User talk:Joe Beaudoin Jr./Archive

For discussions prior to September 2, 2005, click here.

Character Pages...

I wasn't sure where to drop this, so I put it here... I thought about putting it in the update talk, but that didn't seem right, either. I wonder if we shouldn't standardize how the Character pages are laid out (aside from the Template:Character Data, I mean). For instance, Lee Adama's looks really sharp. Notice it's got the contents at the top, then his Bio (the title of which might be haggled over later Biography vs. Biographical Notes or whatever), which ties in nicely to the Character Data box. On the other hand, if a page is too short to have or organized such that it doesn't have contents, that might look a little odd (Cf. Day).

On the other hand, we could do something like Aaron Doral's page with the intro paragraph to kind of act as that spacer in lieu of the contents listing. However, in cases where you do have a contents listing this looks, to my eye, not as sharp (Cf. Agathon, Karl C. which will soon be moved by me to Karl C. Agathon assuming I can figure out how to do it).

So, Joe and anyone else reading this... Whatcha think? Should we do without the intro and go straight into the Bio with a level 2 heading so that our longer write-ups look sharper? Should we have that intro so that our longer write-ups look less sharp, but our shorter ones look more sharp? Or should we change this based on length, so that there's an intro paragraph if it's too short for contents, but no intro paragraph when it gets long enough for one?

OR is my aesthetic sense telling me wrong and you guys like things I think are "less sharp" and so we should go with some otehr scheme entirely? --Day 01:51, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

We had the same idea, day. I've started a project page at Battlestar Wiki:Characters. --Peter Farago 04:00, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Wonderous! I'm going to move my character-based project notes from my User page to that project page. Collaboration and communication please me. --Day 04:16, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Would you mind, Joe, changing the Template:Character Data talk page to reflect the new fields-that-can-be-invisible? This way we can go through and remove a bunch of people marked "Unknown." --Day 15:14, 9 September 2005 (EDT)

Deletions

Joe, could you either examine the move requests at Battlestar Wiki:Characters and assist us with moves to article titles already occupied with redirects, or enable me to delete the relevant redirects myself? --Peter Farago 04:53, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

I'll aid you as needed. Good project BTW. :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 09:05, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Specifically, Joe, we need Karl Agathon and Gaius Baltar deleted so that we can move Agathon, Karl C. and Baltar, Gaius to them respectively. Thanks. --Day 17:18, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Deleted and moved. Please make sure other pages use the Gaius Baltar and Karl Agathon links instead of the redirects! -- Joe Beaudoin 18:43, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

We'll keep our eyes out. Do redirects cause more strain on the server or is it more of a cleanliness issue? --Day 19:17, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Cleanliness more than anything else. -- Joe Beaudoin 19:23, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

I wonder if you could delete this picture of Mason. For some reason, it won't upload right or something. I've tried (as you can see) a couple of times and I'd like to see if a fresh upload would work. Thanks. --Day 16:20, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

Can we just have a VFD page, actually? I think it might be time to have elections for additional admins, if you're willing. --Peter Farago 20:49, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

I'll be looking to get some additional admins in here anyway. I'll just have to set up the process -- probably people can self-nominate themselves, then the community can take a vote on two or three admins -- so that I can leave the "day to day" operations, per se, to the admins. (I'll still do the major stuff, but I'd rather delegate these "day to day" tasks -- such as page deletions and so forth -- to others.)

As for a "VFD" process... I'm not a fan of Wikipedia's VFD, because it causes unnecessary problems between contributors and the process needs work. (I know that there are many competing groups who want the VFD changed out in lieu of something better.) So, while there should be a way to nominate possible articles and images for deletion, I don't believe a VFD is a great way to do so and I don't plan on implementing the VFD process used by Wikipedia on this wiki. Signing off, your benevolent Imperious Leader... -- Joe Beaudoin 10:16, 15 September 2005 (EDT)

In the meantime, I've created Battlestar Wiki:Stuff for deletion to list cruft that clearly ought to be removed. Maybe you can give it a look over from time to time. --Peter Farago 21:37, 3 October 2005 (EDT)

This thread has kinda moved on from this, but this felt like the best place to mention it. I reloaded the Mason pic and it's still having a fit. I'm not sure what's up. Would it help if I maybe re-created it and reloaded it? I've got the original, uncropped screen shot still and it wouldn't be hard to recrop. Is it worth trying? --Day 16:39, 4 October 2005 (EDT)

Spoiler Policy

I'm concerned that the discussion and vote on Battlestar Wiki talk:Spoiler Policy have wide participation, so as to provide a legitimate result. Would you consider advertising it in the site notice for a week or so? --Peter Farago 04:53, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Will do. -- Joe Beaudoin 09:07, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Ban request

Joe, I humbly request that you ban user "Philwelch", if you see fit to do so. On Wikipedia.org, he keeps flaming the Cylon and Battlestar Galactica pages, adamant in the belief that "12 Cylon Models" includes Centurions leaving only 11 humanoid ones (nonesensical). He's counterproductive and often makes unsubstantiated jumps of logic. Please, instill the fear of God in him.--Ricimer 31 Aug, 2005

Oh, let him be. It's not like the issue is cut and dried. Can't we just make a note of the controversy and leave it? --Peter Farago 13:58, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Right now, my decision echos Peter's -- make a note of the issue regarding the ambiguity of the statement (because there is ambiguity present in that "12 Models of Cylon" statement) and ensure that all POVs and speculations are treated accordingly and with respect. -- Joe Beaudoin 18:39, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Joe, I retract any desire to have Philwelch banned: although I have heartily disagreed with him in the past on issues, he is nonetheless an excellent poster contributing much valuable information, as well as policing the wikipedia entries almost as fast as I do against malicious edits (this one guy persistently wanted the Cylon page to say that you can do the "Cylon voice" by speaking into a fan; that doesn't sound like a Cylon, you need a voice synthesizer, etc).

However, I realize I cannot request that someone be immediately banned, but I would like to suggest that you give warnings leading up to a banning if people make complaints. I would like to point out now that new user "Jzanjani" has proven fairly malicious and he isn't really contributing any valuable material in his edits; after which he has been joking in fits of arrogance that he will start "flame wars" here if they are changed. He's also been deleting my entire usertalk page (thanks to Peter Fargo for restoring it; I originally restored Jzanjani's talk page after he deleted it because I honestly thought he wasn't allowed to do that; I was unfamiliar with the wiki convention regarding this). He deserves a stern warning that this behavior could lead to banning. ---Ricimer October 7, 2005

I must say. <sarcasm>I find the comment he left with his edit rather witty and cutting.</sarcasm> If you've not looked at it, it is amusing, especially considering that the damage has already been (so easily) undone. --Day 13:05, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

See my comments about this whole mess on the Cylons Talk page. Both sides on this are going to an extreme, and need to cool down. Spencerian 14:06, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

I agree. Your mutually hostile behavior towards each other is not constructive or amusing, and as far as I can tell you both bear quite equal responsibility for provoking each other. Rather than resorting to rude pranks and ill-conceived attempts at intimidation, you must at least attempt civil conversation on the relevant talk pages. --Peter Farago 17:24, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

Image Thumbs

Can we change the background color of image thumbs to black? The yellow links don't show up very well against white, currently. --Peter Farago 16:04, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Planning on some cosmetic changes anyway. So I'll get right on it. -- Joe Beaudoin 16:29, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

I'd like to voice an opinion for dark grey or some shade. I think it's important to stand out against the black page background, but I agree the links are impossible to read. I'd been meditating on a proper solution for a couple days and dark grey doesn't entirely satisfy me, but it's better than either white or black. In my opinion, anyway. --Day 17:03, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

How about the red shade I've implemented? -- Joe Beaudoin 17:04, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Hrm. Not what I'd expected, but not bad, either. The links are certainly readable now, and it fits more with the theme of the site, so I think it's a good call. --Day 17:17, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

While we're on the subject of changing link colors, do you think the dark blue color that's used in the navigational links at the top of BSwiki and for Wikipedia links could be lightened up a bit? They're kind of...dark. On a more subjective note, I think blue doesn't even fit in the red-yellow-on-black color scheme that you fine gentlemen have set up. I'm sure everyone else disagrees with this, clearly, but that's just my opinion. Regardless, they are just a tad too dark and don't show up very well against the black background.

Jzanjani 16:42, 7 October 2005 (EDT)

Contents?

Joe... You may be messing with the contents boxes as I type this, but, for what it's worth, I liked them better on the left and not wrapped. If they stay right, we may have to reasses some of our aesthetic choices for character pages (or, actually, probably just edit the Character Data template to be left-aligned. It also bugs me that if there's not intro paragraph, the re line under the first topic and the red line un "Contents" don't line up in my browser. This is a small thing, I know. --Day 17:27, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

How about if the TOC is organized horizontally instead of vertically...? The only reason I aligned it to the right was because of all that wasted whitespace, which annoyed me personally. -- Joe Beaudoin 18:36, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Horizontally? I guess I'd have to see it. I can't imagine what that means. I don't know if I'll be checking back in before Monday, but you might just change in and see how people react. I kind of liked the white space, but--that's me. When you're looking at how the TOC looks, you might look at Lee Adama as well as non-character articles to see how it looks when put into play. --Day 19:26, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

I strongly think you should revert them to the wikipedia monobook style. There was nothing wrong with them before. --Peter Farago 19:55, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Good points. I've reversed the change. Still, I believe that there's a lot of wasted space done with the TOC. Don't know if anyone else agrees, but I'd be willing to consider any suggestions. -- Joe Beaudoin 21:02, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Honestly, my opinion is that the guys at Wikipedia spend far more hours and energy agonizing over these things than we could ever put in. Short of a tasteful color scheme, my feeling is that we should put our energy into creating high-quality content here, not a signature web design. --Peter Farago 21:34, 2 September 2005 (EDT)

Speaking of web design, I don't know if you folks are in love with the red/black default color scheme, but I had to switch to the Monobook (wiki.org default) style. The red and black hurt my eyes, and if I couldn't switch it, I wouldn't have an account here at all. It almost turned me off in the first place, and I think it might keep people from contributing, especially anonymous contributors. Just my two cents. --Fang Aili 17:41, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

I know that some people aren't going to like the design, but it is unique to the Wiki. Perhaps, though, it should be indicated somewhere that users can change the skin at their discretion. -- Joe Beaudoin 22:57, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

Maybe a button that says "switch to black on white screen", or something. I'm not sure if that's possible when the user isn't logged in, though. --Fang Aili 23:03, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

What do you think about giving the TOCs black backgrounds again? I thought that looked less imposing. The red does look good for the image thumbnails, though. (And I like the Red&Black, FWIW.) --Peter Farago 01:38, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I, too, would like a return to the black box with red border. Also, were I in charge, I'd lose the red line under the word Contents, but that's me. Then, if it were to float left, rather than not float, it might look much better... if people are into the whole floating thing. The Red and Black thing doesn't bother me. I really dislike looking at a lot of white, so I would rather not look at a black on white theme. Whenever I design some HTML, I tend to make the BG a lighter grey so I'm not bombarding my eyes with quite so many photons. ;) --Day 02:31, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I floated the TOC in The Twelve Colonies, to good effect, I think (although I'm not certain it shouldn't be on the right). However, this is only really appropriate for articles with tall and narrow TOCs. Wikipedia uses templates {{TOCright}} and {{TOCleft}} for floating on a per-article basis. It might be interesting to bring those over, but in the meantime it's also possible to use the construct <div style="float:left">__TOC__</div>. --Peter Farago 03:06, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions

Joe. I went ahead and made the above-linked page. Over at the Characters project page, we got into a debate about verb tense. This would also be applicable for other articles, especially episode guides. There've got to be plenty of other things that would go on a Project Page except that they apply to several projects (or all). If there's already something like this, then I apologize and just point me (and Peter and Colonial One) at it and we'll get to debating standards, etc. I felt I should point this page-creation out to you so that it might get mention in the little announce box thing when something is under discussion that's important and needs a significant consensus. Also, because you might be interested and you might like to weigh in on things. In fact, I think there might be a couple of topics on this very talk page that could be moved to the talk page of Standards and Conventions at your descretion. --Day 05:14, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

"New Message" problem

Hi Joe. Day suggested I contact you about the problem I'm having with the "new message" message--It won't go away, even after I've checked my messages. He said that you've run into this problem before. Can you help me? Thanks. --Fang Aili 17:33, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

It's recurred for me as well, after you fixed it earlier. --Peter Farago 20:52, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

Ack. Did some research with the MediaWiki bugzilla, and I came up with this. Try: http://www.battlestarwiki.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Peter_Farago&action=purge. (For Fang Aili, use: http://www.battlestarwiki.org/index.php?title=User_talk:Fang_Aili&action=purge.) See if that helps. -- Joe Beaudoin 22:55, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

Didn't work. I tried reloading and stuff; no dice. --Fang Aili 23:07, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

No dice. --Peter Farago 23:08, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

I believe the problem is more to do with the "newtalk" flags being cached, if anything else, probably on server-level. This seems to be why some users have the problem, and why some do not. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be beating that Leoben fellow into a bloody pulp... -- Joe Beaudoin 10:20, 15 September 2005 (EDT)

Template issue

At your convenience, could you pop over to Template talk:Twelve Colonies Series and try to help settle a dispute there? A cetrain user has started taking a proprietary attitude to articles he's created, which I think completely overrides the purpose of this site. Kuralyov 22:46, 18 September 2005 (EDT)

My contribution to the articles aside, my opinion is not worth less than yours. --Peter Farago 22:47, 18 September 2005 (EDT)

• • I didn;t say you were worth less than me. However, it's interesting that you made the case that my opinion held less weight than yours because you'd added more to the article in question than I had...Kuralyov 22:52, 18 September 2005 (EDT)

Image Floats

When using the extended image markup to float an image left or right without a thumbnail, a red background gets left behind in my browser. At the moment I'm using <div style="float:right;"></div> tags to surround the image, which doesn't give me the problem, but the use of HTML is undesirable for various reasons. Do you know why this is happening, and whether or not it's fixable? --Peter Farago 21:38, 20 September 2005 (EDT)

I'll check that issue out and get back to you. Thanks! -- Joe Beaudoin 22:15, 20 September 2005 (EDT)

Hosting

If the cost of hosting is a hardship for you, have you considered joining wikicities? They host Memory Alpha, and don't currently have a BSG wiki. (Or is that not possible due to the Creative Commons / GFDL licensing issues?) --Peter Farago 13:32, 22 September 2005 (EDT)

It isn't a hardship at all, actually. I just want to make the option available for people to donate financially, should they choose to do so, in the same way Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation asks for donations. Not that we are anywhere near the importance of Wikipedia, but if we can get people to donate to improve the Wiki, that'd be nice. :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 22:09, 22 September 2005 (EDT)

Quote-o-matic

Joe, would you mind weighing in in this discussion: Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions#The_Freakin'_Quote-o-Matic? Just so we better know how it works and can make a convention/standard and then go make things conform to it. Thanks. And feel free to immediately archive this once you've taken a look. No reason to clutter up your talk page for months. --Day 14:52, 4 October 2005 (EDT)

Jzanjani

Although I find the idea of banning users or threatening to do so distasteful and heavy-handed, I must now join Ricimer in requesting some disciplinary action on your part against Jzanjani. Since the above discussion, he has issued:

• A sarcastic and offensive "apology" posted to User talk:Ricimer, which targeted Ricimer, Spencerian, Watcher and myself with an offensive gesture.
• Vandalism of Ricimer's user page.

Despite our best efforts to extend him the benefit of the doubt, and Ricimer's tactful disengagement, it is clear that he has no intention to stop his harassment. Ricimer is one of our oldest and best contributors, and deserves more respect than this. For his part, Jzanjani is clearly both intelligent and well-spoken when he chooses to be, but if we are to collaborate effecitvely he must end his contemptuous behavior toward his fellow wikipedians. --Peter Farago 04:42, 8 October 2005 (EDT)

I concur. I know Ricimer's worth, and we all collectively remind him when he's being too hard on newbies, but we need our conservatives around here to keep ourselves in check. And, although Ricimer appeared to start it first, Jzanjani won't let it go, and appears to be continuing. A temporary ban to cool jets would be welcome. Spencerian 12:08, 8 October 2005 (EDT)

Silly Pages

One thing that Jzanjani did do right yesterday that was quite funny to me was the interjection of a picture of a toaster on the Toaster talk page. I ran with it and did a little update to the Toaster page. Even Peter, our Concision Jihad "cleric" dug it and created a new category for future sillyness, although Ricimer is a little anal about accuracy. I added the new Numerology page as well to the catagory. I think the page really lightens up the place--and it's helped me laugh after all the fistfighting on the Wiki of late. How'd you like it, Joe? To note, not even Wikipedia escapes such levity: Note: Wikipedia:Extreme Ironing and Wikipedia:Chewbacca Defense. :) 12:15, 8 October 2005 (EDT)