User:MuppetArchives/Current Events 01 (Dec 2005)

Title formatting
I thought I'd bring up the subject of title formatting and the standards we should be following. The big ones are taught in grammar school, but smaller things are tricky.

-- Movie titles are  italicized 

-- Book titles are   underlined

-- Album names and episode titles are in “quotes”

-- TV specials are... in quotes or italicized?

-- Song titles are in quotes or nothing at all.

Additions? Corrections? -- Scarecroe 05:35, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, we need to pick some standards to use. I've only been italicizing sometimes, as I wasn't really sure if we had a standard or not. Here's what I think:
 * --Movie titles - italics, definitely
 * --Book titles - although I believe italics can also be correct, underlining is a good way to set them apart. However, this could be iffy because of Titles that are Links . Then you can't tell it apart from any old link.
 * --TV specials - well, will this apply to every special except for VMX and Oz? Are they really all that different from some of the specials?
 * --TV series - italics, right? Or "quotes"?
 * --Song titles - I think these should be in "quotes."
 * To simplfy, we could just use italics for every movie, series, or special, and save the "quotes" for episode names and songs. -- Ozzel 06:19, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, good question. I agree with Colby that underlining isn't a good idea -- it'll get confused with links. My vote is quotes for songs, poems and episode titles, and italics for everything else. -- Toughpigs 17:46, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, one thing I'm wondering is if links should be italicized at all. Does it look right? If there's a sentence that talks about The Muppet Show, I think it might look better just to have it say The Muppet Show. The point of italics/quotes is to set off the title from the rest of the text, and I think having a link automatically does that. So I would consider a standard that says, for example, that TV show titles are in italics when they're regular text, but not when they're links. -- Toughpigs 18:56, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't feel that that's consistent. If we're going to italicize, we should do it all the time. It feels funny to have The Muppet Show in one sentence, and then in the next sentence you're treating it as something else, The Muppet Show. Links should be non-intrusive, and treating them like they do something special other than link is going against that. In fact, with the next upgrade to the wiki software, I'm hoping there's a global style sheet that will allow us to tweak colors and styles (underlining) with things like this. I agree more with your first response. -- Scarecroe 21:57, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Okay, that's true. Go with my first response, then. It's Christmas. I'm all hopped up on eggnog. -- Toughpigs 22:19, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, I have one other caveat. I'm trying to set a format where an article title is in bold, as the first words of the article. I think that should be bold, without italics or quotes. It looks kind of classy. -- Toughpigs 22:55, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Special Pages not working
Some of the "special pages" haven't been working the last few days (i.e. Wanted pages, Orphaned pages, Dead-end pages, etc.). Does this have anything to do with the other problems WikiCities is having or is it something else? -- Ozzel 20:35, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I've been asking the WC folks about the Popular pages for a couple days; I didn't realize the other stuff was out too. They just sent an answer this afternoon: "Some of the special pages are currently disabled because the wiki is in 'miser mode' to help speed things up. As soon as the problems stop, these will be re-enabled." I'm glad you brought this up; I'll post it on the main page too. -- Danny Toughpigs 22:10, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * They're back! :-) -- Ozzel 18:22, 15 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * Yay! It looks like a lot of the technical problems have been solved. I'll take the technical update off the main page for now... -- Danny Toughpigs 03:33, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Cause of death
I have a question about how we're listing the cause of death for people who have died of cancer. I think it's good that we're listing cause of death, cause why not, but I'm a little uncomfortable with listing the specific kinds of cancer. Lou Rawls was listed as dying of brain and lung cancer, Northern Calloway as stomach cancer. There's also similar info on Nancy Walker, Gilda Radner, Dizzy Gillespie and some others.

Personally, I'd rather say that they died of cancer, and leave it at that. Listing the particular type of cancer that they have just feels so personal and intrusive to me. However, I'm aware that that might just be a matter of taste. What do other people think about it? -- Danny Toughpigs 19:02, 8 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't really bother me personally to have the specific causes of death as long as it's already public knowledge (i.e. you can find it on IMDb). But that's just me. -- Ozzel 21:50, 9 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * If it's public knowledge, being more specific is certainly more thorough. You might hear on a newscast, "Lou Rawls passed away last night from a battle with brain cancer," and it's pretty standard. -- Scarecroe 20:09, 11 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * I just don't think you need to know that particular detail. Like, it makes sense to say "Jeff Moss died of cancer," because otherwise you might think that he got hit by a car, or that somebody shot him. It's relevant to know whether someone died from an accident or a disease or old age; that's part of the story. But is it necessary to know that he died of colon cancer, as opposed to throat cancer or liver cancer? I don't feel like that adds anything to the story. The exception that I'd make is if it's a part of the story, like: "When this person was diagnosed with breast cancer, she became an outspoken activist on the issue. She died of breast cancer in 1999." Otherwise, it just sits there in the sentence, and all of a sudden I'm thinking about Jeff Moss' colon. Which is fine, but I have other things to think about. -- Danny Toughpigs 21:34, 11 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it doesn't matter to me either way. That type of specific info isn't what we're focusing on anyway. -- Scarecroe 22:08, 11 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Format for book entries
We should decide on a standard format for books. We've got a ton of em already, and everyone's doing it differently. The important information should be at the top of course, writer, illustrator, year, publisher and ISBN. It's not a list, so I don't think bullets are right. Ideas anyone? -- Scarecroe 00:11, 6 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know, I'm just playing it by ear right now myself. I also like including the "line" that the book is in, like "Sesame Street Book Club" or "Little Golden Look-Look Shape-Shape Pictureback" or whatever the hell they called it. My vote would be that ISBN goes all the way at the bottom of the page, cause for the most part a reader wouldn't be able to "use" that information. You can look at an illustrator or a publication year, and get some information out of that, connect it to something else. But an ISBN just sort of sits there and glowers at you. -- Toughpigs 03:51, 6 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia links
I created a template for linking to Wikipedia articles. Instead of the HTML code we've been using, just enter at the very bottom of the article. It will automatically insert the name of the page you're linking to.

Eventually, once certain pages reach a particular size, I don't think we need to be including them on pages for, say, Kermit. This being the Muppet wiki and all, I think it makes more sense to direct vistors away for non-Muppet things that we're not interested in putting in our wiki, for example, celebrities. Those pages consist mostly of the Muppet-related info, maybe a career highlight or two, and then an offering for more info with the Wikipedia link template. -- Scarecroe 20:26, 29 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Timeline
So really, we should have been doing this fromt he beginning, but I'm thinking we should be making all the years hyperlinks. It would help in making a timeline like Wikipedia has, by going to the artcile for that year and seeing "what links here." I figure we should start now at 2,000+ articles instead of waiting until we're up to 4,000+ articles. Thoughts -- Scarecroe 14:32, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I have mixed feelings about it. I can see how it would be useful, but I also hate the idea of having every single date be a hyperlink. What do you think about having a standard that you only link the date from the page that's about that thing? For example: you link 1975 on the Sex and Violence page, but you don't link it on the pages that refer to the Sex and Violence page. Like, on the Floyd Pepper page, if it says "Floyd first appeared in the 1975 pilot Sex and Violence..." you don't link that date. So every event has one unique date link. Would that work? -- Toughpigs 14:47, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that pretty much falls in line with the links rule anyway. Otherwise it's messy. Should we put it on the Current Events page? -- Scarecroe 16:33, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, do it. The timeline is a great idea -- it'll be really fun to have all that stuff together. -- Toughpigs 17:00, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I wrote this up as a guideline for what to do with dates. I'm not sure if we want it on the help page, and it might need some clean-up. Thoughts?


 * We're currently in the process of putting together an accurate timeline. To help build such a page, we're going through the database and creating links of the release year of that particular article's subject. So, for example, if a Sesame segment first showed up in 1982, and then appeared in an episode 5 years later, we're only linking the year it first appeared, once. If that segment received an update, or was remade into an alternate version, linking the new date may then become significant. Once there are a decent amount of dates linked, we can use the "What links here" feature to easily build the timeline.


 * -- Scarecroe 15:55, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * I think a Sesame Street sketch isn't the example that we want. I think do it with a movie -- like the 1981 should be a link on the Great Muppet Caper page, but not on all the pages where GMC is mentioned. -- Toughpigs 22:19, 25 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Current Events
By the way, if you look at other wikis, the Current Events page is usually where discussion like this goes. What we have up there now, a getting started guide, is generally what's found on a Welcome page. Other wikis have set a pretty good standard as far as what "the wiki way" is (stuff like not protecting pages). How do we feel about that? -- Scarecroe 16:33, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * You're right -- I moved the Wiki tips that were here to a Help page, and I moved this discussion page here! -- Toughpigs 19:25, 23 Dec 2005 (UTC)


 * Excellent! I updated the main page to reflect the changes. -- Scarecroe 20:22, 23 Dec 2005 (UTC)