Battlestar Wiki:Chiefs' noticeboard

This noticeboard is a location to discuss and coordinate administrative tasks for the Battlestar Wiki.

It is my hope that this place can serve as a location for administrators to coordinate their efforts on the maintenance tasks of the Wiki (it's not ALL fun and games), as well as a spot for our contributors to be able to bring things to the attention of the admins if something needs to be done. Need a protected page edited? An article or picture deleted? Admins will watchlist this page so that your request won't get lost in the shuffle.

Tasks

Special pages that could use some attention include:

• The Article Orphanarium
• Dead-end Pages - usually a sign that there are no citations
• Battlestar Wiki:Community Portal - ideas to develop a "portal" for the wiki community

General

David Larson Screen Capture

Hi

I am new to the site and wanted to say that it is one of the best Galactica sites on the web. I have used it as a reference source on many, many occassions. Thanks to all the contributors.

A few of weeks from now, I have an opportunity to get an autograph from David Larson (Baby Walker from TOS and one of the Super Scouts). Does anyone have a screen capture of him that I could get him to autograph? Thanks Larrydale140

Hi, Larry. A number of folks that work on the Battlestar Wiki:Original Series Article Development Project have the DVD collection and have contributed many screenshots. I would direct your request on The Super Scouts article to request this picture. Oh, in the future, to sign and date/timestamp your talk entries, just place a couple of hyphens and four tilde ("~") symbols. --Spencerian 16:12, 8 February 2006 (EST)

The Walker article has the best shot that I could find in Greetings From Earth. I could take a shot of the whole scene (that includes Sarah holding him), though, if you wanted something bigger to print out. You might ask Mokwella about the Galactica 1980 stuff, as he's been the ONLY source of screenshots and information from that series that we've really had. --Steelviper 16:30, 8 February 2006 (EST)

If you click through the thumbnail on the right you should find the full 640x480 screenshot. It's the best pic of Walker that I could easily identify from Greetings from Earth. --Steelviper 18:18, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Thank you. The screen capture is perfect. --Larrydale140 12:18, 9 February 2006 (EST)

Home, Part II

Home, Part II lacks a summary section in the episode summary. I JUST deleted that episode from my DVR last night (was cleaning things up), so if somebody who has a copy of that could take that on that'd be great. It'd be a shame to have a gap in our RDM episode coverage. --Steelviper 11:12, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Ah, hell, I can probably do that one from memory. I'll look into it if someone doesn't beat me to it. --Spencerian 11:22, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Fire continuously? Thanks for looking into it.--Steelviper 11:26, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Toaster revision

I have proposed a large-scale revision in Talk:Toaster--The Merovingian 14:16, 20 February 2006 (EST)

Billy

Does anyone know why Billy was killed off? I have been unable to find an official statement on this issue. Did the actor Paul Campbell transfer to a different show or was his death solely story oriented? Is it possible he may come back as a cylon?

Paul Campbell will be starring in another show, I forget the name.--Noneofyourbusiness 18:26, 8 March 2006 (EST)

According to RDM's podcast for Sacrifice, the decision to off him was done to let Campbell take advantage of the leading roles he had been offered in other series. -- Joe Beaudoin 17:25, 8 March 2006 (CST)

It's a shame because I liked the Billy character, and Paul Campbell is pretty funny. See David Eick's Video Blog Number 11: Billy Gets No Respect. I just watched it last night and am still smiling. -- Laineylain 14:29, 9 March 2006 (CST)

Spam Alert

I've noticed an uptick in the amount of spamming recently, all linking to the same sites (looks like some sort of a prescription drug outfit). Examples:

1. Redhook
2. Punchcard
3. Amanda
4. Koharski
5. Sh0t
6. Pearl
7. Mrmortisland
8. Eldron
9. Davie
10. Smcn
11. Scofco
12. Fraseyboy

... (I'm going to stop updating this list. It's redundant with the IP block list right now. If we don't do a range block by then I may copy-n-paste the current "week" block people to make sure they get a longer stint.)

I don't have access to their IP addresses, but it appears from the IP block log that they are trying to repeat offend. Just wanted to let you guys know so you can be on the lookout. These persons (if there are, in fact, multiple), have been amply warned and the "leniency window" is quickly slamming shut. --Steelviper 12:26, 9 March 2006 (CST)

I wonder if they're targeting the TOS pages just to aggravate me. Or maybe they're trying to target lower-traffic pages. I don't understand the strategy, but there's not hiding from the Recent Changes (even if they mark their changes as minor). --Steelviper 17:10, 9 March 2006 (CST)

The idea is that they chose short articles on the assumption they have low traffic, I believe; they probably aim for stubs linked by 2-3 well-linked pages, as a trade-off for higher Google returns vs. visibility to wiki-users.

By the way, is there a way to run a script to pass/fail edits? If so, simple blocking of any edit that adds over, say, 10 URI's to a page would fix the problem until the attacking bots got updated. ...I hesitate to suggest a long-term solution of requiring membership in a group (to which users with 2-3 valid edits are routinely added) to add external links at all.

On the other hand, a Captcha for all edits seems more feasible; captchas for non-members of a group would allow for maintenance bots and not annoying high-edit-count humans, too. [I posted this 11:34, 2006-03-10 (CST) and appear to have forgotten to sign it. --CalculatinAvatar 00:10, 5 April 2006 (CDT)]

Captchas are a good idea but unfortunatly easily broken, its best to use a very strong captcha in conjunction with other forms of spam control. On my forum for example i have a hidden field on the forms that means a registration is only made when a person psysically loads the page to sign up. Spammers generall use automated programs to just call the scripts and dont actually load the site. Perhaps a similar idea to this would work? Mercifull 03:53, 28 March 2006 (CST)

SPAMER ALERT

Lpkserj <--- Right now. Block! --Shane ^{(C - E)} 16:50, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Already on it, Red Leader. :-) -- Joe Beaudoin 17:01, 19 March 2006 (CST)

There are a few of them now... --Shane ^{(C - E)} 17:02, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Now they just keep coming... this is going to be a longgggggggg night. --Shane ^{(C - E)} 17:07, 19 March 2006 (CST)

There is another one know, Joe. Moria, like the wife of Jack Ryan. --Shane ^{(C - E)} 17:17, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Thanks for the alert, Shane. Maybe this onslaught might merit another look at the checkuser function (for the purposes of doing some ip range blocks)? --Steelviper 17:47, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Actually, I just implemented MediaWiki anti-spam patch. It's similar to what I had done before, but when I upgraded the Wiki software the customized files I created were overwritten as well. (Which is why this happened in the first place.) My bad. -- Joe Beaudoin 17:49, 19 March 2006 (CST)

Constant Vigilance

It has come to my attention that vandals are planning a massive attack against all wikis on Easter (April 16th), having started at Wikipedia-Prime as well as MemoryAlpha, etc. Stay sharpe. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:27, 4 April 2006 (CDT)

*sigh* Maybe it would be easier to close down on Easter or something. "Lord[s]! What [frakkin' idiots] these mortals be!" (almost) William Shakespear --Day ^(talk) 23:33, 4 April 2006 (CDT)

"The multiplying villanies of nature do swarm upon him!" --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:38, 4 April 2006 (CDT)

Any links Merv? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 09:29, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

Vandal notice board at Wikipedia-Prime. That's the guy. Been pulling stunts at MemoryAlpha, too.--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 15:14, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Can we do admin account activation here? Then you could lookup the username and ip to see if its the same as any of the spammers on the other sites before letting them in? Purely as a temporary measure of course --Mercifull 09:33, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

We could. Temporarily, of course. (This wouldn't be such an issue as I have that day off anyway -- obviously.) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 09:42, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

Amazon referral links

Perhaps as a means of raising a little bit of funding that Joe should register as an amazon.com and .co.uk affiliate and change the links in all the merch pages accordingly so that if anyone chooses to purchase any dvds, books or music from a link on this site at least a bit of credit goes towards running this place? --Mercifull 10:10, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

I was toying around with that idea. I was also toying around with the idea of Google ads -- only in my delerium because I really don't care for that idea all that much. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 11:20, 5 April 2006 (CDT)

Spoiler policy

I would like BattlestarWiki's Standards and Conventions page to address the following re: Spoilers. You see, I think that a cast member mentioning something happening in an upcoming episode is a spoiler which we can post on BattlestarWiki. However, as you may recall Ron Moore warning in his blog, in the days leading up to the season 2 finale one guy got his hands on an advanced DVD of the show and posted a lot of screencaps giving away most of the major plot points. RDM was not pleased, nor was I. We should not include such news into our updates of BSwiki. Actually, what I wanted to bring up was something else more important: From time to time, people post what they CLAIM are "advanced script fragments" from upcoming episodes. More often than not, they're actually either fake, or (rarely) from such an early version of the script that it has little to do with the finalized story. The idea which lends a shade of credibility to this (instead of just instantly thinking "someone made this up") is that logically, they send out early fragments of the script for potential guest stars to audition with. Still almost all of these things I've ever seen are faked, while the others were from such early draft versions that they did not resemble the story at all. You could count on one hand the times these things are actually what appeared in the show. ---->Also, they're not exactly sourced. As a result of this lack of sourcing, many are faked. I mean, there is that handful which might actually have been "demo scripts" for guest actors, but as I said, these are rarely relevant to the actual plot. As a combination of their generally fake nature and lack of sourcing, I propose that we add to our Standards and Conventions a rule clarifying our spoiler sourcing policy, that such "advanced script fragments" found on messageboards and such should not be used as a source of information to be put onto BattlestarWiki in any form whatsoever. The only acceptible "spoilers" we use are cast and crew interview information, etc. '--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 15:25, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

For the sake of clarity, I would be fine with this being noted in S&C. However, I believe "script fragments" and message board postings don't qualify as sources and would be eradicated due to the Battlestar Wiki:Citation Jihad. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate} 15:36, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

Indeed. It's just that several people have been circulating these things and new users (infuriatingly) take them as fact over there. I mean that D3u5 user probably saw it and assumed it was fact and tried to write it up here. That's why I brought it up. But I actually think our current spoiler policies cover this very well, I just felt it should be re-iterated. Thanks. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 16:50, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

I think that's not unreasonable. Maybe a shortened, kind of condensed blurb on S&C with a link to the full text of the Spoiler policy. Unless you would rather someone else do it, Merv, I'd like to see how you would realize this (i.e. go ahead and do it, unless you don't have the time or whatever). --Day ^{(Talk - Admin)} 19:36, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

Our current policy is that rumors and spoilers need to be sourced, and should be hidden by spoiltext when not on episode pages. I don't think we need to ban references to non-production sources - that would rule out the accurate and helpful Patriot Resource, among other things. Do I misunderstand your intention? --Peter Farago 19:45, 10 April 2006 (CDT)

The policy I would like to see, personally is something like this: "Encyclopedic pages should contain only officially released (press release, TV listing) or definitifely sourced (producer's blog or podcast, detailed interview) information. After the episode airs, the episode itself is of course definitive. No detailed synopsis, no matter how credible the source, should be posted on an encyclopedic page before an episode has aired in one of its major markets."

I deliberately chose not to batten that down to "...aired in the US..." on the chance that some scheduling oddity might lead to, say, the UK seeing an episode before SciFi ran it. That sort of thing happened all the time with B5, but I don't actually know if it can happen with BSG.--Uncle Mikey 14:15, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

The UK has Season 1 before it was shown in America but season 2 is about 3 months behind the us airdates :( --Mercifull 14:49, 11 April 2006 (CDT)

See also

• A list of all admins on Battlestar Wiki

Original Series definition: a title of nobility (e.g. Lord Baltar)

Re-imagined Series definition: in military parlance, directive to continue the attack; otherwise used to refer to journalists (TRS: "Maelstrom")

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