several suggestions

Alright, i've done quite a bit today. I don't want to bore you with the details of every single thing i've done, but if you want to read them i've started keeping a change log of sorts (as well as a mostly 'administrative' to-do list) on the main page's Talk page:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Summary of important parts: I've created citation templates for MCISS, ONW, and GW; i've created several categories for images and for certain types of pages needing work; and i've uploaded a bunch of images from MCISS.

There are a couple things we discussed that i didn't get around to, but they'll have to wait 'til tomorrow!

Hi again. I wanted to finish the image galleries i've created before i move on to other projects, and to do that i need to add about 200 images to a category. The site doesn't offer a means of doing this quickly from the Web interface, and doing it all manually is extraordinarily tedious, so i've set up and tested a bot to do it for me. You can see the successful test here:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I was just hoping that you could (a) approve my use of this bot, and (b) set a bot flag on it so that it doesn't spam the activity feed. (If there's no bot flag set, everyone's going to see 200 'added category' updates on the feed page. With the flag set, only people who explicitly choose to include bot updates in preferences will see them.)

I believe all you'll need to do, if you approve, is go into the Special:UserRights page and move that account to the 'bot' group. I'll hold off on making any more changes with it until you've let me know it's OK.

Bot categories were grayed out. Sorry, but I don't really have the time to fiddle with settings this weekend--got a kanji test monday and, I swear, it all looks like chicken scratches to me. o__O

Anyway, I went ahead and gave you admin status, which should make things easier for you. Especially given my incompetence.

kine wrote:
I am divided on the italics myself. As a rule i really dislike using italics for anything but emphasis, and certainly you have already established a trend of not using them (you don't italicise 'Legend of Galactic Heroes' on the wiki, even though technically i believe it should be), so i guess we'll start with that. I guess we can re-evaluate it later.

Italics are yucky. Only for emphasis, I say. If we really need 'em for something... well, we can figure it out when and if it ever comes to that.

kine wrote:
I didn't realise that. I haven't watched any of the multi-episode OVAs aside from the main one, so maybe i should hold off until i have. I think the vast majority of data will be coming from the main OVA, MCISS, and ONW anyway.

Well, not really. The movies, while very entertaining, don't exactly bring in much additional info that's not covered in the main OVA, whereas the prequels delve a LOT into the early lives of Reinhard & co., as well as (to a far lesser degree) Yang.

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:3. I don't really know. Personally, I've been moving more toward the DD/MM/YYYY format because it makes more sense logically. Ideally, though, I think it would be best to simply write everything out fully: The ##th of [Month], YYYY.

K, i'll add this to the MoS and we'll see how it goes.

When you say something like, 'we'll see how it goes,' I can't help but feel a degree of trepidation: as though there's a mess of greatly over-exaggerated drama just beyond the horizon.

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:Personally, I don't think any info-boxes are necessary.

By that do you mean, you think they're unnecessary, or just that you aren't that worried about them either way?

I mean I don't think they're necessary. For the most part, they don't really add anything that's not in the article, and given how little info we have on most characters, the content in boxes would be pretty minor. I mean, unless we come across a vast trove of minutiae, like character birthdays, favorite colors, etc., I can't see them as anything more than an arbitrary affectation. Not that I'm against them, just that I don't see them as anything particularly important or worthwhile.

Canary wrote:Anyway, I went ahead and gave you admin status, which should make things easier for you. Especially given my incompetence.

Oh my. Thank you!

Canary wrote:Italics are yucky. Only for emphasis, I say. If we really need 'em for something... well, we can figure it out when and if it ever comes to that.

Agreed

Canary wrote:Well, not really. The movies, while very entertaining, don't exactly bring in much additional info that's not covered in the main OVA, whereas the prequels delve a LOT into the early lives of Reinhard & co., as well as (to a far lesser degree) Yang.

Hm, yeah, i think i realised that as well when i watched ONW this last week. I was somewhat disappointed to be honest — although i got lots of nice pictures out of it!

Canary wrote:When you say something like, 'we'll see how it goes,' I can't help but feel a degree of trepidation: as though there's a mess of greatly over-exaggerated drama just beyond the horizon.

Haha, i don't think i meant it quite like that. Statements like that come out of a hope that the site will grow, and when wikis grow, little things like how to format dates and so on start to come up. I've seen it with a couple wikis now, especially science-y ones. But for what it's worth, i'm quite happy with 'dth of MMMM', myself.

Canary wrote:I mean I don't think they're necessary. For the most part, they don't really add anything that's not in the article, and given how little info we have on most characters, the content in boxes would be pretty minor. I mean, unless we come across a vast trove of minutiae, like character birthdays, favorite colors, etc., I can't see them as anything more than an arbitrary affectation. Not that I'm against them, just that I don't see them as anything particularly important or worthwhile.

I see. I guess you have a point, many of the characters do have limited information provided. I do think there is some benefit though — we definitely will have affiliation, voice actor, and (for military people) rank for every character, for instance, and these will all be easily visible in the same place and format on every page. Beyond that i suppose it is just a wiki tradition; Wikipedia started it and now every other wiki does it too.

If you aren't actually opposed to them, i will continue to use them. Let me know if you decide they're unbearable though.


I want to leave you to your kanji stuff (good luck btw), but before i do — i noticed you're changing around some of the category stuff i did. Any particular reason? You just didn't like the wording, or?

(I ask because i've been spending a lot of time on re-working the category hierarchies, and i've been waiting on your approval of the bot to do some more, so before i go and do something you're going to make me revert, i want to see where you stand....)

Heh, I'm taking a break from Kanji for a while. Honestly... my retension ain't great. Or it doesn't feel that good. Had an 'attack' today, which necessitated some painkillers: generally, this means I can study all I like and not retain ANYTHING, but then as soon as the stuff out of my system--BAM! I know it all. At once. In a single moment. It's actually kind of cool.

Anyway, as for the categories... yeah, the wording is off. I'm not sure how to describe it, my brain being addled and all, but basically you can't be an "Empire Citizen." You can be a citizen of an empire, or an imperial citizen. And on the other side, changed it to the FPA abbreviation to remain consistent with the FPA Warships category. Generally, I don't mind what you do, but let me know before you make a category change like that the effects a ton of stuff.

Phezzan citizens was fine. I also added an 'Iserlohn Citizens' category, though I guess you don't know what that's all about yet, though. Also added a handful of redirects. There's still a bit of a mess that I haven't cleared up yet, though: basically, every page/category with a Lippstadt tag (alliance/conspiracy/rebellion) should all link to the Imperial Civil War page.

Actually, it's kind of depressing.

Anyway, in terms of general style, I think there's one thing that needs to be added/explicitly stated: the first letter of every word of every page title or category name ought to be capitalized.

EDIT:
Looks like you've marked a half dozen categories for deletion? Care to make a case for that?
If only to keep everything constant.

Canary wrote:Heh, I'm taking a break from Kanji for a while. Honestly... my retension ain't great. Or it doesn't feel that good. Had an 'attack' today, which necessitated some painkillers: generally, this means I can study all I like and not retain ANYTHING, but then as soon as the stuff out of my system--BAM! I know it all. At once. In a single moment. It's actually kind of cool.

bizarre

Canary wrote:Anyway, as for the categories... yeah, the wording is off. I'm not sure how to describe it, my brain being addled and all, but basically you can't be an "Empire Citizen." You can be a citizen of an empire, or an imperial citizen. And on the other side, changed it to the FPA abbreviation to remain consistent with the FPA Warships category.

Fair enough. I just wanted it to be consistent with the higher-level categories. (You know, 'Galactic Empire citizens' goes under 'Galactic Empire', makes sense, right.) But i agree the wording was slightly awkward

Canary wrote:There's still a bit of a mess that I haven't cleared up yet, though: basically, every page/category with a Lippstadt tag (alliance/conspiracy/rebellion) should all link to the Imperial Civil War page.

I'm not sure i agree with this one, personally. Lippstadt Conspiracy and Lippstadt Rebellion are synonymous with Imperial Civil War, but Lippstadt Alliance isn't. The first ones are events and the last one is a group of people. As a group of people, i think it stands to reason that it have its own category — especially considering that the Lippstadt Alliance had a pretty fair number of members (for example, i'm pretty sure there have been more named Lippstadt people in the anime than there have been Phezzani). You don't think so?

Canary wrote:Anyway, in terms of general style, I think there's one thing that needs to be added/explicitly stated: the first letter of every word of every page title or category name ought to be capitalized.

This i really disagree with. :( I did see your point about the link on the menu, i agree that did have a stylistic merit. But you can't say that about the page/category names. These are the main points of my argument:

1. From an orthographical standpoint, these aren't titles of works of art or anything, they're just sections of a site. So i don't think there's a linguistic necessity for it.

2. From a historical standpoint, all encyclopaedias — both real-life book-bound ones and online ones like Wikipedia and Memory Alpha — use sentence case for article titles. (You can see Wikipedia's MoS naming conventions page here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]) Most newspapers and magazines also use sentence case.

3. From a stylistic standpoint, you can't argue that they need to be capitalised to match other things on the site, because unlike with the menu that isn't the case. All of the pages that come with the wiki, as you probably gathered from #2, are written in sentence case. For example, '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]', '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]', '[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'. Also, if you look at any link or section on any page, you can see they're all in sentence case ('Create a new page', 'Upload a new photo', 'Maintenance reports', &c.).

Canary wrote:Looks like you've marked a half dozen categories for deletion? Care to make a case for that?

Yeah, sorry if that was over the line, i was only proposing them for deletion, as a reminder to discuss their usefulness later. :p My cases are:

1. Civilians — I was hoping to remove this one for two reasons: Firstly, it's vague. As you yourself note on the category page, its definition varies somewhat depending on context. (For example, are the PKC civilians?) Secondly, i don't think it's necessary to have a category for something that is the default for all human beings. I mean, having an 'Individuals' category is useful for organisational purposes, but beyond that i don't think that it's helpful to specifically mark someone as being something that all people are inherently born into. It's only necessary to add categories for things that are specific.

2. Political Entities — I think 'Culture' covers this better, because (1) not everything that was listed is actually a political entity (for example, Earth itself is a planet); and (2) because it provides a place for adding further articles without needing to fragment it into several slightly different categories.

3. Pre-Imperial — Marked this one because it doesn't really fit into a specific category. I do think that a category like this needs to be created, probably even with the same name, but as it is i think it's misplaced and doesn't fit into the hierarchy.

4. Production Staff — I'll admit, this one was only because of the capitalisation. I hadn't realised you cared about that, so i just thought it wouldn't matter if i moved everyone to 'Production staff' (you can't rename categories).

5. Voice Actors — I moved everyone from here into 'Performers', because i don't think the original name was quite accurate (for example, would it cover the singers from the opening things? i think it should, they're more 'cast' than 'crew'), and also because i think Performers is more future-proof.

I hope some of that convinced you, but like i said way at the beginning, i don't want to destroy your site, so i will of course concede to whatever you decide.

Also, you don't have to manually move things around one at a time (unless you want to, i guess) — if you'd like to move everything from one category to another, just let me know, my little bot thing can do it in 2 seconds. :x

edit: At least, i think it can. It will be rate-limited on some things (i know renaming articles is one, not sure about adding/deleting categories) until it's added to the bot group. Not even 'Administrators' have the power to change user rights, so i can't do it myself :/

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:There's still a bit of a mess that I haven't cleared up yet, though: basically, every page/category with a Lippstadt tag (alliance/conspiracy/rebellion) should all link to the Imperial Civil War page.

I'm not sure i agree with this one, personally. Lippstadt Conspiracy and Lippstadt Rebellion are synonymous with Imperial Civil War, but Lippstadt Alliance isn't. The first ones are events and the last one is a group of people. As a group of people, i think it stands to reason that it have its own category — especially considering that the Lippstadt Alliance had a pretty fair number of members (for example, i'm pretty sure there have been more named Lippstadt people in the anime than there have been Phezzani). You don't think so?

Not at all: my only point was that the redirects for Lippstadt stuff are a bit of a mess ATM, and need to be sorted out.

kine wrote:

Canary wrote:Anyway, in terms of general style, I think there's one thing that needs to be added/explicitly stated: the first letter of every word of every page title or category name ought to be capitalized.

This i really disagree with. I did see your point about the link on the menu, i agree that did have a stylistic merit. But you can't say that about the page/category names. These are the main points of my argument....

It's more a question of aesthetics than style to me: caps look nicer, therefore we should use caps. That's my reasoning at least. At least for nouns/verbs/adjectives.

kine wrote:Yeah, sorry if that was over the line, i was only proposing them for deletion, as a reminder to discuss their usefulness later. :p My cases are...

1. Civilians — I agree with your points here. Unfortunately... you don't? This argument applies just as well, if not better, to the newly-created 'individuals' category.

2. Political Entities — I think culture is too all-encompassing a category. After all, EVERY page here (very nearly) could fall into that category. I would define a political entity as any person, place or thing that has a powerful impact on the political environment. Yes, this mostly includes nations--but also organizations like the Earth Cult and PKC, as well as locations--like the planets Earth and Phezzan, and--who exert incredible influence over politics merely by existing. Earth will always maintain a level of social, political and religious significance simply for being the home of mankind. Doesn't matter if it's a charred lump of carbon. Not in the least.

3. Pre-Imperial — Well, I don't see this as ever fitting inside the hierarchy... because the hierarchy mostly involves ONLY things from the Imperial era. I think it's a pretty easy divide: we've got history before Rudolph and after Rudolp. We could create an 'Imperial Era' category to compliment it, I suppose, though that might be a tad redundant.

Actually, the tag ought to be renamed 'Pre-Imperial Era' just to be more specific.

5. Voice Actors — Singers are neither. They should have their own category. 'Voice Actors' is, I think, an important distinction to make, given how seriously that particularly occupation; is taken in Japan.

Just a note in relation to the ship information from aforesaid old Japanese fansite - I have bought several of the Wright Staff (i.e. official licence holder of LOGH) miniatures of the warships of the series (soon I'll have every single one) and I can vouch for the accuracy of the dimensions, if nothing else - the back of each box has a diagram of the ship with the dimensions, and they line up perfectly with the sizes on the Wiki. I was the one who added the size for Muller's flagship Parcival. When I get the miniature (I have it on backorder) that includes Bayerlein's flagship Nurenburg, I'll modify that one too ...

Fun fact re the standard Alliance battleship (i.e. the Ulysses type) - its dimensions are actually shown in Overture to a New War when Ulysses takes Brunhild "hostage" - so yeah, they're correct.

One thing I *do* have a problem with, however, is the ship classifications. I don't know where they come from. The characterization of the prime Imperial warship as a "destroyer" simply can't be right.

Vympel wrote:Just a note in relation to the ship information from aforesaid old Japanese fansite - I have bought several of the Wright Staff (i.e. official licence holder of LOGH) miniatures of the warships of the series (soon I'll have every single one) and I can vouch for the accuracy of the dimensions, if nothing else - the back of each box has a diagram of the ship with the dimensions, and they line up perfectly with the sizes on the Wiki. I was the one who added the size for Muller's flagship Parcival. When I get the miniature (I have it on backorder) that includes Bayerlein's flagship Nurenburg, I'll modify that one too ...

Fun fact re the standard Alliance battleship (i.e. the Ulysses type) - its dimensions are actually shown in Overture to a New War when Ulysses takes Brunhild "hostage" - so yeah, they're correct.

One thing I *do* have a problem with, however, is the ship classifications. I don't know where they come from. The characterization of the prime Imperial warship as a "destroyer" simply can't be right.

LOL. Registered now. As one would appreciate, I haven't actually *opened* my miniature boxes yet (I have Vol. 1R, Vol. 3 and Vol. 8, and the rest are coming) so I didn't know they (or at least 1R?) come with a book inside the box. Only found that out when I looked at the Raw source material thread.

They're pretty nice, huh.

Were you lucky enough to get 1R on sale? HLJ had it for 50% off for... about one week. I went ahead and ordered myself a second one while I could.

Anyway, welcome. I've been busy with class lately, but I hope to get a fair amount of content and revisions done before the winter break ends.

Foolishly, Vol. 1R was the first thing I got back in early November - *not* on sale. Then I got Vol. 3 and Vol. 8 - and then the sales kicked in. Vol 2, 5, 7 and 9 are coming (they shipped the other day) and I've got Vol. 4 and 6 on preorder so I got them cheap, at least

Could've saved some decent cash if I had just been patient but ... how was I to know?