80% or higher for a successful promotion.) I would recommend waiting a few months or so before proceeding again. Now, as for the issue I debated... I think that recuriting non-contributors to vote wasn't a great idea. Mainly for the fact that the voters didn't, in my mind, understand what adminship is. Apparently, there was the overall consensus amongst these voters that administrators were top-notch contributors to the Wiki and that people are entitled to adminship. This is not adminship. Adminship isn't for everyone -- and everyone doesn't need admin tools. If they did, then these administrator folks wouldn't need to exist. At all. We would just call them users with dead man switches. :-)

Now, if I may kindly suggest a few things, which will only help you on your course to your (eventual) succession to administrator:

1. I would recommend keeping an archive of all your discussions on your talk page. You may link to the histories or create subpages on your user page to archive discussions.
2. Realize that, as an admin, your actions will be consistently scrutinized. Even more so than now.
3. The differences between admins and non-admins: the ability to delete pages, ban people, and protect pages. That's really it. If there are people who believe I am stating this fact lightly, then I recommend talking to another admin -- even (Super) Mop Boy can tell you that there really isn't anything different. (Other than the two additional tabs on the top. And that "ban" button.)

Obviously, if you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them. Now I'll be seeing the second new episode of The Sopranos. -- Joe Beaudoin 22:28, 19 March 2006 (CST)

A)I would like to argue against the standard of 80% maximum, it is restrictively high. Non-editors is a non-issue; I agree with you there. No, I think I'll commence my next RfA as soon as you close down my current one. Now I'm going to be a little busy updating the site back up to standards, I might not be able to chat for a while on the subject.

B)If I were made Administrator, I would be afraid of losing such a title, and thus would have quite obvious reasons for restraining myself.--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 22:37, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Merv... an RFA-spam will get old very quickly, and does not show the perspective and calmness required, in my mind, of an admin. Also, one should not say, "If made admin X." One should just show X regardless of adminship. Whether it's restraint, or patience or maturity or... not editing Roslin to Roslyn (I picked a dumb example on purpose). --Day ^(talk) 22:43, 19 March 2006 (CST)

I disagree that 75-80% is a restrictvely high standard. Every adminstrator to date has been elected with unanimous approval. --Peter Farago 22:45, 19 March 2006 (CST)

We are in agreement. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:29, 19 March 2006 (CST)

I do not think you are. Peter is saying that the 75-80% margin is good. Unless I misread you, Merv, you're saying it's too high. --Day ^(talk) 00:46, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Er, I meant I was agreeing with you. Sorry, my Sandman-esque syntax does tend to seep in. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 00:53, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Ah. Hazard of using Wiki Talk pages for communication. Not exactly built with all the handy features of phpBB or whatever. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up. --Day ^(talk) 20:05, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Merv, a few points:

1. As pointed out by the others, 75%-80% is not a restrictively high standard. A high standard that is severely restrictive is 95%. This percentage is perfect. In fact, I wasn't the one who came up with it -- it comes straight from Wikipedia. And it works, so I'm not going to fix something that is not broken.
2. May I recommend, in the strongest possible terms, that you not proceed to self-nominate yourself again immediately after this RfA is officially closed. (Which I just recently did and the RfA is now archived.) Could you technically do it? Yes. However, I would be more concerned with how such an action might be perceived by those who would vote.
3. Also, there isn't a rush to recruit new administrators. Back when I first started the RfA importing process, I did it out of necessity, as I could not do everything at that time. As far as I'm concerned, we have all the admins we need right now -- where we need the admins is for the non-English BSG Wiki's, so they can determine the tempo and do the mop boy (or girl) thing. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:22, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Talk to RDM/Universal?

Have you ever considered contacting Ron Moore somehow and offering the wiki as a resource for him and his writers? I think it would be a great idea—have the obsessive fans already take care of the continuity checking and documenting everything that happens in every episode, so I imagine it would be a great resource for the writers to quickly look stuff up and keep track of continuity issues. Philwelch 16:23, 20 March 2006 (CST)

From my expereince, in Star Trek Community, huge companies don't like to have their staff use nothing but there sources, because it's their source of advertizing. But then again, this is NBC and not Paramount. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 17:57, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Well, why can't we become official then? It would solve Joe's hosting problems, and Ron Moore is already into blogging and podcasting, so a wiki can't be that far off :) Philwelch 18:01, 20 March 2006 (CST)

If we were offical, that would be nice. We would see a large influx of users if people knew Moore contribuated to this site and solved a few things that he should spoil us with, but then again it would leave nothing for the offical site. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 18:03, 20 March 2006 (CST)

Officialdom would be a terrible, awful, horrible, no-good, very, very bad idea. Officialdom basically means NBC Universal would control the site and its content, including any critical content. There's no reason to believe we would retain any editorial independence. This site's unofficial status is just fine. Really.--Uncle Mikey 17:53, 21 March 2006 (CST)

So we become the official site :) Philwelch 18:05, 20 March 2006 (CST)

I just want to note that even more so than Mr. Swallow's contributions, RDM contributing to the wiki would present an enormous fact checking, verification and citation problem. --Peter Farago 18:17, 20 March 2006 (CST)

He needn't contribute. I'm sure he has better things to do with his free time. I mean--BSG is his job. I know very few people who have their job as a hobby as well. However, if he wanted to, we could just cite his username as a source. *wink* I actually don't know how I feel about "selling out" to Universal/RDM/SciFi. Not that I have an inherant distaste for it, but I'd be quite wary of anything that might imply any kind of over-sight by non-contributers/people who don't understand how all this Wiki business works. --Day ^(talk) 20:03, 20 March 2006 (CST)

I sincerely doubt that we would become "official". While it would be nice, being "official" is the furthest thing from my mind. Also, being unofficial does have its advantages -- meaning that we can be a critical as we need to be and we are not tied down by bureaucratic B.S. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:13, 20 March 2006 (CST)

OK, but official status aside, I do think we should let Ron Moore know that we exist. All I'm really asking is that we be an unofficial resource for the writers (if we aren't already!). Philwelch 13:06, 21 March 2006 (CST)

What makes anyone here think that RDM doesn't know of our existence? Just curious. -- Joe Beaudoin 13:08, 21 March 2006 (CST)

I get the sense from his podcasts that they don't have any convenient resource to keep track of continuity. Philwelch 16:18, 21 March 2006 (CST)

They may not feel they need any. RDM has said as much as that he's trying to "make up" for some of the "mistakes" of Trek, but he may not consider Trek's failure to be slavishly continuous a "mistake". If he really did, then he would have/could have gone the route JMS went with Babylon 5, with all the major and many of the minor arcs plotted out before the first frame was shot. He didn't do that. I think he's gone so far as to say he doesn't even know for certain yet if Galactica will ever find Earth, let alone what state Earth might be in if it did.

In the end, strict continuity is of interest mainly to a relatively small number of die-hard fans. It's not of interest to the general viewing public, who mostly just want to be entertained. It's not necessarily of interest to the writers, to whom strict continuity is often a straitjacket.

I'm not saying that RDM wouldn't appreciate what we do here. I'm just saying that if he really thought such a resource was necessary for the writing team, he knows more than enough fannish geeks who could have created it for him by now :-) --Uncle Mikey 17:44, 21 March 2006 (CST)

A) It sounds fanboyish to call in, displaying our wonderful site to their corporation

B) I already mention BattlestarWiki numerous times in the official RDM Blog thread on the official site

C) A week ago, I personally brought BattlestarWiki to the attention of Terry Dresbach, Ron Moore's wife, in the official Talk to Mrs.Ron thread on the messageboards. She seemed quite enthused. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 19:42, 21 March 2006 (CST)

International characters

Hey, Joe, how did you add the international characters 'insert' block at the bottom of the Edit pages? I have another Wiki project I'm working on, and having easy access to those special characters would be extremely nifty...--Uncle Mikey 19:31, 21 March 2006 (CST)

Well, here's what I did:

1. Download CharInsert.php from the Mediawiki CVS
2. Copy that into your "includes" diretory of your MediaWiki install
3. Add the following line to your LocalSettings.php file, near the top:
   • require_once( "includes/CharInsert.php" );
4. Once that's done, save and upload the revised LocalSettings.php file.
5. After that, go to MediaWiki:Edittools. Copy and paste the code.
6. On your wiki, create a page with the same name. Paste the content and save.
7. After that, edit MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning on your wiki and insert:
   • {{MediaWiki:Edittools}}

And you should be set. If you need anything more, feel free to contact me. (Also, what's your Wiki?) -- Joe Beaudoin 19:54, 21 March 2006 (CST)

Thank you!

One modification I figurfed out is that {{sitetools}} won't actually work. It needs to be {{MediaWiki:Edittools}}, and that's what it is for you as well (I checked).

I'm starting to put together a wiki for the fantasy series The Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker. No idea if it'll take off, or not, but there seems to be at least a little interest on the Three Seas forum. Special characters abound in the names of people and places, so having a handy way to get those specials inserted for those who don't know how to do it with entities or from their keyboard will be a big win.--Uncle Mikey 14:10, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Ack, sorry about that. Alien bimbos took my brain, since they lost Spock's. (As you can see, it has been returned.) -- Joe Beaudoin 15:58, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Alien bimbo brain thieves happen :-) When the wiki is ready for customers, I'll post the link in my user page :-) Thanks for the help!--Uncle Mikey 16:45, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Shane's Departure

I received the following in private comunication from Shane this morning:

10:03:38 AM shane.WITHHELD@gmail.com: I have left the wiki because of your comments with merv about the RFC. You knew that was not an approved way, and Joe had already said so. So say we all.

shane.WITHHELD@gmail.com disconnected (10:03:51 AM)

The comments he referred to can be found here. I am unaware of any comments by you to that effect, but felt that I should bring the matter to your attention in the event that I overlooked something. --Peter Farago 10:07, 27 March 2006 (CST)

I might have missed something as well... because I don't recall ruling one way or the other. -- Joe Beaudoin 10:20, 27 March 2006 (CST)

You didn't. Shane is overreacting. There's far too much drama on both sides of this particular tiff, but Shane is overreacting badly, here.

Peter, for what it's worth, I don't see anything you've done that would constitute a reason someone should leave. Perhaps Shane was expecting more "protection" from what he saw as an unjust series of personal attacks, but I'm not sure that's a realistic expectation anywhere on the 'Net, let alone in a loosely-moderated universe such as this.--Uncle Mikey 10:25, 27 March 2006 (CST)

You are indeed correct, UncleMikey, when it comes to the drama on both sides of this issue. Both sides are at fault. I believe that it would be best if both sides shed the negativity, take a deep breath, and start anew from the same page, as it were. -- Joe Beaudoin 11:07, 27 March 2006 (CST)

On second thought, I believe he thinks that the RFC process is something that I had apparently not approved of. (Quite contrary, seeing as I imported it from the English Wikipedia to deal with future issues, should they arise.) -- Joe Beaudoin 10:27, 27 March 2006 (CST)

Re-imagined Series definition: the brig

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group ^{(TRS: "Water")}. It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.