Battlestar Wiki:Galactipedians Quorum

This page is one of Battlestar Wiki's many projects. This page serves to coordinate discussion on a particular aspect of this Wiki. The formal recommendations of a project may be treated as policies.

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.)

Before asking a question, check if it's answered by the Battlestar Wiki:FAQ or other pages linked from Battlestar Wiki:Help.

Before answering a newcomer's question abruptly, consider rereading Please do not bite the newcomers.

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.

Ask a new question or begin a new discussion by clicking here.

• Archive 1 (December 3, 2005 to April 12, 2006):

Need help with a new article namespace, Colonel Tigh / Colonel Tye historical connection in TOS?, Cast Data infobox?, The Kitt Joke, When Earth is found..., A proposal, Server time is wrong, Wikipedia user box, Battlestar Galactica Model Kits, error on Battlestar Wiki:Help, Talk pages for actors?, Fatal error, The spam filter, Peabody award, BSG in the Comics, Season 2.0 and 2.5 DVD, Spoiler policy

• Archive 2 (April 15, 2006 to June 12, 2006):

Screencaps, Can't find a picture, Sitenotice on Koenigrules vote, Battlestarwiki Deutsch, Main Page Redesign, Proposed Policies, Community Portal, An apology regarding spokesmanship, User Feedback, "Battlestar Wiki Friends" section, What is a policy?, Binomial nomenclature for ships, Requested Articles, "Relationships" Article, Quorum Definintion, DVD titles., Archiving the Wikipedian Quorum, Featured Article and Featured Picture

• Archive 3 (July 13, 2006 to September 28, 2006):

Scifi.com, Seaon Three Teaser Images and other artwork?, Question/idea, Template: Episode Data, The Hangerbay Comes to Life, Wormholes, DragonCon, Anyone?, Image Taging!, Portal:Cylons/Current Cylon agents, Is this project an official Wikimedia project?, Photo of human cylons of Galactica 1980, Sandbox, Do you see the ball?, Request from FrakParty.com

• Archive 4 (September 27, 2006 to October 10, 2006):

Copyright violations BY Wikipedia?!, Template works in Wikipedia, but not in Battlestar Wiki ... Why?, Standards and Conventions Adjustments, Fanwanking, Wiki up again, Science in the Re-imagined Series Reorganization

Scifipedia

It seems Sci Fi has set up their own wiki, and looking through there I saw some articles which were, while not text-for-text copies, strongly influenced by our setup here. Is this a problem, or can we just let it pass by? --BklynBruzer 12:47, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Which articles? --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:53, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Aaron Douglas, for one. Let me find a few more. --BklynBruzer 12:57, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Katee Sackhoff is eerily similar to ours, as well. --BklynBruzer 13:00, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Well, at first, I was going to say they probably just used an appropriate license, but SCIFIPEDIA:Terms of Use definitely means they don't. This is a problem, as the content there clearly infringes. The same user originated both of the example articles, and they show clear similarity in a way suggesting an attempt to disguise the copying or a very poor effort to paraphase. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 13:26, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Let's have Joe notified on this. They (in proxy) own the rights to talk about the show, but not to copy from other wikis if they are going to respect the MediaWiki process and the licensing. Oh, this isn't new: Wikipedia contributors have greatly boosted many articles from us as well. --Spencerian 15:26, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

Yeah, I know it's not new, but I figured it should be brought up. --BklynBruzer 17:21, 18 October 2006 (CDT)

I've been aware of the growing issue. Scifi claims that they are the ones who wrote the original articles, such as the one on Edward James Olmos. Right now, I need help gathering evidence to the contrary -- please feel free to either e-mail me or post any evidence here. Since my time is now getting extremely limited, I need help in this. Thank you! -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 19:20, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

Both the BSWiki and Scifipedia use MediaWiki and both has history showing page edits. Its obviously which site wrote it first and which one just edited in large chunks. Someone really needs to give JohnRDouglas a kick up the bum. Of course its a bit of a dilema because if SciFi really wanted to they could force us to pull virtually all our content, or at the very least the images. We dont want to piss them off, but at the same time, they cant go around using material written by other people. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 19:37, 13 November 2006 (CST)

german Battlestar Wiki

Again german Battlestar Wiki was the first, who aired a german description of the new episode Exodus, Part II. Thank you to all of you, who aired the english description very fast and made this translation possible. :o) -- Tirkon 14:30, 21 October 2006 (CDT)

Danke, Tirkon and to everyone as well. Folks like yourself on the Internationalization project are some of our most remarkable contributors because you have to manage up to 3 separate versions, while us meager English users just have our place. --Spencerian 20:49, 21 October 2006 (CDT)

Miniseries Standardization

Of all the episode articles, the Miniseries article is most nonstandard, with much information that has been discussed ad nauseum in many other articles on Battlestar Wiki. As with any episode article, the content should reflect the parts aired, the significant summary of events, and brief questions and analysis generated by the initial broadcast (many of which has been answered).

The current format has extended analysis in the second part, most of which is painfully redundant with Battlestar Galactica (RDM) and many, many other articles. I will be revising both parts to reflect their episodic nature, separating the events in each part, with questions and analysis for each episode. The articles will be renamed based on our current naming procedure in managing multi-part episodes. Both parts will avoid extended questions and analysis as much from the miniseries has been answered, but will point to the episodes and other articles that answer these questions. Any topics or sections that discuss the overall changes between the Re-imagined Series and Original Series will be moved to Battlestar Galactica (RDM) if the item is not already present. --Spencerian 09:28, 25 October 2006 (CDT)

The Cylons (RDM) article seems as an introduction to the Battlestar Galactica (RDM) as well. Further I also think, that the term Cylon Agent is at the latest obsolete now. Caprica-Six, Galactica-Sharon and Caprica Sharon are the first examples against. Especially Caprica-Sharon could be called a "human agent" now. A Number Five shot Caprica Six because she helped Baltar. German version had the "mercy of the late birth" and did not use the term from the beginning ;o) -- Tirkon 11:34, 26 October 2006 (CDT)

Special Number Three in third season

Since the third season we have one Number Three Character who played and will probably play in future a special role. If I remember correct, it was the same Three, who was slain by Six in Downloaded. We heard that the oracle said, she never should hold the child, because everything will change then. But she did. The first consequence was, that she did not nuke the town. I think, now at the latest we should give her a special name. In the describtions it would be much easier, to identify her. What do you think? And what is about Caprica-Three, because she was introduced there? -- Tirkon 11:18, 26 October 2006 (CDT)

Images

I am not sure why, but my entires on Valkyrie, Eugene Novacek and Admiral Corman which were primarily just images uploaded onto the pages were deleted...I don't get it, doesn't it help to have pictures to refer to the subject the page is discussing. If it is a matter of spoiling future episodes with these pictures, readers are imformed at the top of the page which all of the above mentioned pages have, that the page is a spoiler. If it is my own fault for not siting where i got the images taking them down isn't exactly the answer, why not modify them yourselves. I realize I am a huge amateur so, discussing this for me will help myself and possibly others.

It's not a spoiler issue at all, and your efforts are appreciated. In this case I believe it was simply a matter of the images being duplicates of images already previously uploaded. I'll see if I can track down the image names so that the articles that you mention can be corrected. --Steelviper 14:49, 9 November 2006 (CST)

Apparently they can be found at Shane's gallery. --Steelviper 14:55, 9 November 2006 (CST)

Firefly class

I have what might be a dumb question, and I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but here it is: Does anyone think it would be a good idea to create an article for Firefly-class transports? I mean, a Firefly class ship could be seen in the skies of Caprica in the miniseries, so it might be worthy of an article. The reason I am asking is because the Star Wars Wiki has an article for Firefly class ships (see: Firefly-class mid-bulk transport). Basically, since a Firefly-class ship was shown on a single panel of a Star Wars Webstrip, it was deemed worthy of it's own article on the Star Wars Wiki, so I was thinking that since a Firefly could be seen in the Galactica miniseries, it might be worth an article here as well. Just thought I would ask about it. NickScryer 19:38, 12 November 2006 (CST)

The appearance of that ship is noted in our "Easter Egg" article (though we still need to come up with a way to increase the exposure to that article). Enterprise also made an appearance in the miniseries, but those cameos were both obvious tributes, and neither of those ships was ever to be seen again. Should either of those craft make another appearance we'll know for certain that they were intended to be canon, but until that point it'd probably be best to err on the side of caution and assume that they are just one-shot gags from the VFX guys at Zoic. --Steelviper 20:44, 12 November 2006 (CST)

As Spencerian said, these were likely one-time cameos. There's very little need to add individual articles about them, when the Re-imagined Series References would more than suffice. Also, other than a brief appearance, what else of an in-universe nature would there be to say about Serenity or Enterprise? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 09:52, 13 November 2006 (CST)

The amusing part is that the footage with the Enterpise in it (the first fleet shot at the end of the Miniseries) is in the opening credits of each episode with, if I remember correctly, the exception of the New Caprica ones. --Talos 09:58, 13 November 2006 (CST)

Formatting box

This isn't really a question about the wiki per se, but I thought this would be the most appropriate place to ask. I'm one of the admins over at the Star Trek Expanded Universe wiki, which, if you didn't know, is the fanfic/fan film counterpart to Memory Alpha. I was wondering how I would go about having the box below the editing field with all of the formatting shortcuts added to my wiki. Considering that I'm also the rank archivist for the wiki, it's extremely agitating to have to type out the <sup> tags every time I'm writing something about the different grades of Petty Officers and Second/First Lieutenants. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks. --Kevin W. 15:24, 26 November 2006 (CST)

It's at MediaWiki:Edittools on this wiki, and it should be in the same place at your own wiki, assuming it runs on MediaWiki. --CalculatinAvatar^(C-T) 17:38, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Ok, I added it, but it doesn't seem to work. Can you tell what the problem is? --Kevin W. 17:59, 26 November 2006 (CST)

The stuff is showing up on edit pages, but it's all text and no links. --Kevin W. 18:17, 26 November 2006 (CST)

If I were to guess, it's that there's CSS stuff at work. Note the div and span id's up at the top in the code? I'm betting the default css styles here (bsgbook and bsgmonobook) have been rigged to interpret those correctly. Hopefully Shane or Joe will notice this, as I think both of them were involved with getting it up and running here. I'm sure they'd be glad to help another wiki out (whenever their ridiculous schedules will allow). --Steelviper 18:55, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Hi Kevin! Welcome to the wiki! ;-) Actually, in order to get edittools working, you will need the charinsert extension. Obviously, if you have need for any assistance from me, please feel free to ask! :-) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 19:58, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Ok, I need help on how to get the charinsert tag working. I have no idea how to do it. --Kevin W. 20:21, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Hmm... Did you edit the LocalSettings.php config file and upload? Reason I ask is because the extension is not showing up on STEU's Version page. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 20:42, 26 November 2006 (CST)

The thing is, I don't know where the Local Settings page is. Exactly where is it? --Kevin W. 20:48, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Do you have FTP access to the server, because that's the only way to get it, edit it and then upload it again. (Sadly, It's not accessible through the web-interface used by the MediaWiki software.) If you don't feel comfortable with changing the stuff directly on the server -- or don't have the access -- I suggest firing off an e-mail to the Wikia folks and let them know to install the charinsert extension for you. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 20:54, 26 November 2006 (CST)

Ratings?

One of the stats on the Lurker's guide episode guides were a "P5 Rating", an informal poll rating the episodes. Would that be of value? Personally, I'd almost rather see something more like the last vote in the Coaches poll for college football, where the votes are published. Something with the user, the rating, and maybe a brief explanation of why they rated it like they did. My only fear is that may degenerate into cross-talk and vote manipulation ("I voted a 1 because User:Starbuck_Rocks_My_World is an idiot and voted it a 10 when it should really be more like a 6 but she just really like Starbuck episodes.") Some sort of automated tabulation would also be good, as we wouldn't want to add more admin overhead (especially for older episodes). --Steelviper 12:30, 21 December 2006 (CST)

I'm not too keen on the idea, personally. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 16:55, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Disagree as well. There are enough forums where people can rate episodes. For a place that strives to be objective, it would add unneeded subjectivity --Serenity 17:17, 21 December 2006 (CST)

Some kind of javascript/dhtml/css user star rating might be a cool little addition though, but i think that it should be clearly a user rating not a rating given by the battlestar wiki officially. --Mercifull ^{(Talk/Contribs)} 03:46, 22 December 2006 (CST)

I can see where there might be conflict with the "encyclopedic" mission (an encyclopedia might note that critics loved/hated a particular work, but shouldn't be in the business of critiquing itself). The user rating was just a thought I had when pondering some of the differences between us and the lurker's guide. Differences aren't always bad... --Steelviper 07:56, 22 December 2006 (CST)