User talk:Spencerian

Transferred my basic bio from Wikipedia to here. To all of us BSG addicts: Praise the Lords of Kobol and pass the munitions... Spencerian 15:52, 14 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Annililated three major stub pages today. Guess I'm all hyped up for Season 2's premiere today. Stop me before I de-stub again... Spencerian 14:51, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Destroy All Humans!... erm, I mean stubs.  :-) Yes, please keep on nuking all the stubs. Thanks! :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 17:51, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

We're a POV Wiki, Within Reason

This is just my understanding, but BSG Wiki is not quite like the formal Wikipedia. As such, as we enter factual information about the episode, we also may add opinion, some commentary, and speculation as appropriate. This is definiitely different from Wikipedia where such Personal Point of View comments are not acceptable. One thing that we must remember not to do is to get all bent out of shape and delete an opposing view simply because we have a different interpretation of events. One suggestion is to add a counterpoint with sufficient reasons or evidence that support your view. This is fiction, and I doubt that RDM will explain everything (where's the fun if he did that?), so we're left to figure things out on our own. So, don't hack and slash, but if you find my posts (or others) are just too wordy or prose-ridden, do what you feel is right, of course... Spencerian 17:45, 4 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Thanks for some of the clean-up in the Gauis Baltar and the Marines/Defense entries. I do have a question about the "tense" convention being used here on BSG-wiki. While you note that this is not wikipedia, I am curious as to why we are using present tense usage on events which occurred prior to the current episode? It seems to me events as they unfold should be used in the past-tense while ongoing terms and concepts that are presumed still active within the context of thew "current timeline" of the show would be present tense. For example, shouldn't descriptions of Baltar's background, and events which have already occurred on Caprica, etc. be in the past tense, while referring to him as the Vice President, and duties onboard Galcatica, etc. be present tense? Likewise shouldn't passages about say the development of the Mark II Viper be past tense, while current disposition and capabilities be present tense? Not trying to be overly pedantic, but if we were to use and adopt the convention that this "encyclopedia" were to be discussing things and concepts within BSG as if it "were real" so-to-speak, like say in a present day encyclopedia would describe the development of the F-14 Tomcat in past tense terms but describe current description of the presently active variants of the F-14 (i.e. the F-14D) and its deployment and present status within the arsenal of the United States Navy, it would be present tense. Whereas descriptions of say, a WWII German Stuka Bomber would all be past tense. Lestatdelc 12:29, 30 November 2005 (EST)

Thanks (and welcome!), Lestatdelc--fresh faces to help the wiki articles is always helpful. You're right--"historical" items of Gaius' history (things that happen before the series and Mini-Series) can and should be left as past-tense. But episodic info should be present tense since in fiction they are always "doing" and not "done", so instead of "Gaius shot Crashdown", it's "Gaius shoots Crashdown." The Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions project page details this more, and I've not been expert at it myself, but try to correct what's outside of convention whenever possible. If I've changed any of the tenses improperly, do feel free to dive in to correct. --Spencerian 13:23, 30 November 2005 (EST)

Episode Project Page?

Heya. I heard you were particularly active in writing the episode articles. If so, you might consider collaborating with some other users that are, too, to create a project page for episodes. Peter Farago created a Characters Project Page for better planning and communication. I can't speak from experience, but it might be good to make note of various conventions or templates or whatever used for episode articles. If you decide to put this together, I made a Project Page category so we could keep track of the various convention & template pages. I don't mean to tell anyone what to do. Just thought I'd draw your attention to this. --Day 07:18, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Hi, Day. Thanks for letting me know of this tool. I'm more of a major article content writer than article creator, so I've usually not done much in page formatting and creation. I've generally followed the lead of Peter and others who obviously have stronger wiki formatting skills, then apply or update any new material on pages that use their templates. Collectively the wiki has improved on formatting and templates, but yes, many early character bios must be cleaned up, and I'll get to Peter's character project page and your general project page to lend a hand. Same for the episode pages as applicable, although most of the second season pages appear to be in fair shape. Excellent idea. Spencerian 12:03, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Ellen Tigh

I have a question for you concerning your recent edit to Ellen Tigh at the bottom of Battlestar_Wiki_talk:Standards_and_Conventions. --Peter Farago 22:33, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

Mercury-Class Battlestar

Since we have gone back and forth once, I wanted to talk to you about it here. Stating that a battlestar is a Mercury-Class Battlestar, even if it happens to be pegasus, is not a spoiler. It is unnecessary to be in spoiler tags. We don't state anything else about it.

Okay, but would that be of plausible interest to anyone who explicitly did not want to have that episode spoiled? It's not as if the Mercury class has ever been mentioned before. --Peter Farago 17:26, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

I understand what you're saying about not spoiling it for someone who has no interest in knowing, however this isn't stating any IMPORTANT information that would lead you to explicitly know anything. People who are newbs to BSG wouldn't know if the Pegasus ship has been featured before, if it was going to return, or how many episodes away its return is. And BSG veterans may know about Pegasus, but wouldn't explicitly know when or if the Pegasus were going to return. Therefore, I submit this is not a spoiler. However, this is specific case is not a major concern for me, the episode is two days away anyways, but rather the principle of the issue at hand because it might arise again and I'd like a consensus on the issue. I believe that small splices of info that couldn't explicitly give away plot twists are not spoilers and therefore in the interest of not needlessly continually reediting pages that should not have been editted to begin with we should treat trivial information that does not reveal plot are not spoilers. In conclusion I will go to our future spoiler policy's definition of a spoiler:In fandom parlance, a "spoiler" is one or more pieces of information that may spoil the user's interest in an ongoing series. If anyone can give me a couple of reasonable explanations as to how the fact Pegasus is a Mercury-Class Battlestar is a spoiler and if a majority of people agree that trivial information not revealing plot but mention future events/items/characters I will resign the issue.--Zareck Rocks 18:50, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

The reason that "Mercury-Class" is a spoiler is because it a term not told in any aired episode. We only know "Galactica" but have not been told yet what her class was, much less that of the others. We know (at least until "Pegasus") only that there were other more advanced battlestars. Thus, "Mercury-Class" is a spoiler. The name "Pegasus" is also one, but we got that an episode name and it's not worth protecting that matter. Spencerian 20:58, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

I'm inclined to state that any specifics regarding an upcoming episode that hasn't been directly outlined in say...TV Guide or the Sci-Fi channel's own description would amount to a spoiler. I agree that the class of Battlestar is probably a trivial detail but as the episode has not aired we should leave it out until it does. The only exception to this would be where the specific revealed happened to be part of the teaser trailer airing to promote the episode.--Feldspar 19:06, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

This is a spoiler according to the not-yet-instituted policy. It may be a kind of miniscule, nit pickey, lame spoiler, but it fulfills the following:

Therefore a spoiler is one or more pieces of information from an episode that has yet to air anywhere in the world.

This is just a technicality, but if you're gonna make a rule, you should follow it all the way. Maybe this is an indication that the proposed policy is a bit strict. I dunno. That's my opinion, though. Anyway, we're not bound by the proposed one yet. For another couple days or something, anyway. I think. I can't keep things perfectly straight. --Day 19:51, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

I added my comments to the main policy page, but Peter said what I have said. ANY connecting information leads to a spoiler if it hasn't been announced officially or aired. We don't rate the importance of information as to whether it's a "big" or "small" spoiler. If it's not aired yet, it's gotta have a tag, but at least it can be added to the page. My only failure was to make whole pages as a spoiler instead of using the spoiltext tag more judgiciously--and I was corrected by others. Spencerian 20:58, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

IMO, the policy is sound, and leaves no room for interpretation. This is a good thing, since it will keep us from having exegetical fights instead of wiki-ing. --Peter Farago 20:54, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

See Battlestar Wiki talk:Spoiler Policy/Compromise for my reply. -- Joe Beaudoin 22:48, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

Laird's first name.

Hello there. I am sorry for the confusion that I may have caused you. I personally did not find the name "Peter Laird" on any external site, I found it here on Battlestar Wiki on the Pegasus episode page. Upon checking the history of the page it appears that a user by the name of Arjuna updated the page giving first names to both Chief Laird and Lieutenant Throne. Clearly, I mistakenly believed these to be official names and proceeded to edit Laird’s profile page oblivious to the disputed and most likely non-canonical nature of his first name. Next time I shall be sure to check the validity of a piece before I assume it is a fact, however the person you should really be questioning here is Arjuna, he/she appears to be the source of these false names.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention though, I appreciate it.

Kahran 06:02, 29 September 2005 (EDT)

Thanks, Kahran. We've all done that here, and it's nothing to worry about. The strongest contributors here are also the biggest sticklers to sources, and prefer less to more when it comes to information. Like Galen, Laird's name is probably going to be canon, just not yet. And, with BSG's popularity, more and more enthusiasts like you and I will want to put in their 2 cents, but need to know what's official and not. I'll check with Arjuna on the source if there is one. Thanks for responding back! Spencerian 10:13, 29 September 2005 (EDT)

The Battlestar Disambiguation Pages-What Was Done?

After talking with Peter on the general Battlestar page, we agreed that that page needed to be broken up and successive pages to keep the confusion down between TOS and RDM information. See the new Battlestar page, which is now a disambig page to lead you to the several pages where the data is logically broken up.

The only problem is the original Galactica page, which should have been moved to Galactica (RDM). Mistakenly I created that Galactica (RDM) page instead. The Galactica page could be another disambig page with links to the RDM, TOS, and Video game areas, but I stopped there (enough damage) to let Joe think of the best way to make this work.

The biggest change involves the general Galactica link, which should be Galactica (RDM) by default unless a TOS page discussses it, in which case Galactica (TOS) should be used. Please flame away: it's what the page is for. Spencerian 13:51, 30 September 2005 (EDT)

Toaster Pic

Spencerian, I'm thinking of uploading an actual picture of a toaster for the "Toaster" page, or at least I'd like to see one there. If you check out the Talk:Toaster page, I've linked to one I think looks pretty good. I understand you're probably going to bust a tantrum because it's not appropriate or something, but I think it'll be a bit of humor that'll break a few smiles here and there. Just tell me what you think.

Jzanjani 21:56, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

Brilliant idea. See the Toaster page. Spencerian 22:22, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

Your photos

Damn, sir. --Peter Farago 00:43, 9 October 2005 (EDT)

Oh, its what I do. :) Spencerian 12:23, 9 October 2005 (EDT)

Ooh! Hottie!--Watcher 12:25, 9 October 2005 (EDT)

I'd like to draw you're attention...

...to this discissuion again. You were one of the only two other people to reply to it initially, and I'd appriciate feedback, befor putting my most recent proposal up on the main page. Thanks in advance. --Day 12:17, 31 October 2005 (EST)

Cally

Question: Why'd you change the picture width of her template pic to 150px? The Characters page says use 200px and the template's own talk page says so, too. I'll go change it back right now, but--I thought I'd start a dialog about it, too, in case there's some good reason I don't know about. --Day 14:29, 10 November 2005 (EST)

OK. I think I got very annoyed at the large perspective of the shot, despite it being at the 200px convention. Sometimes it may be better not to have the larger shot as the picture eclipses the article. --Spencerian 15:30, 10 November 2005 (EST)

Costume Idea

Dude. You should consider Terry Tate. The man is a Golden God. I can't find all his commercials (they're out there, though), but here's one. --Day 14:43, 10 November 2005 (EST)

Ahha. This is a longer version, which has some clips that are priceless and does some better close-ups. I especially like the tackling technique at the end. He doesn't just slam the dude. He goes in for the ball-strip, too, to force a fumble. Okay. I'm done on this topic now. --Day 14:50, 10 November 2005 (EST)

Oh. My. God. Being one of the whitest black men in America, I don't think I can do this one justice! Still wiping the tears out of my eyes, though. I think I lost it when Tate complained of the lack of cover sheets on a victim's TPS reports. Maybe I can do Lumbergh from Office Space... :)

Rrrrright... --Spencerian 15:41, 10 November 2005 (EST)

You don't think you could pull off Terry-at-the-Finance-Meeting? With the reading glasses, pointer and jeresey? Heh. I have a friend who must be very like you, except much, much skinnier. We've been telling people for years that he's the whitest black man they'll ever meet. Now I guess I've met two. ;) --Day 14:57, 11 November 2005 (EST)

Creative Commons

Okay, crash course: All the non-image content we create on this wiki is automatically under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution Share-alike license, version 2.0 or greater.

Because of this, we cannot incorporate work into the textual areas of the wiki which are copyrighted or licensed under incompatible terms (e.g. the GFDL). A certain amount of leeway is allowed for "fair use", such as scholarly quotations.

Image content we create remains under the exclusive copyright of the uploader unless a written waiver is provided or the image is explicitly provided under an Free Content license on the description page

Images copyrighted by Universal Studios stay copyrighted by universal studios, no matter who is hosting them - any credit given to TwizTV or other sources is a mere formality, since universal is the sole rights holder. Thus, taking a screen capture from another site (as Ricimer has done before) is legally no different than taking a screen capture yourself.

Copyrighted and GFDL work cannot be used "under the Creative Commons license" - because we don't own the copyrights, we have no right to relicense the work. What we can do, in limited circumstances (including most screenshots here), is claim fair use. --Peter Farago 12:13, 21 November 2005 (EST)

OK, Peter. Based on what you said, the screen captures I've pulled from TVIV are still appropriately obtained. I've not grabbed textual content from any other sites lately, per your last clarification on the differences between CCL and GFDL, so I understand now that my recent images are fair-use and not really CCL. Makes the whole idea of share-alike too confusing to make it worthwhile, and certainly not practically usable for us without a clear primer. I'd rather not get into learning legalities for fear of realizing I've turned paralegal and mercy-killing myself as a societal gesture of goodwill... ---Spencerian 14:15, 21 November 2005 (EST)

Sorry if I came off testy - I just don't have any desire for Joe to get a cease-and-desist e-mail over a silly accident. That would be a bummer. --Peter Farago 20:56, 21 November 2005 (EST)

Not a problem, Peter. Taking the time to chastise and clarify things with me indicates your mutual concern and enjoyment for the wiki, so I don't take it at all personally. --Spencerian 08:35, 22 November 2005 (EST)

Administrator Spencerian?

I have nominated you to be one of the new administrators. --Ricimer 18:34, 16 December 2005 (EST)

Re-imagined Series definition: initial skills training; can refer to basic military indoctrination, and arms and ground training ^{(TRS: "Fragged")}; and basic flight training ^{(TRS: "Miniseries")}

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

Re-imagined Series definition: the brig

Re-imagined Series definition: derogatory term for Cylons in general

Re-imagined Series definition: visual indicator used in a battlestar's Instrument Landing System during a hands-on approach ^{(TRS: "Miniseries", "Act of Contrition", "Final Cut", "Black Market")}