User talk:Toughpigs

You blocked yourself?
I hope that mistake can be reverted ... --MuppetVJ 20:09, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh well, I guess Baba's not the only one who can't follow instructions. :) -- Danny Toughpigs 20:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Transcripts vs. Lyrics?
I'm confused... When I placed the lyrics to I've Never Harmed an Onion (the original page no longer exists), that was considered a copyright violation. Now, though, I see a transcript to a Sesame Street sketch? What's the difference? Just curious... -Sbartok 13:23, 19 February 2006 (UTC)-


 * Well, a lot of what we're doing is a copyright violation -- pictures, names -- even the name of the wiki is a copyright violation. The question really is what will get us "caught" and shut down. For whatever reason, song lyrics are policed more tightly than anything else, and websites have been shut down for posting song lyrics. The whole concept of "fair use" is really complicated, and I can't say I understand it at all. I wish we could post lyrics -- it would be fun, and a helpful addition to the wiki -- but everything we looked at suggested that lyrics are a big red flag for lawyers. -- Danny Toughpigs 15:09, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

65.103.86.169
Must be blocked ... posted 5 times after you posted the User Name Policy on their talk page ... --MuppetVJ 17:27, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and blocked him, not just for the five times, but for generally not responding and for adding in less than relevant details, such as to the Wheel of Fortune page, and left a message on his talk page to e-mail Danny and discuss the policies if he wants to obtain a username and return. While he wasn't a troll, this sort of editing isn't really helpful, especially when no communication occurs, and I suppose we've got to start somewhere in enforcing the new policy. --Andrew, 18:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Replacing a Picture
Hey Danny, I've got a cleaner scan of Muppet Magazine issue Winter 1989. How do you go about deleting out an old picture? Is that something only Admins can do? Can I just replace the photo, then have you guys delete it out later? --Radionate 02:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, just go ahead and replace it. Don't worry about deleting the old one; Scott cleans out the images every once in a while. Also, just an FYI: New messages should go on the top of a talk page, so that when people come to the page, they can see what's new. The wiki software thinks they should go on the bottom, but that's why we think the wiki software is a knucklehead. -- Danny Toughpigs 03:00, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I wondered about that, but when it popped it on the bottom I figured why not, Wiki knows best. --Radionate 03:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * To upload a new version of an image, go to that image description page and click the Upload a new version of this file link. It will replace the old with the new automatically. -- Scott Scarecroe 03:35, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * One more question. I know that you guys said somewhere to keep it down to about one picture per page, but I added in two pictures to Molly Monster since they are just so damn hard to find.  If you want to get rid of any of them, feel free to, since I didn't know the Wiki stance on this. --Radionate 16:37, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


 * We've mostly been trying to keep from being too image farm-y. Which I'm not sure if we're succeeding at or not (not). But I think our general feeling on it has been that there shouldn't be more images extending the length of the page than there is text. See: Sesame Street News Flash, for example. -- Scott Scarecroe 16:47, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Gotcha Scott. I took those words of wisdom and applied them.  Although I must say I'm a sucker to make sure there is one picture to go with every character if and when possible.  Just 'cause I'm a visual person like that. --Radionate 17:27, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

User Names
So, do the IP addresses get blocked automatically or is that something that we have to watch? If it's automatically, how on Earth did you get the wiki to do that? It's like magic!--Pantalones 18:39, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it's manual. The magic is us. The first time an anon user makes an edit, leave the welcome message for them. (It's easy to know when it's their first time, because their "Talk" link is red.)
 * When you see an anon user in Recent Changes that doesn't have a red Talk link, then click on the IP address -- that takes you to their User Contributions page. If there's more than five edits there, then they get the User Name template: . If they make another edit, then you can block them, with this in the Reason line: "Muppet Wiki User Name policy".
 * And just like that, she is gone. A good system, yeah? -- Danny Toughpigs 19:01, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Not as good as magic, though.  Come chat with me in Googleland. -- Peter

Hi Nick!
Hey man, it's good to see you here! What do you think of the place so far? -- Toughpigs 17:53, 14 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * It's amazing how active and knowledgable the people here are. So many of the articles are already the pinnacle of their topic on the web, in what... two or three months? I've been using the celebrities cat to cross-reference the Wikipedia article on Sesame guests, and it's been mindblowing how complete the Muppet Wiki's collection is, including so many appearances I never even imagined existing. BTW, this post on the Muppet Central forums was someone announcing they'd be creating a SS episode guide, I pointed out this site. There's been no response, so I don't know if the guy ever decided to come on over. --  user:zanimum


 * Excellent, I'm glad you like it! I'm having so much fun with it. I'm glad you're pointing folks here. There's been a lot of people showing up -- some good, some not, but that's the way of things. There's some folks who've appeared here who I've never met before, and who are just amazing at this stuff. I'm glad it's feeding back into Wikipedia, too. What's new on the Sesame pages there? Is there anything interesting that we could use? -- Danny Toughpigs 14:32, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * All of the Muppet/Sesame page have been essentially dead for the last couple of months, other than edits based on MW. Sad to hear there's been bad editors showing up. MW, from my views of it, seemed to be like Wikipedia's early days, back when everything was utopian. You guys all have one great advantage going for you once you're a known bemoth, outside of the Muppet fandom. All of the information is essentially "factual", little room for debate, so lies and other nonsense are easier to ID. Just thinking, the community want to band together and create a press release promoting the project's "official launch" or something. Perhaps send it to free PR distribution websites around the 15000th article or so, or perhaps around September 24, so the media could link it to Jim's b-day. I honestly think you could get lots of positive press. --  user:zanimum


 * That's a good idea! It needs to get a lot more filled out, obviously -- there's a lot of facts here, but not that many actual articles yet. But a little ways down the road, that's a good thought. I'm sorry to hear that Wikipedia's getting troll-y. I've been reading a little about it, and I'm hopeful that they'll figure out a good solution -- maybe requiring everybody to have a user ID. We've even been toying with that idea here, although I don't know if technically we're allowed to. What do you think is going to happen? -- Danny Toughpigs 16:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, does need to develop out a bit more, but the media generally gets impressed by quality, but mind blown by quantity. But as long as you can find a gimmick, like unofficially linking it with a Muppet event or anniversary, or a round number, you've got yourself an easy in.


 * As simple and effective as requiring an ID is, it'll never happen. There'll always be purists arguing that "ah! you're taking away our rights". Also, IP addresses tell you roughly who's doing the edits, that's the only way we tracked down the guy who did the John Seigenthaler Sr. edits. We'll trudge along as is probably. There'll soon be an article validation feature, where once an article reaches a "safe point", it will be frozen. All editing will take place on a seperate page, and periodically things will be updated.


 * As far as I know, neither Wikia and Wikicities would have a problem with it, as all of the people involved in the company quite likely pro-"user account only" themselves. It should already be built into the hardware, and just require you emailing the tech employee to have him turn it on. Perhaps do a quick vote too to reach a consensus on the change, just so no one can complain later. --  user:zanimum


 * Well, I've been thinking about it today, and I came up with a Muppet Wiki User Name policy. We started implementing it tonight, giving warning messages to a few active IP addresses. We'll see what happens with it. I think it might cut down on the babysitting. -- Danny Toughpigs 03:10, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

That's a curious policy, I quite like it. Two things to take into account: Otherwise, that all sounds pretty cool. You may be on to something I can suggest to Wikipedia! -- user:zanimum
 * 1) you'll have to continuously keep track of the contributions pages,
 * 2) and you'll have to take into account that multiple people might use the same IP address, in companies, universities, and with AOL's non-static IPs.


 * Well, the idea is that it's tied in to stuff that we already do. We're always scanning the Recent Changes page anyway. Whenever a new person shows up, we post a welcome message on their talk page. So you can tell at a glance at Recent Changes when an IP address is brand new and when it isn't.
 * So when we see an IP address with a blue "Talk" link, we check it out -- which we have to do anyway, to check for vandalism. You click on the address, and you see how many contributions they've got. If it's more than five, then they get a User Name policy warning. If they've already had a warning, and they're still editing pages, then they get blocked. It should be pretty easy.
 * The multiple IP addresses thing is more complicated, and we're going to have to see how that plays out. The one safeguard for that is that when somebody with a blocked IP tries to edit something, they'll get a message that refers them to the Muppet Wiki User Name policy page, which tells them to write to me if there's a problem. So if someone gets blocked accidentally, there's still something they can do about it.
 * By the way, I've noticed that you're double-posting this conversation in both of our talk pages. We've decided that we're not going to bother with that -- we're just going to treat a talk page conversation as a thread, with both parts of the conversation there. If I post something on somebody's talk page and I want to remember to go back and see their response, I put it on my watch list. So you don't have to cut and paste to both pages if you don't want to. -- Danny Toughpigs 23:57, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Watch
Are we still using the watch page? IP blocks are logged automatically, so I don't see that we need it. -- Scott Scarecroe 00:51, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
 * No, it got too complicated. You can delete it if you want. -- Danny Toughpigs 01:19, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts from IRC
Hi, I thought these two pages might be useful to you: Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles and Posting by newcomers should be limited, but not banned. There is a lot of conversation on the talk page, but a few good points. Hope the help -- sannse (talk) 22:03, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks For Thee Info Dan I'll Now For Next Time.

Phillip, -- Baba

Thanks for the welcome, Danny. I will try to stop when as and when I can. First thing I think needs doing is a frame/border around the picture on the Main Page? &mdash;iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:07, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

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