Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

Template proposal

I'm getting really sick of cleaning up fiction note templates, so, hey, here's an idea. Every single one from now on has to actually be brought up here before the community before it's implemented and not done willy-nilly by one person or a small group of editors. I realize that, as a wiki, we are going to inherently have continuity boners, but the recent trend of drowning character pages in notes is annoying and intrusive. The idea that we need to mention every point of continuity minutiae even in articles like fucking universal greeting is obnoxious and needs to stop. Saix (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I agree. Things like "Regeneration One is a continuation of the Marvel Comics continuity" don't need to be in the middle of character write-ups. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 12:30, 8 January 2016 (EST)

The Marvel thing is a unique case that at least is relevant to character write ups—it tells readers that the Marvel UK stuff mixed into the Marvel US stuff doesn't count. (Of course, this only applies to articles that actually have sections for the original Marvel comics.) The text in the notes could stand to be trimmed down, though. Saix (talk) 12:53, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Do you have some other examples of unnecessary notes we could discuss specifically? I caught the 2001 Car Robots note you mentioned from universal greeting, and I agree it's pointless unless there's actually an RiD vs. CR distinction to be made. --Xaaron (talk) 13:04, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Wings, Classics, RG1 on pages without the continuity they're referring to. Ask Vector Prime. I'm bringing this up now because we need to develop a better way of vetting templates that are theoretically going to be used on many pages. One or two "yes" reponses on some hidden talk page most people don't notice shouldn't be used as a community-wide consensus on things that dramatically alter the reading experience across multiple pages. Saix (talk) 13:12, 8 January 2016 (EST)

And looking at the other stuff we have, Template:Notecmn could easily be made as part of the actual prose and flow more naturally that way, for example. ("In a divergent timeline, blahblah"). Saix (talk) 13:17, 8 January 2016 (EST)

And there's Template:Notemoviebio, which explains what is a regular occurrence in all of Transformers fiction for no real reason. Saix (talk) 13:19, 8 January 2016 (EST)

A similar one is Template:Notetitantlg, which I tried to make pointless when we overhauled the movie character pages a while back and which I think we ditched most uses of, but is still out there. - Chris McFeely (talk) 13:22, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Not quite the same situation, but I'd like to chime in that I'm not a big fan of Template:ongoing. Most of the time, editors completely forget to include it on the appropriate sections, it reiterates something that's obvious ("if there's information missing here, you should add it.") and it's a note that only gets put up so that it can be eventually be taken down. --Ascendron (talk) 13:27, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I agree that it's quite useless when we already have stub templates. Either information is missing or it isn't and people just leave it up on pages that really don't need it because it's not that noticeable. Saix (talk) 13:33, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Ehhhhhn. I'm willing to let "ongoing" live, as, well, there's a TON of "dead" fictions and only a few currently-updating ones, and letting people know which ones are likely to actually continue and not just be a storyline dead-end is at least marginally informative. "Stub" can mean "it came out already and no-one's bothered yet", which is... different than "this cuts off because the scheduled continuation hasn't come out yet". --M Sipher (talk) 08:12, 10 January 2016 (EST)

Also, if you find yourself overburdened with certain tasks, don't be afraid to ask for help. --Ascendron (talk) 13:08, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Thanks for taking care of the CR note. Saix (talk) 13:12, 8 January 2016 (EST)

No prob. As for the RG1 note, I agree that it would look nicer as a single line of text. I'm having difficulty reducing it in length without leaving out something crucial though. I'm putting it on the back-burner for now, but I'll keep it in mind. --Ascendron (talk) 13:18, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Tried cutting it down a bit. The G2 bit was redundant. Saix (talk) 13:43, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Ah yes. Much better. --Ascendron (talk) 13:48, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Yeah, that's equally informative, but also far less intrusive. Nice work, Saix -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:53, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I just wanna say that I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks we have too many goddamned templates. Escargon (talk) 15:03, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Two templates for discussion: Template:TransformersComicMagazin and Template:GIJoeTransformersfiction. Necessary or not? I feel like the former states what's already obvious by the fact that it's in its own section ("Comic-Magazin is not Marvel"), while I dunno about the latter. Saix (talk) 15:43, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Transformers Magazin could probably be done without. The {Gi joe transformers fiction} one, on the other hand, should probably be kept. With the way we use the {noteukonly} and generally treat the US and UK comics, I feel that we kinda need to point out "hey, unlike just about everything else from Marvel US, this doesn't actually fit into the Marvel UK 'verse." -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 15:53, 8 January 2016 (EST)

The Joe one is terrible. It's just plopped into the middle of fiction write-ups with no specification as to what text it refers to. - Chris McFeely (talk) 16:04, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Yeah, I can understand the purpose, but the execution just doesn't work at all. And I don't think it belongs on the issue pages. Saix (talk) 16:06, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I don't do much fiction-section work anymore, but if I can identify part of the problem with the fiction itself... unlike most franchises, TFs has a metric fuckton of "major" divergent splinter timelines. I mean, how many different Marvel G1 comic timeline spinoffs do we have now that don't actually relate to each other? It can be difficult at first look of a page to tell the difference between a series of proper, one-timeline sequel-series and, well, the clusterfuck that is post-Marvel-G1-related stuff branching out like a hydra. So I'm loathe to just run with the "well everyone reading thew wiki should know this" mentality.
So, can see why the templates began, but when we started getting more and more branches? A bit out of hand. And worse, it's not quite a thing the base wiki organization tools are good at adapting and making obvious. (Frankly I find it tricky to tell sometimes the difference between a ===-subsection and a ====-subsection, but that's another quibble for later).
I think a good amount of this can be mitigated with some creative rewriting of the sections' openings, "ten years after the battle of Klo" or whatnot. And certainly that doesn't even need to be brought up if it's just a one-off page of a piece of minor technology from one issue of a spinoff. But for larger pages with a buttload of timeline-fragments?
We might want to look into collapsible Notes. Just a single template that can be adapted not just for this, but, well, for anything. Whack it up top, collapsed, have it say "Continuity Note: (more)" (not as a default), then people can click on it and see "well this continuity branches off from blardeeblar and has no relation to blardeeblar". This way the clutter is minimal, the information on our confusing mess of fiction is right at the fingertips.
Just a thought.--M Sipher (talk) 16:31, 8 January 2016 (EST)

This sounds useful. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 16:47, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I love this idea. Collapsable notes could solve a lot of the problems we've been having with the templates as of late. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I just took a brief look at the voiceactor template, since that does basically what I'm looking at, and even that template's workings are beyond my ability to understand and adapt into a collapsible Note. So um. --M Sipher (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2016 (EST)

It depends how you want it to work. Something like {{cnote|text 1|text 2}} to produce:

Or just {{cnote|text 1}} and

It wouldn't be difficult to knock either of those templates up --Emvee (talk) 09:50, 9 January 2016 (EST)

Expanding off of what Emvee posted here, I've worked up a collapsible note template which can display a custom header, custom visible text and hideable text that is either custom or derived from a preset name. The first draft, examples and documentation can be found here: User:Tigerpaw28/Sandbox/Template:CollapseNote. All critiques are welcome. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 18:50, 9 January 2016 (EST)

Is there a way to put that in a gray box so it matches with the rest of our Notes? I think this has legs. --M Sipher (talk) 23:49, 9 January 2016 (EST)

D'oh! There is. In fact, I actually did have the box but the CSS for it is only available in my personal CSS file at the moment. I'll go integrate that into the template itself for now, then once this is approved maybe it can be moved to a site wide CSS file to reduce template clutter.--Tigerpaw28 (talk) 01:40, 10 January 2016 (EST)

Okay, the CSS is now included in the template so users besides myself can see the gray box. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 01:50, 10 January 2016 (EST)

I love it. Nice work, Tigerpaw. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 03:37, 10 January 2016 (EST)

Seconded, good stuff. --Emvee (talk) 04:16, 10 January 2016 (EST)

I'll stick the css in the common file when everyone's happy. --abates (talk) 16:29, 10 January 2016 (EST)

Speaking of notes and templates, can we also scrub the IDW notes that say "Revelation was shorter than it should've been because Simon Furman was fired." and the Dreamwave notes that say "Because Dreamwave collapsed, plot threads were left dangling."...unless those notes are specifically contributing something to the character's page? --Xaaron (talk) 13:53, 15 January 2016 (EST)

I'd say yes. Saix (talk) 14:16, 15 January 2016 (EST)

More Prominence for IDW

I'm going to propose a change, because the above discussion reminded me of something I find annoying -- the position of IDW in the Fiction sections. At this point, I believe IDW is the longest running continuous fiction in Transformers history. Yet while the 30 year cartoon and Marvel Comic are easy to pick out due to their position at the top or their multitude of subcategories, IDW is typically found near the bottom of the list, nestled in between Japanese micro-continuities, Sticker Adventures and, god help us, The Beast Within.

Is there a better configuration we could work with? I'd be supportive of a "Major Fiction" and "Minor Fiction" breakdown for the traditional "Fiction" section, if we could all peacefully agree to what counts as Major and Minor. Another thought I had was to do away with the Ongoing Fiction Template, and just have "Ongoing Fiction" automatically at the top and "Previous Fiction" underneath.

Any of this sound worth looking into more? --Xaaron (talk) 21:08, 11 January 2016 (EST)

Absolutely friggin' not, never or ever. Organizing fiction due to perceived prominence is counter to the very spirit this wiki was founded on. (It's also amazingly subjective and would be a headache to argue over indefinitely.) --ItsWalky (talk) 00:36, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Wasn't that the point of changing the disambiguation pages though? So that the more prominent stuff was at the top and had pictures to help people? omegatron (talk) 12:23, 12 January 2016 (EST)

That kind of potential slippery-sloping was why I had misgivings about that change in the first place. But Disambig pages are navigation pages, and articles are not, and I have faith that we can recognize the different needs for pages according to their utility and not just make everything the same just because it makes our brains feel superficially happier. But let me put it this way: Imagine Grapple's page. In a "we put IDW first because it's important" world, a dinky subsection in which he appears in the background twice is given precedence over a Big Looker storybook in which he is a major character. IDW isn't always super important to a character's page just because its fiction's gone on a decade! And here's the kicker -- for those folks who've appeared a buttload in IDW, those sections are split off into their own subpages and navigation at the very top of the page leads you right there, effectively already giving everyone this proposed functionality. And without losing the information of real-world chronological release order that levels the canonicity playing field, I might add. --ItsWalky (talk) 14:00, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Right. The disambiguation page thing wasn't something brought up on a whim. It's not a thing I'd propose for any other "type" of page, because disambig pages serve a different purpose than almost every other. That requires some special consideration. --M Sipher (talk) 14:15, 12 January 2016 (EST)

No, no, no, no and no, with a side order of no and no for dessert. --M Sipher (talk) 04:08, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Just throwing this out there as an alternative suggestion to moving the sections around: what do people think of the idea of bolding major sections in the table of contents, so for Optimus you'd end up with something like this. For the sake of preventing arguments we'd reserve it for the really prominent G1 continuities (G1 and BW cartoons, Marvel, IDW and possibly Dreamwave comics), since it's not generally a problem for other continuity families. I'm thinking this could be done very simply in CSS without having to edit a ton of pages, though it would mean that characters with only an IDW fiction section would have it bolded in their contents listing. --abates (talk) 17:30, 12 January 2016 (EST)

That's got some potential, I think. I don't think single-fiction character with bold in their TOC would be a problem. --M Sipher (talk) 17:48, 12 January 2016 (EST)

This ties into an old proposal from way back that I'd also found in my Community Portal re-read, and was brought up on Allspark (and I'd briefly mentioned here recently); the visual differences between subheaders are really quite minimal. It's hard to tell at a look where one continuity-line ends and the other begins. there's got to be something we can do just visually to make these divisions easier to identify by sight. Can we make the header-text for continuity-breaks centered? If we wanna get fancy, can we make a graphic the header? --M Sipher (talk) 18:47, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Okay, apparently you CAN center section headers. --M Sipher (talk) 19:32, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Did some experimenting and found a way to do this. Requires a little bit of HTML/CSS inside the header but easily doable I think. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 23:04, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Since the initial concern, at least, was IDW, can someone sandbox a G1 character with an IDW section to see how that might look? Pipes (G1) seems like a good candidate, since he's got a good-sized IDW section that also isn't so big it should just be a subpage. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 23:13, 12 January 2016 (EST)

I've grown pretty iffy on using images as headers, honestly. There's a lotta "standalone" timelines that don't really have logos and having only SOME major headers be logo images... ehhhhhn. Might be best to just stick with text, maybe a thin bar above, with a wiki-wide change to a thicker tier-1-header-bar. --M Sipher (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2016 (EST)

Actually? Second thoughts, no. This would likely start too many arguments. Sky Shadow (talk) 10:05, 13 January 2016 (EST)

Another proposal after I had a thought just now: dashed overlines. The difference should be enough to differentiate from the underlines on h2s, and they nicely group together related stuff. --abates (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2016 (EST)

The Goal Of The Wiki

(slight editing of something I posted to the Allspark's wiki thread)

A little while back I decided to rummage through the Community Portal archives... from the beginning. The earliest stages, when we were hammering out how to lay out the damn pages, what we should disambiguate by, etc. Saw the suggestions for making information more readily-accessible (character appearance tables, the GO! Box, the navigation templates), the "common wiki" practices we rejected because they just could not apply to this franchise (character infoboxes, for example, thanks to the many many many bodies the characters could have), up through the big move away from Wikia when they started really fucking us over with their ads.

And during that lonnnnng string of arguments with Wikia staff, when we tried (repeatedly) to explain why this "only not-signed-in readers will see the ads so why are you complaining since you don't see the page-ruining ads see this will somehow make money!" thing was utter bullshit...

"We create the content on this wiki FOR casual readers."

Re-read that. RE-FUCKING-READ THAT.

The wiki lost that mentality somewhere. At some point in the last few years, the wiki stopped being about the readers, what would make the vast ocean of material accessible and entertaining to them. It became a micro-minutia-based circlejerk. It became editors confusing anal-retentive busywork (based on the strictest interpretation of rules that always were meant to be applied with a slight degree of malleability because our subject matter absolutely HAS to be handled that way) with productive and useful updating. And with the advent of the Facebook AVP, it became "gee now I can make Real Transformers wheeeeee" with even more micro-minutia and bad-faith gaming of the canon policy that was originally meant to give equal space to the obscure so we wouldn't have the "prominence = more deserving" mentality (plus stuff very specifically made to create circumstances to middle-finger policies that have served us well for a decade prior).

Thus, people who've worked for a decade to make the wiki something huge and special and a wiki other fandoms look at and go "holy shit, we need something like this" find themselves frustrated and edging away as the spirit of the whole thing turns into this sour, solipsistic nigh-gatekeepery up-its-own-ass wank festival, especially when certain subjects just won't. Goddamn. STOP.

From one of our newest regulars:

"Hell, I've only had to deal with one day of GoBots discussion and I'm already sick of it! I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to deal with this shit on multiple different occasions over the course of several years, but I bet it's unpleasant."

So when I see "hey why don't we move IDW sections up because I think it's more important" or "why don't we rename every character in the Japanese-fiction writeups to their Japanese names", yeah, I'm gonna respond harsher because it's kind of hit that point where we have to start bringing the hammer down hard to keep this thing even remotely accessible to anyone who isn't fully engaged in the minutia of TFdom.

I think wiki editors (and others) need to stop and have a good think about WHY they're doing what they're doing, and who they're actually doing it for, and, ultimately, if they should actually be doing it.

There's an important difference between "can" and "should", and too many don't see it. --M Sipher (talk) 04:08, 12 January 2016 (EST)

look i already apologised for the japanese name thing okay

Well, said, though, and you've given me something to think about. --Riptide (talk) 05:21, 12 January 2016 (EST)

...Yeah, I'm taking exception to this.

Because of recent events, I wasn't expecting anyone to jump for joy, but this is a bit much. First of all, "hey why don't we move IDW sections up because I think it's more important" is reductive and dismissive to the facts on the table and the argument I presented. IDW being "ongoing fiction" isn't my subjective opinion, it's a fact. It's also the longest running mass-market fiction not only ongoing right now, but also in Transformers history. So I'm not some weebo saying, "I like Japan, so other people must want Japan to be more prominent, too." (no offense, Riptide -- just for the argument) We were discussing a case of factual prominence, not the "perceived prominence" just inside my own silly head.

And I don't need "We create the content on this wiki FOR casual readers." repeated back to me because it was you, M "Not lovin' this idea" Sipher I was thinking of, saying those very words, which made me think this was a good idea.

Maybe we have different ideas about what casual readers are, but I think of them as new/returning fans who came here because of some ongoing fiction they just saw, and might like to learn more about. If they're watching Robots in Disguise or Rescue Bots, that's cool -- most of those character pages are traceable by (RID) or (RB) disambigs, which is simple enough to figure out. And their Fiction box sections are (mostly) minimal enough to glance over and find what you wanted.

But what about the comics? Well, first they have to know IDW is Generation 1, which isn't exactly on the cover of the comics. Then they have to know the Fiction section on a character's page is organized by release date. You and I know that, but is that rule actually posted in a FAQ somewhere so we could expect a casual reader to know it? The way Sunbow and Marvel subdivide on most pages, a casual reader could be forgiven for thinking the most prominent stuff is already on the top. And even assuming they're visiting the Wiki on a full-screen computer and not a mobile device, for the 1987 guys or earlier "IDW Generation 1 continuity" is likely going to be "below the fold". And if you made it to the end of this paragraph thinking TL;DR, imagine the casual reader going through this in real time. THAT was who I was thinking of when I suggested the Ongoing Fiction content that the casual reader might be looking for when they come here be easier to find somehow.

I'm not trying to throw your words back at you, M Sipher, but again it honestly was a post you made this week defending the Ongoing Fiction Template that made me think of this. You said, "letting people know which ones are likely to actually continue and not just be a storyline dead-end is at least marginally informative". But the current razor-thin, World's Smallest Template Note doesn't really accomplish that. A casual reader may stumble across it by accident, if they squint, or they'll find it if they're already looking for it, but that's it. Floating Ongoing Fiction to the top of the Fiction sections negates the need for the template, lets new readers find what they were most likely looking for more easily, and those Fictions can just as easily be shuffled back down into 'release date order "dead" fiction' once they are no longer ongoing.

If this was a bad idea, fine. But maybe you could provide me a definition of "casual reader friendly", because obviously my WWMSD? bracelet doesn't help when I'm too stupid to know the answer. --Xaaron (talk) 09:09, 12 January 2016 (EST)

There's a Table of Contents at the top of just about every character page. The wiki software even automatically makes a TOC if a page has enough subsections. That TOC has "IDW continuity" in it, which links directly to said subsection. Easy.

Your proposal is nothing but arguments waiting to happen over what's "more important", to become more arguments over which "more important" fiction takes prominenece over the other "more important" (comics or cartoons?) with no actual benefit. It is furniture-shuffling. --M Sipher (talk) 13:19, 12 January 2016 (EST)

Not to put words in Sipher's mouth, but I don't think the main idea he's putting across is really about your proposal, Xaaron, you've just said it at a moment in time in which we are seeing a lot of what Sipher describes (but trying to dub something "more important" will lead to arguments - I remember way back when when people would complain we were putting the Marvel comic ahead of the cartoon). To repost something I've also said on the Allspark - which I don't consider to relate to your proposal, Xaaron - I have been saying for a long time in private conversation what Sipher is saying now, and several months ago, I tried to explain how we're basically responsible for breeding this attitude into our readers. It's the same attitude that caused the AVP brouhaha - we are seeing editors now openly state that the wiki has been a gateway to a lot of this stuff for them, and that they have fixated on the minutiae and the continuity-fondling, which is such a small part of what Transformers, and the wiki, is about that it's the wrong lesson to come away with. Wiki projects ATTRACT those with mindsets focused on categorization, organization, and pattern-observation. It took years before we had editors who were able to reconcile that way of thinking with our "and also fun!" approach, but they now exist, and are more interested in trying to make sure all the headers are precisely the same, that everything is in exactly the right continuity-order and header-structure and category, that all the disambigs are exact - that absolutely everything fits into its little imaginary box, and that nothing breaks the rules by coming out of its box unless there's a seventeen-week debate about it first. ORGANIZATION IS IMPORTANT, but - with the greatest of actual respect to our new editors, because it is thankless hugging busywork and its impressive that you're dedicated to it - as Sipher says, this "moving of the furniture" is all that newer-guard editors actually seem to want to do, or to be capable of doing. It's very, very easy to paste a one-or-two sentence nugget of information from AVP into the wiki, which is why so many people do it and why it got so out of control - but you don't see anyone falling over themselves to add Spacewarp's Log stuff, even before the two-week delay, because it's not presented in nugget form, it's a piece of prose that you'd actually have to - shock, horror - read and summarize, and - oh christ no - it's NOT full of references to pre-existing things so you can't just paste it into existing articles or throw the AVP stub template in. When - just for a recent example - I can go to the article of a major character like Ironhide or Thundercracker and still find tons of material that needs filling in, that says "it doesn't matter that it's been ten years, there is a lot more important work to do than making sure that header is a level 2 or a level 3 one." - Chris McFeely (talk) 13:32, 12 January 2016 (EST)

I just want to be clear that people who take the time to do "busywork" like, say, fixing links so they no longer lead to a redirect page are unquestionably welcome to. That's good, that has a tangible benefit to our wiki (reducing server load). That kind of "busywork" is absolutely okay. It's the seemingly-endless stream of talks about reorganizing hundreds of pages, arguments over disambigs, and yeah, the "easy" trivia-nugget work that's grinding here. --M Sipher (talk) 14:01, 12 January 2016 (EST)

I get the concern over the AVP-inspired editors, and even counseled Giggidy about this very issue above. In hindsight, I probably should've waited for the dust to settle more on the GoBots matter before suggesting something similar for different reasons, but like I said, the idea was sparked by the above discussion about the Ongoing Template.

And I completely agree that a Major/Minor Fiction split would likely lead to more arguments than benefits, which is why I also proposed Ongoing/Not Ongoing. That's completely binary and objective. It's not subject to debate over which fiction is "More Ongoing" than another.

I agree that the IDW links above the main character images remove any need for my proposal...for the characters who have them. My concern rested with characters like Jazz or Soundwave who do not have IDW subpages, and that continuity is 21 or 24 listings down on their Fiction TOCs, nestled between things like Q-Robo and Henkei! Henkei!. But, as I believe Chip suggested on the Allspark, a way to resolve all this is to just be more lenient with allowing IDW subpages in the first place. --Xaaron (talk) 16:31, 12 January 2016 (EST)

I too proposed that. Is there a specific reason why that tab system isn't more prominent. Heck, maybe it would even work for stuff like the Marvel and Sunbow cartoons. Those tabs are a simple and brilliant way to get our readers to what they are looking for. A casual coming here after googling say "Prowl Transformers" needs to be sent to were they need to be efficiently as possible. A page tab on his page header right at the top with IDW staring you in the face ks a good solution that doesn't deal with any of the parliamentary bojangling that's been such a hot topic latelyLush City (talk) 01:25, 14 January 2016 (EST)

Continuity Stream Bullshit

I suggested this on the Allspark, and there's some momentum for it so I'll put it here.

As M Sipher said above, arbitrary furniture movement is bad. That said, all the continuity stream minutae is even worse, and serves only to bloat our pagecount with duplicated information in articles that will only ever be stubs forever. Why do both Primax 984.0 Gamma and The Transformers (issue) exist? Or Marvel Comics continuity if you think the continuity is more important than what the Universal Stream indicator actually decodes to, although if there weren't significant opposition I'd argue that since the stream encoding to a piece of fiction is a 1:1 mapping that we should respect that directly.

Since a Universal Stream page will not contain any useful information other than its actual stream indicator (and VERY occasionally some detail such as "this universe is destroying another one"), I'd like to propose that all universal stream pages either be redirected to the actual single piece of fiction that the stream indicator decodes to, or to the Continuity timeline page that best describes it - and somewhere on **that** page we try and find a place for the universal stream number. Perhaps in the same fashion we originally handled alternate names - directly below the introductory paragraph, in bold?

If this causes problems, feel free to disregard... but I've heard enough discontent about the matter and there's been enough push for it there that I feel confident enough to put my next foot forward on this happening. Sky Shadow (talk) 10:32, 13 January 2016 (EST)

My proposal is that rather than stream pages, major continuities would all get pages. a Marvel g1 universe page, a sunbow cartoon universe a Classicsverse page and so on. Then, stream numbers used in universe would be redirect to those pages. Minor streams would get redirected to the current list pages we have now; AVP additions to minor streams would go in notes on the works main page. (For example, Ulchtar would go in the notes of that videogame)Lush City (talk) 10:51, 13 January 2016 (EST)

I just noted that the already existing Universal Stream pages could be converted into continuity pages in some instances , http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Classicsverse could be simply renamed "Classics Continuity/Universe" for exampleLush City (talk) 11:07, 13 January 2016 (EST)

I'm not seeing how universal streams are logically any different than random crap namedropped without context in stories all the time. Pralmtzurlz VI, Vaulted Heights of K'th Kinsere, and Payload of General Frightening have less content than most universe pages. There also isn't really a way to effectively have real-world information and then fictional universe information on the same article; Transformers: Mystery of Convoy isn't going to look any better if you put all of the To Die Game! stuff on it. (Primax 984.0 Gamma is also not limited to "The Transformers", so, uh, what?) Saix (talk) 13:10, 13 January 2016 (EST)

The difference is those pages are not wholly redundant. For example, yeah, maybe the city "Gygax" only got mentioned offhand in one story. But as it gets a page, it goes in the Category listing of "Cybertron cities" (or whatever it's actually called) and then when, oh, say, a TV cartoon writer wants to look up cities for references...

In other words, BAM, the whole reason we did this wiki. The obscure was given an outlet, and it got used again. And this is far from the only instance.

But this is not a functionality that serves any real purpose for the named Streams. You need to know the code to make any sense of them, at which point you can easily make up a code for any piece of fiction that exists. And every piece of Transformers fiction that exists IS canonically its own universe, and simultaneously wholly-subsumed parts of other universes, because of quantum (read: pseudoscience arglebargle translation of a meta-based concept with no real defined rules because we, and I literally mean WE as in me and Trent, made it all up and jesus on a tilt-a-whirl some people think way too hard and too rigidly about this). All these pages do is create a hoop for people to jump through unnecessarily. We don't need the pagecount bloat.

If people are REALLY concerned about stuff not from, say, that one storybook that some FunPub gag-strip or Facebook post placed some wacky new event, then there is a simple solution. NOTES SECTION. One bullet point is really all you need in the overwhelming majority of cases. Something else, a subsection under notes called, oh, "Use in Other Fictions" will cover it. --M Sipher (talk) 15:49, 13 January 2016 (EST)

Yeah, the "club fiction adds a bunch of stuff to some random micro-continuity" scenario is really the only one where the stream pages are even remotely good for anything - the Shell Game/Megazarak universe springs to mind - and in those cases it is potentially useful to have the info from a bunch of separate AVP things (or whatever) collected. But as you say, Sipher, that kind of thing could happily live in the notes section of the fiction article. Jalaguy (talk) 16:06, 13 January 2016 (EST)

From a group complaining about "moving the furniture around", there sure have been a lot of suggestions recently about deleting a lot of pages and taking all the info in them and putting them onto slightly harder-to-find pages. I'm not even sure I have an opinion on this proposal, but the observation struck me as odd. --Giggidy (talk) 16:09, 13 January 2016 (EST)

Context is important, and the context here is bandwidth issues and reader experience. Those are fucking important. Every time we bounce a reader to another page, that's another tick on our sever, and these pages are, as noted, almost wholly redundant info when we could send them to a page that has the whole thing. And you're gonna sit there and claim that a listing of made-up words and number gibberish is somehow easier for a reader to use than just putting the relevant information on a page titled in plain English they're vastly more likely to find on their own. Okay, sure, whatever. --M Sipher (talk) 16:17, 13 January 2016 (EST)

I think at the very least, there's little reason to argue that stream indicators for major continuities shouldn't just redirect to the continuity page, i.e. Primax 984.0 Gamma to Marvel Comics continuity. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 16:35, 13 January 2016 (EST)

Let me put this another way... the stream pages feel akin to having a page for "Khrapovik" then listing only the things Prime Ratchet did in the Russian comics on it. Again, technically a different universe, sure, but it's part of the bigger universe and splitting it out really only obfuscates info in the name of pedantry, and it's just better off folding it into the main. --M Sipher (talk) 17:09, 13 January 2016 (EST)

That makes a lot of sense to me. This might be one of those situations where we want to use flexibility. If there is a continuity page that already exists, maybe the redirect goes there and we have a fiction section. If there's a universal stream and little else, maybe that can just go away. And if there's a lot of information about the stream, maybe we just keep it. --Giggidy (talk) 23:06, 13 January 2016 (EST)

So should we start compiling solutions for wn eventual vote. I'm behind the idea of replacing stream pages with pages for the continuity. In fact I think a good way to deal with extra Avp infor is to use are already existing arrow system. Thede added storiee are just like,say Regeneration One added to the end of Marvel US in a way, so for example. Mystery of the Convoy would get an arrow that goes to To Die Game, Shell Game would get an extra a avp write up detail.

But over all I am for us having Continuity pages instead of streams. Like was said above we don't need Primax Whatever Gamma AND Marvel US continuity pages. Lush City (talk) 10:30, 14 January 2016 (EST)

Alternate names

When we mention a character's alternate names (i.e, on X's page, we note that "he is sometimes known as Y), there seems to be a bit of confusion as to exactly where we do it. Some pages^[1] place such information near the top in the continuity note, whereas others put it at the end of the opening paragraph. Is there a policy on this? I don't particularly care one way or the other, I'd just like to see them made consistent. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 01:08, 17 January 2016 (EST)

I prefer them to be in the top rather than in the bio.--Primestar3 (talk) 14:54, 17 January 2016 (EST)

The continuity notes are cluttered enough already. Put them at the end of the bio. Saix (talk) 08:57, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I think, barring the unusual case of an obscure alternate name that is seldom used, the end of the continuity note is the ideal place. But I'm not sure consistency is absolutely necessary, as long as the information is conveyed in an appropriate way.--Giggidy (talk) 10:14, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I concur with Saix. --Khajidha (talk) 10:45, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I prefer the end of the intro over the continuity note. It leaves more room for multiple names (in case a character has 2 or more alternate names) and also makes room for context (like, when and where and why is the character sometimes called by that other name). --DrSpengler (talk) 13:54, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I prefer the end of the intro as well. Take a look at Hot Rod. ^[2]He has all his names in the continuity note, and it's a mess. If we're going to pick just one way to do it (and I think we should), it should be at the end of the intro. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 15:45, 20 January 2016 (EST)

You've convinced me that the intro is a smarter spot. --Giggidy (talk) 16:09, 20 January 2016 (EST)

How about Vector Prime's alternate names? He's never made a solid appearance using any of them, so should they be in both the intro and in the AVP story section? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 15:23, 21 January 2016 (EST)

That feels like a great place to make an exception and only list them in the fiction section or the notes.--Giggidy (talk) 15:44, 21 January 2016 (EST)

Parodies

I think we should have one page that lists notable parodies and stuff. Just to get them out of the way. HarbringerOfDoom (talk) 08:29, 20 January 2016 (EST)

They're already out of the way, by virtue of being not on this wiki. --Riptide (talk) 08:43, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I noticed recently that the other place has started listing stuff like characters' appearances on Family Guy and Robot Chicken in their main profiles, which gives us even more reason not to. --Emvee (talk) 09:01, 20 January 2016 (EST)

I can see the appeal, but I suspect it would quickly get out of hand. Transformers gets referenced in a lot of pop culture. Every show, movie, and Web comic is somebody's favorite, so I suspect any such page would quickly become an unbearably long and tedious list. So what would that leave us with? A page saying Transformers often shows up in pop culture? I'm not sure there's any value to that. --Giggidy (talk) 10:13, 20 January 2016 (EST)

You guys have got to just be doing this on purpose now. Lush City (talk) 10:53, 21 January 2016 (EST)

I will get myself banned before I will allow this wiki to cover Family Guy and Robot Chicken. --Riptide (talk) 11:23, 20 January 2016 (EST)

NO. Like, a thousand times no. I believe similar discussions have been had in the past, and the answer was a resounding no. (I can't find that particular discussion at the moment; I'll post it here if I find it.) -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:43, 20 January 2016 (EST)

We have episodes of cartoons and issues of comics that are stubs and primary character articles that need to have their fiction sections filled out, but ok, yeah. Let's start pedantically listing every time Family Guy has referenced Transformers. That should be a priority. --DrSpengler (talk) 13:53, 20 January 2016 (EST)

**Condescending Wonka image** --M Sipher (talk) 15:00, 20 January 2016 (EST)

The only page that would make sense (to me) while keeping in line with the spirit for this wiki is a simple list of times that official product was used in movies and television.

• This toy was in such and such movie in year 19XX.
• Transformers episode so'n'so was seen the background of movie in year 200X.
• A number of toys were shown featured in McTV show in episode whatzitz.

References are out. Parodies are out, and it's only a single page as to not clutter up the rest (similar to what we do with unofficial Transformers guides.) --Bluestreak7 (talk) 02:36, 22 February 2016 (EST)

I really don't see any potential benefit to that. Are we going to make a page full of stuff like "Some G1 toys showed up in Flight of the Navigator" and stuff like that? Why? It's pointless, and it would just open the floodgates for more of the same pointless crap, not to mention how bloated and useless it would be. Before long, people will use that page as an argument for including bullshit from Family Guy and the Chevy commercial with the car that turns into a robot and god knows what else. Information about references to Transformers in other media is something for Wikipedia to cover. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 12:24, 22 February 2016 (EST)

Question about GoBots....not the one you are thinking of

Is there any objection to my adding External Links to Counter-X's Challenge of the GoBots profile pages to the character pages here? --Khajidha (talk) 10:54, 3 February 2016 (EST)

I was doing it only in lieu of TFU.info links. TFU seems to be our standard for outside toys links and we typically don't do others unless TFU lacks them for some reason. But I dunno if there's a legit policy about it or not. (that said, Counter X is a great GoBot-centric resource and probably more informative than TFU, just my opinion) --DrSpengler (talk) 10:58, 3 February 2016 (EST)

Counter-X has actual cartoon bio pages to link to, not just toy reviews.--Khajidha (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2016 (EST)

I don't think there's any issue with adding informative links. Saix (talk) 11:31, 3 February 2016 (EST)

Okay, Renegade-related pages linked. I'll tackle the Guardians later. Unless someone else wants to do it. --Khajidha (talk) 12:27, 5 February 2016 (EST)

Guardian-related pages linked. I changed format a time or two, I will go back later and harmonize ALL of them. Unless someone else beats me to it. --Khajidha (talk) 11:52, 22 February 2016 (EST)

OK, just to clarify, what Chris McFeely proposed last month was this: "GoBots characters only mentioned in Renegade Rhetoric stories consolidated into simplified 'List of Guardian' and 'List of Renegade' pages with only brief write-ups, linking readers to our archive of the Facebook posts if they want the full scoop. Characters such as Cy-Kill and those who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories should, of course, retain their own articles." So, it's permissible to write up full articles for characters who appear in the crossover fiction, yes, detailing their adventures in said crossover fiction? Those who only appear in Renegade Rhetoric get consolidated into a list with brief description of their Renegade Rhetoric adventures with links to the RR/src archive. And for the characters who do appear in crossover fiction, their Renegade Rhetoric adventures get that brief description with link to archive. I don't want to do work that will get reverted or start an argument, which is why I'm double-checking what Chris proposed and the community agreed.

If my understanding is correct, I'll try to write up the crossover fiction stuff, and then take a stab at consolidating whoever's left. I thought I remembered seeing a sandbox of consolidation, did anyone make any progress on that?--Giggidy (talk) 08:55, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Considering that we now list it as "Transformers: Renegade Rhetoric", does that distinction still apply? --Khajidha (talk) 09:21, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Let's not bring up old wounds and rehash old arguments. --Giggidy (talk) 09:43, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Chris's proposal was based on the idea that Renegade Rhetoric wasn't Transformers fiction. --Khajidha (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Jim has stated before that the "Transformers" part of the title doesn't really mean anything and shouldn't be taken too seriously. --Sabrblade (talk) 09:53, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I guess I can't argue against that. --Khajidha (talk) 09:57, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I would, however, argue that the RR appearances of characters who have other TF fiction appearances should be on their pages and not just on the archive. --Khajidha (talk) 10:01, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I don't want to argue about anything. I just want to confirm that I am correctly understanding and interpreting what was decided.--Giggidy (talk) 10:10, 25 February 2016 (EST)

So... no opinions on this? I'm maybe 90% sure I'm right in my interpretation, but I'd love Chris or Walky to weigh in just to be certain. If no one cares anymore, I'll assume I'm right and get started. --Giggidy (talk) 09:46, 26 February 2016 (EST)

Yep, your summary matches what I envisioned. I started this sandbox for the Renegades but I've been busy. - Chris McFeely (talk) 10:30, 26 February 2016 (EST)

Great. I'll try to get some progress done this weekend. --Giggidy (talk) 11:20, 26 February 2016 (EST)

I would say, though, that it'd be worth linking to at least one of the TFU/Counter-X profiles from these list pages, given that they provide useful context without it being the wiki's coverage; in particular, the likes of Jack Attack and Decker Decker, who (on the sandbox as it stands) don't give any indication of which unused Machine Robo toys they're based on, meaning it would be pretty much impossible for casual readers to track them down. I remember that someone proposed using a table instead of headers for the list pages; maybe have a column in the table for Counter-X links? --Riptide (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2016 (EST)

Is there a category for images from the Timelines Facebook pages?

Do we have a category for all the images posted on the Timelines Facebook pages like Ask Vector Prime, Renegade Rhetoric, etc? As I've been going through the uncategorized images, I've noticed that quite a few of them are from those Facebook pages. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 17:16, 8 February 2016 (EST)

"Requested URL could not be retrieved"

I can't seem to find any kind of technical place to post this, so I'm just going to post it here in the hopes of getting some attention. For some reason, I've been locked out of the site; trying to access the website on either of my main computers results in a white page and an "ERROR: The requested URL could not be retrieved" message. I've tried clearing my cache, deleting cookies, all that stuff (I can still post on my phone). I suspect that it's some kind of internal server problem (I don't think I've done anything to break the wiki on my end), but I'm not sure? Any help would be appreciated. Grum (talk) 19:09, 28 February 2016 (EST)

That might have been me being too zealous with the spam blocking. I'll send you an email shortly. --abates (talk) 20:36, 28 February 2016 (EST)

Thank you! I will see if it works. Grum (talk) 20:56, 28 February 2016 (EST)

Did you get the email? --abates (talk) 22:14, 28 February 2016 (EST)

sorry for the late response, it got put into junk mail. Clicking the link just takes me to a blocked site. Grum (talk) 22:43, 28 February 2016 (EST)

OK, I think you should now be unblocked. Give it another try! --abates (talk) 22:57, 28 February 2016 (EST)

It worked! Many thanks! Grum (talk) 23:03, 28 February 2016 (EST)

No problem - sorry about that! --abates (talk) 00:05, 29 February 2016 (EST)

Facebook-exclusive characters

Given the copious quantity of characters debuted through the Tornado and TransTech Facebook pages who have no toys and have yet to appear in any other fiction, would it be appropriate to create a "Facebook-only characters" subcategory of "Fiction-only characters"? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 19:59, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Not a bad idea. I'd also be down for "Online-media exclusive characters" or something along those lines. --Ascendron (talk) 20:15, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Yeah, that sounds worthwhile. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 20:19, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Furthering the use of list articles

Looking at Chris McFeely's sandbox for the GoBots list article, I think that maybe similar list articles would be a nice way to handle some of the minor Shattered Glass and Kre-O characters. Pages like Broadside (SG) are rather useless, and I think that consolidating such pages into a list article would lead to a better reader experience. (To save us from pointless page moves, I would suggest just turning the old pages into a redirect to the list article, keeping all the categories.) -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 19:38, 3 March 2016 (EST)

No. Saix (talk) 19:41, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Would you care to elaborate on that? -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 20:20, 3 March 2016 (EST)

We only used a list for GoBots as a compromise for the endless debate. Applying that concept to inarguable Transformers characters is senseless and leads to more arguments over what counts for a list and what doesn't. You're just causing more inconsistency and headaches for no benefit. Saix (talk) 20:39, 3 March 2016 (EST)

I still hate the list pages for Gobots, I don't want to have to spread it further. Escargon (talk) 20:25, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Lists are not ideal. - Chris McFeely (talk) 20:26, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Fair enough. It was just a thought -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 20:41, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Sick Of Arguing About GoBots II

The existing rule was: "I think that any events described from the original, actually-existing cartoon should be reduced to minimum, and all GoBots characters only mentioned in these stories consolidated into simplified "List of Guardian" and "List of Renegade" pages with only brief write-ups, linking readers to our archive of the Facebook posts if they want the full scoop. Characters such as Cy-Kill and those who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories should, of course, retain their own articles"

That caused a lot of argument over Echoes and Fragments, since most people did not want to create new pages for each named character even though 'legally' it's fine. This is going to come up again when new GoBots appears in a Transformers fanfic (and Macrocosmic Seekers is all about that).

At this point, might be worth altering the law to "who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories with a moderate-to-large role in Transformers fanfiction" i.e. Major Mo is fine because he had a big role in Echoes but Back Grounder the Rock Lord who was only mentioned briefly in a crowd scene is not. That seems to be the spirit of the law. - Charles RB (talk) 17:27, 4 March 2016 (GMT)

I vote no. "GoBots characters and concepts who have not appeared outside of Facebook-based media do not get their own pages" is a reasonable policy without loopholes. --Riptide (talk) 12:52, 4 March 2016 (EST)

That's the crux of this all, so if it gets people to shut up about this forever, please, for the love of God. Stuff that has appeared or been mentioned in other media will still get appropriate pages—nobody has ever argued against that. Saix (talk) 13:18, 4 March 2016 (EST)

Agree with Riptide. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:34, 4 March 2016 (EST)

I think this is a terrible, terrible rule and an awful precedent, but it is at least honest and non-subjective. --Giggidy (talk) 14:23, 4 March 2016 (EST)

So, that's the concensus. The rule is "GoBots and major associated characters who appear only on Facebook pages get the list treatment." The justification is that GoBots is a frequent source of arguments and the hope is a simple, unambiguous rule will curtail these arguments. --Giggidy (talk) 23:07, 5 March 2016 (EST)

RID Kre-O

Since we're unlikely to get any more Kre-O fiction, and all of the RID Kre-O articles are pretty sparse in content, maybe they should just be merged to the main RID character articles? Saix (talk) 15:27, 8 March 2016 (EST)

I'll be honest, I'm not averse to this at all. --M Sipher (talk) 17:13, 8 March 2016 (EST)

I guess nobody's really opposed to this or cares, so I'll go ahead and do it. Saix (talk) 13:48, 9 March 2016 (EST)

After looking through the Kre-O pages... I feel like the comic-only cameos should all just be merged to whatever they're referencing. After merging all of the Iocus crap, it feels right to do the same to articles that are pretty much just "BWII Galvatron, but as a Kreon". They're very specific references removed from their context for really no good reason. Maybe not a popular suggestion, but throwing it out there. Saix (talk) 16:50, 9 March 2016 (EST)

So long as it doesn't mess around with characters that freely switch between different incarnations of themselves, or are composite homages that can't be neatly classified. I can't think of any way those could be neatly merged into another page. --Ascendron (talk) 17:10, 9 March 2016 (EST)

Yeah, I'm mostly focusing on unique characters (Fractyl, Atari, Tarn, etc.) and not the big archetypes like Optimus or Bumblebee. Most characters with toys will be left alone. Saix (talk) 18:35, 9 March 2016 (EST)

I'm extremely cool with this. Never been big fan of giving them individual articles in the first place. Like, honestly, in a more organized world where this stuff hadn't been created on an incremental basis, "Fornax" almost certainly wouldn't be a thing and it'd all be Iocus. - Chris McFeely (talk) 17:48, 9 March 2016 (EST)

Again, no real objection, if a tepid "sure". I mean, I'm not really convinced that Kreons based on existing characters who DO have toys but no fiction (like a hefty chunk of the "Class" sets) really need to be split out. A page from Kreon Topspin seems... overly redundant. --M Sipher (talk) 22:29, 9 March 2016 (EST)

Yeah, I'm looking around more and it seems like there's only a select few that couldn't be encompassed by their main versions. Most of the Class series is guilty of that, but there's also lots of Kreons based on one-shot characters (Wingspan Hawk, Barrage (Kre-O)). We have a lot of pages that are just "this exists and is obviously this other thing" from both the toyline and the comic. Saix (talk) 00:39, 10 March 2016 (EST)

You probably are doing this, but be sure to add the "Kreons" category and such when condensing. --M Sipher (talk) 00:53, 10 March 2016 (EST)

Ehhh... I disagree. I mean, the Kreon Class ones, sure, but I'm less certain on What about the likes of the Soundwaves and Convoys and Starscreams? I'd probably vote strong "yes" to merging the Class of 84/5 guys, weak "yes" to merging the fictionless Kreons (and maybe the non-Transformer comic cameos, I don't know), but a strong "no" to anyone who was actually in the comic. --Riptide (talk) 06:55, 10 March 2016 (EST)

We do have a couple of examples where character pages have sections that cover more than one character already. The Masterforce transtectors and the BeCool cartoon come to mind. Does it really serve anything to give those tiny one-panel cameos in a referential comic their own pages? Saix (talk) 09:03, 10 March 2016 (EST)

As I've noted before, there comes a point where we're just being pointlessly pedantic, making people jump through hoops (and incrementally hitting our bandwidth limits) for... no actual benefit near as I can tell. Seriously. What's the benefit? What is the purpose? "Consistency"? Sorry, this franchise has grown and mutated too big for us to try and cram everything into no-exceptions rules. We HAVE to be flexible and make exceptions in some places, and when it comes to overly-redundant pages, that's where I'm more than willing to make exceptions.

I'm down with low-content one-pages for one-panel unique characters to be certain, like the Hideous Brain Guy, but for Basically The Well-Known G1 Character But In Brick Form? ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn. --M Sipher (talk) 16:45, 10 March 2016 (EST)

Should we merge Soundblaster (Kre-O) into Soundblaster (G1)? Their colors aren't exactly the same, but they're both black repaint clones of the main Soundwave. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 00:02, 14 March 2016 (EDT)

Sure, whatever. If another independent G1 Soundblaster pops up, that's probably where they're going anyway. Saix (talk) 00:54, 14 March 2016 (EDT)

Informing new users of the recent anti-spam measures

(Slight re-editing of something I posted on the Allspark) I think we may need to put something in the welcome template and/or on Main Page/editing-tips about how new users are unable to create pages because of all the spam stuff; it seems to be confusing some people. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 12:45, 13 March 2016 (EDT)

I've just reduced the timeout for creating new pages down to 6 hours, which should still slow down the spammers but not be quite as much of a burden on legit new users. --abates (talk) 15:50, 13 March 2016 (EDT)

Is any active admin still getting emails sent to the webmaster mailbox? I ask because I'm getting a ton of them: Looks like new IP/User Agent blocks, and I haven't touched this setup since... 2014? McFly (talk) 23:12, 23 March 2016 (EDT)

We now have a new captcha based on the Transformers Name Generator, which should hopefully be harder for the spammers to crack. Also my apologies to the non-spammers caught up in the blocking - all of the user agent blocks have been rolled back by now, so hopefully no one should be blocked from viewing the site. (Also as per McFly above, I've redirected the webmaster email address to me) --abates (talk) 20:18, 25 March 2016 (EDT)

I hope the new signup test is not too difficult - I notice we haven't had any new signups since implementing it. I changed the notice to be clearer and provided an example. --abates (talk) 22:30, 27 March 2016 (EDT)