User talk:Toughpigs

Cafritz
Humble apologies for letting my personal crises affect my response to Wiki issues and such. I'm better now, I *think*, but I'd hate to find myself turning into Shane 2.0, so I'll try to watch it. Although if you ever get a certain person's ear again, it might not hurt to ask if the archive has anything on the Time Piece cast members. Andrew Leal (talk ) 22:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, please, don't worry about it. If it weren't for personal crises, I'd never work on the wiki at all. -- Danny (talk ) 22:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Coloring Books
What do you think of consolidating the coloring books into a gallery a la Sesame Street Magazine? -- Scott (talk ) 22:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, that's a great idea! -- Danny (talk ) 22:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Rock! -- Scott (talk ) 22:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * You want to do 'em by publisher, or what? -- Danny (talk ) 22:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, Coloring Books are all done. You can categorize em any way you want. They're so much neater now. Those pages were a sore thumb for me. And now I can add more! -- Scott (talk ) 23:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

James Murray
Okay, this guy I *do* have proof on. He appeared in the end credits (and is listed in Cotter's book) for several Dinosaurs episodes as an additional performer (I think Sexual Harris is the main one), and worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze assisting Kevin Clash on Splinter (need to check Sight and Sound, but I think Clash was the voice and body and Murray the face). I'm too tired to recreate his page right now (I'm trying to find a way to combine the background portions of Jerry Juhl's page to avoid as much back and forthing and doubling, and maybe work some more of his writing contributions into it in a narrative way, like creating Super Grover), and I understand we're trying to get rid of short pages, but maybe do like we did with Binion and Godwin, just make a list of questionable pages before deleting them all? Andrew Leal (talk ) 03:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And while I'm at it, I saw your edit to Michael Hordern. I've been meaning to ask your views on illustrating pages for voice actors and such. Do you prefer just character images, or would you allow photos or publicity images from non-Henson projects? I've got screengrabs of Florence Stanley and Sherman Hemsley and quite a few others at the ready (and I know I have some of Hordern and some of the other British voices somewhere). <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 03:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, definitely, actor pics are great. I've just been putting in character pics to have something there. If you have pictures of the actors, that's even better. And I could probably post questionable pages before deleting them, but it's more fun to see the expression on your face when I delete stuff. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:04, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Harrumph. Sir, I consider your actions inimical to good fellowship. Plus it makes me paranoid and confused. Are you trying to get ride of non-Henson people, or just anyone and everyone with exactly one credit? <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:08, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm just trying to get rid of tiny little pages that have one word on them. A page for James Murray that says "Dinosaurs" is only slightly more useful than a page for James Murray that doesn't say "Dinosaurs" on it. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * So I'm still confused. So basically, if we do know a performer puppeteered for Henson but we only have one credit and little else about them, the page should instantly be nuked or never created? And there is more to say about Murray, we just haven't gotten around to saying it. Give me time! I've been working with the British voice people who only had a one line credit first (David Healy and Percy Edwards look pretty good if I dare say so). <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that we shouldn't create a page until we have at least one sentence to write on it. There's already a listing for James Murray on the Dinosaurs page. If you click on that link, it takes you to a page that has the word "Dinosaurs" on it. That's not a helpful click for a reader.
 * In the early days of the wiki, we were encouraging people to create as many pages as they could, because we were still working out the structure of the wiki, and having lots of placeholder pages helped us to do that. At this point, I think we've gone past that point. We don't need placeholder pages anymore. If a reader clicks on a link, s/he should expect to get more information about the topic. If there isn't any more information available, then we shouldn't bother creating a page yet. If information surfaces, then we can always create the page at that point. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * If it makes you happy, I nuked Enid Cafritz about who we know nothing save that she was the wife in Time Piece (and I kinda liked that screengrab but). But with many of the other people, there is more to say that hasn't been said yet, and I'm afraid I'll wake up in the morning and have to hunt down 20 deleted pages and fill them in myself. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal  (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:22, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Honestly, there's absolutely no need for you to hunt down deleted pages and recreate them. I promise you that I'm not deleting any information from the wiki. I'm just consolidating, and deleting pages that don't contain any new information. No actual information is being lost. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It is if the person does have a Henson credit, and others not yet on the Wiki. I don't know, I guess it's just that while deleting empty pages made sense, now I worry that if I don't add content to Kerry Shale in time, it will be gone and information which is not otherwise on any page (Labyrinth has no full cast list yet) will be lost. It's putting pressure on me, and again making me worry about the project in general. Is this a sign that any "additional puppeteers" with one credit will be nuked, and if their names are redlinked, I'd be better off leaving them as such then creating them? This is upsetting me more than it should, but life in general is not unmixedly pleasant right now. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'm calmer now. I guess it doesn't matter, and I can always try to go through the DVD credits and such and put in anybody who is lost entirely. It just feels like its making more work for ourselves. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 04:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to upset you. Let me try to explain: I'm only deleting/consolidating pages that repeat information that's already on the wiki. For example, yesterday I deleted most of the Ghost of Faffner Hall episode pages, because they didn't have any text besides the title -- but first I created a Ghost of Faffner Hall episodes page, so we don't lose those titles. Now those are redlinks, which means that whenever somebody feels like adding information on those episodes, they can create the pages again. I deleted some of the Muppet Beach Party songs, but only because they repeated information that's already on the Muppet Beach Party page. No actual information content was taken off the wiki. Does that make sense? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 12:58, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * So you're promising not to delete pages with just credits unless the names are already on the Wiki? I guess I'm okay with it, it just feels weirder to me when dealing with performer listings, even bare bones ones, then with blank episode pages and such. Still, if you want a list, I've found a few. I stayed up later than I should have trying to find ways to save some of those pages. And note again that none of the Labyrinth performers and a bunch of Basil Hears a Noise puppeteers, and others, are not on the Wiki outside of their individual pages, so just remember to add their names to the people pages or something. Still, I guess the era of "everyone gets a page" is indeed over. 14:37, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Sweetie, I'm sorry that I stressed you out so much. Yeah, I won't delete anything that isn't on the wiki somewhere. You were taking a break from the wiki when I started on my info-consolidation drive, so you missed the conversations that I had with Scott about it. He pointed out that good information shouldn't be taken off the wiki, which I agreed with. I wouldn't have taken out those pages without making sure that the names were on the appropriate pages.

For another example, check out what I did on The Muppet Show on Tour and The Muppet Show on Tour: 2nd Edition. Nate created separate pages for all of those songs -- but we were almost certainly never going to have any more information on the "Goodbye Camilla" page except that it was orchestral music for the stage show, and the only way to get there was from the stage show page. So I took all that info and put them in tables on the stage show pages, and then deleted the song pages. If we someday stumble upon Paul Walberg's secret files and learn the true and complete history of "Goodbye Camilla", then we can always recreate the page. Until then, the info is still on the wiki, in a form that's kinder to the readers.

The reason why I got on this consolidation kick is that I've been looking at the "mean article size" on the Muppet Wiki statistics. When I started on the consolidation project, the mean size was about 850 bytes. It's now 966, and my goal is to get it up to 1000. (For an idea of how big that is, the Carol Burnett page is 966 bytes.)

The point of that is that as the mean article size goes up, it's a better experience for the reader. There's more information behind every click. I think it's frustrating for people when they click on a link and don't find anything on the new page except a repeat of what they saw on the page they came from.

So there's a few different ways to bring the median article size up. The main way is to keep improving the pages, as we're always doing, and making articles bigger and more complete. Another way is to look at the list of short pages, and either add something to those pages, consolidate them with other pages, or delete them.

I've been doing all of those things. For example, yesterday I saw that the 50s Timeline pages were some of the shortest on the wiki. So I added info and pictures to all of the pages from 1954 to 1961, and brought those up. There was nothing on 1952 or 1953, and I couldn't find anything to add to them -- The Junior Morning Show started in 1954, and we don't know anything before that. So I deleted 1952 and 1953, since they had nothing but a category tag. As a result, there's more information on the wiki, no information got deleted, and the mean article size goes up.

I hope this explains what I'm doing better. I'm sorry that I didn't explain it to you before -- I talked to Scott and Peter about it, but I didn't think to catch you up. I really didn't mean to cause you any anxiety. Please know that I won't deliberately damage anything on the wiki. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:01, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess it makes sense now. Though I still feel inexplicable pressure to expand those pages so they won't be deleted, rather than expanding because I want to or find the person or their work interestingly, which is what I was doing before, and that's actually less fun. I really don't give a fig about Murray or Nancy McGeorge or Martine Cardinal (though Alice Tweedy's becoming pretty neat if still obscure), but it seems easier to find out if any other information exists now rather than recreating and re-redlinking and such from scratch, but that's just me I guess. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:12, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm sorry to say, I think that's on you. Recreating a page really is the easiest thing in the world, as long as it's redlinked from somewhere -- you just click on it and start typing. You don't have to expand pages if you don't want to. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:23, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I guess. I'm having a miserable time right now, so I guess deleting people pages somehow brings home the reality of death, and I'm not sure if it really is as useful in increasing the mean as trying to fill up pages, but oh well. I need help, I know. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry that you're having such a bad time. You've got all my best wishes. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:28, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Andrew, if it helps at all, I've been using Special:Log/delete to go through things that I think could have some better information. I was pretty strongly opposed to deleting things from the wiki when you guys started talking about this, but I guess I lost. I just don't think deleting information from the wiki is productive unless a number of pages are being merged together. In most cases, pages that don't have any content in it are there to solidify certain spellings and redirects so that we don't have to do the work later when there's more information to add. Taking all that stuff out kinda undoes some of the work we've been doing. The red links are helpful, but not always the best path back to where we were when the pages were originally created.
 * I would suggest that we take it easy on the deleting pages for a while. Or at least have more discussion about deleting things. -- <font color="Blue">Scott Hanson (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:44, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's cool. I'm actually pretty much done with all the deletions that I thought needed to happen. We don't have any more pages that are just category tags. At this point, I think it's all about building up the pages that we have. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It just seemed to me there was a distinction between deleting a completely empty page someone created back in December and never looked at again, and in many cases wasn't even linked to, and deleting pages with information, however brief, which are closer to true "stubs" than empty shells. And I'm also not sure keeping misspelled redirects which aren't accurate and used anywhere else is useufl either. Anyway, I'm going out for awhile, see if that helps. Creating Cabby also cheered me up slightly. 15:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry. I was just trying to clean house a little; it's not worth it for me to upset you guys. You're both precious to me, and I wouldn't upset you for the world. I promise that from now on I'll add to short pages instead of deleting them. The one exception is if I can consolidate multiple pages onto one page. I really never meant to upset you. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:05, 17 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm cool. I was a bit upset at first, and then I got a grip on what I could do to improve upon it, and got over those I couldn't or didn't. I cropped it up to not being around enough for the initial conversation and/or being outnumbered on my side of the fence. I'm cool, though. -- <font color="Blue">Scott Hanson (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:11, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Kukla and Fran
As you can tell, I'm having too much fun trying to solve the mysteries of Burr Tillstrom and Fran Allison. I've had a photo of Burr with Don Sahlin floating around for ages. Any objection to adding it? Also, I'm beginning to think a Bil Baird page may be justified. Many of the Tillstrom quotes also mention Baird, and his "Lonely Goatherd" work was more or less spoofed in the Julie Andrews episode (though not identical, and without the mother in law jokes, the staging is strikingly similar). <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:21, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I say yes to everything. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Tim Blaney
Actually, he did work on Dinosaurs as an additional puppeteer, and I think on Muppets Tonight. I have his credits right here from the DVDs and in Cotter's Wonderful World of Disney Television. Of course, it's up to you if that justifies inclusion, since it was probably one episode or two of each. Most of his IMDb credits are puppetry and voice, but IMDb never makes that clear.
 * Never mind, I checked Cotter, which is horribly incomplete but, and it's not there, though I do have him in my notebook transcriptions. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how profitable it is if we can't even pinpoint which episode it is, we just have Sherman's site and my credit transcriptions. Never mind, keep him nuked <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk )
 * Ha. Okay. If we find him again, we can add him. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:24, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, speaking of puppeteer nuking, did you ever get back to Talk:Carol Binion? Her page is okay, since we found definite Henson credits, but Brad suggested a "Celebrity Puppeteers" page for puppeteers who had some sort of Henson link but aren't really Muppet performers and some of whome, like Richard Bradshaw, don't really fit as celebrities outside of puppetry. Brad also raised the question of whether to nuke the non-Henson shows which have no other cross-over or spoof/reference connection. You might want to weigh in. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, I figured Carol B. was settled, since James added the Designer credits. I'll comment on the category stuff on her talk page... -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:36, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

International Fraggles
Your work on fixing the international merchandise categories inspired me, so now there's an Internation Fraggle Rock category. I'm working on adding pages for the other Docs and stuff (I'm thinking just a blanket "Internation Fraggle Rock Performers" for live actors, puppeteers like David Barclay, and dub voices). Any thoughts on other ways to organize? Also, is it okay to link to non-US commercial sites? I found a couple of pages for the French DVD set (which makes me wish I had a region free player, as it apparently includes an entire section on Fraggle merchandise from different countries), but wasn't sure of the propriety. Of course, we also link to a commercial site on Muppet Meeting Films. I figured the dividing line was whether the site has clips or information or is otherwise useful rather than just telling someone where to buy things. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:03, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * That's lovely, yay. I hope we can dig up more information on the other Fraggle shows -- right now, the sum total of our knowledge on most of the shows is essentially that a show existed in X country. I think "Intl FR Performers" is a good category.


 * I hadn't really thought about the Meeting Films page being a commercial site. I guess it is, although there are other links here that are also "commercial", like Henson.com, for example. That's even got a store. I guess the distinction we're making is between a "commercial" site for a company, and a "shopping" site like Amazon or Ebay. What do you think? -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The shopping distinction makes sense. I linked to a library sales site for Sesame English since it has episode summaries and downloadable clips. Ebay and Amazon don't really offer anything you can't find anywhere else, though, and their sole purpose is indeed shopping. Anyway, here's the French listing. There's also a fan site with nice menu grabs and details on content which could be added. <font color="Blue">Andrew Leal (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:26, 16 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Les Douzeurs! Oh, that makes me happy. Tres bon. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 21:28, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

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