User talk:Scarecroe

Anniversary Goal
Well, Danny's skepticism aside, we are now exactly 147 articles away from 12,000. The hardest part for me is trying to assemble a list of gaps that need filling and that I can fill. I don't know if I can keep up the pace, with final papers and applications as priorities, but if I can manage at least a couple more days like this, with the usual additions from other people, and if not too many pages are deleted, I think we might still reach 12,000 articles by December 5! -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 16:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Nighttime
Very nice, I like seeing that. By the way, ebcite is brilliant. That's a great way to handle that situation. -- Danny (talk ) 22:18, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I think this is really going to work out nicely. These pages can be really useful now. — Scott (talk ) 22:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yay! It takes us a while, but we always figure it out. The wiki wins. -- Danny (talk ) 23:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Hey, for the first time in a while, our page count actually went down! It's worth it, though -- the new system is going to be so much better. -- Danny (talk ) 04:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we only lost around 30 pages. We'll get that back in a week. We're cutting it close for 12,000 by our one year anniversary. — Scott (talk ) 04:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That would be nice -- I'm rooting for 12K too -- but I don't think it's going to happen. 200 new articles in two weeks... I'm not seeing it happen, unless somebody gets very busy over Thanksgiving weekend. -- Danny (talk ) 04:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * By the way, what's up with the space at the bottom of some of the pages? -- Danny (talk ) 05:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * You mean the ones marked "intentional space for anchored links"? — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:45, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, those. I have two questions. a) What does that mean? b) Is that gonna be there forever? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 12:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Trying clicking on an anchored link in any article. It doesn't work if there isn't enough room at the bottom of the article and therefor makes any of the reference links useless. That's why I didn't like them when they started to be used here, but there wasn't much way around it. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you're talking about. They work fine. I just took the extra space off Ernie and Bert Sketches: Expeditions, clicked on the reference link, and it took me to the bottom of the page. Maybe it doesn't work in Opera? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work. When you click on this link, note how it takes you to the second reference in the list, not the first one. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:56, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Or, a better example at The_Muppet_Workshop — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:57, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that they don't work if you link them from other pages. But they work fine when you're on those pages. When I'm on The Muppet Workshop and I click on a reference, I get the correct reference. Why would somebody be linking from one page to another page's reference? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * If those break tags weren't on The Muppet Workshop and you clicked a reference link in the article, you wouldn't see the reference. You'd just be taken to the bottom of the page wheer you'd see a list of references. It's extra work to scroll back up and look at the number again, then scroll back down to find that number in the list. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, is that the issue? I actually don't see that as a problem at all. I figure if you click on a 3, then you remember that you're clicking on a 3.


 * I really don't like the extra space. I think it's off-putting and disorienting to click on the footnote and be taken to what is essentially a blank screen. You have to scroll back up anyway to keep reading the article -- and with the blank space, you always have to scroll down to see the category tags. It violates the format that applies to all the other pages. Can we discuss it with some other folks and see what they think? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:10, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, see what everyone else thinks at Current Events. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:11, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course, taking away the blank space will mean that you can't link directly to a sketch which happens to fall at the bottom of the page. And that's a feature I really don't want to lose. We have dozens of those links all over the wiki. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:13, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you give me an example? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Say I wanted to link to a sketch from an article. I might say, "some sketches, such as this one, have not aired in the US." Depending on your screen resolution, that links takes you to anywhere between "Identity Crisis" and somewhere in the middle of "Attracting Birds" ... unless the extra page breaks are in there. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think that's a problem. You could just as easily say "some inserts, such as the sketch about Ernie and Bert pretending to be animals, have not aired in the US." That's better wiki writing anyway -- using "this one" as a link works for a talk page, but not a wiki article.


 * As for getting oriented on the page, I think it's much easier to process getting linked to the table and finding the item at the bottom of the page than it is to click a link and find that item and absolutely nothing else on the screen. I'd find that very disorienting, because it's unlike any other experience you would have clicking links. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding point 1, your way of writing the text is better, but the link still takes you to the wrong place. If a link is meant to take you to the Egypt sketch, it should take you to the Egypt sketch and not somewhere else on the article. It's confusing and disorienting.


 * Regarding point two, I just disagree. Clicking a reference link should take you to that reference and not someplace else on the page. It's more work to find the reference when the link was supposed to do that for you. Otherwise, there's no point in useing the reference links at all, and we may as well just make a list under a "Sources" header. Because without the page breaks, that's what it is anyway. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:32, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The point of using the references rather than a "Sources" list is that they're numbered. So if you click on 4, and it takes you to the Sources list, you look at #4 on the list.


 * As far as what's more or less confusing, we might have to ask the other guys what they think. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:40, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I hate the kludge of extra whitespace at the bottom of an article. It makes people wonder "why is this here?", and really, we don't know how much whitespace any given viewer might need.  However, it is also a popular solution to the well-known anchor-link problem.  My instinct is to not bother with it, but the decision might depend on how often one needs to link to bottom-ward anchors on other pages.  (I don't think it's worth the trouble for footnotes, personally, but the sketch pages are a different story.)  Powers 21:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I've never been a big fan of the whitespace, and part of the problem is it's not always easily understandable. Peter's asked me several times why Scott keeps adding whitespace. I had a vague notion of the reason, but nothing's been clearly stated, until now. It seems like there's two issues, though. One is the "sources" links, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me. We never link to them outside of the actual page (or at least, I've yet to see that). As Danny said, they're numbered, and for my money, a bigger problem with sources, which I've caught a few instances of and there's probably several that have gone undetected, is editors using the format but forgetting to add at the end, thus the links don't go *anywhere*.


 * The anchored links for individual sketches is a different story, and a tradeoff for converting so many pages to tables. With lists with subheadings, like Nobility or even Muppeteers in Non-Henson Acting Roles, one can link to a specific section using just a # to seperate the specific heading, and that's it. Simple, and as far as I can tell, unless that heading is removed, always works. With the tables, it's a bit different. It might help, though, if Scott could be specific at what screen resolutions it breaks. for myself, I *always* have a problem when images are placed beneath a heading, but the initial picture is longer. So, for me, that creates extra white space between the heading and the actual text, in contrast to when all images are stacked on the top, assuming they're the same size, in which case they neatly fit on the right side of the page. So, for anchored sketch links, which are in heavy use, maybe some Sandbox testing would be in order? To find out how to limit that space if possible, if it can be done, and just how many browsers/screen resolutions would create a problem in this way. Otherwise, we may need to either cut down on changing everything to the table formats if we expect to link to them, or find another way to section them. That's how I see it, anyway, without fully understanding the whole technical side of it. And I agree, this really should go to Current Events. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 00:24, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Non Muppet Cameos
Hey, Scott. I know you're busy with the Ernie and Bert situation (I really don't have anything to suggest, since I don't understand it either), but when you get a chance, I *really* need your thoughts on Muppeteers in Non-Henson Acting Roles re organization. I've tried putting the images, at our normal 300px, near the Muppet person's name, but that's proving a little lopsided, and once we get more than one image per performer, impossible. I'm not sure I just want to stick all the images at the bottom ala Miscellaneous Cameos either, though. Especially re Frank Oz, for whom we currently have three images (and since they're already double counted, I think they should be moved off of his page and added to the Acting Roles page; Jim in Into the Night should stay on his page, since it's more a cameo as a version of himself than an acting role, with the "Bernie" joke and all). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:55, 19 November 2006 (UTC)


 * How's that? Also, we don't have to repeat the info twice. If it's in the gallery, we should probably take it out of the list. — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:05, 19 November 2006 (UTC)


 * By repeat, I was referring to stuff on Frank Oz Cameos also being on that page, which I intend to take out. With the galleries, I dunno. It works perfectly just having that on, say, Jerry Nelson Cameos, but I don't know if it's worth it to try to shoe-horn in the extra text to the galleries here, except in those cases where that's the only appearance, or we eventually get all of the images. Since I have them arranged chronologically, with details on medium, role, etc. Which would be thrown off in several cases (but might be a wiser course with, say, Don Sahlin). -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

A Little Night Music
I'm going to bed (I'll have to push us closer to 12,000 tomorrow, it looks like), but here's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. If you're so inclined, you might be able to do a better job of the biography than I did. Enjoy! -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:25, 19 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That's awesome! I knew we had some music, but no idea that we had enough to support an article -- sweet! — <font color="Blue">Scott (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

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