Ten Forward/Archive 2005

Template:Tenforward

Episode References

I see everywhere differing styles of referencing episodes; and cannot find in the Manual of Style anything specific that denotes what the SOP is. Personally, on the articles I've worked on, I use:

In-Line:

(TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint")

or as a list:

VOY: "Caretaker"

And while I ensure to maintain continuity within my own articular contributions; I do not see that within MA as a whole. I would like to keep an eye out and make conformation when I need to refarding episode references, but need first to know what the standard is. | THOR 21:38, 3 Feb 2005 (CET)

It won't help you when I tell you from the german Memory Alpha. I can't remind me of any rule of style that tells me how to arrange such references and so everyone has his own style. I once brought up the very same issue on the german 10F which led to (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"); italic to emphase on the meta-trek nature and quto-marks for titles. -- Florian K 11:13, 8 Feb 2005 (CET)

I'm still looking to get guidance on this as well as the same below, but I'm loathe to "nag"; have I addressed this issue in the wrong forum? | THOR 20:16, 23 Feb 2005 (GMT)

That style is what has traditionally been used, since the start of the wiki, for referencing episodes. I will add something to this effect to Memory Alpha:Cite your sources, and possibly the Manual of Style. I have noticed the italicizing of said references creeping in, and have reverted to the original style when found for consistency. -- Michael Warren | Talk 00:22, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT)

I'm still seeing users using italicization with episode references. I am hesitant to continually change them: checking both Memory Alpha:Cite your sources and Manual of Style this doesn't seem to have been added as official SOP; and as such I have no regulatory backing or standing to be making these changes other than this 10F thread. -- THOR 13:39, 18 Mar 2005 (EST)

Well, since it is said to emphasise book titles it is only logical to emphasise episode and movie titles as well. It does also merge with the style to indent and italicise background information. Keeping a list without italicisation is also an analogon to keeping an entire background section un-italicised. (see: Episodenverweise) -- Kobi - (Talk) 14:06, 18 Mar 2005 (EST)

My take on this is as follows: I understand everyone's point here, but to me - despite "professional writing guides", it is, frankly, rather distracting when I am trying read an article and see non-italicized items that are from outside the "Trek-universe" POV, as I have yet to see a good explaination as to why it must be included inside the "Trek-universe" POV when it really belongs to ours (the outside). That certainly was not what was in mind when they designed the MLA guide -- that is jumping in and out of "reality". Natually if I see it in italics I will skip over it or click it if I wish to go to the page, otherwise there are several cases where in the middle of a paragraph there will be three long unitalicized episode references in a row and it really takes away from the natural flow of the fiction. --Gvsualan 22:06, 27 Feb 2005 (GMT)

I understand this argument, and have some sympathy with it; however, what I find distracting is inconsistency in the format between articles, or, worse, within a given article. If there were a consensus that all inline references should be in italics, I might support making a bot to make those changes (if such a thing is possible). However, as things stand now the majority of entries are in (roughly) MLA standard, which puts names of television series and films in italics, but puts individual episodes unitalicized in quotation marks. Barring a consensus that we should change this, I'm going to continue to put citations in the current standard form. I won't edit an article to change an italicized citation alone, but if I'm making other changes to an article I'll probably change the citations to the current standard while I'm at it. --Josiah Rowe 15:21, 28 Mar 2005 (EST)

I went ahead and made some changes to Memory Alpha:Cite your sources about citations. I myself could not find what the preferred citation form should be so I put in the first and most seen, as far as I can tell, form -- Q 01:51, 28 Mar 2005 (EST)

That page ought to have something about film citation as well. The standard has been that the names of TV series and films are put in italics (per MLA form), but I hesitate to put that on the page myself until the subject has been aired a bit more fully here. --Josiah Rowe 15:21, 28 Mar 2005 (EST)

Maybe a short vote (for example over a ten day period) on the two styles to see which is the preferred one by the archivists. I did some quick research on citations and found several styles and some depend on if you are writing an article or a book. There is however something to be said to keep the citations styles between the different MA's the same. -- Q 04:18, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I'm a big supporter of italics for all information that is out of Trek POV -- this includes episode names when the occur in or behind paragraphs. I know some users are making an effort to remove this style, but that seems preemptive -- there's never been a clear consensus on it.

One think i'd like to do away with is italicizing alternate timelines -- the events of an alternate timeline don't take place from "our" POV, therefore they should not be styled so -- besides, there is always confusion over what is alternate -- for example, what happened on Earth in "Storm Front" is alternate, but the events that occurred aboard ship was "real" -- the people all went home remembering having lived that -- it was a "real" part of their lives and timeline that they visited another timeline, therefore those events arent covered

Since alternate timelines are ambiguous anyway, i dont see any real way to conclude what really happened in the end of some of the more complex ones -- so italicizing them is a really uninformative and distracting feature. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 15:48, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I certainly recognize my name when it's not said, but I would like to clarify my position on this subject:

I do no espouse to "support" one variety of reference standardization over another. I just want defined clarity on what the standard should be. I now make changes based on Memory_Alpha:Cite_your_sources, but beforehand I simply wanted some standard; I chose the variety that I did (the same that was added to the cite your sources page) because it's what I felt I saw more frequently and proliferously, therefore making it easier to change fewer pages to an already unofficially stated standard.

As for what preferences I do have: I suppose I would prefer the italicization of all OOC (out of character) information (episode/movie references, background information, notes, bloopers, tidbits, etc) and the indention of alternate timelines/universes. I would support wiki-linking as frequently as the majority prefers, but personally lean towards once per article -- or once per section for articles long enough to garner tables of contents. That's my 3¢ — THOR 11:32, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I certainly support indentation over italicization for alternate universe happenings. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 11:43, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Python Wikipedia Bot

Memory Alpha is now being supported by the Python Wikipedia Bot Framework [1]. -- Head 11:34, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT)

After some research I found [2] and [3]. It reads that this Bot is now enabled for Memory Alpha but I think it's not in use yet. Are there any plans for bot-policies what-so-ever? -- Florian - Talk 12:35, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Could we please get some opinions on this topic? We of MA/de would like to use this bot in order to set interwiki links for episodes and categories. -- Kobi - (Talk) 10:04, 7 Mar 2005 (GMT)

My main concern is that if it is used, will it have an effect on the performanc of MA ?. I often noticed that it can take 5+ seconds to load a page, from my point of view MA is sluggish. Using this bot might increase this IMHO -- Q 18:18, 9 Mar 2005 (GMT)

I just read some of the wiki[p|m]edia articles about bots, and wouldn't be opposed to have some bots on MA as well. We should adopt these policies, though and, regarding the recent performance problems, the bot should definitely be throttled... -- Cid Highwind 20:05, 9 Mar 2005 (GMT)

True the server performence is one of the most valid argument against bots. On the first run it edited up to five pages per minute which sounds about fair if there are no other edits around. Due to the size of Memory Alpha only a few bots are necessary, I'd say one for interwiki links, one for categories (maybe) and another one for tables. In MA/de we are a bit ahead and already did set up a Policy. However there is still time to discuss this, because the bot framework has a minor bug with German Umlaute, so my main intention to use the bot as interwiki link putter is a bit delayed. -- Kobi - (Talk) 08:43, 10 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Speaking of performance, seems like all wikicities are currently running on ross.bomis.com, which is overloaded in some kind. Although other wikicities have reponse-times lower than 1 or 2 seconds. If you have a random Memory Alpha article, you can read something like this within the HTML-source: "Served by ross.bomis.com in 4.61 secs." If that would be something about database-size, Creatures-Wiki should have similar performance-issues. Must be something about Memory Alpha, since dutch, german an english versions seem to be slower than they should be. Perhaps it's all imaginary.. -- Florian - Talk 13:01, 14 Mar 2005 (GMT)

This is no longer the case since Memory Alpha and Wikicities are now running on three of their own servers in addition to that ross.bomis.com one. See Wikicities:Technical support for details. Angela 22:35, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

I'd support a regulation to put a restrictive throttle on bots here to prevent server flood -- but i think there's a lot that could be done with them. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 22:36, 26 Mar 2005 (EST)

I went ahead to create the page Memory Alpha:Bot which is now a translation of the bot policy we did set up at MA/de. Angela did also put bot flags to User:Morn and User:DataMA, so that their edits can be removed from the recent changes. -- Kobi - (Talk) 07:01, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)

At the moment we are somewhat blocked in MA/de (and MA/nl) since both bots are "normal" users. No-one in MA:de or MA:nl has steward-privileges and we must wait until Jason will "promote" someone. Without bot-flag enabled, all batch-processes will penetrate the "recent changes" log which is bad for normal users (thinking of 200 changes a day or more). @Dan and Harry: Will you please set bot-flag as soon as possible on MA:de? -- Florian - ✍ talk 10:41, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Do we need a mailinglist?

Since we came to wikicities there's an option of mailing-lists (see left hand navigation). Do we need a mailing-list? We have wiki-pages (e.g. Ten Forwards) on all three languages, we have a message board, user talk pages... And though I like the idea of (one) mailing-list for all three versions to have a central announcement method for important stuff which could affect all of us, since the message board doesn't work; it's too inconvenient to have a regular look at the board plus there are just a few archivists. This mailing-list could be a way to announce last-minute upgardes or outages as well as wiki-wide problems. -- Florian - Talk 05:20, 20 Mar 2005 (EST)

Although the mailing list link is there, there isn't currently a list configured for this wiki, so please let me know if you do need it and I can create one then. Angela 22:33, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

templates

Watching Template:Ranks being made, and watching Curps' creation of Template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual (regardless of his vandalistic work thus far), I was wondering what the criterium or rules dictating the creation of Templates is. -- THOR 00:13, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

As far as I am aware, we don't have any strict policies regarding the creation of content templates. Just use common sense (Is this content really useful as a template?), add the template to the appropriate list (Memory Alpha:Navigational templates) and expect "your" template to be edited by others, just as any other contribution. The "dual licensing" template is something completely different, however. I personally think we shouldn't start this, and something as important as this does at least need a consensus in my opinion (See below). -- Cid Highwind 06:09, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

I agree -- Template:Ranks and others like it, such as Template:Dax, were created to correlate data in articles that occur in short series -- if someone created one that didnt work, it would be voted down or deprecated, or it would be fixed to conform to a better style (to fit canon, for example, or brevity) -- just like a regular article that was off topic.

Licensing issues and other templates dealing with our administration structure should remain in the province of the bureaucrats though -- an archivist who wishes to enact changes in basic structures of the site like licenses and structure, should more properly do so through a discussion here or a related talk page, not by creating an anomalous template page -- that kind of action is what requires approval. This user is banned anyway, so i dont think this was a serious edit -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 10:17, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

This is probably the best place to bring this up, in MA/de we created several new navigational templates recently. Most notably those on the series pages (see de:TNG Staffel 2). I find them quite useful and think it would be a nice idea for MA/en too... -- Kobi - (Talk) 10:27, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

Yes -- i've seen some really complex ones in use at wikipedia and at http://babylon5.wikicities.com/ -- in particular, i'd like to add some sort of season browser template -- their episode articles contain a long episode template which is a few degrees more complex than i've ever seen before. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 10:41, 21 Mar 2005 (EST)

MA/nl

Hi I just hit the wrong link and was brought to MA/nl. I had to notice that Gebruiker:Buttfucker has removed content of ~100 articles and also posted pornography. Isn't there someone responsible for that wiki because that vandalism was on the 25th! -- Kobi - (Talk) 03:42, 29 Mar 2005 (EST)

I've seen it, but as my exams are comming up, I don't have the time to correct it. i'm going to need other editors on Dutch MA te help me out. So far, however, I haven't seen more than two or three editors work on MA at a time. Any suggestions? -- Redge | Talk 05:44, 29 Mar 2005 (EST)

I'm sure that some of the MA/en and /de admins (me included) could check for the most obvious vandalism from time to time if you would grant us admin rights there. If there really aren't any contributors at the time, though, it might be best to put that part of MA "on hold" (if possible)... -- Cid Highwind 08:33, 29 Mar 2005 (EST)

As long as my dutch isn't in shape, I just can assist as a spam-detector. Although, I'de love to see more dutch users online to edit and expand. -- Florian - Talk 11:00, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

Any help is welcome, but I don´t know how we can get more Dutch to the Dutch MA. I´ve tried pointing the site out on a few Star trek sites I know, but it didn´t meet with much enthousiasm. I theorize this is because most Dutch trekkies know enough English not to need a Dutch translation. -- Redge | Talk 11:06, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I´m also having a bug in the MA/nl skin I´d hoped someone could help us with. All common text is colored black in stead of white. Where do I fix that? -- Redge | Talk 11:42, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Best thing to have a synchronized CSS for all languages will be to insert a template-tag into those monobook.css/LANG pages, see Overleg MediaWiki:Monobook.css/de. This is an open issue here, too. -- Florian - ✍ talk 04:18, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Changing Series Pages

I really think there should be a voting system for changing the long series pages, much like the Featured Articles system. These pages are a major part of MA, and if this was done, it would help to avoid vandalism. --Defiant | Talk 12:16, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

If users would discuss page changes rather than just reverting edits without explanation as you did, perhaps it would be more productive. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 12:47, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

Exactly! I very strongly believe that people should discuss changes, before they are made and that significant changes to the series pages ought be done democratically. It seems to me like we're both arguing for similar things here, Mike!
I think the TOS and TNG pages should be returned to how they were before you edited them, so a vote can be taken on whether they stay like that, or if the changes you suggest are made. --Defiant | Talk 12:57, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

I understand Defiant's point, you should make your changes to Star Trek: The Original Series/temp, work out the layout and then ask if some improvements could be made. For example I think the template:TOS-Season3 is a cool idea, however I personally don't like the numbered scheme. I suggest these edits are on hold for a while until this is discussed -- Kobi - (Talk) 13:29, 30 Mar 2005 (EST)

Strange sign

Why do I keep seeing this sign - "‿" (a square or rectangle)? Does anyone know? Does anyone else see lots of this sign, or is it a problem with Internet Explorer (which I use) maybe? --Defiant | Talk 08:13, 1 Apr 2005 (EST)

I see a bracket that is lies on the ground. Somehow reminds me of a sign that teachers make when a word has to be written to‿gether ... but I see it for the first time in Memory Alpha -- Kobi - (Talk) 09:29, 1 Apr 2005 (EST)

I used Mozilla, where the sign appears as a curved underline. It seems to be that only Internet Explorer displays the symbol as a square. --Defiant | Talk 17:58, 5 Apr 2005 (EDT)

If it's any help, I often see this strange sign in Featured Articles where quotation marks should be and always at the end of the quotation. For example, "hello‿, rather than "hello". --Defiant | Talk 16:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This character is Unicode U+203F UNDERTIE, apparently a punctuation character used in Greek. Not sure why it's happening, though—perhaps somebody's dumb browser is sending a mutated curly quote mark or something. —Brent Dax 08:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC) (a newbie)

Star Trek Related Music?

We already have a section on such non-canon works such as books and games. Should we create a new section for music about Star Trek? For example Warp 11, No Kill I, Sto-Vo-Kor, and any other Star Trek related bands or music could get pages that fall into this section. --docdude316 22:48, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT)

These would be fandom bands, unlicensed works, correct? These aren't something MA accepts at this time. Licensed works are fine for inclusion in the Trek Franchise area, but not these. -- Michael Warren | Talk 08:59, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Battle Boxes

I have noted a new user implementing so-called "battle boxes" into all our major battle pages. Whilst I understand what the user is trying to do, I find these inclusions both distracting and badly-designed, and generally unsuitable for this reference. I would note to this user (following his edit summaries of "adding Wikipedia-style battle table") that MA is not Wikipedia, and so does not follow the same style conventions. I have reverted for now, but wish to get further opinion from the rest of the Archivists. Please see [4] for an example. -- Michael Warren | Talk 08:59, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I'd support the inclusion of a standardized sidebar which is useful to the kind of information our battle articles contain -- for example, the Wikipedia version lists casualties, there are only three or four Trek battles that we have reliable casualty numbers. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 10:29, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I'd support it as well. I'd like to find a format that would better accomodate/incorporate the MA styling, but I think they could certainly work out well. We could gen up a standardized template based on the MA style and put it up on Memory Alpha:Article templates. — THOR 11:18, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Operation Return
Conflict:	Dominion War
Etc.:	Etc..

I'd recommend using the standard wiki-sidebar class table -- using the "class" modifier probably allows us to reformat all the sidebar tables on the sit simply by updating the style sheet -- so that's a non-issue. Just what information to put in.

List of composers

Could pages be created like the list of director pages for all of the people who composed music for the series and movies? -Rebelstrike2005 11:03, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I'd say yes -- this is a natural outgrowth of our production information -- but suitable names for each article need to be found. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 11:07, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I was just thinking of just List of DS9 composers

Sounds like a good idea to me. Why don't we start articles like this for the many other people involved in certain aspects of Star Trek? Enzo Aquarius 18:01, 8 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Good idea, I was also thinking of a list of writers but thought it might be too long -- Rebelstrike2005 06:12, 11 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Maybe we could have a Star Trek production staff list? -- Rebelstrike2005 18:05, 13 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I'll start creating the article soon. - Rebelstrike2005 12:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

browser tables

browser tables at the bottom of the screen often cause an overlap in stubby episode and novels articles that also contain a sidebar table.

would it make sense to add some sort of "clear" tag directly to the tables, or to make that a characteristic of the "browser" class table's default style? The latter would require a change to the style sheet, but i don't really know anything about it.

if that isn't feasible, a bot could add a clear tag (br clear="all") prior to every browser table. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 11:46, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Well, indeed a bot could do that, however the bots have shown that they damage tables from time to time (when they are bad coded). I will speak to Florian who applied the MA specific changes to the framework -- Kobi - (Talk) 11:58, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I think editing the stylesheet as suggested would be the better option - it's "cleaner" than an additional HTML tag on each page, doesn't need any article edits and should result in less errors in the long run. I will change the CSS, let me know if there are any problems. -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Thanks Cid! Everything's working great with those tables now! -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk

Voodieh class

As talk pages can be easily overlooked I'll post this here as well. The name "Voodieh" has been floating around for several years as rumors or otherwise in association with the "All Good Things..." Klingon attack cruisers, and I was curious if it is worth creating an article on it or just have it as a passing reference in the Negh'Var class article? I only say this because we do have an article on another unspoken Klingon ship class, the K'toch class. --Gvsualan 15:22, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT)

I believe the "Voodieh" term was first used for Star Trek CCG [5]. IIRC, we do have stuff from roleplaying games and the like mentioned in the background notes, so I don't see why it shouldn't be included on the Negh'Var page. -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 23:37, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cool, I was actually trying to find the source on that. Wasnt sure if it was from an early script draft or what. Any additional links or info to add to that would be grand! --Gvsualan 05:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

DVD Link

Could someone please place a link to the DVD page on the Main Page, under "Other Sources"? --Defiant | Talk 20:49, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if that would be appropriate. A DVD, in my opinion, is not an "other source" (as a novel or a game is), but just another way of publishing the episodes and movies. I might be in the minority, of course, but I think this needs some discussion first. -- Cid Highwind 13:01, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The Star Trek DVDs include much more than the actual episodes and movies. A great amount of behind-the-scenes trivia can be learned from them, some of which has already influenced articles here at Memory Alpha. The DVDs are probably more of an insightful source than the novels, as these present facts about canon Trek. --Defiant | Talk 15:58, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Defiant. Some of the special features can be very useful to Memory Alpha. -- Rebelstrike2005 18:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is there anyone else who feels that the DVDs are not as resourceful as novels or games? Is there anyone else that feels that they are? Opinions would be appreciated. --Defiant | Talk 09:30, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, you convinced me, I didn't really think about the bonus features. :) No one else seems to have any objections, so I will add a link to the main page now. -- Cid Highwind 15:03, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. --Defiant | Talk 19:50, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Policy Reminder - Summary field

I think it is necessary to remind ourselves of the policies from time to time. Policy of the day: Always fill summary field

Whenever I have a look at the "Recent changes", only about 10-20% of the edits contain an edit summary. Please, try to use that feature more often and, if possible, try to make the summary meaningful by really describing what exactly you changed on the page. Thanks. -- Cid Highwind 09:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, I would discourage archivists from marking major changes to an article as "minor" -- there are a few who have never made a non-minor article edit, but also never even tried to use the summary field. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 13:38, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Typographically correct punctuation

(moved from Talk:Benjamin Sisko:

For more details on the changes I made to the punctuation in this article, see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/typography/ and http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/

—Ian Adams 10:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that this style brings only difficulties. It slows down to write an article and also doesn't look very good in a browser at this font size. This is not word and the simple quotation marks " do fulfil our needs.

But what I also want to address is the slowly spreading illogical quotation: Why does it have to be "The Cage," "Where No Man Has Gone Before"?? the komma has nothing to do with the article and it really slows down reading a series of references -- Kobi - (Talk) 10:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually Kobi, i prefer tht way (with punctuation correctly within the quotes) -- i believe it is also the American English standard -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 12:59, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed you started to use that quotation style: I also am aware that it is considered typographically correct in American English, but I wanted to address that it doesn't make sense when used in single emphasised words, and especially not in lists. I'm already semi-comfortable with having to use -yze -se -o- -er and so on, though being taught otherwise from first lesson in school, but in the case of illogical quoting I must say stop here. That is why I put it here too: I want to hear the opinion of the international visitors, maybe I'm not the only one who has difficulties to read those lists. I also noticed that people started to include full stops within links (asuming they are following the "include dots rule", so that they created links like "The Cage." -- Kobi - (Talk) 14:44, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I must take exception though to people parenthesizing an episode reference when it occurs as an object in a sentence -- for example "In (TNG:"Family"), Data met.." -- The point of parentheses is to separate a thought that is part of a sentence, obviously we can't intend to separate "Family" because it is non removable ("In, Data met something" is not a sentence). "In "Family," Data.." or "In TNG:"Family," Data.."

However, an episode title is a separate thought when placed at the end of a sentence, but it is still included as part of a sentence, so therefore does not deserve an extra period: "Data met Dr. Soong. (TNG:"Brothers")." is incorrect, because "(TNG:"Brothers")" is not a complete thought or statement -- it is a parentetical add-on to the sentence, so the correct form would be "Data met Dr. Soong. (TNG:"Brothers")" or even, possibly including it as part of the parent sentence as "Data met Dr. Soong (TNG:"Brothers")." -- but not with both having a period. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 13:36, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Isn’t that defined in the MoS?

—Ian Adams 13:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The “style” is only more time-intensive on very long, already published articles. (I put “style” in quotes because it isn’t just a style: it’s proper English.) But then I had no problem going through and making the adjustments. When you’re writing copy from scratch, however, it takes no time at all. I just use the free tool available at http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/index.html and it is able to do all the formatting for me at the click of a button. The argument against how it looks at small font sizes is hardly applicable since the font sizing is done in ems in the style sheet — users can (and frequently do) adjust the font size in their browser. And even then, at the default size, I’d say that it actually looks quite a bit better. Certainly more legible, and definitely more professional and polished.

Either way, it’s a Wiki — it’s not like we’re on a deadline. ;)

—Ian Adams 13:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think usiing ' " and -- are fine. One of the points of a wiki is to use the simplest markup possible, so I'm going to go with the characters that are already on my keyboard -- also, it confuses me when i open up a file and find that this reads & #8217; & #8212; & #8217; & #8217; -- this is simply unacceptable because it makes our markup impossible to read for the casual user, for what amounts to only minor, minor characters. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 14:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree - in fact, there's a section called Keep it simple in our Manual of Style that states exactly this: HTML markup should be avoided in most circumstances. -- Cid Highwind 14:13, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oooh, touché on me (from the MoS, which I would have posted minutes ago if you guys could have stopped responding ;) ):

"For uniformity and to avoid problems with the wiki software and the searching utility, use straight quotation marks and apostrophes, and avoid curved marks such as the backtick (the so-called "smart quotes")."

Although I suppose, then, that it should be rephrased to say "use single and double primes instead of quotation marks and apostrophes". :P

But the author is right: I tried searching for "Benjamin's" (a word that came up often in the article), and it didn't pull up the article for Benjamin Sisko. I'll go ahead and re-apply the non-typographically correct single and double primes. Please don't just revert, as that will lose many grammatical and other copy corrections that I also did at the time. I said I'll handle it and I will. :)

Sorry for jumping the gun, folks!

—Ian Adams 14:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that was a quick decision -- Kobi - (Talk) 14:44, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good question about the MoS including this, Ian -- I actually forgot the other day, when I was trying to remember how to explain to a user why I was removing mdashes -- that extra characters coded like that are examples of an HTML-style code, and to be avoided in the main articles -- maybe we could amend the MoS to clarify that, to make it clearer, because it was something i wasn't clear about right away. And to clarify points where American English (our standard) conflicts with International English, like the punctuation within quotations issue. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 14:47, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kobi, I agree with you on the fact it might be unwise to do so in lists (punctuate within quotes) -- did you mean parenthetical end-of-paragraph lists or what other kind of situations would you like to make an exception to this rule -- we can clarify this for a policy addition to better synthesize a preferred writing style - -Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk

Jeez, now it's hard to keep track of how many levels deep these conversations are. ;)

Anyway, I do agree with Captain Mike on the point of punctuation within quotations, since that is proper American English; however I think it would be prudent to do the opposite (punctuation outside of quotations) in the case of links, otherwise you increase the chances of someone mistakenly making the punctuation mark a part of the link, as Kobe demonstrated. I do agree with Kobe, also, that they should be outside of quotations in the case of lists; it definitely makes it harder to read those lists when done with punctuation within quotations. How's that for a compromise? :D

And Kobi, I do feel your pain — the "-yze -se -o- -er and so on" did certainly take some getting used to. :)

—Ian Adams 15:08, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm suggesting to use the system of "logical quotation", it has just one additional rule: Does the dot/comma belong to the quote? It applies the same rule that is already used in American English with the question (?) and exclamation mark (!) to the comma (,) and dot (.). All other rules stay untouched. That way a list of episode references would look "Episode 1", "Episode 2", "Episode 3". -- Kobi - (Talk) 15:11, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well then -- I'd like to propose we maintain the standard style for the rarer converstional mentions (where the episode lives as an object in a sentence) -- Spiner played both characters in "Datalore." (this doesn't happen as much since most episode references are in lists -- but when episodes in quotations are listed they should always be required to operate with a comma or semicolon outside their quotes, even when mentioned conversationally -- ENT:"The Aenar"; TAS:"Yesteryear"; etc. or They were seen only in TOS:"Arena"; TAS:"The Time Trap" and ENT:"In a Mirror, Darkly, Part I." -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 15:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ehm, almost, according to the logical quotation it is: Spiner played both characters in "Datalore". because the quotation marks belong to the episode name exclusivly. Just think of the quotation marks as another HTML-Tag: you don't intersect different tags, but can only nest them: bold italic, wrong: bold italic. -- Kobi - (Talk) 16:15, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just a general comment, please consider that there are contributors who are not fluent in english, like me, who are happy if they can write understandable english, or something to that effect. So please keep the grammer rules as simple as possible. As far as I can tell this discussion was about , or ; when summing up items. I am happy with both versions and as far as I knows it is always put behind the quoted text (not within the quotes itself) in most western languages -- Q 17:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well I still don't like breaking the American English standard -- but I'm willing to compromise for the sake of making these episode citations as uniform as possible. One thing I intend to practice is placing the series after the episode title when it's mentioned conversationally -- that way, there's no likelihood of punctuation ever coming after an episode reference, which means the style wont be broken when the episode occurs as an object in the sentence. For example: (TNG:"Datalore"; ENT:"United") when in parentheses, and when used in a sentence: He played the character in "Defector" (TNG), and also in "Emissary" (DS9). This will eliminate the possibility for this to happen in sentences or lists. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 22:19, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can understand that, and must say it is a great workaround. I have just one minor suggestion for the lists namely that the semi-colon is used to seperate references from different series: (TNG: "Datalore"; ENT: "United", "The Aenar"). How's that? -- Kobi - (Talk) 08:55, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Awesome idea! that occurred to me the other day as well. If any of this isn't covred in Memory Alpha:Manual of Style and Memory Alpha:Cite your sources, we should add it. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 17:09, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The advertisements on Memory Alpha

I don't mind the advertisements, but could they be moved slightly so that they don't cover the images? For example, look at the picture of the NX-01 at the NX class article. -- Rebelstrike2005 16:00, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"List of..."

I think there might be some value to all of our list of articles shortening their title -- since there is very rarely an article with a plural title, every single "List of" article could have those two words removed and become its root subject, making it easier to conversationally link to ("numerous [[military conflicts]]..." over "numerous [[list of military conflicts|military conflicts]]...," for example), and also easier to tabulate alphabetically (The Cardassian article would list links to Cardassian ranks, Cardassian history, Cardassian starships, etc -- a standard form for associating subarticles -- the lists will fit fine into the shorter and preferably simpler termed article name), and evolve to correspond or redirect to a list category. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 01:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll buy that. Just say 'when' and I'll help with the move. --Gvsualan 20:26, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A great idea, and helps save time when writting articles. Enzo Aquarius 02:56, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I must have a look, but if you intend to change all the links and will make those changes "invisible" I can offer the help of Morn. If this really becomes the new style of Memory Alpha he could change all the links of List of military conflicts and turn them into Military conflicts. It should be no problem I must only find the correct program. All I would need is a list of all the lists that were changed. -- Kobi - (Talk) 08:52, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with that change. As our list categories, list articles could simply have titles in the plural form (whereas all articles that are not lists should then have singular titles). However, I suggest to postpone that change a little and combine it with the creation of a Category:Lists, simply because it is easier to find all existing list articles while they still have a common prefix. -- Cid Highwind 09:17, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update on the bot offer: it is really possible: In MA/de Morn cleared a lot of redirects. However when solving a redirect it has to be entered one by one. If you want the changes to be made by the bot, move the pages and post the link on my talk page or at Morn's to-do. Btw: categorisation is DataMA's speciality ;) -- Kobi - (Talk) 18:20, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the input guys -- i think we are ready to go on Category:Lists, and then once we categorize all of our articles that currently begin with "List of," then we can start moving the articles, and then the services of the robot would change all the links. Let's go! -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 18:28, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One more thing to figure out -- do we prefer List of Vulcans (and all other similarly named articles) to be at Vulcans or at Vulcan people -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 19:16, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Planets

I suggest we start a list of unnamed planets, in order to accomodate planets such as the one which the Organians were studying in ENT: "Observer Effect" and the planet that was rich in magnesite in "Bound". --Defiant | Talk 18:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article is at Unnamed planets. Any unnamed planets that anyone finds can be added there. --Defiant | Talk 11:54, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Lists of...

I'd like to see a List of spacial anomalies, List of temporal anomalies and a List of medical procedures. Any thoughts? Tyrant 16:53, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)Tyrant

Feel free to start them or, if you don't want to write them yourself, request them on Memory Alpha:Requested Articles. :) -- Cid Highwind 17:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I like to test the water first these days as i've found initiative can put on the defensive around here. heh. Tyrant 17:11, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)Tyrant

Well, there's no policy to stop you from creating any article you like. However, if the article turns out to be useless for some reason (in the case of a list: if there are too few items, for example), someone else might suggest it for deletion... That's life. ;) -- Cid Highwind 17:23, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'd suggest list of spatial anomalies (correct spelling)

Just because someone has input on whether an article should exist, or whether it should be altered or renamed, i wouldn't really see it as being "on the defensive" -- it's part of wiki collaboration when someone corrects some spelling or tries to ensure that an article reaches a higher level of quality -- we're all working on the same project here. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 17:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree. However, wording should be considered and insult avoided. Tyrant 17:49, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)Tyrant
- I agree that its very easy to take insult here -- i've been on both sides of that particular coin, and its always regrettable when it causes friction, but I think I've tried to make amends with everyone who I considered to be insulting me, so I'm always willing to work on issues with anyone who feels i've insulted them. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 17:53, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  - My solution was to simply stop making major contributions a few months back, heh. (I'm still doing a few hours of link hunting dayly) And for the record I wasn't talking about you. Tyrant 19:06, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)Tyrant

- Hmm, I wonder... --Gvsualan 23:41, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Earth Ship from ENT

I can't seem to find an article on the Earth ship that found alongside the Intrepid (Earth) in "The Expanse" and "Twilight" - the triangular shaped one. I noticed a mirror version of it also appeared in the title sequence of "In a Mirror, Darkly". There is a line of speculation under Neptune class, but we should come up with a naming resolution for this vessel so that it can be included in M/A. --Gvsualan 11:21, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Article Tense

I've been looking through are various policies but cannot seem to find any established rules on article tense (past, present, future). The examples I've seen used in the guidelines show both past and present, and I've noticed most articles around here are in past tense - as are the ones I typically write. I noticed that User:Mark 2000 had a concern about this, and I thought I would ask you about the scenario. --Gvsualan 07:43, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe a general consensus for past-tense was reached in discussion -- however, policy pages are slow to follow discussion sometime, so I'm not sure where this ended up getting added. If you and I discuss this with a few other administrators and archivists, I'm sure we can find a way to disseminate this style policy. I think Ten Forward might be the best place to do this. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 07:46, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See, I couldn't even find that discussion. Just this. --Gvsualan 10:05, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This is connected to some discussions about our "point of view" that we had in the past - though I can't find a central location for that discussion, either. Basically, we're talking about events happening in three different centuries (with some special cases happening even outside that range). The only point of view that makes sense for MA, in my opinion, is one of a person existing "inside" the Trek universe and "after" the last of the events we are writing about. In this case, it only makes sense to write about everything in the past tense. -- Cid Highwind 13:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What about background info, and distant future events like the Enterprise-J, etc.? --Defiant | Talk 22:17, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's difficult to answer, because (in the case of Enterprise-J, for example), we're not only talking about something that happens later, but about something that might happen later, an alternate timeline. For the sake of simplicity, we might want to choose to write all articles in past tense, but it would be equally valid to write about possible future events in future tense, as someone from the 24th century would do. What do you all prefer? -- Cid Highwind 15:43, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I also read somewhere that the past tense was preferred over future and present tense but I cannot remember where. I think it had something to do with MA being a library and that in this context past tense would be preferable. That was also the reason why I changed the Nog article to past tense. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to write an episode summary like a book, in present time like you are experiencing it. As far as I am concerned episode summaries would be the only articles valid for present time. -- Q 06:39, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We should write all articles in the present. This is what the books say to do. Alternatively, we could write everything in the future now and in the 22^nd century, start changing the tense to past. By the late 24^th century, almost all articles will be in the past. I prefer the first idea better. As an example, last night, I wrote in Hoshi Sato (mirror) she poisons Jonathan Archer (mirror) and becomes Empress Hoshi Sato Ⅰ. Within hours, it became she poisoned Jonathan Archer (mirror) and became Empress Hoshi Sato I.

She will not do those things for 1½ centuries.
¿What is wrong with the Roman Numeral Ⅰ as opposed to the letter I?

— — Ŭalabio 21:48, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You're looking at this from completely the wrong perspective. The perspective of Memory Alpha is that of the late 24th century - ie, several years past Star Trek: Nemesis, so that all events that have happened in the regular Trek timeline have already happened. And, what books? The Star Trek Encyclopedia, the only comparable reference work, takes the same view. The only exception to the past tense rule should be things that aren't a time-specific reference, ie, saying "Phasers are directed-energy weapons..." or "Archer IV is a planet...", and similar. -- Michael Warren | Talk 22:35, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The books are the writing manuals from University. Basically in fiction, one writes things happening at the now of the characters in the present with things happening in the future of the characters happening in future and things happening in the past as past. When writing about fiction, on uses the same conventions. As an example, in the the Trouble with Tribbles, tribbles over run Deep Space K-7 and the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701).

—

— Ŭalabio 04:43, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

10,000th article

I noticed after I created T'Pring that it was the 10,000th article (see Special:Statistics), I thought this might be of some historical value. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:19, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see the count of the number of articles has stopped at 9999 articles. -- rebelstrike 17:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's at 10009 now. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:44, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Connection refused

I noticed several times that when I was working on MA I could not get a connection to it. I have got the error "connection refused to memory-alpha.org" (or something to that effect) when I wanted to refresh a page or to connect to MA itself. If I tried it again after some time I could connect to MA. Anymore people who noticed this behaviour ? -- Q 19:58, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I had a similar problem earlier today. In fact it's happened to me several times recently, so I too await someone with more information's responce. -AJHalliwell 06:47, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

¿Should we use Roman Nuerals or letters for numbers?

I notice that we currently use letters for numbers. I believe we should use Roman Numerals for numbers thus:

Instead of letters for numbers thus:

I
II
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII

i
ii
iv
v
vi
vii
viii
ix
x
xi
xii

MediaWiki is fully Unicode-compliant, so no technical reason exists for not using Roman Numerals for numbers. — — Ŭalabio 22:03, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, but a practical one exists. How exactly does one enter these codes? Are they easier to enter and remember than Shift-i? I seriously doubt it. MediaWiki may be Unicode-compliant, but keyboards are not. Besides which, the Unicode characters look appallingly out of place next to standard text - Archer Ⅳ vs. Archer IV. -- Michael Warren | Talk 22:35, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

“How exactly does one enter these codes?” That is easy:

The menu “Edit”
The menu-item “Special Characters”
The Unicode-Block “Number-Forms”

¡It is as easy as πr^²!

“Besides which, the Unicode characters look appallingly out of place next to standard text - Archer Ⅳ vs. Archer IV.” The true Roman Numerals look great to me.

—

— Ŭalabio 23:07, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can you do that in Internet Explorer or Safari? I can't find that menu in IE, and I don't recall seeing it in Safari. Besides, with all do respect, three mouse steps to add "Ⅳ" is much more than the two keyboard taps it takes to put in "IV". -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 05:14, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Since people say that these characters do not show on cellphones and the like, I drop this request for now (I reserve the right to bring this up in a decade or two when our Borg-like implants will solve the technical problems) but to answer your question. I use Safari. The menu “Edit” is the menu between “File” and “View”. It is available in most applications. The option “Special Character” is an option on the menu “Edit”. Selecting “Special Characters” causes a dialogue-box to appear with a side-bar of Unicode-Ranges such as “Miscellaneous Symbols” which contains these useful symbols:

☉: Sol 0
☿: Sol Ⅰ
♀: Sol Ⅱ
♁ ☾: Sol Ⅲ
♂: Sol Ⅳ
♃: Sol Ⅴ
♄: Sol Ⅵ
♅: Sol Ⅶ
♆: Sol Ⅷ
♇: Sol Ⅸ

—

— Ŭalabio 11:09, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, the letters look better than the unicode, and it would be a pain to try to redo all the wikilinks and force everyone to use the same system. The unicode for "eleven" and "twelve" also show up as blocks on my browser... -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 22:39, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

“it would be a pain to try to redo all the wikilinks and force everyone to use the same system.” Just moving an article to a new title leave a redirect. “The unicode for "eleven" and "twelve" also show up as blocks on my browser … ” They look great on my end.

—

— Ŭalabio 23:07, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) So Memory Alpha will only look great to one user? I'm sorry, but I can't describe to you how awful your Unicode text looks like when browsed on my Linux machine, or my cellphone.

One of the basic principles of a wiki is to keep it simple -- to use the most common and easiest way to present information, so that it is more likely to be intuitively linked to, attract potential editors' attentions and so forth. This is a basic technical violation of our foundation here -- to present the data in a way which excludes some readers from being able to view it. Standard keyboard text is used for a reason, as is wiki markup -- to remove the problems associated with extraneous characters and HTML code. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 23:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree, keep everything simple. IV is clear, easy to understand and to enter into an article. Besides that I find the unicode characters ugly because of there strange font, it looks like someone squased the letters together. -- Q 06:44, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Expanding the Timeline of Star Trek production

I would say that an insignificant fraction of the dates "within" the Star Trek universe POV occur with months or with months and days -- this is why we don't wikilink "October 21, 2154" as Wikipedia does -- there wouldn't be enough information to create a separate article -- likewise I don't see 2154 being subdivided into January 2154, February 2154 any time soon.

Since we aren't going to use these possible article headings for "in-universe" articles, I was wondering about the validity of creating some type of redirect structure where an article like May 1967 or December 1991 would lead back to a timeline page (1967 productions as a list page?) to show the order of release for Star Trek episodes, movies, books, games, novels and DVDs. This way, w would avoid cross-pollinating "in" and "out" universe references -- for example, if you link to 1967 it won't tell you anything about the episodes which were produced that year, etc, but if we link the month and the year we could direct the link to a more appropriate venue. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 19:12, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, I like that format and an expanded timeline is something we've needed for a while. Redirects could be added to the Notes section of the Trek POV articles. -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 19:22, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

I plan to get started soon -- i've thought about permutations for the titles -- i think "YEAR productions" should be fine for each -- each article would have 12 redirects, for each month that occurs in the dates. Should i phrase them spelled out October 1989, or leave them as stated in episode pages: "1989-10-21" ?

That is tricky... Wikipedia uses the October 1989 format, but the 1989-10 format is what is used in the episode pages... perhaps stick with the spelt out version for the actual page, and create a useful redirect with the numbers? -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 02:44, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Canon

Is information from deleted scenes seen as canon? --Defiant | Talk 23:36, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure myself. We have several articles like USS Hemingway, USS Ticonderoga, Martin Madden, and Denab system, mostly from deleted scenes from Star Trek: Nemesis. However, the scenes also claim Beverly Crusher left to head Starfleet Medical, and I've been adamant about keeping that as background information in Crusher's article. To be fair, all of the aforementioned articles are clearly tagged as coming from deleted scenes... -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 02:50, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Unregistered users

Just an open discussion, with no agenda. With the constant vandalism and typically very poor articles and submissions created by unregistered users, are they becoming more trouble than they are worth? Or is the non-registration policy the best way to allow new users to become involved immediately and learn the ropes? Has Memory Alpha reached a stage where it is best that only registered users are permitted, to maintain its integrity and cut down on vandalism? Or is it easier to identify vandalism when ip addresses stick out among a list of familiar users? What are your thoughts and opinions? -- Dmsdbo 00:56, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Just my two cents -- i think unregistered users are more valuable than registered users sometimes, especially when it comes to fleshing our real life topics like military parlance, elemental chemistry, particle physics, etc, etc.. while they have no concept of or respect for the idea of a valid resource when it comes to "canon" Star Trek, they still know more than I do about a lot of subjects like that, and have no trouble writing about them.

However, I think the vandalism is getting a little extreme -- many blocked IP users are obviously coming back to taunt us on a new IP address a few minutes later -- our block process is far from being useful right now because of the vandals' ability to use a different IP a few minutes after being blocked. I find it especially troublesome thaty they have targeted me, and a few other users, it makes me seem they have a score to settle, even if it just a non-star trek fans' natural instinct to make fun of a star trek fan asserting itself. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel^talk 02:21, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I would point out that our "friend" yesterday was on an AOL proxy - said IP addresses shift regularly, particularly on dial-up, so it is difficult to block those anyway. On "targetting", they obviously knew their way around a wiki, certainly - took a look at RC to get to the user pages of those who were reverting, and VIP, as well as a few pages under edit at the time, then "random page"d their way around. However, in future, I would advise against extensive blocking of these addresses - it can inconvenience other, innocent users. We'll see what happens tonight. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Captainmike's points are all well stated--anonymous contributors also work well as proofreaders... people who may have come to MA simply to look up an article and find a spelling or grammatical error, then fix it. We'd lose that valuable asset if unregistered users were blocked. And if someone really wants to do some damage, they won't stop just because it takes three seconds to register an account. I wouldn't take it personally, either... these are just immature people thinking they're going to be cute. In the end, there are many, many more people here who want to play nice and can help clean up in the wake of a spam attack... one would hope that the spammer will simply realize that it's not worth it to waste their time. However, it would be nice to have a feature which the administrators could use to automatically revert all edits from a certain user within a specified time period, especially concerning things like tonight's events. -- SmokeDetector47 // talk 02:31, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Most registered users gave Memory-Alpha.Org a spin without registering. Certainly most edits from unregistered users are vandals, but it might be better to use mitigation such as watch all anonymous edits, the 3R-Rule not apply to logged in users reverting anonymous users, and have a message show after anonymous users save:

“Due to a few people ruining it for everyone, anonymous users make only one edit daily, thus giving the admins a chance to review edits for vandalism. If you like, you can register and have unlimited editing rights. Understandably, if a user registers just to vandalize, we reserve the right to ban.”

If we block the testdrive” new users will become a scarce commodity. We aldready have a natural experiment:

At about the same time Memory-Alpha started, Hidden Frontier started a wiki here. Hidden Frontier decided that it would require people to login. Memory-Alpha flourishes while Hidden Frontier is on its deathbed. We should let people have their testdrive and mitigate the damage:

Watch all anonymous edits.
Have the 3R-Rule not apply to registered users reverting Anonymous users.
Limit Anonymous users to one edit per IP per day
Display a message to anonymous editors stating that they should login to eliminate the limit about editing.

—

— Ŭalabio 02:52, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Memory Alpha has no three-revert rule. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

1) A note on the Hidden Frontier site - maybe the low number of editors to that site could be due to the obscure nature of its content. MA has information on all the series, while HF is only a fan-made spin-off.

2) I think this site should continue as it is. However, I think a section of the site (such as the "Recent Changes" section) which only reflects the activities of unregistered users may be a good addition to this site. Also, user pages could have an option for Administrators to revert any user's edits which an Admin had selected. --Defiant | Talk 10:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree -- that would be great. You have such a range coming from the unregistered users. Some are vandals, and others write brief articles that need rewrites immediately. However, others are good proofreaders and some actuall make excellent contributions. -- Dmsdbo 13:13, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

OKAY -- Just a quick perusal of what had happened since I last left, and I must say that I'm losing patience rightly or wrongly. It seems that except for spelling and grammar checks, everything that unregistered users submit is either vandalism or useless information that it immediately reverted or pna'd. I'm starting to really question the value of their contributions, I fear, and am questioning the need for them. When this was first starting out, it was great to come in and give everyone a chance to contribute, but we have so much quality material here that it hardly seems necessary anymore. Of all the unregistered users who come and screw around, how many stay and become valuable contributors? If not cutting them outright, we should at least limit what they can do -- maybe time limiters (2-5 mins) per edit. Like they use on IMDB.com - except this would only be for unregistered users. I dunno - I suppose I am tired of seeing people's hard work vandalized, and spending half my time cleaning up after others. -- Dmsdbo 13:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the suggestions you all made - please keep in mind that we're using some standard software here. We basically have the option to allow or disallow anonymous contributors, but nothing more. Thus, we should concentrate on discussing these options. You might want to suggest everything else directly to the MediaWiki programmers.

Defiant: ("However, I think a section of the site which only reflects the activities of unregistered users may be a good addition to this site.") Just click on "hide logged in users" on Special:Recentchanges... :)

On-topic: I admit that I completely missed that last big vandal attack, but already saw several of them. We also discussed exactly this suggestion months ago on the forum. I still believe that we should allow anonymous contributions (as was the result of this last discussion). Just don't give the vandals what they are looking for (attention, anger, tantrums, ...). Another important point, in my opinion, is to actually tell non-vandal anonymous contributors why their additions have been reverted. This is something many of us forget occasionally. -- Cid Highwind 13:42, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Please see m:Talk:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit on the Meta-Wikipedia. A lot of good points are raised on both sides, and it is rather illuminating. One major point I get from there - "Most vandals are anonymous users. The converse, that most anonymous users are vandals, is NOT true." (from (moink 19:57, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)). Anonymous users provide substantial improvement to MA - they are our spell-checkers, our fact-checkers, our stub-creators; we have a major anonymous user who has substantially expanded the episode pages of Star Trek: The Original Series with a glorious wealth of background information (albeit, mixed in with a little too much personal commentary). They ask questions that may lead to a major article rework; they link words to create articles we may never have considered. And yes, whilst it appears that all anon users do is vandalise, post copyvios, and spoil the wiki for others, that's only because those users' actions are what attract our attention and get us riled up, as I see User:Dmsdbo doing (getting riled up, that is). Vandalism is just something that any wiki must deal with. People come and try out the wiki - sometimes they stay, sometimes they leave, sometimes they get frustrated when we apply our policies and launch an attack on us. It's what happens. It's what's been happening since we started - hell, it's been the same with Wikipedia since they started, and you haven't seen them restrict users. Why? Because it goes against the very principle of a wiki - that anyone can edit.

On a related note, those calling for restrictions on anon IP edits: I scrutinise every anon edit that comes through (with the exception of the ones I know come from User:Defiant). Your typical anon "regular contributor" may make ten or twenty edits in a day. Your "test driver", only one or two. Your vandal... it depends on how committed he/she is. Our AOL "friend" yesterday is somewhat of a rarity, as most are warned off by test and vandalism notices/warnings. The total average number of anon edits per day is roughly 200, a figure that is easily monitorable - I regularly am able to check through a night's worth of RC in ten minutes or so (more only when a significant vandalism spree takes place). However, our small community means that all of us must work together to deal with any problems. A lot of the time, I see vandalism left unfixed at a time when other users are around - sometimes it's several hours later when I see it and revert it. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Pages needing attention

We are approaching somewhat of a problem point with Memory Alpha:Pages needing attention. Each day, more articles are tagged with {{pna}} and its variants - and yet, they don't seem to be disappearing off that status as quickly. I have just finished classifying many of the standard {{pna}} messages, recategorising where more specific templates are appropriate, removing where no talk page details exist. This is how we stand:

Category:Memory Alpha pages needing attention - 43 articles
Category:Memory Alpha pages needing citation - 6 articles
Category:Memory Alpha inaccurate articles - 10 articles
Category:Memory Alpha incomplete articles - 146 articles!
Category:Memory Alpha unformatted articles - 12 articles

Whilst it seems that some of these numbers are low, a lot of them have been lingering around for a while without resolution. I believe this is because they are tagged and, once off RC, aren't noticed again.

So, I have a few suggestions/points to make:

Please classify articles with the appropriate template: {{pna}}, {{pna-cite}}, {{pna-inaccurate}}, {{pna-incomplete}}, {{pna-unformatted}}. Please try to restrict {{pna}} to where more than one action is required, or where the attention required doesn't fit any of the other four.
Remember to indicate on the talk page what needs fixing. This is only the case for pna, inaccurate and incomplete - the other two have been modified to remove reference to talk pages, since they don't really need further explanation.
If adding a page to one of the PNA categories, have a look through said categories to see if there's anything you can fix. Unformatted and cite are the easiest to deal with - inaccurate and incomplete require more work, pna may depend on what is needed.
Have a look through Category:Memory Alpha incomplete articles asap, and see if there are any pages you know you can help with. A copy of the Encyclopedia, if you have it, is enough to help deal with some of these. For others, with major requirements, try checking the scripts as well.
If you tag an article which you think requires major work, add it to your watchlist. Check back in a few days or weeks to see if improvement has been made. At a later point you may have the time to deal with the problems yourself, or be able to call further attention to them.

I will probably do this tally once every month or two months to see where we stand. Many thanks. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Memory Alpha:Ten Forward/Archive 2005

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