User:MuppetArchives/Current Events 32 (July-Dec 2009)

Archive of Current events.

Editing problems
I'm having trouble logging in. It's as if every other time I try to edit a page or go onto another page, I log out instantly. Has anyone else had this problem? -- MuppetDude 16:02, September 17, 2009 (UTC)


 * I haven't seen any reports of similar problems today. Can you try emptying your cache, deleting cookies, restarting your browser and logging in again? Does it happen in other browsers? What browser version and operating system do you use? —Scott ( talk ) 17:04, September 17, 2009 (UTC)


 * I couldn't edit earlier today. A pop up window would come up and ask if I wanted to save a file or fine a program online to open the file.  Same thing would happen when I would click on the "new pictures" link.  -- ''Nate  (talk ) 18:17, September 17, 2009 (UTC)


 * I've only been on for a bit and had no issues, but it sounds like it could have been a general Wikia thing and, whatever the cause, it appears to be gone now. A good tip, which I don't always remember myself: when you notice something strange, especially when it involves odd pop-ups or error messages, take a screengrab. It helps to document the problem and assists the tech people in tracking down what could have caused it. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 19:53, September 17, 2009 (UTC)


 * I've had a problem for several weeks now. I left a note on Danny's talk page about it, but no one seems to have noticed (though I didn't express the problem quite fully). Whenever I log in, it doesn't register on the page of the wiki on which I logged in that I have logged in (even when I have). But if I go to another page of the wiki then it shows that I am logged in. But if I go back to that page I had up when I logged in it still shows me as not logged in (even though I obviously am). Emma 13:49, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

Sesame Street episode links
I've been doing something lately with Sesame Street episode links in articles, and it makes sense to me, but it's a slight change to the writing style, so I wanted to bring it up and see what people think.

I'm not talking about most of our links, just a particular kind -- links in a sentence where it's sort of a stray episode number that doesn't have other context. For example, in the Aladdin article, there was this sentence:


 * "David Alan Grier guest starred as Aladdin in Episode 4025 of Sesame Street."

Personally, I'm not so up on Sesame episode numbers that I know when that is -- I know enough to say that it's fairly recent, but off the top of my head, I would have said that it could be any time in the last ten years. Turns out it's 2002. So the information "Episode 4025" doesn't help me put it in context -- I know from that sentence that he was in an episode kind of recently, but I don't know anything else.

So when I've seen sentences like that, I've been changing them to:


 * "David Alan Grier guest starred as Aladdin in a 2002 episode of Sesame Street."

With "a 2002 episode" being a link to Episode 4025.

This still provides the link and the information, while also giving the average reader some extra context that they wouldn't get from just seeing the episode number.

What do folks think about this? Is it something that we'd want to adopt more widely in those kinds of situations? -- Danny (talk ) 15:42, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it would depend on context. In other words, if the link is there mainly as a source or an eka to explain when Bert and Ernie went to the park or something, I don't think the year really matters (and of course, if it's not a street scene, that's always subject to change later on). However, I agree that it works for non-insert celebrity guests, and also for major events (episodes which served as the official intro for a character, the "Everyone meets Snuffy" episode, etc.) -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 19:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what I meant. This isn't for eka's, or anything where the specific number is the relevant info. I'm just talking about instances where it's part of a sentence. -- Danny (talk ) 21:46, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think even if it is part of a sentence, but it's not an area where the date is really important or useful, i.e. references: "When Big Bird and Snuffy go on an adventure in Sesame Street episode 3135, Snuffy wears an Indiana Jones style fedora on their adventure and an Indy look-alike is repeatedly chased down Sesame Street by a large boulder." It's from 1993, but I don't see the year as being especially useful, and our format on all the reference pages is to include an episode name or number, not a year.
 * Similarly, Mr. Snuffleupagus has a "Near Misses" section, where people almost saw Snuffy or where he tries to make himself seen, but changing the episode numbers to a year in those instances wouldn't really add anything, to my mind, since there was often more than one per year and we know they all happened prior to the reveal. This is in contrast to an earlier sentence in the same article, "the major human characters never believed his existence until episode 2096 in 1985." It includes both episode number and date, since it's a significant milestone. So that would make sense to me, for milestones, character intros, or celebrities (which tend to be topical) but not every sentence that has "In Episode 0276, Bert eats an oatmeal cake" and so on. -- Andrew Leal (talk ) 23:11, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's relevant for the reference sentence as well. If we say that something happened in episode 2714, then we might as well just say that it happened in a Sesame Street episode. When was episode 2714? What else was happening on the show then? Was that back when I was watching it, or after?


 * We're writing for a readership that can't say, oh, right, episode 1423, that was the period when I was watching as a kid. Having a year helps to ground you in the history of the show -- the episode number doesn't tell you much at all. Personally, if you give me any given episode number, I pretty much lose track of where it is in the series after about 800, and I've been immersing myself in this wiki for years. I can only imagine that for people reading the site, an episode number might as well just be a random four digits. -- Danny (talk ) 03:32, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, especially since the seasons went from 130 shows a year, to 65, to 50, to 26, so the numbers are now going by a lot slower, but most people don't know that. I know when I see an early episode number, I have to stop and try to multiply by 130 in my head, and I usually just click to see what year it was.  So the way Danny is doing it would help, since I can just hover over and see the number, and the year is already on the page.  It's kind of like how we do Muppet Show episode links.  I like that you can see the number, and you can hover over to check who the guest star was. -- Ken  (talk ) 04:27, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That's what seems odd to me, though, on references. Take Indiana Jones. We do use just the episode number, not the year, on Muppet Show episodes. Guest star s the main idea there, sure, but it would look kind of terrible for lists on the Snuffy page to have years or, in the middle of a reference list with either episode titles or numbers, to see years, as if we don't really know which episode it's from (which in the case of some clips or excerpted stuff, really is the case). I just don't see the point in changing every episode link, just the important ones. If it was back when the reader was watching ot not, well, they can click to find out, just as they'd click to find out on an eka. That's how it seems to me. If we're talking when a celebrity guest starred (especially one who may not be so famous now) or Mr. Hooper dying or Around the Corner's debut episode, then dates seem relevant, since those *are* part of the history of the show, in a way that "A Mona Lisa painting appears in blank episode" really isn't. It just seems like excess work I guess to make it a rule to use the year every single time, regardless of context or how important it is, when often, even when it's not in the eka format, the episode number is just there to confirm that this happened in an episode and isn't an unsourced fan memory. -- <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:12, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

sidebar
Could we put the active talk pages back into the sidebar, it makes it much easier to accsess. -- Joe ( talk ) 19:38, 16 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You can edit your own personal sidebar -- check out User:Scarecroe/Monaco-sidebar for an example. We decided that "Active talk pages" is really only useful for a handful of contributors, and isn't very useful for 99% of the people reading the site -- so you can still access it through the "Community" link in the toolbox, or you can edit your own sidebar to have all the links that you want. Let me know if you need help with it! -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

The case of the disappearing pictures
What happened to all of the pictures? Where they're supposed to be I only see blue boxes with question marks in them. (I have a Mac, so Windows users might see a clear box with a red x in it.) - Jasonbres 15:19, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * It happened to me. Restart your computer. I have a mac, I restarted it and no question marks! Webkinz Mania   says   stuff  15:46, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikia's having some database trouble right now... They're working on fixing it. It's a pain. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:59, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Muppet Wiki's evil twin?
What is the meaning of this? I'm confused ... --MuppetVJ 20:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Good question! I'm asking the Ops folks... It's probably a test version, but I don't know what it's testing, or why we're getting watchlist e-mails about it... -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:29, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * That's weird. It's like a time capsule of how the wiki looked about a year ago.  It even still has our avatars! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:07, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Very weird. I am a bit freaked out... I am also confused. Webkinz Mania   says   stuff  12:42, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

19,000 articles!
It looks like we just crossed 19,000 articles! Congratulations to everybody! Maybe we'll hit 20,000 in time for our 4th birthday! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:58, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Yay! That's a big milestone. And yeah -- I think we can make 20,000 by December... That would be super exciting! -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:04, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Then again... I just looked at the current stats, and we're making about 5 new pages a day right now. If we stay at that rate... we'll get to 20,000 in about six months. Which would still be awesome. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I know that there a bunch of song pages I haven't gotten to yet, so I'll see what I can do to help! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And a lot of SS characters I've yet to add! -- MuppetDude 20:14, 14 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You mean there are even more?! -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:02, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And, getting a bit corageous here, hundreds of Sesame Street Episodes. -- Joe ( talk ) 09:35, 15 August 2009 (UTC)


 * And with Season 40 underway, there'll be a bunch of articles about that. At least 100. And the 40th birthday of Sesame Street! I agree Joe. So much more Sesame Street episodes other than Season 40! Webkinz Mania   says   stuff  12:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Green to Blue
Is there a reason that the color scheme of the wiki has changed from green to blue? -- <font color="Blue">Peter (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It shouldn't have... I still see it as green. There might be a bug. I'll check it out... -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 19:03, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I checked it out... We released a new skin this week called Lean Monaco, which looks the same but is supposed to load faster, especially for logged-out readers. It looks like there's bug that's causing some people to see Sapphire instead of the chosen skin. We filed a ticket about it; hopefully it'll get fixed soon. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This should be fixed now... Does anybody still see the wrong skin? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Skin looks okay to me, but I see another weird issue since the new code rolled out. About 1 in every 3 pages that I load, the skin looks like this for about two seconds. —Scott ( talk ) 16:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that was a different problem from yesterday. Is that still happening to you right now? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:09, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes. Even after the CSS purge that Jason cleared on varnish just within the past hour. —Scott ( talk ) 20:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's changed back to blue for me. Is anyone else experiencing this again?  -- <font color="Blue">Peter  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:27, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm seeing green here, but I've seen some skin issues on other wikis. I believe it's a cache issue that (I hope) is being fixed with a code release tomorrow morning. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 23:31, 11 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm seeing green, but the same half-loaded skin is showing up for me in the first couple seconds of the page load again. I'll check again tomorrow after the new code rolls out. —Scott ( talk ) 04:16, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Official Henson Company Youtube Channel
The Jim Henson Company just recently started Youtube channel. It has some cool stuff, such as an "outtake" from The Jim Henson Hour, a Munchos commercial, and some early Henson films like Cat and Mouse and Idea Man. So there's some cool stuf to embed. --Minor muppetz 14:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Season 36 on iTunes
I just released Season 36 was on iTunes. It looks like it came out today. Twelve episodes, like the first volume was released and the new volume came out most likely came out because the first volume was number nine in best kids shows and is in "Kids: iTunes Picks:".  Webkinz Mania   says   stuff...  22:53, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Sesame Streem links
A new contributor, User:Sesamestreem, came and added lots of links to his website, Sesame Streem. The site has a stream of out-of-print Sesame and Muppet albums. It's also linked to a store, where you can buy the vinyl LPs (and a CD copy along with them).

This is super borderline, but I'm not sure what to do with it. On the one hand, it seems pretty clear that the streaming is copyright violation, although we don't have much room to get on our high horse about that. The albums themselves are out-of-print, although some of the tracks are included on currently available CDs.

On the other hand -- copyright stuff aside, it's actually a really neat website, and it does provide value for our readers. I wouldn't want to host all that, but linking to it? I dunno.

On the third hand, I'm a little irritated that the dude came in and added 30+ links to his more-or-less commercial site without saying anything to us about it. So I don't know what to do. Any thoughts? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 00:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi everyone, my name is Jay and I'm the culprit in these new links. I'm very new to the whole wiki editing, so I apologize upfront as it appears I have already taken a large misstep.  I will be happy to comply with whatever the community feels is the right thing to do in regards to the links, including removing all of them immediately.


 * Although my site is set up so that anyone can enjoy these old albums for free, I understand Danny's concern because it is also linked to my web store. I feel like I've made a stupid mistake and should just remove the links now anyway, but I will do whatever the MW community feels is best.  Thanks for your time.Sesamestreem 01:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * No, please don't feel like you have to take them out right now. It's cool; this is part of having a wiki. You make a change, and if it's something that needs to be talked about, then people talk about it! Once we've all talked about it, if it turns out that we want to take the links out, it's easy to do.


 * I'm really glad you posted here; it's great to have you be part of the conversation. So don't worry, you haven't offended anybody! I take back what I said about being irritated; you're cool. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:48, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Ha ha, okay, thanks for the note of reassurance. I'm happy to not be blasted from the site the same day that I got here.  Sesamestreem 02:05, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, guys! (You knew I'd show up for this one, right?)  I was watching these links appear earlier, and I was excited and nervous at the same time, so I'm glad Danny brought it up.  The last thing I want to do is get the Workshop mad at us, since I know we all love what they do, and want to support them.  I guess for me the gray area is the audio streams.  But then, this is the same thing as the tons of Sesame clips on YouTube put up by fans, and Viacom seems to have had more of a problem with them than the Workshop does.  So I'm really torn.  I'd love to hear the material I don't have yet (and it'll be awesome to finally finish the song pages), but I don't want to advocate violating copyrighted material, either.  I'm happy that Jay's site offers a burned CD of an album purchased from him (which is legal), and not just cranking out CD's of the Columbia LP's and putting them on eBay.  So like I said, I'm torn, and I guess I'll leave it up to the admins.


 * By the way, does anybody know if Muppet Central Radio ever gets complaints? Because I think what people are worried about is not so much listening to out-of-print material, but downloading and making a bunch of copies without paying the copyright holder. -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:45, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have no particular reason for this, but quite arbitrarily I would prefer that we link to an internal wiki page on the website, and that page in turn would link to the external site for those who wish to go there. -- <font color="Blue">Wendy  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 20:42, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that's an interesting idea. Let me make sure I understand: Each Sesame album page has a See also link to the Muppet Wiki page about Sesame Streem. Then you can go from that wiki page through an external link to the Sesame Streem site, which has great navigation that can help people find what they're looking for.

I think that would help me feel more comfortable about linking to Sesame Streem as a resource for readers. I'm happy to let people know that the resource exists, but the current links make it sound like Sesame Streem is a part of the wiki. "Listen to the Born to Add album" with an external link basically sounds like an advertisement, and if it's on every Sesame and Muppet album, then that's a lot of advertisements. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:24, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that sounds like a very good idea! It helps to remove the stigma that Sesame Streem is operated by the Muppet Wiki, but still creates a simple way to get from an album listing to the corresponding "listen to" page.  This actually would have been my preference from the start, but I wasn't sure how to set up such a page and also didn't want to come of as some self-important guy going "Hey, look at me and my music!"  Thanks for the idea, Wendy.  -- Jay -- Sesamestreem 21:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That's right! I forgot that Sesame Streem would get a page in Muppet Fandom, then that would kind of be a buffer between the wiki and his site, like we do for other Muppet fan sites.  I like that idea, too! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Anybody else have any thoughts about this, or can we create a page for Jay's site in Muppet Fandom, and take out the links on the actual album pages? -- <font color="Blue">Ken (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 02:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, sorry this petered out. I think that's the best way to do it. Ken, do you have the time (and patience) to do all that, or do you need some help? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey guys, definitely let me know if I can help in any way - including removing the other the links and what I need to do to get the Fandom page up and running. Thanks!  --Jay-- Sesamestreem 05:20, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'll work with Jay on this. Thanks, everybody! -- <font color="Blue">Ken  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 05:39, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I started removing links to Sesame Streem in the See Also sections of some albums last night before I realized what had been decided here. I caught the early part of the conversation where we said we'd have a page for the fansite. But why are we linking to it all over the wiki? The site is obviously illegal and I don't think we should be endorsing that behaviour. I mean, as a fan I think it's cool that it exists, but providing entire albums owned by Sesame Workshop goes way beyond using pictures or posting video clips. Isn't it enough that we have a page for the site? I don't think we need to form an affiliation with Sesam Streem. No offense meant to the webmaster. —Scott ( talk ) 14:46, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

new links in the sidebar
Hey all. You may have noticed that there are two new links in the sidebar with icons next to to them, Write an Article and Add Image. They're new links rolled out in the code today, but there's no way to disable them if you already know how to do those things. If you don't want to show them, here's what to do: 1) create your own .css file if you haven't already. Mine is at User:Scarecroe/monaco.css. 2) Enter the following code: display:none; } Save the article and you're done! It may take seconds for the changes to show up, or it could be several days. And let me know if you need help figuring anything else out. —Scott ( talk ) 15:06, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) link_box_dynamic #dynamic-links-list {
 * Should we be removing the "Upload an image" link in the sidebar, since it's redundant now? -- <font color="Blue">Peter (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 18:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)