User talk:Toughpigs

Everyone Likes Ice Cream
Hi Danny: I just made an edit to the Everyone Likes Ice Cream page, but the page claims that I made the edit on June 10, 2008. There seems to be a bug of some sort... Tclark1428 18:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

1986 Love Stamp
Hi Danny: I have a question about the Love Stamp page. Try as I might, I haven't been able to find any information on the First Day Cover (FDC) for which Guy Gilchrist purportedly drew a picture of Rowlf, although I've found many other FDCs for this stamp with cachets by other artists. In a 2005 post, Garrett Gilchrist, Guy's son, asserted that his father had designed a Rowlf postage stamp that (presumably) predated the 2005 USPS Jim Henson and Muppets stamps, but I think that Garret must have been thinking of the above mentioned FDC (the 1986 22c Love Stamp itself was designed by Saul Mandel, as indicated on the USPS Souvenir Sheet for this issue.) Does anyone have a copy of this FDC--I'm very curious to see a picture.Tclark1428 23:46, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know... what's on that page is all that I know about it. You should post this on the talk page of the Love Stamp page -- maybe somebody else will know? -- Danny (talk ) 23:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I went ahead and posted on the Love Stamp discussion.Tclark1428 18:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Ton Hasebos
Hi Danny Ive crossed to some records sites and found a need picture from Pino the pinguin.. Its a story character used in an old dutch puppetery show on Dutch television during the late 50's. He was created by Ton Hasebos and used as a starter for our verry own Pino. I hope ichanged the Pino part and Ton Hasebos correctly?(Pino 20:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC))

Another upcoming anniversary
Just thought you'd like to know that the wiki will be 1,000 days old on Wednesday. -- Ken (talk ) 00:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Oops; we already crossed it. I forgot that the date is taken from the bottom of the chart. (Emily Litella voice) Never mind! -- Ken (talk ) 00:53, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Jogchem Jalink
Just wow. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 00:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, how fun! That's awesome! -- Danny (talk ) 00:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Stuntkip and Angsthaas
Hi Danny, I finnaly founded some info about the two new characters.. Even a picture wich I worked on so they are now two seperate pictures. Can you please check if the language and writing is correct? All information I found on a weblog from one of the writers from Sesamstraat (Herman Roozen) http://hermanroozen.blogspot.com/search/label/Sesamstraat Thanx (Pino 20:21, 5 September 2008 (UTC))


 * Those are great, thank you! We can take care of the writing -- it's great to have the information! -- Danny (talk ) 21:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Search engine
What ho! Do you know if Wikia's still planning to work on the search engine or if that's been forgotten? Because as of now, placing a term in the top box goes directly to the page, which can be useful, but not when you're wanting to search for a name or phrase within. This has been a particular problem with the many redirects (most of which are unused). Users can always look further down and find Special:Search, and as long as they remember to physically click the search button (pressing "enter" just goes to the page), it works and bypasses the issue. For example, I just undid a redirect from "tiger" to Cats, which was only used in two places. I'm planning to add a page about the comic strip character Tiger (one of the King Features characters who appeared in cartoon inserts on Sesame), but I'm not sure whether to disambiguate it (not because we have an actual article by that name, but to make it easier to search for the word). I'd meant to mention it on the mailing list myself but then got busy and depressed and so on, so I'm just checking to see if you're aware of anything. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 20:24, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah -- this is something we've been talking about a lot, and the answer to your question is complicated. I'm gonna try to give the broad outlines...


 * There are two different search functions -- "Go" (meaning "take me to the page"), and "Search" (meaning "take me to a page of search results"). On Monobook, those are two separate buttons under the search box. That layout makes both functions visible... but also confusing. Those two words don't necessarily communicate the difference between the functions. It's especially confusing because when there isn't a page to "go" to, it defaults to search results anyway... So for some terms, either button will give you the same result.


 * Speaking for myself, I used Monobook heavily for probably a year and a half before I figured out what the difference was between those buttons.


 * So for Monaco, we made a choice to make things clearer for the average user. The basic thing that people want to do when they go to the search box is "go". If a new reader comes to Muppet Wiki and searches for Miss Piggy, they want to go to the Miss Piggy page -- not a list of every page that has those words. The search box on the Monaco skin defaults to "go" -- whether you press return, or click the arrow.


 * The people who want to use "search" are hardcore users -- you and me. A new reader has no interest in seeing all the pages that mention Gonzo; they want to see the Gonzo page. The main reason to use "search" is when you're building a page, and you want to make sure that every page that mentions that term will link to that page. It's basically like "what links here", but the other way around -- "what should link here but doesn't yet".


 * So "search" has the same status as "what links here" on the skin -- a link that's important for heavy contributors, but not for the average reader. That's why it's in the toolbox, where "what links here" is. The kind of user who wants to use "search" will be savvy enough to click the link in the toolbox. (Although I think we may want to change it to "Advanced search", to make that clearer.) Does that help? -- Danny (talk ) 22:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Gonzo is one thing, but for casual words or things which redirect to something else just as shorthand (like tiger or when Hercules was a redirect to Greek Myths, despite there being nothing about him on the page), I'm not sure it's so useful, and I still think it would make sense to have an option beyond the default right there (the magnifying glass on the arrow kind of implies actually searching for the term). As an example, it's easy to imagine even casual readers |searching for the phrase "tiger" when looking for that one Fraggle Rock episode, or because they forgot Rugby's name or something, not just hardcore users, and to them it may not be immediately obvious why they can't actually find anything but a redirect. So I don't see it as similar to "What links here" at all in those instances. Thanks for the status summary, though (and definitely changing to "Advanced search" would help, or for that matter, rename the search box to "Go" since that's primarily what it does now, as opposed to "Searchg Muppet Wiki," really, though I know it's too late in the day to change that one). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I think what you're talking about is a problem with a particular redirect. We need to design our redirects and disambigs to fit the way the search tool works, which for the most part we do. Right now, "Wolf" redirects to Wolves, which is a disambig that lists all of the important wolf pages. We could do the same thing for "Tiger". If "Hercules" goes to the wrong place, then we just need to change that redirect page. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's just so far I've deleted over half a dozen redirects for that reason, and often more are created. But whatever works, I suppose. (And we'd previously decided not to list things like a Fraggle Rock episode title "Catch the Tail by the Tiger" on the disambig pages, unless we want to start doing that due to the search tool). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:36, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, we seem to be finding a lot of things lately that made sense in 2006 and don't make sense now. I created that "episode harry" redirect (and other similar ones) in December '05 because I was doing a lot of work on the TMS episode pages and wanted a shortcut. If I'd known that we would have a wiki three years later with 17,000 pages and dozens of active contributors.... well, I don't know what I would've done differently, but I would've been happy about it.


 * So like with all the other '06 cleanup, when we find something that doesn't work anymore, we talk about it and change it. :) -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:49, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The problem is the list of redirects is limited to 1000 results, and we have well over that (the list works chronologically, and can't even get past January 2006). But I guess it's a matter of deleting them or finding other work-arounds as they're found. It's working around the search engine than actually benefiting from it. Google helps with some things, like the still insurmountable three-letter word issue(which Wikipedia solved but all Wikia still has), but doesn't keep up fast enough). Well, que sera sera and all that, but both Scott and I have discussed the problems with this. It sounds like it's not really on the table right now, but if you can mention it as something worth overhauling at some point in the long term, that would be nice (so neither "hardcore" nor casual users are frustrated by the setup). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 02:56, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, how many redirects would you want to delete? Most of the ones that we have are helpful. I'm sorry, maybe I'm not understanding the problem. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The core problem is really the search engine (which Scott and I have discussed,, and which has cropped up time and again in passing in various discussions), but with no plans to change that, a way to keep track of exactly how many redirects we have and why would help (as I said the List Redirects page is limited to 1000 and so stops at January 2006, and most of the problematic redirects were created more recently). Many are helpful, some are random and comprehensible only to the person who created them (Nick's done a few like that, and I don't think all were deleted), and like I said, more than a few basically consist of a key word (not a character name) which hinders rather than helps. But I guess we can just nuke as they surface. It doesn't sound like this is going to be fixes, so we may as well drop it (and I'll find ways to work around it). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 20:01, 3 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, if you look at Special:Allpages, you can see a list of every page, including redirects. So this page shows all of the "episode x" TMS redirects that I made way back when. That's still a long list to hunt through, but if you're looking for something in particular, maybe that helps? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 20:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

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