Herocopia talk:Community portal

Server Abnormalities

Hey JB as I've been going around moving pages around, I've been getting this message popping up some...

"Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination"

I just play around with it, refreshing or something and it will disappear. And sometimes it'll be on top of text on pages. Just a heads up. --Astrozac (talk) 23:22, 8 March 2014 (PST)

The trimming of the "The"s ...

The recent changing of the use of "The" needs some discussion.

For starters, what Wiki rule are we referring to here. I would like to read it so I can reflect and put some context into this shift of policy.

Please provide a link.

- Thanks --Infobroker (talk) 16:53, 12 February 2014 (PST)

Sorry Zak, but the more time I spend thinking about this the more I am against it. These are titles of characters, the word "The" is inclusive with that title. I know back in the dawn of this web site we had sorting issue with pages, but we overcame that lack of knowledge a long time ago. Please revert all of these back to the way they were. I am also thinking we need to get the "The" onto most of the groups like 'The First Family' and 'The Irregulars' along with several of the single characters like 'The Confessor'

Thanks. --Infobroker (talk) 22:18, 12 February 2014 (PST)

Here. I was just scrolling on Wikipedia one day looking up characters noticing that typing in the The Hulk, redirects to just Hulk. And I looked at the list of Marvel superheroes pages and none of them have "The" either. The Flash redirects to just Flash. The Savage Dargon redirects to Savage Dragon...

Apart from that, it felt like too much of a judgement call. Some like The Gentleman always seems to be referred to with The. But The Confessor, not always.

--Astrozac (talk) 06:28, 13 February 2014 (PST)

Thanks for the link. On a general site level, I feel the need to mention that not all the consensus dictates of Wikipedia apply here. For example, they are not keen on opinion, this site is loaded with it, we even have section titles dedicated to speculation and opinion. They don't want fan perspective. This entire site is fan driven, and meant to cater to fan perspective. I have read the link, I appreciate the perspective given, and for them and their mission it makes sense. But note, it is a still guideline, not a rule, even for them, and they close with the advise of applying common sense to the application of the "definite" or "indefinite" when deciding when and where to use it.

You are right, it is indeed a judgement call. I kinda stand on the side that says that is not just any old Hulk being referred to, that is THE Hulk. I prefer that a naked ("Hulk") search operation cause the page redirect to go the other way with "The" displayed and be part of the title. Same would be true for The Flash. It may well be that this is the only super-hero series based site that goes this route, but in my judgement, many of those characters like The Gentleman, The Living Nightmare, The Confessor and The Hanged Man are practically screaming for the definite when referencing them. Their page title feels a bit naked without them.

Now, having said all that, I grant this bit of possible compromise on my part. For now, ok, we don't need to undo the whole trimmed list. However, the ones that are practically screaming in outrage at the trim (those mentioned above and a few others) need to be given their definitives.

I emphasis the "for now" clause. A couple of the major models that drive my reasons for doing this site, is/was Marvel's Silver-age Annuals and their fact-sheet pages that they used to round out the page counts. When I first saw those, they were so cool. Definitely an epiphany moment. So yea a general warning, those are loaded with definitives and even adjectives.

For Instance:

- Thanks --Infobroker (talk) 09:21, 13 February 2014 (PST)

P.S. Zak, I un-trimmed the ones that I thought needed un-trimming. Please feel free to challenge any of them. That is still fair game. I just am not keen on the full trim of all them. Thanks for understanding. --Infobroker (talk) 18:17, 13 February 2014 (PST)

The other part was the consistency, it just seemed weird having some but not others and it goes back to the judgement call. I mean for The Xenoform, it kind of depends is it the only one or are there multiple ones? And either way it works referring to it as Xenoform. And we only have Balloon Bandits, not The Balloon Bandits. I know a large part of our initial reasons, were we thought the heroes and villains category pages looked better without a bunch of The's all over the place

The Confessor is the main one I'm not real sure about. He(they) is The Confessor, but just Confessor works. Sort of like N-Forcer. Technically he's known as The N-Forcer, but is widely just referred to as N-Forcer more.

And was The Jackson referred to as The Jackson and not just Jackson. I'd just gone through those issues but can't remember for sure...

I'm generally fine with reverting all of them back, unless there's some you think don't need it. Or making all of them, I was mostly going for consistency(or close enough for consistency.

--Astrozac (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2014 (PST)

Chiming in late here, but is there a way to make the title at the top of a page different than the actual page address, so that it would say "The Gentleman" but the url would end in just "Gentleman"? Because while I agree that including a "The" at the top is ideal, a prefacing "the" is so common in superhero names that if we include one for every single character it applies to (I wouldn't be surprised if that's as much as 25% of entries), it's going to be unwieldy, not to mention visually inelegant with all the blue "the"s.

Obviously, there's redirects, but I don't think making Herocopia redirect-o-rama is the solution, either.

--Yiding (talk) 00:21, 18 February 2014 (PST)

There's this guy --> $wgAllowDisplayTitle <-- which is suppose to make the magic word DISPLAYTITLE override the actual display title. I've tried toggling it to no avail. I'll keep working with it as time permits, because I can see it coming in handy and not just for definite-articles.

In the meantime, pipelinks can be used to reduce and control blue ink.

[[The Confessor|Confessor]]

--> Confessor

However, in this particular case, I prefer the blue ink. But I am also fine with authors who lean the other way. --Infobroker (talk) 21:37, 19 February 2014 (PST)

I got it to work for iGod, when I brought the page from the Way Back Machine. The actual page address and on the villain category still shows IGOD and when you go to edit it, that's how the page reads. But I tried playing with it for N-Forcer, adding The as the display title, but it wouldn't change anything.--Astrozac (talk) 06:29, 20 February 2014 (PST)

Ok, I have figured it out. Only the first character can be lower-cased, no extra letters, and no changing the case of any other letters except the first. So that is of limited value to things like iPods and iGods and whatever names the evolution generations of iPods are endowed with. Not going to help us here.

The link above mentions another option I can toggle, but given the complete open nature of it, I'm not too keen on using it. Especially since it will lead to linkage problems for author trying to figure out exactly what to use.--Infobroker (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2014 (PST)

Category: Unknown Alliance

What about the Unknown Alliance/Other for the Category box, I mentioned wondering about?--Astrozac (talk) 06:33, 14 February 2014 (PST)

I don't think I came across your comments on this Zak. Can you repeat them here please.--Infobroker (talk) 20:40, 16 February 2014 (PST)

Can we also get the Unknown Alliance Alignment in the Categories to the left too? Or should it be moved to an Other category? I just sort of followed suit with other characters, after you created it for the Broken Man, with characters who were more neutral.

--Astrozac (talk) 23:52, 16 February 2014 (PST)

You got it! I pulled it during the SideLiners story for obvious reason. I don't consider them unknown, just neutral. I forgot to bring it back. Sorry. --Infobroker (talk) 21:37, 19 February 2014 (PST)

Alright, I wasn't for sure if that was just created for the Broken Man, with his hipsterness or it was a general unknown, other, neutral. Can delete this part now. --Astrozac (talk) 06:19, 20 February 2014 (PST)

Hang tight here. I plan to employ a different mechanism for resolved issues. One where we don't lose history, but does keep this page from getting abundantly noisy. --Infobroker (talk) 19:52, 20 February 2014 (PST)