User:MuppetArchives/Current Events 17 (Feb 2007)

Archive of Current events.

More Wiki Fame
CNN Money's online magazine mentioned Muppet Wiki: -- Brad D.  (talk ) 18:44, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yay! Jimmy Wales loves that Itzhak Perlman page. We should be keeping track of this stuff on the Muppet Wiki (website) page. -- Danny (talk ) 19:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Co-Production Box Template
What are people's thoughts on a information box for international co-productions. Something similar to the TV show box we have, but it would also highlight what country a show comes from and what it is an international variation of. I put one together template:coproduction, but it could still use some tweaking and input. I tried it out on Galli Galli Sim Sim and Die Fraggles to see how it works. Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? -- Brad D. (talk ) 20:58, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Muppet Wiki:Quality article nominations
There hasn't been a lot of activity lately, so in the chance that people have forgotten about it, there are some nominations that are closing next week. — Scott ( talk ) 19:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales loves us
So, a podcast called Net@Nite recently had Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia and Wikia) on their show, and we got a really nice mention. Download here and go to about the 50 minute mark. — Scott ( talk ) 16:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Holy cow. Yeah, that's amazing. They talk specifically about Muppet Wiki for about three minutes. The money quote: "Just the fact that this site exists on this planet makes me insanely happy. I love the Muppets Wiki." -- Danny (talk ) 19:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Search box glitch
This is just a heads up: The Wikia search index seems to have a glitch in it right now. It hasn't been indexing pages for a few days, starting around February 11th. I just caught the problem, and I reported it to the tech folks at Wikia.

The pages are all there, and you can get to them by typing the name of the page in the search box. The thing that's missing right now is that it's not doing full-text search on any page that's been updated since the 11th. This has happened once before, and the tech folks fixed it. I'll let everybody know when I hear back from Wikia. -- Danny (talk ) 14:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Quotes in photo captions
A while ago, we decided that it would be okay to use quotes in the captions for photos -- I thought it would spice up the wiki and make it more fun. But for a little while now, my feelings about it have changed. I've seen a lot of quotes used that are funny or interesting to the person who posted them, but completely baffling to other readers.

For example, the quote for the Fraggle song Dum De Dum was: "Catch a frizzy Fraggle and punch him in the -- die de dum de die de dum..." On the Arthur Rizzic page, the quote was "Go ahead and eat me." The Blotch caption says "You barf on me, you die!"

Now, I recognize all those quotes, but I think someone who doesn't know them would find them confusing.

There's also Rocky's Mother, where the quote was: "Oh, Rocky! Rocky, are you all right? Oh! Oh, you're always crying. I wish you could talk." Which is not that interesting of a photo caption.

So I feel like quotes in the captions are an experiment that we tried out, but it hasn't worked. I don't think it fits with the tone of the wiki to have out-of-context quotes under the photos. Obviously, there should be quotes in the article text, as illustrations of what the character is like. But I don't like them in captions.

What do other people think? Would anybody object to taking the quotes out? -- Danny (talk ) 22:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the quotes work to a point. Obviously, the examples you cited are a bit... out there. But then there's Kermit the Frog ("Hi-ho, Kermit the Frog here!") and Fozzie Bear ("Wocka Wocka!") where it's their signature saying. Those make sense to have under the photo. --Justin 22:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I was thinking about catchphrases. That might be okay, although it's hard to say what phrase is supposed to be the character's catchphrase. For example, on Cookie Monster, we could have something like, "Me love cookie! Ahm nahm nahm nahm." But we don't really have a photo that fits that phrase, and it's not that great of a phrase. -- Danny (talk ) 22:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Signature sayings, I could understand, though in general if they're that well known, they either don't need repeating or can be addressed in the article. But in fact that's the minority; for even some of the well known characters, the quotes have often been random or tied to a specific movie moment or something not related to the image. More often they're for minoe one-shot characters; I've sometimes amused myself with them (like on Eileen, a rare case where the quote actually matches the image precisely), but as Danny said, they can be baffling to the uninformed. Many, especially song lyrics (which strikes me as even odder given are reluctance to transcribe songs), are inordinately long. And they've been a prime target for anonymous nuts to chop and change. In some cases, like Stan, the quote is useful, but better incorporated, either directly or in part, into the article, as it gives specifics about the character's actions or role. But then there was Japanese Storyteller: Just a huge block of opening narration from the "Five Dragons" tale. If the blank is glaring, a descriptive passage is better, and can involve humor even, without making something up. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 22:55, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I can remove any obscure quotes, if you like. -- MuppetDude 18:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah -- sorry, man. I know you put a lot of work into them. Even a year into this, we're still figuring out how everything here should work. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 19:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

More YouTube
I know we never settled the YouTube issue, but Guillermo and I have spent some time taking out a bunch of dead links from a nother round of removals. But amid the expired Sesame stuff, there's also some links to things like The Daily Show. So at the very least, in addition to our current rules not to link to commercially available clips or early Henson films, I'd like to propose no links to any shows, especially those still on the air, on the basis of a Muppet spoof/mention only. I'm not sure there's much value in collecting them anyway, but they have provably a shorter and more legally problematic shelf life than Monsterpiece Theatre clips. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Was there any particular rhyme or reason to the removals? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Viacom owns Noggin, so any clips with a Noggin logo are being removed. Recently, whole accounts have been deleted for this reason and others not involving SW (as I stated before). --MuppetVJ 03:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, Viacom also owns The Daily Show, VH-1, etc. So anything Viacom owned has been deleted, but also whole accounts. So anything ever uploaed from the accounts of two particularly prolific users, "Larynxa" and "nantusoichuken" (sp?) is now a dead link. I'm beginning to think, at the very least, in addition to the youtube template, it might be worth finding some way, not a category, to track *individual* youtube links, for better monitoring purposes. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Man. I thought the whole point of Youtube was to post Daily Show clips. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * YouTube gets more and more depressing every day. One can check what articles are using the template with this link, but not everyone has used the template. Otherwise one would have to use the Wikia search and Google search features. — Scott ( talk ) 03:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Is it time to say no to Youtube links? This is exactly the kind of mess I was talking about a month ago. It seems like an awful lot of work to "patrol" links that we probably shouldn't even have in the first place. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:08, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm ok with that, but I don't look at them very often anyhow. I figure,  much like lyrics, people can probably go do the search themselves if they really want to see stuff.   -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:17, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Danny, you're not doing any of the "awful lot of work" you mentioned, so relax. There's a reason we work as a team. --MuppetVJ 04:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. Okay, I'll relax. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 11:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * And another account, "MacLeaper," has just taken down all their videos, or had it taken down (unclear, but account doesn't seem to be suspended). So a bunch of links that worked yesterday are dead, and so pages need to be examined all over again. Frankly, G, I'm not sure it *is* worth that awful lot of work. It winnows our list for now, but as more get added, I dunno. At this point, if we really feel a need to provide people with YouTube clips instead of searching the site themselves (and I personally don't think we need to), I'd prefer just sticking them all in one list, so when they die, any work and checking is limited to one page. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 19:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * With all this mention of Viacom making You Tube shut down clips with Noggin logos, I wonder how long it will be until Disney makes You Tube shut down Sesame Street clips with Kermit the Frog. --Minor muppetz 15:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Another day, another account nuked for violation, and another user, not yet banned, tactfully removing all their videos. Between us, Tony, Wendy, and I have pulled at least 8 dead links so far, and who knows how many more. Yeah, I could just give up and let them lie, but I don't like the idea of so many broken links lying around. So at the very least, I'd like to suggest a moratorium: continued clean-up on existing links, and no adding new ones. If they're useful or prove a point, they can still be linked to on talk pages and user pages and the like. But I don't know that I like the idea of adding more links with no idea how long they'll work. Right now, every day brings more dead links, which worked just the day before, recquiring constant checking. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 19:57, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. We can't predict when YouTube closes accounts and remove clips, so I see no point to add the short SS clips for certain pages. If they're helpful, they could be added. -- MuppetDude 20:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree too. Consciously adding links to an encyclopedia project that we know are going to expire ina few months is a bit irresponsible on our part. Credit to the folks who want to clean those up on a regular basis, but there are better things they could be doing with their time. — Scott ( talk ) 20:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization of titles
Do we have a policy on capitalization of article titles? For example, is Postage Stamps capitalized that way instead of as "Postage stamps" (or "postage stamps", not sure if those are the same here or not) by convention or just because? Powers 14:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's still in process. We were capitalizing everything for a while, but recently we've started de-capitalizing. I think it's a good question. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've gone along with the de-capitalization, but don't actually really like it. It makes things look unbalanced to me, even though I understand the reasoning in terms of the fact that "Postage Stamps" aren't really a proper noun.  Also, given the wiki's bizarre search issues with capitalization it occasionally makes it hard to find things quickly.  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Monster last names
I wonder if the article titles for Grover, Elmo, and Zoe should be changed to Grover Monster, Elmo Monster, and Zoe Monsters. Though not commonly mentioned, all three of those characters last names have been revealed to be Monster. Grover was referred to as Grover Monster in The Exciting Adventures of Super Grover, Elmo was referred to as Elmo Monster in Elmo's World: Happy Holidays, and Zoe was referred to as Zoe Monster in an early Elmo's World segment (I think it was the one about dancing). --Minor muppetz 03:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think so. In the vast majority of cases, they just use Grover, Elmo and Zoe. You have to struggle to find examples of them using Monster. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good question though. If we don't use their "last names", how do we justify using Maria Rodriguez or Aloysius Snuffleupagus as article names? — Scott ( talk ) 15:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That is an interesting issue. I never did like the move to Aloysius Snuffleupagaus myself, which was based on the Sesame Workshop website at least, though. With the human cast, though, since they're meant to be "real" people with real full names, that's probably the reason for the move. I'd definitely oppose changing any of the monsters unless it's a case where in dialogue, print matierals, and official documents they're regularly referred to by that as a full name (Herry Monster, Telly Monster, etc.) But it wouldn't hurt to look at some of the others too. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree with Andrew. I actually wouldn't mind changing Snuffy, but Maria makes sense to me. Besides, not all Monsters are related. What, next you're going to say they all look alike to you? Huh? Huh? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 02:51, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Marionette toys
Does anyone know anything about these? I've had these pics on my hard drive, but I don't remember where they came from. — Scott ( talk ) 21:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure someone posted an eBay auction on the forum with those pics, so maybe that's where you got them. Though that doesn't help much. — <font colr="Blue">Joe  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hm, this is probably it. Although, in typical TP forum fashion, the thread was muffined after the 3rd post. — Scott ( talk ) 18:18, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Kermit can be found here on Muppet Central. He's from 1979, made by Pelham in the UK.  According to them there were prototypes of Miss Piggy and Rowlf, so that could explain the other two as well.  -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * So I made Muppet marionettes (Pelham), and will assume that Rowlf and Piggy are the prototypes until shown otherwise. -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:36, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia template
Just a heads up that I've adjusted Template:wikipedia so that we don't need to use Template:wikipedia2 anymore. If you're linking to a wikipedia page that doesn't share the same article name, use instead of wikipedia2. In all other cases, nothing has changed: use just as we always have. Thanks to Brad for migrating the articles using wikipedia2 to wikipedia. — Scott ( talk ) 19:34, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's good info! I never even knew about the Wikipedia2 template and always wondered how to do that, but I think this revised original template is really going to help me. <font color="Blue">George B. ''(<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)