Muppet Wiki talk:Policies and Guidelines

Sketches Edited on Video

I've been thinking lately. Often if a Sesame Street insert is edited on a video release, it's noted on the video page as well as the appropriate sketch pages when listing video releases. But I have been wondering if we should make a policy when it comes to video edits. Every sketch at sesamestreet.org as well as all bonus segments in the Old School releases have fade-ins and fade-outs, which are often (but not always) not included in the episodes they are broadcast in. And while watching some sketches online that I've seen many times on videos or episodes I have copies of, it seems like when there are fade-ins and fade-outs that a few seconds get cut when the sketches don't have them in television episodes or video releases (especially if a different screen transition is used). This means that a lot of releases would cut out a second or two at the beginning and end.

So I've been wondering if we should make a policy regarding what edits we note and what we don't note. I'd say note edits that are a bit more specific. If it's a line of dialogue, a shot of a different angle, or ending music/sound effects (or anything else that would be noted in a script, assuming it's not an ad-lib), we should note, but if it's something small like somebody moving their head or hands slightly, it probably shouldn't.

Anybody have any thoughts on this subject? --Minor muppetz 18:58, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't see any reason to note that a couple seconds of fading to black was cut anywhere. —Scott (talk) 19:04, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it feels more like common sense than a policy we need to spell out (and when we've noticed it, we've usually taken out the line for that reason and mentioned accordingly in the summary), but if it does become a problem, we can address it here. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 19:17, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

Okay I was just checking on this. And I was a little inspired to ask after seeing that a note on a 5-second sketch edit reverted. --Minor muppetz 02:43, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Caption links

"Avoid linking words in image captions that could be linked in the text instead." I actually think there's value in linking the captions. Most people browsing the wiki aren't going to take the time to read through the article to click on links. The eye goes directly to the images, but we're not telling the reader that we have an article about it. I do this myself sometimes. I'll see that Jane Smith is noted in this picture as appearing in Muppet Episode X, but there's no link to click on -- I have to go looking for it in the text, or type in in the search box. So for both regular wiki users and casual readers, I think we have a better case for including links there than not. —Scott (talk) 22:39, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

That's a good point... I hadn't thought of that.

I was thinking that caption links are usually duplicates, and we don't encourage duplicate links in general. -- Danny (talk) 23:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm against duplicates unless they're in a place where the reader eye would be lured to first such as image captions and bulleted lists. —Scott (talk) 23:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Okay, good point. I took that line out. -- Danny (talk) 00:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Current events?

Hey, what do you guys think about moving this stuff back to Current events? It seems like this is becoming a place to make decisions about policies. I think Current events should be the place that we figure out policies, and then this page is where we record the decisions that are made. The talk page here should just be about how to format or present the decisions. What do you guys think? -- Danny (talk) 21:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The two most recent discussions should be at CE. —Scott (talk) 21:05, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'm moving them... -- Danny (talk) 21:18, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Those 2 were started by me. Sorry about that. -- Ken (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Merchandise naming conventions

I added a section on merchandise naming conventions. I've been working on this system for a bunch of months now, but not really explained it, and I know it's been kind of mysterious -- especially because I haven't actually gone through and fixed everything, so it's still a bit of a mish-mash.

Anyway -- this is open for conversation or questions or whatever. -- Danny (talk) 02:00, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Question

What about links to outside lyric sites? Some of the Bear in the Big Blue House CD's have them, but I haven't seen them on any other albums. -- Ken (talk) 03:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

That's not an issue. Links to outside content, barring the usual suspects and limitations (commercial websites, YouTube, etc.) aren't a problem. The policy is that we don't allow lyric transcriptions here. Most of the Bear in the Big Blue House links are left over from User:Agent0042, who loved the show and its lyrics, and mostly linked to pages he'd created to house such things. Nobody else really cared about it, and I personally don't think it's necessarily worth tying a lyric site link to every song. But it wouldn't hurt if it's particularly notable or the site well done, or in cases like "I Want a Monster to Be My Friend" where lyrical content is relevant, and so on. Basically, though, it's just something only one user really wanted to do, which is why it's only evident in that one area. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 04:20, 26 November 2008 (UTC)