Brickipedia:Forum

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Changes to appearances sections

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.

This is just something that's been bugging me for a while, but never got around to proposing.

Appearances sections for minifigure pages with lots of variants and appearances

Appearances sections on many minifigure articles like the main Ninjago characters are getting left behind. I think part of this is because it's a long list, and there are little notes next to everything... it just looks a mess to me. I think it would be much better to group the appearances by each major variant- as it's really only new variants coming out, you can see right away what needs to be added, and it's also more useful if you want to see what set a specific variant appears in. There's an example here (as opposed to here- note that it's missing about 5 sets on the list). NovaHawk 00:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Sure. I think that it might be useful to indicate years (i.e. Trainee (2006 - 2007, 2009)) as well as variants. Even just one of those is probably a more sensible way a person will browse than by set number. I do wonder how well this would work for minifigures like Batman who have an absurd amount of one-offs and "New hat!" variants. Berrybrick (talk) 00:40, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Per Berry. LCF ^(talk!) 01:15, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

You mean years in the heading (eg, DX (2011-2012))? That'd be fine with me. @Batman- that's why I said "major" variant- eg, Cole's ghost airjitzu is grouped with his normal airjitzu, it just has (ghost) next to it, you could do the same thing with the different-shaped cowls. I get what you mean for one-off suits, though I still think it'd be slightly better this way overall :S NovaHawk 03:50, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I like the new layout, but Friends has unique (throwing a random leg piece and torso together) variations for each set. So that'll look messy regardless Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Just had a look at all the variants/appearances on Emma, and yeah it'd be pretty pointless on Friends since nearly every set would have its own heading :S I don't think there needs to be a fixed rule for when to use this formatting, just more of a "use when it makes sense to use it"-type thing NovaHawk 03:14, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

I guess it could apply to most themes par City, Creator and Friends. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

"Mentions, depictions and portrayals" section

I've had a problem with the appearances section ever since it came out, and wasn't sure how to fix it. Take Lloyd- his kimono suit comes as a physical minifigure in 5002816 LEGO Ninjago: Character Encyclopedia. Technically, at the moment this should be listed under "Book appearances", along with novels and other encyclopedia which just mention him or have a picture of him. There's no real way we have to indicate whether a minifigure actually appears or is just mentioned. I think the way to fix this might be to have a subsection of appearances just for video games, books, etc. It'd look something like:

==Appearances==
* [[9443 Rattlecopter]] {{C|ZX}}
* [[9457 Fangpyre Wrecking Ball]] {{C|ZX}}
* [[5002816 LEGO Ninjago: Character Encyclopedia]] {{C|Kimono}}
===Gear appearances===
;Key chains
* [[850442 Lloyd ZX Key Chain]]
;Clocks
* Lloyd clock
===Mentions and portrayals===
;Video games
* ''[[LEGO Ninjago - The Final Battle]]''
;Television
* ''[[Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu]]''
** Season 1
*** "[[Rise of the Snakes]]"
;Books
* [[5002816 LEGO Ninjago: Character Encyclopedia]]

Note I've also got a "gear appearances" section for things which physically appear as Lloyd, but aren't 100% a minifigure. Also, the character encyclopedia appears twice because he both appears as a physical minifigure and is pictured/mentioned in the book. NovaHawk 00:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

This makes sense, but I'm not sure about the name. I think its "mentions" which gets me, and then aren't portrayals and depictions the same thing? I'd just pick either of those, personally. I'm just nitpicking your brilliance though. :P Berrybrick (talk) 00:44, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I meant to say I had no idea what to name it :D And yes, they're the same, I won't take you through the crazy process I went through to have both there :P Removed one of them, if you like the other feel free to change it NovaHawk 00:56, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I think that our current handling of "mentions and portrayals" is sufficient. Lloyd appears in the book, yes, but shouldn't it already be clear that there is a section for his physical appearances? Perhaps the "appearances" section should be renamed to "Set appearances" or "Physical appearances"? I believe that the problem would lie more with the generic nature of the lone word "Appearances", not the other way around. LCF ^(talk!) 01:24, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Well the book sections are bound to be incomplete :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Looks good, organized and nice instead of jumbled up - good idea you brought up! I didn't think of this and it'll help make articles better :) @Berry: I'm fine with "mentions" personally - the only synonyms I could find/come up with were either too long or too complex - "acknowledgements", "utterances", "recognitions" - while "mentions" is short and sweet. :P Also expanding on LCF's suggestion (or maybe I'm repeating, I don't know) - I personally think this structure would be better since it's less repetitive:

==Appearances==
===Sets===
===Gears===
===Mentions & portrayals===

The reader already recognizes the top section is about appearances, so you can just say the prefix without the "appearances" suffix as it's already defined.

SamanthaNguyen (talk) 06:33, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

It's not that I don't like the word "mentions" but that I'm not sure that listing where a character is mentioned in a section called "appearances" makes much sense. I can see that that was totally unclear though. :P Berrybrick (talk) 14:41, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Anything come of this discussion? CJC95 (talk) 19:54, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
Just need some clarification on the bottom section before I take this away and write it up- should we have a "sets" subheader as suggested by Sam or just have sets directy under appearances as is currently done? (totally agree about removing the redundant "appearances" though, if anyone has any objection to that please say so below) NovaHawk 04:25, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Reevaluating "subtheme"

Also, "supertheme" and "toyline".

I am not sure in what official capacity the term "subtheme" has ever been used. In my experience, it has mostly shown up on fansites like Brickset and Bricklink where it is used for organization. I wouldn't be surprised to find the term in some official materials, like The LEGO Book, but I would expect that that would be more so because of the of the way that fans use the word. Essentially, Black Falcons was a revamp of the Castle theme, and that's what makes it a subtheme. "Black Knights is a Castle theme." Considering that the sub- prefix means "beneath" or "under", this makes sense. Castle, in turn, would be an "umbrella" or "supertheme" which also encompasses Royal Knights, WolfPack, and even, though we don't seem to consider it one for some reason, Nexo Knights. Though I don't know what our current organization is, under this reasoning, City would be a "subtheme" of the Town "supertheme". This will sometimes show up when themes which we probably would not call "super", like Adventurers or Alpha Team, get rebranded as "Jungle" or "Deep Sea". The original version of the theme (just plain Alpha Team) usually gets treated as the "supertheme" because it has nothing particularly special about it (Adventurers being an exception because of the clearly defined desert setting in its first year). This doesn't make much sense because, even if we haven't got a name for it, the first year of Alpha Team releases is as much of a subtheme as the second. In short, a subtheme is a variation on a theme.

As far as modern themes are concerned, we don't really do this any more from what I can tell though; we don't record an Outlands subtheme for Legends of Chima or a Rebooted one for Ninjago. The only place that we see subthemes now is with licensed themes. The Desolation of Smaug being a subtheme of The Hobbit theme. This doesn't always make a ton of sense though. I've noticed recently that Toy Story 3 is a subtheme of Toy Story. The equation seems to be that since the name of the first movie is the name of the franchise, then the sets based on that first movie are not sub to the franchise like the sets based on the other movie are.

The third point that I wanted to address is toylines, which we usually classify by the building elements they use. I think that this is should be more about what sort of product they are delivering. For example, Constraction is a building system, not a toyline, so we would classify BIONICLE, Galidor, etc. sets as part of an Action Figures, Constraction Figures, Ultrabuild, or whatever toyline. Collectable Minifigures would be one. I think that sets like 71241 Slimer Fun Pack should be considered part of a Dimensions, Video Games, or Toys to Life toyline with Ghostbusters as the theme. And Ideas would be handled a similar way, I think. Probably things like the new BrickHeadz, too, and maybe Mighty Micros and MicroFighters. Ninjago spinners and Chima speedorz would be toylines. Friends and Elves would be "Girlz only no boys allowed!!1!1". The question I guess is sort of how to go about this because if I would consider Ideas a toyline, then what toyline would "normal" sets like City and non-spinner Ninjago classify under? "Classic" or "what it's always been" I guess, unless we wanted to equate superthemes like Town, Castle, and Pirates to toylines, which might make sense.

So yeah, that's my overanalysis. Accept it or not, I think that we need to question what "theme" means. Because right now, it seems to have less to do with a rebrand or "new take on an old classic" and more to do with what kind of sets are being released under the same banner. And I think that leads to some messy organization. Admittedly, it's not usually too bad, but I think that we can do a lot better.

With what I am thinking this will, for example, join all Ghostbusters products from across the Ideas/Dimensions/Sets divide while still allowing it to remain part of those things.

Feel free to ask questions. I understand that my thinking isn't always so easy to follow, and even if you can, there are sure to be a lot of "what about thises and thatses?". I'll work on a more precise plan in the mean time. Berrybrick (talk) 16:45, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay I am not exactly sure what you are proposing. We could first do what Bricklink does and sort everything under whether its a set, book, video game etc. Having that additional category may be helpful. Then each theme could include sets, video games, clothing etc.

What comes to mind is allowing sets to have more than one theme, so the Dimensions pack would be in the Dimensions and the Ghostbusters themes. It solves the problem, but it makes sorting more confusing.

Maybe we should make a new category for things which span more than one theme/system.

LEGO Education (Dacta), at school a few years ago we had old TECHNIC Dacta. But looking at Bricklink, there is also Dacta which uses System, DUPLO and Jumbo Bricks.
Not just different systems, but themes also. There are Town, Castle and Creator sets that are still Dacta.
Dimensions and Ideas are the same. There are different themes under each of these "themes".

Maybe we should stop thinking of Education/Dacta, Ideas, Brickheadz and Dimensions as themes and instead as lines, like you said. So a set can still only be part of one theme, but can also be part of one of these additional categories.

You mentioned Speedorz, I don't understand what is wrong with having those under Chima, as on the boxes they say Chima Speedorz. The Town theme is long gone now, so really I suppose City sets actually replaced the Town theme. I need to think it through more, maybe draw up some diagrams showing all the different themes.

I don't know if that reply helps much, I'm not very good at collecting my thoughts together! Lachlan (talk) 20:38, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. :) I'm not proposing anything yet (I need to collect my thoughts), I just wanted to get people thinking about the way we categorized based on theme and toyline. I'm glad you seem to be. :P

I had forgotten all about Dacta. That would be classified a toyline, at least in my thinking. That way it can encompass different themes, but those themes could still have regular products. Sort of like Ghostbusters having sets in its own theme, Ideas, and Dimensions. Does that make sense?
Speedorz would still be under Chima. I'm thinking that the banner on set pages which currently goes like [{System -> Legends of Chima -> Speedorz}] would instead be more like [{Speedorz -> Legends of Chima -> {subtheme}]. We could keep thinking of them as a subtheme and it wouldn't be the end of the world (especially since only Chima gets them), but I suppose my thought there comes more from thinking that we ought to do something about subtheme coming to mean "special kinds of sets within regular theme" rather than "rebranded version of the theme".
On City/Town: Yeah, I'm not sure how clear I was, but the thing about Black Falcons was that that more or less replaced Castle, and then Black Falcons was in turn replaced by something else. We treat Castle, Space, and Pirates as superthemes and (almost) every new incarnation as a subtheme. By that logic, City would be a subtheme of the supertheme Town (or we could even call the supertheme City if people wanted to; though Town is more historical). Supertheming is a practice that, at least for those four themes, I like, but it has sort of started to teeter off with the way that people have started to think of subthemes.
I'd be happy to see what you come up with. I'm afraid that whatever we do though, it'll be a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it for a more organized site.

Berrybrick (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Wow. I was going to write something long on this months ago, but didn't for mine (and your) collective sanities. I haven't read this yet, but be prepared for a long thing on it. CJC95 (talk) 20:58, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I look forward to it. Berrybrick (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

DUPLO and City list all their subthemes on their websites, otherwise things are in fact pretty vague for unlicensed themes. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

A couple of points:

I had forgotten that City, at least, still has subthemes "officially" distinguished. Thanks.
We shouldn't think of DUPLO as a theme. We don't with System or Constraction. I don't know what to do about TECHNIC though. :/

Berrybrick (talk) 22:15, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I have yet to read the whole thing, but so that I can quickly reply before this gets forgotten... I think we should think of DUPLO as a theme still. Most other sites, including LEGO.com, do, and we should be consistent with that. 96.51.149.32 01:46, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

If we want to imitate LEGO then I guess I haven't got a leg to stand on, but what I'm imagining (which hasn't been fully drawn up yet, but can best be seen in these notes) but considering DUPLO a theme would kind of compromise it. I guess that if there is really nothing better to put in the theme box DUPLO can go there--since that is probably what'll happen with TECHNIC anyway--but with the magic of wikilinks, it really won't be at the loss of any functionality or maneuverability. All of the articles which are linked to and from DUPLO now would be then. Searches and browsing will hardly change, and of the items which would be getting a status change, DUPLO is probably among those which will be effected the least. Berrybrick (talk) 03:08, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I've put down some notes that might help you all understand what I am thinking. If you've got any questions or things you want to add, feel free to do it there or here. Just please make sure I see it. :P Berrybrick (talk) 23:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
- Well. That was long :P Not sure what to think about the toyline idea yet- "toyline" was intended to be what you call "system" in your notes when the set header was created, so this would be a whole other category. Put me down for a neutral for now, I probably need to reread it again :)
- The whole subtheme thing started because the online LEGO Shop originally used to group stuff into subthemes, eg check the sidebar here. The whole Toy Story both being a supertheme for all Toy Story movies and a Toy Story 1 subtheme is probably a mistake on our part. Although for some reason I seem to remember that Cars and Toy Story used to have bars that went "Cars" for Cars 1 sets and "Cars > Cars 2" for Cars 2 sets. I could be wrong though. I'm pretty certain PoTC used to have a bar that went "Pirates of the Caribbean" for POTC 1-3 sets and "Pirates of the Caribbean > Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" for the 4th though. Spider-Man on the other hand did seem to group them separately- Spider-Man was one theme, Spider-Man 2 was another. So that was definitely our mistake. Now I think of it, POTC/Toy Story/Cars may have been listed the same was as Spider-Man was and we handled it badly NovaHawk 01:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
  - Yeah, I would have dropped that bit about sequel nesting had I thought ahead more. :P It's not a big deal. We don't have to do anything about it right now. And @Toylines, I guess that I saw the term used in a different capacity yesterday and sort of ran with it.... Anyway, thanks for the correction about where subthemes come from. I guess I just didn't expect that they would be so thoroughly added retroactively. Part of my text wall was that we don't seem to identify subthemes by the same conventions anymore, and I would sort of like to get back to that, which is why I was distinguishing toylines (and hopefully not making it more confusing by making them something new :P). I hope that makes a reread easier. :P Berrybrick (talk) 03:08, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I suppose the level of organisation we can achieve depends on whether you want to keep the theme names "official". Looking at the Toy Story sets, all the boxes say Disney on them, so this is how I would organise it:

Disney > Toy Story (File:7590 alt1.png)
Disney > Toy Story 3 (File:7789 Lotso's Dump Truck box.png)

Nowhere on the Toy Story 3 box does it imply that Toy Story 3 is a subtheme of Toy Story (although after reading the text above maybe the LEGO website did).

I may be taking this a bit too seriously, but being a wiki admin for four years now makes me want to categorise everything correctly. So this is my suggestion for better organising of sets:-

What it is - Set, videogame, boardgame, t-shirt, pen etc etc.
- System of construction (for the items above that include bricks) - System, TECHNIC, DUPLO, QUATRO, Modulex, Jumbo Bricks, Galidor, Scala - one only per set (these are all different methods of construction, correct me if I'm wrong but AFAIK in every set the majority of bricks belong to one of these)
Theme - so Disney > Toy Story - only one final theme per set (maybe not assigning a theme to every set might help organisation for generic DUPLO and TECHNIC sets)
Toyline (or whatever you want to call it) - Dacta, BrickHeadz, Collectable Minifigures, Ideas, Dimensions etc - Not related to theme, a set can belong to one of these as well as a theme.

I know this will require a lot of work to re-categorise sets, but if we want the system to make more sense then that might be inevitable. Please consider this, I will now find some examples for this. Lachlan (talk) 10:43, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

So, here we are. I'm going to use subheadings.

Themes

What is a theme? Is it a general term for a grouping of thematically related sets? Sometimes we use it as such, but I think the best thing to go by is either a) what LEGO say or b) how LEGO brand it. So Airport is a no, for example. That was just made because its nice for a database to group Airplane related sets together.
"So a set can still only be part of one theme," Disagree. Some sets get redefined themes midway through their existence, especially those in the "box of bricks" sort of category, when LEGO decides to rebrand it every couple of years, but still have the old sets to sell :P

Subthemes

I agree that we only use subtheme because Brickset/Bricklink/etc do. Because, lets be honest, when I made pages at least, I just copied the information from them...
The issue with subthemes comes from this unofficialness. I was going to bring this months ago, but we use them as umbrella terms, like Berry says. The only reason we call those 80s Castle lines subthemes is because they are Castle based. So why not Nexo Knights? I don't know.
"we don't record an Outlands subtheme for Legends of Chima or a Rebooted one for Ninjago". This is literally only because we make the pages before we know they are "subthemes". If we were making them 10 years done the line we probably would :P
"DUPLO and City list all their subthemes on their websites, otherwise things are in fact pretty vague for unlicensed themes." DUPLO has themes, not subthemes (although its confusing as they also have apparently themeless sets...). For what its worth, City website doesn't actually call them subthemes either.
"Although for some reason I seem to remember that Cars and Toy Story used to have bars that went "Cars" for Cars 1 sets and "Cars > Cars 2" for Cars 2 sets." It would say Cars for Cars 1 because Cars 1 was called Cars? :P Same with Toy Story
- Well yeah, I guess now you say it Cars > Cars would look a bit weird. Guess we should have picked up on that and had "Toy Story" and "Toy Story (subtheme)" NovaHawk 00:55, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Toylines

These are a historical relic here.
They were nominally to divide system based sets and duplo based sets. Even in the 90s boxes said System on them and stuff. But that doesn't mean its a linear thing. Lines are blurred. Is Architecture a system theme because its using system bricks? Or is it not because they are clearly different styles of set from the sets that used to say "System" on them.
Berry raises an interesting point about "action figures" and "toys to life" and stuff. I'm not sure my thoughts on it.
"Okay I am not exactly sure what you are proposing. We could first do what Bricklink does and sort everything under whether its a set, book, video game etc. Having that additional category may be helpful. Then each theme could include sets, video games, clothing etc." This to an extent happens already. Its just instead of "sets" we are using System/DUPLO/TECHNIC/whatever for sets.
Education sets confuse things even more...

Lachlan's idea at the bottom

The perils of writing this as I read them is that I didn't see this until I wrote all that stuff above.
Anyway, I'm interested in it. May I suggest we look at some sets (at random) to work out how they'd get classified, to ensure that this idea will work fully?

CJC95 (talk) 14:41, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Another problem I have just noticed is that the early sets from the Bob the Builder theme are "Explore" sets, and the later ones are not, meaning the Bob the Builder theme actually has sets in two different themes, if that makes sense.Lachlan (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

According to the page, Explore was formed by merging DUPLO and Baby, and lasted two years, before it went back to being DUPLO. CJC95 (talk) 16:33, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Hm, how should I format this?

@Lachlan (post 2): This is very close to what I was thinking. Except "What it is" is what I was calling a Toyline. So my hierarchy would go like this:

Toyline or What it is - "Gear" or "Miscellaneous" being used to lump together things like pens and T-shirts, though if we wanted those to be their own thing, I guess now would be the time to do it.

System of Construction - Thanks for that term; the parts it is made from, being System, TECHNIC, DUPLO, CCBS, or whatever. I should note that I don't envision this appearing on the banner because DUPLO, TECHNIC, and a lot of minor Systems are also what we could call themes or toylines.

Theme
Subtheme

If there is a supertheme applicable (like Castle to Black Falcons) that would be the theme, but I suppose the confusing thing is that you can get "more sub" and have a subtheme of a subtheme because subthemes and superthemes are themes; they are just sub- or super-. With that in mind, I don't think that there will be a problem of things being broken down too far. As an example, "DUPLO > Super Heroes > Marvel > Spider-Man" (again an example; I'm not suggesting that we divvy up the Super Heroes line like that right now).

I'm not too worried about working out the subtheme nesting right now. Grouping all of the Disney sets (except Marvel and Star Wars, probably) under a Disney supertheme wouldn't be a bad idea though.

@CJC (14:41): I think we are on the same page, but you explain what is wrong with the system much more clearly than I did. Thanks.

@Lachlan (16:08): There are a couple of ways I can see to solve that using Toyline > Theme > Subtheme

We could consider Explore and Baby themes which are part of the DUPLO toyline and Bob the Builder an Explore subtheme. When the set is part of Explore, it would go "DUPLO > Explore > Bob the Builder". When it isn't, it would go "DUPLO > Bob the Builder".
Alternatively, we could consider Explore and Baby toylines. Then, "Explore > Bob the Builder" or "DUPLO > Bob the Builder" depending on the set.

I thought CJC was saying that DUPLO was Baby and Explore. If Explore is Baby and DUPLO, then it should be a toyline.

That was what I was trying to get across with the piece about Ghostbusters where right now we consider the Ideas and Dimensions sets as separate from the ones in the main theme. The idea is that different sets which are considered part of the same theme don't all need to be broken down in the same boxes to be together; they just have to fit one group, the theme, and the rest can be Venn diagrams.

Berrybrick (talk) 19:25, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

It's worth noting that (at least recently), those issues haven't been a problem on say, DC Super Heroes - The system, duplo and juniors pages all have that as a theme atm. CJC95 (talk) 20:16, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I kind of have an issue with the Juniors pages because they consider DC a subtheme of Juniors when it isn't - at least not in the same way Black Falcons is a Castle subtheme - but the DUPLO and System ones are very similar to what I'm pushing for. Berrybrick (talk) 23:21, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Just a quick reply to Berrybrick as its getting late here, If people agree then I am happy to work on creating a Disney "supertheme". That eliminates the Toy Story and Toy Story 3 problem. Although I didn't realise that Marvel was owned by Disney, and Star Wars has sub-themes itself so it could get messy. But I think it would be better personally. 21:40, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Would Star Wars come under Disney? If so, what about sets from before the Disney purchase? CJC95 (talk) 21:46, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

There is already Disney. You could just turn that page into the supertheme. The history section nearly covers everything already, and I'd be happy to expand that a bit if you don't want to. I don't think that Star Wars and Marvel should be a part of it though because it's more about franchise than ownership, I think. The Disney stuff sort of crosses over with itself with things like the CMFs and Princesses (especially with Ariel in both) whilst Marvel and Star Wars stay self contained. Also, would want to include Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia, and Lone Ranger or keep it to animated stuff? And what about Disney Princesses and all of those DUPLO shows? I'd say include, though maybe group the DUPLO shows into a Disney Junior subtheme? I don't know. Berrybrick (talk) 23:21, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Besides the TECHNIC/DUPLO thing we have now, what Brickset groups as miscelanious here is mostly what I am talking about as a toyline, plus some other things like Juniors and probably most of the "vintage themes", "pre-school", and "technical"...I guess that most of the confusing stuff like Architecture, Creator, and Bulk Bricks could just stay under System. There really isn't a problem with that now. \_O_/ Berrybrick (talk) 04:27, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
I think whoever had the Toyline > System of Construction > Theme > Subtheme is on the right track (I can't tell who's writing what in some areas). Plus it seems to be pretty much what we have but with an extra parameter so would be easier to change over. Not sure how I feel about Disney being a supertheme, I think it should be just for Disney stuff that doesn't already have a theme and stick Disney in the "related themes" field. Plus I like having Cars and Cars 2- that's how they were assigned officially and I think shorter lists make it easier to read. I think there was a suggestion above to scrap all subthemes- strongly against this. Firstly many of these were officially assigned, why not use them? But then there's ease of navigation to consider- say you were a casual reader looking for a Star Wars set, you didn't know what the set was called but you knew what movie it was from. Would you rather go through a list of 500+ sets in Category:Star Wars sets, but a list of 10-80 by looking at the subtheme category? @Berrybrick- I know what you mean about Juniors and Friends/DC/Marvel being treated as subthemes, that's an awkward one (I don't have any ideas on what to do) NovaHawk 00:55, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I've decided that Cars/Cars 2 doesn't really bother me. Sometimes you organize documents on a computer like that, so it's not a big deal. It might actually be confusing to do it any other way (aside from making Disney a supertheme, but I'm with you that I personally prefer that being separate, but that's only personally). I don't think there was a suggestion to scrap subthemes (aside from maybe things like Airport; CJC would have to comment on that), though I can see where you'd get that, it was more that our of idea of a subtheme has changed and become a bit inconsistent over the years and that we aren't using them to their full advantage because of it. But if I did happen to miss a petition to scrap them--again, I agree with you. I go through that process all the time. :P As for Juniors, my solution is to expand our definition of toyline to include things like Juniors because it's a line of toys that includes Friends and SH themed sets. :P So the banner would go Juniors (System) -> Friends, or something like that. CJC seemed a bit iffy on that idea. I'd like your input too. Berrybrick (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with subthemes (just not ones that don't exist :P). I don't think I'm iffy on that, but I really can't remember. CJC95 (talk) 09:46, 23 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm fine with that- Juniors is technically System, but it's being marketed as a bridge between Duplo and System so I guess it's fine to have it in the system of construction section NovaHawk 10:51, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Template:Theme gallery

I think we can all agree the majority of us are pretty lazy and if we're not going to edit why not make the site do it? :P In all seriousness even when we had editors other than Nova, those minifigure galleries were pains in the buts. So I have questions for you tech people. You see on http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Friends#Mini-dolls_2 there's a .further results button at the top of the theme gallery, how to we display part 2? Also is it possible to split it up into animals, non physical by the other templates we have? And lastly is it possible to make a set version or is that too harsh on the server? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

(I usually just remove galleries like that. They add video-game characters that shouldn't supposed to be there and the spacing is weird.) Berrybrick (talk) 15:01, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

That's why I asked could we do one without the video game characters. :P What's wrong with the spacing and could we fix it? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

That template is designed to grab the first 100 results only. I could bump that limit up to 500 if needed. However, a gallery of minifigures is now against the theme MoS anyway and shouldn't be there in the first place. NovaHawk 23:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Automate redirect creation again

Back in the day, NXT's bot used to create redirects automatically. I am preposing that we do that again with someone like MeikoBot or CJCbot.

Support

LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:16, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. LCF ^(talk!) 21:19, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

Comments

I think NXT's bot did it en masse once. I don't remember it being automatic. Anyway, a couple of questions:

Would CJC/Meiko/anyone be able to do it at all?
There were a couple (hundred?) extra redirects created last time; it would be nice if we could somehow keep it from happening to those particular pages again.

Berrybrick (talk) 21:20, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

My bot wouldn't. CJC95 (talk) 22:13, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

It's one thing to actually want to do this, it's another to actually get a bot for it to happen. It's like voting that we should no longer have any bugs NovaHawk 00:26, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- I second that vote. No more bugs I say. CJC95 (talk) 11:20, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
I'll take a stroll through memory lane and hopefully get better at writing Python, and maybe one day I can write a bot that's not only functional but can actually do stuff like this. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 00:30, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
- Actually, it seems Pywikibot now supports Python 3, so I might be able to look at it too. I gave up before with it as it only used Python 2 and I couldn't be bothered to deal with the syntax differences :P CJC95 (talk) 11:20, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
Are we talking about redirects that redirect lowercase stuff? Like 10234 sydney opera house? I could probably have my bot do it (aka I could recreate a bot to do it since I don't have any of the old bot files anymore) but as mentioned above there might be false positives that would need to be cleaned up afterward. --ToaMeiko (talk) 02:46, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
- Er, I don't think so. With TitleKey installed this shouldn't be necessary anymore. I think the proposal here meant creating redirects from just a product ID to the actual article, like the edit you just made - so creating automatic redirects at 10234 which redirect to 10234 Sydney Opera House. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 04:31, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
  - I just rebuilt the TitleKey index (I think I probably forgot to do this when we moved over so it only had new pages in it) which should make search a lot quicker and far more useful now. Or at least, the search suggestions. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 08:24, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Archival stuff

So, I know the old AFD stuff and the old Forum stuff was all deleted for being unused, but I'm wondering whether we want to keep them or not. I ask because we keep some stuff for archival purposes, but not this, and we should either have a precedent or not. CJC95 (talk) 20:00, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I was actually looking for some old forum stuff the other day, but since they were deleted I couldn't find any. I think that archiving old forums would be useful, as well as AFD. LCF ^(talk!) 00:22, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Archives sound good, and consistency is always good as well. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:21, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Yeah. It would be nice if we could restore the old forums which were delete too. Ed was looking for them today, and I had gone through them to find something just a couple of days before they were deleted. Berrybrick (talk) 02:27, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

Done, I think. Let me know if missing anything. CJC95 (talk) 22:32, 23 August 2016 (UTC)

22 push up challenge

Hey I was wondering if you all could take a picture of a minifigure doing a push up? I will then put them in a collage and it will be our entry for the 22 push up challenge. Raises awareness for charity (https://www.22kill.com/22-honor-pushups/) and the site! Please add your name to the list with what theme you can do, ideally one that hasn't been picked.

Ideally something like this, a figure doing push ups with other figures of the same theme cheering them on with a set(s) of that theme in the back. If the last two aren't applicable just do a figure in a push up position Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

(Any chance someone with a babyfig could do one? :D) NovaHawk 06:30, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Can't tell whether or not serious :P (at this size they'd basically be planking haha) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 07:01, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Whoa, I'll do that :D Berrybrick (talk) 15:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Baby figs, Mini dolls and BIONICLE figures! <3 Anyone know anyone with Fabuland, DUPLO, Scala or Clickits or Gladior figures? :O Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Jack mentioned having Fabuland and Scala. Albus has Gorm. My brother used to have some of those Knights Kingdom figures, too, but I don't want to go through the hassle of rebuilding them. :P Berrybrick (talk) 17:15, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Aye, I have like two Fabuland figures, two Scala figures and maybe even some DUPLO ones (but frankly I've no idea where they are, so, uh, yeah). --Jack Phoenix (talk) 17:33, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I have four Fabuland figures if you want a Fabuland photo. I know I've done the Doctor Who one, but... Clone gunner commander jedi _talk 22:56, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Will you accept minifigures with parts from OTHER minifigures? --cpplayer90210

18:32, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Sure I guess, but do you not have one set with more than one figure? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Yes, I do. They're two Mine craft sets. --cpplayer90210

21:05, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Here is mine. http://meta.brickimedia.org/wiki/File:KnightsKingdomIIPushups.JPG --Albus Potter (talk)

Done :P Brikkyy Talk 23:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

I hadn't realsied someone already did Minecraft, but regardless I've added mine. Lachlan (talk) 13:43, 27 August 2016 (UTC)

Follow up on user profile

So, to follow up on our custom profiles, do we want to let admins (or functionaries) have access to Special:EditProfile? Currently its only available to sysadmins, but it may be useful to remove stuff like http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/User:Chickenx4 - while that was added before the customs were set, it now seems a bit inappropriate to have "favourite theme: sex and nudity" :P CJC95 (talk) 20:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Support

Yep, I don't see our admins causing any harm. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
LegoFan4000 ^talk 20:40, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
This went unnoticed for a while, so I think it would be a good idea for this to be manageable. LCF ^(talk!) 21:04, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
--Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
I think it makes a bit more sense as a right for functionary, but I won't be too bothered if it is given to admins. Berrybrick (talk) 22:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Sysop access seems OK. Ajraddatz (talk) 23:11, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

Support for functionary, oppose for admin. The question you have to ask it- can you trust every admin with knowing everyone's email address- not just every current admin, but every admin we've ever had (because we're bound to have future admins). I know I can't. NovaHawk 09:16, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
At the time this was made, LegoFan4000 was still an admin and I had trust issues with him, which is why I didn't vote. Like what NovaHawk said, I can't guarantee either that I can trust every future admin to have access to a community member's email address. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:48, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Comments

Admins would be good. I don't see any reason to limit it to functionaries. LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Wasn't the catch that this would reveal email addresses to admins? Which, I guess isn't that big of a deal, but is there anything we should know before voting? Berrybrick (talk) 21:02, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
One thing I do want to note is that perhaps the functionaries shouldn't have access to everything, only the things that are public (email shows up in there). No idea how that would work, but it seems like a much more safe way to go about it rather than unrestricted access. LCF ^(talk!) 21:04, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Yes, Special:EditProfile allows privileged users to see the target user's email address. I don't think it's a huge issue, as I for one trust our admins to follow the relevant policies and to use common sense in handling non-public information. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
So, I was rather vague and suggested either admin or functionary, before the vote started. So, um..are people supporting for admin or just functionary? :P CJC95 (talk) 23:05, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
- I'm not even sure why the functionary group exists, so I support giving it to regular admins. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 23:41, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
  - I suppose it's a way to emulate the bureaucrat user right from Wikia. LCF ^(talk!) 20:11, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
  - It is checkuser plus some other rights that I can't remember. I think stuff like suppressing stuff from admins. Basically, the rarely used stuff. CJC95 (talk) 22:14, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
- I'm voting for just functionary. LCF ^(talk!) 20:11, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Post blogs as news?

Meiko said on chat: "User blog:Berrybrick/What's wrong with Orient Expedition? + User blog:Soupperson1/A mini-doll rant by a mini-doll fan is the kind of stuff we should promote more often to bring people to the site. People like opinion articles whether they agree with them or not because it incites them to either agree with you or disagree with you (e.g. activity!)" I agree with him and at least Berry's is well written. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Meiko is right. A couple of things:

We did discuss the possibility of publishing editorials through Brickipedia News before. Either of those blogs could probably work there. I'd still choose to publish mine separately though, because some of them have a moralizing element (it might be small in these ones, but there are a couple of ideas I have which might be a bit larger) and I don't think that a LEGO news source ought to be doing that. Disclaimers are a thing for a reason though.
In the main page section above, I almost suggested a list of recent blogs to replace the recent forums. That wouldn't be enough promotion, but here I am suggesting it now
Creating a user blog isn't as intuitive here as it was at wikia. That would have to change if we want to promote people writing.
I'll probably comment again later when I have more speed, but some things to consider: Should this be a part of the "news"? If so who can publish "news" blogs? If not, what outlets? What gets Tweeted? What gets featured? Who decides these things? Berrybrick (talk) 19:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

The person tweeting decides what get tweeted. CJC95 (talk) 19:43, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Per ^ I imagine all your blogs are good enough to be featured. Mine not so much, though I don't think that mini doll one is half bad. :P Nova has also had a few good ones, even promoting the missing Star Wars stuff one could be worthwhile. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Opinion/discussions blogs like Soup and Berry's should be featured on the main page. I'm a bit skeptical about whether or not they actually qualify as news, but they at least deserve to be featured. Like Berry said, writing blogs on here is not as intuitive as it was on Wikia, so perhaps this will "inspire" more people to write blogs. LCF ^(talk!) 20:09, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
Useless vote since I know it's going to be one vs everyone, which is fine and I can see why people are for it :P But oppose. I'm a weird person, but I only like to see news when I go to a section that says news. This isn't news. I can't remember the last time I've seen actual news on Eurobricks' news feed, Brickset's not as bad but I'd say only about 30% is actual news. (@Soup: yeah don't feature that SW one, despite starting it about 6 years ago, I'll most likely just get accused of copying Brickset's series that says getting a 6th Y-wing remake will help fill in missing gaps in Episode IV) NovaHawk 22:01, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I actually agree. I don't know what the alternative looks like though. Berrybrick (talk) 22:15, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't see why it needs to be in news to be promoted. Give it a section on the mainpage (Sam was talking about that on Chat) and tweet it and stuff, but I'd rather have a separate newsfeed to this feed. Not that I care enough to passionately argue - as long as I don't need to do anything, do what you like... CJC95 (talk) 22:16, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

@CJC and Berrybrick- I could set something up very similar to Brickipedia News:Home that gets selected blogs and sticks them on a main page feed as well. SMW may have to be enabled for the user blog space (not sure if it's enabled) but the rest would be very easy. NovaHawk 08:54, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Restore the "Collectibles and Merchandise" portal

Portal:Collectibles and Merchandise was deleted per Forum:Portals about two years ago, however, this particular portal is linked to by over 500 articles. It's evident that this particular portal had its use, but since it was deleted per referendum I'm going to have to make a vote on it. Any objections? LCF ^(talk!) 00:28, 30 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, can't decide yet! I'm thinking about it. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 00:55, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
We don't have a portal namespace (and I don't see a need for one personally) but we at least need an article for this. Either that, or redirect it to a collectibles and merchandise category. NovaHawk 12:58, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Redirects cause lag

I've noticed for a while that moving a page seems to take forever and doesn't let any other pages in other tabs load, but I've since realised that it seems to be actually due to creating or modifying a redirect page- if you supress the redirect when moving the page it's instant. Anyone have any ideas why this has been happening in the past year or so and/or how to fix it? NovaHawk 02:33, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
- I had an idea but it doesn't seem to be right after some thinking; you should probably wait and see what Jack Phoenix says, she probably has a better explanation. —Unsigned comment by SamanthaNguyen (talk • contribs). 02:42, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
- (@Jack Phoenix:: please respond whenever you can, thanks :) ) Bump SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:52, 10 October 2016 (UTC)
  - This behavior is indeed easily reproducible (or was the last time I looked into this, anyway) but I have no idea how to solve it, sorry. I guess the usual rant — "we need a more powerful server" — applies here, too. (I mean, sure, you can run MediaWiki even on 13 years old hardware, just don't expect it to be fast. There's quite a difference between "it runs" and "it runs smoothly".) --Jack Phoenix (talk) 09:07, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Mould variations / using Bricklink part numbers

Yes I know it's blurry, but it was taken using a phone.

I know this is probably very boring for most people but LEGO have changed the moulds used for bricks over time (see picture). On bricklink, the brick on the left is "3002old" and the brick on the right is 3002. Should there be seperate pages for these slightly different pieces, and if so should I use the bricklink naming scheme? I'm leaning towards having only one page with separate sections for mould variations.

What do you think?Lachlan (talk) 08:10, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

It'd be nice if they had different Element IDs so we could easily separate them as normal... I'd vote to keep them on the same page at least NovaHawk 08:43, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, keeping them on the same page makes sense IMO. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 12:30, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Per Nova & Jack CJC95 (talk) 14:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
^ because when someone looks "Part:3002" up, they'll see two Part:3002s, which'll cause #confusion. -- cpplayer90210 23:03, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
Same page, having a different page doesn't seem to make sense. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:06, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
I'd keep them on the same article. LCF ^(talk!) 23:54, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

"Twin" minifigures

(continued from Talk:Kabuki Twin). This relates to pages that are about identical minifigures but are two separate entities (ie, twins). I think we only have three cases- Fred and George Weasley, the Skull Twins and the Kabuki Twins. NovaHawk 01:30, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Per my comment on the talk page, the other twins are actually distinguishable because they have different personalities, backgrounds, and actual different first names. So:
- If the twins can be distinguished, have different pages.
- If the twins can't be distinguished, have one page. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 02:23, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Here's my opinion, it may not make sense- I don't know why but I'm finding this strangely hard to explain :D
- I don't see why we need to make a special exception here- all our other pages done in a singular form, just because they're twins, doesn't mean they should be treated as one entity as they're still two individuals.
- There's the simple logistics of it- if the article is about two minifigures, how many should you say appear in the set? Kabuki Twins (two) could mean two groups of two. Then on the minifigure page for accessories- if you say the minifigure has two claws, does that mean two total (ie, one each) or two each?
- In the case of the Skull Twins and Kabuki Twins who don't have a backgrounds or personalities distinctly different from each other, it makes no sense to have pages like "Kabuki Twin 1" and "Kabuki Twin 2" since they'd be completely identical. Fred and George are different since they do, and also have separate video game characters as well.
  - So why not use the plural on the "xxx Twins"? We're talking about minifigures here, not the characters, and apart from the background, the page should be "out of universe". Since neither of these are Siamese twins, we're getting two separate identical copies of a single minifigure, just like we get two identical unnamed Stormtrooper minifigures or whatever so I don't see why this case needs to be treated differently.

Again, sorry if that makes absolutely no sense :P Basically, per Sam. NovaHawk 02:30, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Eh....

Logistical stuff:

Concern about Appearance section is granted, though I don't think it is an insolvable problem. Perhaps indicating "both" instead of "two" would do it.
I don't think that the Accessories concern is very legitimate though. If Batman comes with one batarang in a set but two in another, what do we do? I don't think we have to spell it out so much. Just put down "Claws." Descriptors like quantity and especially color seem sort of arbitrary to me; there should be pictures (or at least links to relevant pages) which show exactly what they come with.

"Two separate identical copies of a single minifigure": I don't know if I can reply to this in any way which is meaningful because my brain goes to Platonism.... A lot of the Ninjago ghosts are the same minifigure but have different names across the sets, yet we still consider them separate even if they are functionally indistinguishable. Same thing with Fred and George.

Definitely agreed about the backgrounds being what would keep functionally identical twins on the same page; I'd agree to "Kabuki Twin" long before splitting them.

What I think I disagree about is the philosophy behind the out of universe policy, at least here. With backgrounds it makes a lot of sense to me, but I tend to think of minifigures (at least ones with story roles) as being avatars or icons of the characters they represent, retaining a portion of that identity, and then communicating it through their design.

This is why, I think, we allow the Ninjago Ghosts to have their own pages and why we do not have an article for every separate variant of every minifigure (aside from practicality, of course).
And then, and this is what I was trying to articulate on the talk page earlier, being a Twin is part of that integral identity for the Kabuki Twins. That is an essential part of who they are. Like, I probably would say that they are "one [inseparable] entity that is two individuals." Fred and George don't have that, and neither do the Stormtroopers. The Skull Twins may be a little different, for reasons noted on the article, so I could agree with the Stormtrooper analogy there, but it could probably go both ways. The Kabuki Twins are one indivisible character, but part of that character is being twofold; one personality, two bodies, perhaps.

Sorry if this makes no sense. It's possible that I have been reading too much about theology and obscure religious rites. <_> Berrybrick (talk) 20:33, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with Samantha. Berry, I like where you're going. I agree with you to an extent, but like Nova said, the article is intended to be primarily about the minifigure, not the character. One thing I want to point out, somewhat unrelated - why are Fred and George Weasley relevant here? The Weasley twins are two people that are not functionally identical - they're two distinguishable (perhaps not visibly) people, unlike the Skull Twins and Kabuki Twins. LCF ^(talk!) 00:04, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
- Looks like everyone who wanted to vote had voted - are we good to go with my proposal since it looks like everyone else agreed? SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:45, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Clarify on titling articles with the same name but of a different concept in the MoS

Brickipedia's Manual of Style (BP:MOS) currently doesn't have any clarification on titling a group of articles that have the same name, but are a still different concept (e.g Ferrari the theme, or Ferrari the company). What naming standard should we set for existing and future articles to follow? There's:

Naming the most common/major thing just the name with no parentheses: Ferrari, which would be a redirect from Ferrari (theme)
Every article created after that has a parentheses: Ferrari (company) for the company article
The disambiguation page for readers to use have (disambiguation) in the title: e.g Ferrari (disambiguation)

Or...

Every article has parentheses, and it's status of how common/major it doesn't matter: Ferrari (theme), Ferrari (company)
The disambiguation page doesn't have parentheses: Ferrari

SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:16, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to go with option 2 (what is currently mos-compliant from my understanding - correct me if i'm wrong here. regardless of whether or not, i'm sticking with option 2). LCF ^(talk!) 22:21, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
I'll go with option 1- it's pretty much what we do and have done in the past, and it makes more sense to me. Keep in mind if you do go with option 2, there will be a lot of articles pointlessly linking to disambiguation pages because of what we're already established in those individual cases- think about all the pages linking to articles like Batman, Spider-Man, Harry Potter and Marvel to name a few off the top of my head- there are around 2000 pages linking to those four articles alone (I don't know if that's directly, but there are definitely a good portion of them that do). @Nigma: Not sure what you mean about "currently mos-compliant" since it's not even in the MoS. These are the I guess the "current trends" of what does seem to happen with names:
- Physical minifigures generally take precedence over obscure video game characters, eg, (Chen vs Chen (Indiana Jones))
- Themes generally take precedence over minifigures, eg, Indiana Jones goes to the theme, not the minifigure.
  - The exception to this seems to be for minifigures which also appear in more modern themes, such as Batman and Spider-Man since they're minifigures in the current Super Heroes themes (as opposed to the links going to old discontinued themes)
- There are also cases where the page link goes to a disambig page, for example X-wing and Woman, because there isn't any page going to be clearly more used.

Anyway, basically why I think option 1 is a better idea (even if we did have a bot that could clean up the thousands of links if we went with the second option) is that as far as I can see, there are two things that need to be considered here:

Ease of a reader finding a page through searching - if someone enters "Marvel" into a search box, 99.5% of the time they're going to want to find out about the Marvel Super Heroes theme, not that Marvel is a comic book company. Why make them click an extra link for no reason? Even for cases like Batman, most people are going to be looking for the guy currently being sold in sets and the star of an upcoming movie, not for some discontinued theme from 10 years ago (some people searching may not have even been born when the theme came out). It's not like they can't find the other page(s) if they needed to, there should always be one of those ""Marvel redirects here. For other uses of the term, see Marvel (disambiguation)/For the company, see Marvel (company)" type messages at the top of the page.
Ease of editors being able to link to a page - While I think the above is much more important, even something as simple as [[Batman]] vs [[Batman (minifigure)|Batman]] seems like an unnecessary amount of extra typing (especially if you're making multiple pages in a row).

I'm not actually sure if I'm even awake while I'm typing this, so I'm going to stop now in case it makes no sense :P NovaHawk 04:31, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I'll go with NovaHawk on this. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:43, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Per Nova. Berrybrick (talk) 02:02, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Per Nova, make it the case where the obvious option is the main page. CJC95 (talk) 16:27, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Main Page- let's actually do something about it?

There was talk of redoing the main page and some attempts made, but nothing actually ended up happening. Anyone want to take a shot at a redesign? I'm happy to help out (but not designing it myself). Also, content-wise: with all the *OTMs apart from BOTM being retired, there seems to be literally no point in having a Reviews or Fan space main page- could we delete them and have Featured x on the main main page too? I'd be ok with having the MOC gallery of poll on the main page if people want them there too. I also think we should remove the "recent forums" section- noone uses the forums NovaHawk 23:06, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm not exactly comfortable designing it either (but maybe our resident designer is ;-) but I agree that we should do something about it. Being Captain Obvious, I should point out that Lachlan has been the current BOTM since August (according to the BOTM page)...if we're unable to choose a new user every month, maybe we should consider retiring BOTM, too?

Agreed on the reviews/fan space main page thing — one main page to rule them all, and that page is Main Page, which is fine and dandy.

Regarding "recent forums", this is where I'd beg to disagree. Sure, your point is entirely valid, but the way I see it, the problem isn't merely "nobody uses [the forums]" but rather, "why does nobody use them?". We had that discussion in July, and although people did make some good points in the discussion, just like with the whole "let's redesign the Main Page" discussion, nothing ever became of it. Wikis are a social effort — and unlike most wikis, Brickipedia has plenty of social tools installed, which I'd claim further supports the claim that we also care about the community aspect, not just the content (although it goes without saying that content is very important, too!). I think we really should investigate our whole forum situation and decide what to do with the various forums before removing forum stuff from the main page or whatnot. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 19:58, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Fair enough about the forums- I would much rather see them being used than us giving up on them, I just thought that sticking them on the main page didn't get activity then nothing will. If there's any possible way to get more activity going though, I'm all for it. There have been over 5000 views on the Star Wars 2016 thread- but that could just be spambots trying to post then finding out they can't because it's restricted to registered users NovaHawk 23:01, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

I like how the main page looks now. I wonder if there is more we could add on how to join up / post here? Ajraddatz (talk) 09:48, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Increasing the default image size of Template:ThemeSet from 50px to 200px (or something else > 50px)

Template:ThemeSet is used internally by Template:ThemeTable, the main template used to generate theme tables like this one on the Western page. By default it generates images which are 50px in size, or simply put, too small to be useful to anyone. This results in the user basically having to go to the set's page to see a more useful image, which in turn leads to user frustration (as well as at least slightly increased load on the server due to "unnecessary" page loads).

I'd guess full HD (1920x1080px) is a rather common display resolution these days, in both computers — whether desktop or laptop — and in smartphones; exceptions exist, though, especially in the lower-end segment of smartphones. Whatever the case, I hope we all can agree on at least one thing: 50px sucks and we need to change it to something larger. I propose 200px, chosen by the scientifically valid* "it popped into my mind just like that" method, but I'm open to other suggestions if you have 'em.

A live demo of this proposal can be found at this subpage of mine, which is a copy of the set listing from the Western page.

* not actually scientifically valid

--Jack Phoenix (talk) 02:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Really? I'm using something a bit smaller (1366 x 768), although it'd be nice to have a 1920 x 1080 resolution. :P I like it, but maybe 150? SamanthaNguyen (talk) 02:58, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Even though the template breaks the page on most themes, for places it does work I agree the 50px we have is pretty useless and definitely support making it larger. I was going to say that there's a lot of scrolling there, but that's possibly just because the image for 5392 is so tall (maybe we could put a max height limit in there too? I forget how to do that but I know it's a thing) NovaHawk 12:10, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
- We can do that with css (along with using the css parser function, {{#css:...}} :D) What we do is grab the base selector of Template:ThemeTable (which is .themetable), and then grab all the descendant elements thats an image (img), and use the max-height property. It'd look something like this:

{{#css:
.themetable img {
   max-height: 150px;
}
}}

(150px is an example value). Once the value for that is figured out, you just put that into the template. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 14:02, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Or just putting in 150x200px instead of 200px works too :D (looked it up, didn't have time before) NovaHawk 06:41, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Cool. CJC95 (talk) 16:29, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
I think Jack's version looks better LCF ^(talk!) 16:32, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Definitely in favor of increasing the size, but Jack's demo is comedically large on mobile. :P BrikkyyTalk 11:30, 17 October 2016 (UTC) while we're at it, I have a lot of issues with the mobile site, mainly relating to the menu bars. Is that just me?
- Looks like Apple's iOS, right? Which version? (Not like it'll help, I don't have an iOS device of any kind nor access to one, but maybe some of our smarter people can figure out the situation...) What do you mean by your statement about menu issues? Menus not expanding at all when you tap on them? That's an intermittent JavaScript issue, which sometimes happens (regardless of your platform); refreshing the page fixes it pretty much always.
  I somewhat agree with your conclusion about the images on mobile devices, although I'd be inclined to blame the skin rather than the images — not being able to collapse/expand the sidebar on demand^[sic] on mobile devices is problem, as there's less screen real estate than on a laptop (think about it, a 5-6" mobile device vs. 10-15" laptop screen vs. 27" desktop screen...). Given that the toggle to collapse/expand the sidebar already exists (for really small screens, ie. my mobile device in portrait mode, as opposed to in landscape mode), we could simply show it for all screen resolutions instead, which would then allow users to regain some precious screen space when viewing larger (=wider) pages, such as set listings. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 19:58, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
  - A related ticket (except for content sections @T143511), although I support the idea of collapsable sidebars for all resolutions, would require some rethinking some of the header interface though, because we'll need a button somewhere on there for opening and closing the sidebar menu. As for images on mobile devices (even though I feel like all the data in ThemeTables could be displayed in a better way visually (that's for another day)) I think that we could use a media screen query(@media screen) to define image sizes based on screen sizes. (See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queries/Using_media_queries for more information.) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 21:54, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
    - Yeah, it's iOS 8.3 (jailbroken, but I had these issues before jailbreaking). The "menu issue" I was referring to was more relating to the three bars on the side of the screen that are used to expand the sidebar. I can't think of a way to describe it right now, so just look at these screenshots :P Brikkyy Talk 06:25, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Juniors "subthemes"

How exactly should Juniors "subthemes" be handled? At the moment we just seem to be classifying sets by what theme they're based on and making that a pseudo-subtheme of Juniors on an article-by-article basis. LCF ^(talk!) 20:45, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Not sure, but I believe this goes in the 2nd section called "Reevaulating subtheme" (or something like that at least.) I'll keep thinking and then respond once I have my thoughts on it. :) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 21:56, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, we sort of discussed it up there. I think the idea was to consider Juniors a toyline, and then things like Friends and Marvel would actually be the theme. Don't think I got much feedback on it other than "I guess that would be alright," though, and it was obviously never implemented (nor did I finish figuring out how all of that would be implemented). Berrybrick (talk) 01:42, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Guidelines on the background of comic book characters

I've noticed, especially in the Batman article, that his "background" section is not only a mess, but a pool of backgrounds on several different "Batmen" (Earth-One, New Earth, Prime Earth). It also makes references to Scooby-Doo Meets Batman. There is no real guideline specifying what exactly should be done regarding the character, given the fact that there are so many different (major: Earth-One, New Earth, Prime Earth) variations, covered or not by LEGO media. Since 76052 Batman Classic TV Series - Batcave includes the Silver Age, Earth-One (I believe) Batman, we should have a short description for that incarnation of Batman, one for the New Earth Batman, since the original Batman theme was released during its run and LEGO Batman: The Videogame's Batcomputer facts are based around the New Earth canon, and Prime Earth due to New 52 elements being used in the DC Comics Super Heroes line and games. It would be confusing, but it is much more factual than implying that the New Earth Batman and Prime Earth Ace the Bathound teamed up with Earth-One Mystery, Inc. to foil the Joker's plans. Or perhaps we should only have the LEGO media-only backgrounds for such characters. But regardless, a guideline will be necessary. LCF ^(talk!) 01:46, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Certainly needs some clarification; I'll contribute more here later. Scooby-Doo probably shouldn't be there. We haven't mentioned the team-up with Captain America, either, though I think that actually was some sort of New Earth canon. Berrybrick (talk) 04:12, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

The Captain America team-up was part of the Earth-3839 canon, so that would not be relevant unless we wanted to add a bullet or two under the "Notes" section mentioning the Captain America and Mystery Inc. team-ups. LCF ^(talk!) 19:07, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

I thought it existed some way in canon, even if its existence was erased at the end of the crossover because the Trinity series followed some plot points from one of the Marvel crossovers. But either way, those things probably shouldn't be there. Maybe the Scooby team-up would be relevant in the context of Dimensions, but otherwise I don't know. Anyway, here are some thoughts:

BP:NOT
I think it makes sense, in a lot of cases (i.e. Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Ninjago) for characters to have some account of their character development. Comic characters are a little different though, because most of the really notable ones have very little permanent canon beyond their origin.
Even doing it in the context of "LEGO" probably won't work: We've got different Batmans between the sets, video games, DVD specials, magazines, and the cinematic movies.

If we had to pick one, I'd go with video games, at least primarily. They generally give most attention to the universe, I think.
Speaking of which, if the article is tremendously messy, we could split the page into "Batman" and "Batman (The LEGO Movie)." That might mean doing the same for Robin, Batgirl, Joker, Alfred, and everyone else too, but some sort of notability policy might help take care of that.

My thought is that, for sanity's sake, a background should explain the character's place in the larger world as far as it is stable. For Batman, that would be his origin, what he's about, relations to characters like the Robins/Batgirl/Alfred, the Justice League, Gotham City, and his Rogues Gallery. How detailed do you get though?

The issue is that this probably wouldn't make for a very good read. There might be some articles or websites we could find to get an idea of how to write like that, though.
And then, what do we do with the video game and movie versions? They probably shouldn't be the plot summaries that they are now; save those for the game/movie articles themselves.

So that's what I've got for now. Might have more thoughts later. Berrybrick (talk) 21:27, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

By "in the context of LEGO", I didn't mean the sets, as those do not have a real, larger story. I was thinking perhaps backgrounds in relation to the LEGO Batman series of games and related media, The LEGO Movie and derived media, The LEGO Batman Movie, the LEGO Justice League films and related media, and LEGO Dimensions. Each one of those five topics have their own version(s) of Batman that would need separate sections. Those would certainly be relevant to Brickipedia, as would be articles on the Dark Knight film series (all three films have at least one set), and the 1966 TV series, which is also directly identified as such (unlike most other sets, it's just "Batman" from Earth-God-Knows-What). I don't think that separating the articles per-theme would be such a great idea, though. Sure, our article on Batman has a section that is essentially the synopsis of all of the hero missions of LBTVG, but I don't think that would do very well as the plot for LBTVG either. It's already too long and detailed, and would need to be expanded further and also need to accommodate the other half of the game, 15 villain missions. That's a personal opinion, however; we don't have a guideline as to how long backgrounds must be and I don't think that's the main focus of this discussion anyway. LCF ^(talk!) 21:52, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

We have an objectivity issue on some articles, perhaps in part because of the way I used to write them. Articles don't need to be drowned in detail; that just makes things that are actually informative harder to pick out and causes the page to decay. We have this problem with descriptions too. The background I suggested, though it still has issues I would like to pound out, would tell people who he is without concerning itself with differences that are really quite arbitrary in all of those cases except for maybe The Dark Knight trilogy because of the way that series' world works (but I'd just ignore it; mention what it's based on in the description, and put an external link to where they can read about that and every other version, because BP:NOT). Batman is a very fluid character; trying to pin down all of these heads (by "earths") is not necessary. The only version I think needs to be covered in any considerable detail as "separate" from our generibat is the TLM/TLBM version(s), which is why I suggested splitting the article into "Batman" and "Batman (The LEGO Movie)"--and only those two(--though I'm not really for the idea either). As for transposing the stories to the the video game (or whatever) pages; of course it wouldn't be a copy and paste and shouldn't be that detailed, but anything on the Batman article needn't walk through every (or any?) scene. Also, though it is really just creating another head, the sets do have conflict and therefore elements of a story (albeit basic); yes, it would be chaff to write lines about that one time he saved an alien princess from an amusement park of doom, so let's not do it, but maybe it would be useful if the background could somehow explain how he knows this Joker guy whose face keeps showing up everywhere? Or how he knows these Robin and Flash people who keep showing up? Berrybrick (talk) 03:59, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Scooby meets Batman was referenced in a LEGO club comic Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

That should have probably been cited, not that we have very clear guidelines on what gets cited. Berrybrick (talk) 13:57, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

I think there are people much better qualified to deal with this than me which is why I'm pretty much staying out of it. I guess my opinion is pretty much what Berrybrick said above:

"My thought is that, for sanity's sake, a background should explain the character's place in the larger world as far as it is stable. For Batman, that would be his origin, what he's about, relations to characters like the Robins/Batgirl/Alfred, the Justice League, Gotham City, and his Rogues Gallery."

Yes, there are multiple universes, but couldn't you just have one summary for all the bits they have in common? ie, "When he was a kid, Bruce Wayne's parents were murdered because they watched way too much opera. Bruce went away and trained for a while and came back as Batman. He hired Robin as his sidekick and they like to fight bad people with weird faces like the Joker." Plus maybe a small paragraph with a subheading each for the Nolanverse and DCEU universes if deemed necessary? The summary from the video games is good, but the level-by-level account belongs in video game level articles and a smaller more abridged summary would be much better here (although the LB3 summary could do with a slight expansion :P). No real opinion on splitting TLBM Batman, I'm ok either way. Anyway, that's pretty much my opinion but as I said, in this case I'm just going to defer to people who know their comic book stuff here :) NovaHawk 11:33, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

That all sounds fine to me, Nova. A general background that goes as far into detail as possible without crossing the story-specific boundaries. I wouldn't oppose that. But I feel like splitting the articles would only draw in more questions as to how it should be done for everyone, such as "why are we splitting it for this theme and leaving all the others in one article?" I agree that the article is too long, but I don't think that splitting it is the answer. LCF ^(talk!) 23:21, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

What themes are we talking about? Because I'm not sure I see the issue. Sure, some decisions might be a little arbitrary, but that is hardly the worst thing. Berrybrick (talk) 13:57, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Requirements for admin

The minimum edit requirement for requests for admin rights currently reads "500 content namespace edits". This is a bit messed up. At the time the rule came in, there was only one "content namespace"- the mainspace (this is why the templates in the requests say "x edits, y mainspace"- to check that y>500 for admin requests). However, we now have several namespaces defined as content namespaces in the code- Brickipedia News, Fan, Inventory, Review and Part (at the time the rule was made, "Part" was a part of the mainspace, and the Fan namespace didn't exist- Brickimedia Customs did). So, basically just wondering if we want to re-examine which namespaces should count toward admin requests since so much has changed since the original rule was made. NovaHawk 11:16, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Personally, I'd be happy to just make it 500 for any namespace excluding edits in the User/User talk/User blog namespaces. It seems a bit silly to me that edits in useful places like the template namespace don't count. NovaHawk 11:16, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Sure. Per Nova. Berrybrick (talk) 13:47, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
Agreed. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 16:45, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

I've changed my mind (again!). As much as I don't agree with Reviews or Fan as being considered "content" (I still don't), however, I'd venture to say that it would be necessary for administrators to have experience with those two namespaces. However, editing Brickipedia News pages is reserved only for news reporters, administrators, and others with administrative rights, so I don't think that that should have anything to do with gaining administrative rights. ~~It would also be nice, like Nova said, for admins-to-be to have knowledge of templates and how they work (and thus, edits in the template namespace).~~ I think it's necessary to keep the edit requirements. I don't think that we could UCS on whose request is to be considered valid or not. The entire purpose of the edit requirement is to prevent that sort of business from having to happen, but primarily, to ensure that the user in question is well-versed in managing the primary function of this wiki: mainspace articles. I would not mind that we broaden the usage of the term "mainspace" in this context to encompass the mainspace, inventory, and part namespaces. That is the only real "content" on this site (sorry Reviews and Fan - you're not real content). I get it, administrators do a lot more than just edit our articles (which is definitely not what administrative rights are required for). Like others have said, yes, it would be nice to have administrators-to-be having much more knowledge about other parts of the wiki, such as participating in discussions and working with templates, etc. etc. But how would we factor any of that into the URR process? The edit requirement is something simple, something minimal that displays that the user is dedicated enough to qualify for administrator. LCF ^(talk!) 18:52, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
- Everyone has brought up some very fine points here. On the other hand, I'm against hard-coded edit count requirements, but the fact is that Brickipedia is a wiki and we need good edits for the site to thrive. One of the strengths of any admin team, but especially ours, is diversity. We have different people with different strengths and interests, and we are all united by our dedication to making Brickipedia the LEGO wiki. You know how templates work? And you've even created a few new ones on your own? Splendid! You've verified pre-existing inventories and written new ones? Wonderful! Knowledge of both is definitely a plus for any admin candidate, but the lack of edits in a namespace shouldn't necessarily be something to be held against a candidate.
  For example, on ShoutWiki we have an extension which enables "sharing" the help pages from ShoutWiki Hub to any other English-language ShoutWiki wiki which does not yet have local help pages (such as this wiki, which was just created yesterday). Although this analogy doesn't apply quite as well to well-estabilished, big wikis like Brickipedia, you can see why most ShoutWiki sites probably have a rather small amount of help pages, if any.
  I agree with Nova in that edits in the User* namespaces shouldn't count, but as for the rest, why not? Article edits are important, but so is discussing with other editors about potential naming conflicts and such, so most edits to various talkspaces are probably meaningful, too. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 20:56, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
I mean, in many ways Template/File etc are also "content" namespaces. So I'd just remove the content namespace part of it to just say "500 edits". Then, if they do in the unlikely chance have 493 of those in User talk/User blog, then we can just not support it... CJC95 (talk) 10:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Relevancy of Brickipedia:Notability

Earlier today I came across the Iron Man 3 Poster article. I was puzzled by the existence of the article, and scoured the policy pages over page notability, but found nothing. After performing a page title search, I came across Brickipedia:Notability, which was not linked to anywhere (in fact, Template:Notable is the only page on this entire site that links to that policy). It seems that CJC95 wrote it over five years ago, where it has not been edited since. I'm facing a dilemma here as I'm unsure as to whether the policy is even relevant anymore. Whatever policy changes this site has undergone (at least, to my knowledge), have excluded the policy. LCF ^(talk!) 04:00, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't know about irrelevant, but I'm ok for re-examining (not saying there's anything wrong with it now though) NovaHawk 10:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Hmm well, the policy seems to make sense? We can do an extensive review or rewrite if we need to though. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 23:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
I mean, in many ways, the content of the policy literally just says "things that are notable". CJC95 (talk) 10:50, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Poster articles

Earlier today I came across the Iron Man 3 Poster article. I was puzzled by the existence of the article, which I eventually placed a delete template on, tagging it as LCP-2 and not notable. I didn't publish it, however, and made an AFD in which I jokingly mentioned how we didn't have an Avengers poster (surprise, we did!). At that point, I also saw the Poster article and Category:Poster. Some of the poster articles have set numbers. Others don't. The "Poster" article itself could be a LCP-2 article, but as I discovered that we have several poster-related articles that were questionable territory under the notability policy, whose existence is also questionable. I suppose the only way to figure out what to do with those articles is to create a discussion. LCF ^(talk!) 04:00, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't say I've ever seen this before, it looks like something out of the back of an instruction book. For promotional posters with an item number I'd say to definitely keep, not so sure about the others. NovaHawk
(Didn't know we had a notibility policy. Pretty sure I've implied we don't have one before. Oops.) I don't think it isn't necessarily notable. We have one for Man of Steel too, I think. I don't know if they have actually been released though. Berrybrick (talk) 15:14, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

LEGO.com Description e's and t's

In Refreshed, not sure if anyone else is experiencing this, but in the LEGO.com description template, some letters' lines are missing. For example, on 41237 Batgirl Secret Bunker, the t's in the "This is a description..." and the e's everywhere else are missing their horizontal lines for me. Now, the issue does not appear if using Vector (perhaps other skins too, I did not make a comprehensive test), or if zooming in past (what is for me) the default zoom on a desktop. So is it only for me that this occurs on default zoom? Or might this be the case for a large number of readers? 108.181.134.225 17:38, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't have this issue. ~~Anon is a liar.~~ Berrybrick (talk) 19:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

I can't reproduce this. Screenshot? SamanthaNguyen (talk) 20:38, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

imgur.com/a/sLw0a - One can still make out what's being said, of course, but it's a less fluid read for those odd moments when you confuse, say, c and e. 108.181.134.225 21:27, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to move domain to brickipedia.com as well as buy it

This would cost around $400, but could considerably help us make us more discoverable. Most people don't know the difference between Brickimedia and Brickipedia (or that there even is one), and Brickipedia is a term much wider-known in the LEGO community. This would take a considerable bite out of the current money we have (see Brickipedia:Financial reports ), but I believe it could help the site attract more people and gain a larger community. Thoughts, comments?

SamanthaNguyen (talk) 05:49, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Support

Support as nominator. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 05:49, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support would be undeniably a good move to make. $400 price is speculation because the domain has to be bid on so there's no telling what we might have to pay for the owner to sell it to us, but considering 2016 proved to be Brickimedia's first profitable year, whatever the cost of the domain might be, it'll be paid off eventually. The potential benefits of moving the wiki to www.brickipedia.com are worth every penny of the cost. --ToaMeiko (talk) 05:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support - good luck to us getting it for 400$ haha but I can ask. That would be a good way to spend the surplus I think. Ajraddatz (talk) 05:53, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
- Oops, didn't know the domain had to be bid. :P Yeah $400 is a bit cheap when you look at https://flippa.com/5447307-brickipedia-com (linked from visiting brickipedia.com) - it's listed with the minimal offer as $1200 SamanthaNguyen (talk) 06:04, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
  - I've offered them 50$ before but didn't get a response. Maybe they'll be more open to a bit more than that? They've held it for 8 years now, nobody has bought it and nobody ever will. Ajraddatz (talk) 20:12, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support (with attempt at $400). Could be a huge boost to traffic. It may get rejected, but as far as I know the domain's never been used, can't hurt to try NovaHawk 06:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support per above. Hopefully we'll be able to get the domain. Would changing the domain include changing hosts as well? BrikkyyTalk 11:20, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
- Nope, domains and hosts are different things NovaHawk 11:29, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support because brickipedia.com is more fitting. --CPPLAYER90210 _{T ~ C} 21:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support-because I always seem to type "Brickipedia.com" by mistake. Albus Potter (talk) 21:59, 9 January 2017 (UTC)
Support Berrybrick (talk) 02:49, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Support Per Nova, CP and Albus Omega X (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Per everyone, sorry for being so late. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Oppose

Comments/Neutral

Carrying over from here, would our LUG support be affected? Kim seems to have said that it relates to domain and identity, so it may be an issue. Even if we lose LUG, I still think moving to brickipedia.com is the right choice, but it would be nice to have both. BrikkyyTalk 03:53, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
- We would still own brickipedia.com if we end getting to buy it, so it shouldn't affect us. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 04:02, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
- It would not have an effect on that and the old domain would still redirect to the new one (much like http://gbc.brickimedia.org redirects to http://greatballcontraption.com). --ToaMeiko (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

@Ajraddatz:: The consensus seems to be that people wanted this. As the person in charge of the surplus, did you ever make an offer? --Lewis Cawte (talk) 07:11, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- Yep. Still no response. Ajraddatz (talk) 22:37, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
- I just offered them $400 as well. --ToaMeiko (talk) 18:16, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
  - Jk it didn't go through I guess, it won't let me offer less than $1200. It will let me buy it instantly without having to negotiate with the seller for $1995 though. --ToaMeiko (talk) 18:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Install OATHAuth

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Passed 2600:1000:B024:5E75:8106:33B8:6304:E233 00:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I would like to suggest installing OATHAuth. It provides 2fa which is a good way to prevent accounts from being compromised. 2600:1000:B03D:379B:8C91:2CE1:F295:DE65 23:12, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Support

Seems like a good idea (assuming it's not going to be a major drain on server resources, etc) NovaHawk 01:45, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
I support the idea behind this. CC'ing @Jack Phoenix: for comments SamanthaNguyen (talk) 05:06, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
To be totally honest, it's easier to just have a secure password. But I don't mind enabling it as an option for people. Ajraddatz (talk) 06:57, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
If only this were true... most people don't even know what a secure password is. And you should definitely have secure passwords... --Lewis Cawte (talk) 10:09, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Sure, I'm just not 100% sure whether it'll work with outdated and unsupported version of MediaWiki we're using. (Yes, I know what the doc page says, but docs suck.) --Jack Phoenix (talk) 00:57, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
There is:, github:wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-OATHAuth/tree/REL1_26. 2600:1000:B024:5E75:8106:33B8:6304:E233 00:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
As nom. 2600:1000:B024:5E75:8106:33B8:6304:E233 00:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Oppose

Comments

Just wondering- would this make two-factor authentication compulsory, or is it just there as an option for each user? NovaHawk 01:30, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
It appears as an option for each user. 2600:1000:B02F:CCF8:193F:E0F9:1D3D:E130 01:40, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Server move/upgrade

I know this is still going on, but there doesn't seem to be any consensus coming out of it. I'm not closing it off or anything, but in the event that it doesn't pass, I think we need to look at a server upgrade or switch hosts ASAP so I'm just getting the discussion started now. Our site has been virtually unreadable for weeks- it got a bit better for a while, but it's back to being terrible. We have about 200 articles that need shop descriptions/updated images, and there's nothing I can do about it- I've been trying to add a single shop description since January 16 and keep getting the same error nomatter what article I try to edit. If we could get pricing info for an upgrade (I'm guessing only @Ajraddatz: could find this out?), or how much it would cost to host on a more reliable server, that'd be a great start. NovaHawk 00:09, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
- For pricing info with our current host, you can view this page. We're currently on 3072MB CVZ plan, and I can't remember if we pay annually or if we started doing monthly instead, Ajraddatz would have to answer that. --ToaMeiko (talk) 03:09, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
  - Thanks for the info :) Would there be any way to tell if upgrading to the 4096 plan would solve our problems? NovaHawk 05:40, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
  - Also, would temporarily disabling SMW fix these memory errors? I know it would break a lot of things, but it'd be better than having our mainspace literally uneditable, searches broken unless you refresh five times and a lot of articles unreadable wouldn't it? NovaHawk 05:46, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
    - It certainly should/would. But I wouldn't call it a solution. --ToaMeiko (talk) 05:05, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
      - Neither would I, I was just thinking of it being a temporary fix until we move to ShoutWiki/do something with the servers NovaHawk 05:40, 22 January 2017 (UTC)
I could bump us up to the 4096 option, for $12 more a month. We're on monthly billing so changes aren't an issue. I'm just curious whether that will solve the problem? Ajraddatz (talk) 08:05, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
- I mean, I don't know why I'm bothering, as nobody seems to pay attention to a word I say, but I've been saying this in the Brickimedia related discussions for years. Run away from RamNode. Here's an option for moving - pick up a dedicated server from one of the OVH brands, namely Kimsufi or SoYouStart. This way you get a server which is billed monthly, that we can actually use the resources on. And don't stick freaking Debian on it! --Lewis Cawte (talk) 11:10, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
  - I'm definitely listening and think that it'd be likely that a server change would be the best way to go. However I don't know much at all about hosting so I'm not really qualified to comment. But as far as I can tell Kumsufi is offering better specs at a cheaper rate aren't they? I've never heard of them, but as long as you or someone on the technical team know they're reliable I don't see a problem with switching. Except, are they based in Canada or France (the flags are there, not sure why). Would that affect speeds with US users (who I'm guessing are our main audience)? NovaHawk 11:49, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
    - Maybe by like (a fraction of) a ms or two. Kimsufi is part of OVH who are a big name in the dedicated server and hosting world. They've got a world wide fiber network. ShoutWiki has a server with Kimsufi (for staff tools, repository hosting, support, etc. All our non-user facing stuff.) and the Uncyclopedia move was or still is to Kimsufi. We're thinking of a move to SoYouStart in the next month or so for a whole host of reasons. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 12:10, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
    - Their plans look good. But do we have the human capital to move everything over? I don't need to tell you that I'm not a technical type; I want to make sure that this can actually happen, with people able to make the transition. Ajraddatz (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2017 (UTC)
      - Let's put it this way, I'll need more than one hand to count the number of times I've had to manage server moves for production MediaWiki sites. It's time-consuming and not that fun, but it's doable. However, these days I wouldn't shed a tear if Brickimedia in its current form simply fell apart, and I'm not sure I'm interested in volunteering my time to do the move myself. That said, if a move happened, I'd prefer it done well. What I don't think people really took away from the move proposal is that Brickipedia would be gaining a team that is experienced in running MediaWiki productions sites and that while you sort of already have two (well, okay, one - Jack) of our team member's attention, but Brickimedia isn't our focus. We just keep the Brickimedia ship afloat, we sail ShoutWiki. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 23:39, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Interwiki table

This is not a disscoussion but rather a friendly reminder to remove the interwiki prefixes for customs and ideas as the wikis were both removed. 2600:1000:B024:5E75:8106:33B8:6304:E233 00:55, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@NovaHawk:. :) 2600:1000:B027:73A8:1CC1:B09D:B23B:5E28 23:16, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Automatic appearances list

Something that's been bothering me since... well pretty much since the wiki was set up is that we list minifigure appearances on a set page, then have a list of all the sets a minifigure's appeared in on the minifigure page. Having to do this twice can lead to a lot of mistakes, or only one of these lists being updated (usually the set) while the other (usually the list of set appearances on a minifigure page) can get left behind. Now that the server's moved and we can use SMW again, I think I might have something that could work. Testing 1 and Testing 2 show two pages (think of them as set pages with a MinifigureGallery). Testing 3 shows what appearances sections would like like for the three minifigures (I didn't want to make three pages for this, but think of it like three separate pages). Note that Jay's appearances are grouped by variant, whereas Kai's are just all in the one group- you can choose how that's set up. Different subheadings for video games/movies/whatever will also be set up (but my brain's just crashed which is why I'm typing this up instead of working on that).

Anyway, basically just wondering if we even want to do this before going ahead with any further coding. If we did this, what it would mean is that for minifigureGalleries, you'd be filling out a template instead of a link for each character, eg instead of

|img2=TLNM-lloyd.jpg
|txt2=[[Lloyd Garmadon|Lloyd]] (''The LEGO Ninjago Movie'')

it would look like

|img2=TLNM-lloyd.jpg
|txt2={{a|Lloyd Garmadon|Lloyd||The LEGO Ninjago Movie|Zukin}} (''The LEGO Ninjago Movie'')

Currently the template's set up like this:

{{a
|Direct link to minifigure page
|what name to display in the minifigureGallery
|Special section (like video games, etc).
|Variant
|Text to put after on appearances list
}}

This may look long and complicated. However most of the time, it'll be looking like

|img2=TLNM-lloyd.jpg
|txt2={{a|Lloyd Garmadon}}

Or at worst, to link to "Lloyd Garmadon" but display "Lloyd"

|img2=TLNM-lloyd.jpg
|txt2={{a|Lloyd Garmadon|Lloyd}}

Which is pretty much what we do now.

To generate the list of appearances on the minifigure page, it'd be something like

{{Appearances|Kai}}

Or if grouped by variant (and will be similar for video game, etc)

{{Appearances|Jay Walker|Jungle robes}}
{{Appearances|Jay Walker|The LEGO Ninjago Movie}}

Any questions/opinions/improvements/whatever, let me know. Like I said, my brain died so it's likely that none of that above even makes sense :P NovaHawk 04:45, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

I think the only issue I might have is where variants get a bit complex, like a minifigure being basically the same variant, but then having some special neck accessory or a few different faces which get cycled through, like Superman. I recently reformatted the appearances in a way which I think makes it a bit more readable by categorizing based on variants (as previously discussed) and then using the parenthetical to denote variants of those "super" variants. So, basically, if it gets complex like that, will the appearances section still be readable? Or be made to be that readable? Or is that something I shouldn't be doing at all (because that's fine too :P ). It does sound like the efficiency would weigh out the cons, but I wouldn't want longer appearance sections to become unreadable (like a lot of them already are). Berrybrick (talk) 14:54, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, somehow I missed the third test entirely. x( Yeah, this looks good, as long as people make sure to use consistent variant names. Probably it couldn't be used to keep Variant Galleries up to date too though, since different set pages sometimes use different images? Berrybrick (talk) 15:00, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

One mroe thing I guess since I don't see it when editing either of the first two tests and I just want to make sure: there are a lot of fields that can be filled out, and there order is a little arbitrary. Will they appear in editing mode like an infobox where what each line does is stated? For example:

{{a
|Page=
|Name to display here=
|Special section (like video games, etc)=
|Variant=
|Text to put after on appearances list=
}}

There might be more concise ways to name those things, but I guess I'm worried that the template will complicate editing a little bit for new users, or old users like me who can't keep things straight and would have to constantly look back at the template page. :P Berrybrick (talk) 15:19, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh yeah, sorry I should have mentioned that. Even I was getting confused about what goes where as I was coding it :P I'll definitely be coding in some named parameters as well, basically like alternatives so you could do either {{a|Lloyd Garmadon|Lloyd}} or {{a|Page=Lloyd Garmadon|Display=Lloyd}}. Nope, unforunatelly it can't do galleries, I've got another idea for that but don't think it'll ever actually happen (won't put it down here because it'd be another long paragraph and probably not even feasible). I think you answered your own question with Superman, but yeah that's definitely possible (Testing 3 will now show that) NovaHawk 22:36, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Part Images or Part images

So as some may have spotted, I've been slightly abusing my staff powers by making local changes which would normally be done by an admin by restoring various templates. I guess I could justify that by saying it's part of the merging images back into Brickipedia that I started when I was a Sysadmin at Brickimedia, but still. It occurred to me this morning I should probably avoid the urge to use all the powers available to me until I'm an elected admin like ... well, pretty much every other member of the day to day ShoutWiki team. Although I should state, I was here first!

Anyway, rambling done with, I restored two wanted categories today - Category:Part Images and Category:Part images ... two seperate categories with the same name. Now, I do intend to fix this with my bot, which I guess I can use under my previous approval for doing minor little things that I got back in the Wikia days, but which do variation of the category do we go with?

--Lewis Cawte (talk) 08:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Uh oh, I sense another election campaign coming XD But how dare you fix up redlinks, such abuse! (thanks for taking care of all that). Never noticed that problem before, the category should be at Category:Part images (it's inline with all the categories like the ones in Category:Images by theme (not to mention the capitalization doesn't make any real grammatical sense). I tried doing it through Cat-A-Lot, but it didn't turn out, might try again later NovaHawk 09:05, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

And here I was thinking I'd wiped all copies of that photo from existence. --Lewis Cawte (talk)

09:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

So going through the wanted category list, there's a lot of these. I'll follow the same rules if both types of capitalised category exist and clean them up. A fair few of the part images seem to be duplicated. --Lewis Cawte (talk)

09:56, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Unanimous consensus on Option 1: Conservative removal - licensing and technical solution can be talked about in another section

The Image Problem

So this a multipart post... that I'm posting jointly as a member of ShoutWiki staff and a personal capacity as a Brickipedian. (I can use that title right? I pre-date a lot of you...) I apologise in advance, I've tried to keep this brain dump as organised and easy to read as possible, but with the amount of stuff involved it isn't that easy.

Images/files on this site are a mess. Big time. There are over 100,000 images uploaded to this wiki. That's over 2.5 images per citizen of Monaco. l

Over 25% of the files currently uploaded to Brickipedia (and the former Brickimedia sites, as we merged all the images from meta in prior to moving to ShoutWiki) are without valid licensing information. Another quarter (roughly) are copyrighted, that's fine, these have a valid copyright tag on them. But that would suggest there are a further 50,000 (approx) files without a valid (no) licensing tag on them. This is the problem. Correctly attributing images is a legal requirement.

Obviously, not all of the 50,000 files are unlicensed. A lot are uploaded by users for their customs, stories, etc. However, the {{Self}} template doesn't satisfy any sort of requirement. It simply puts that the uploader created the image. It doesn't specify any sort of permissions for reuse, modification etc. We ought to be suggesting users share them as either personal copyright or under some free license like one of the many Creative Commons options.

Depricating {{Self}}

As explained above, this isn't a licensing template. Additionally, many of these files have lost their original attribution when they were migrated and now it would appear that NXTBot is a photographer of varying skills. Stuff happens, it's complicated to fix now. I might get so bored one day that I find a solution but for the time being, it'll have to do.

My proposal is that we modify {{Self}} to add some sort of notice like I've recently added to No license, change the upload options to include more CC licenses, and add a new, horrible tracking category to the template so things can slowly be migrated to a proper licensing template.

This should probably be integrated with the return of some form of minified "Information" / Fair use rationale type template.

Reducing the insane maintenance burden

So as I said, 2.5 images per citizen of Monaco. Well, Special:UnusedFiles has quite a few entries (while not all of them are valid - there are images used for the CSS for example), as well as historical logos, a vast majority of the report is right. Not only does this mean there's random junk, it makes it harder to maintain Brickipedia's huge catalogue of images. I'm proposing a few options below.

Option 1: Conservative removal

Remove images that are unused where the only indication is that NXTBot uploaded the particular unused image if it is using Template:Self or has no license attached.

For

I think I have some ideas for how this could work while avoiding false positives. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 17:24, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Sure. CJC (talk) 22:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
No need to keep around a lot of unused images without a proper license, I think. --Jack Phoenix _(Contact) 07:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
NovaHawk 12:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I did this a lot back in my spare time. --ToaMeiko (talk) 17:35, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
(sheepishly voting with the crowd makes me cool) Berrybrick (talk) 20:22, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
Seems like the most logical approach. SKP4472 (Admin) 23:50, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
I must agree that we do not need a lot of the images that are currently unused in our database, so removal is necessary. Latenightguy (talk) 00:39, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
Per Berry. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Against

Option 2: Extensive cleanup

Anything unused for fan space content and duplicates copies of images to be removed (best copy preserved).

For

Against

Option 3: Do nothing

Yep, a lot of work, lots of RC spam.

For

Against

Review uploads more carefully

While not selecting an image makes uploading quicker, you add to the big problems already addressed. We as a community need to be more vigilant on what we upload and who uploads it. If you're uploading an image without the appropriate licensing information, somebody should probably tell you... and/or the upload page gets upset at you.

Comments

One thing I thought I should maybe clear up, is that I'm not advocating that all of this be done by one person, or overnight. If we agree to sort anything on here, it's going to be a process that is likely to be on-going for a long time (potentially forever). There are probably ways that we/I can use my bot to help but a lot of this will have to be done by hand. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 17:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Finally someone is using the metric of "citizens of Monaco" to measure things. CJC (talk) 22:35, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Sorry I can't be on for too long at the moment, will read more thoroughly when I can. But I think by far our biggest problem is our upload form. You find an image on a random shop site- what license do you choose? I've been here over 10 years and I still don't have any idea, so I choose "I don't know". How's any casual user meant to know what to choose? Licensing needs to be set up in such a way that you don't need a law degree to understand what option to select. That's why I added a few new templates recently like {{C-eBay}}, {{C-Amazon}}, {{C-Instagram}}, etc, I don't know if they'll really help much though. Categorisation for themes needs to be a lot simpler too (like a set of buttons and you can hit "Star Wars" and the image will be categorised into "Star Wars sets". I was planning to work on this but then the June wave came and it got put down the bottom of the list of things to do. Anyway, that's probably getting a bit off track :) NovaHawk 12:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
- Does (for example) Amazon actually own the copyright to an image put on Amazon? CJC (talk) 18:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
  - No clue, I just copied/pasted it from all of our other templates (I don't think Brickset and other sites do either, but that's the wording). NovaHawk 22:53, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
    - For almost all LEGO products listed on Amazon, Amazon doesn't own the copyright for the images found on those listings. They either have an explicit license to use them or they come under some form of license that permits the usage of those images for the context of depicting a product which is being sold. Though I'm not sure if it would count as fair-use. If the image can be found on LEGO.com then it would tend to suggest that LEGO is the copyright holder of the image especially when it comes to box-art.
      Also, on another note, I'd be happy to help out with clearing through the images one-by-one and deleting those which aren't required or can't find a correct source/applicable license. SKP4472 (Admin) 23:56, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
    - (Typed this up before SKP posted; haven't read what he said) The way I understand it, Brickset does when they took the pictures of the set/minifigure/whatever (remember when they used to take pictures of every minifigure in a theme and had those slightly annoying watermarks in the corner because people kept reposting them?), but if it's one of the official images that they use in a set's entry, that's copyrighted to LEGO because it was produced by/for them. On eBay and Instagram, people would take their own photos so those are good templates to have, but I imagine for Amazon the right template is actually C-LEGO in probably every instance (at least for sets; books and video games might be different, but I'm just running on now). The reading I've done was very little a very long time ago, so these are mostly just assumptions I've made about how it works, so I could be wrong entirely. Berrybrick (talk) 00:02, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
      - This seems right. According to https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=508088, copyright is owned by either Amazon or the content supplier (referring to the product producer, which would be The LEGO Group in this context).
        All content included in or made available through any Amazon Service, such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, audio clips, digital downloads, data compilations, and software is the property of Amazon or its content suppliers and protected by United States and international copyright laws. The compilation of all content included in or made available through any Amazon Service is the exclusive property of Amazon and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.
        
        So, I think we can safely migrate all cases of {{C-Amazon}} to {{C-LEGO}}. Based on Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:C-Amazon, there's actually only 3 files that use this template, so if we want to do that it'd be pretty fast. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
        
        Ok, well you know that, and I know that now (until I forget). But what's a casual user who finds an image on Amazon going to do when there's no Amazon option? Choose "I don't know the license", which is what we're trying to reduce isn't it? NovaHawk 05:57, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
        
        Sorry, I should've been more clearer. I think we can still delete it, but that doesn't mean we have to completely remove references to "Amazon" on MediaWiki:Licenses. We can rephrase it to something like this: C-LEGO|This file that was found on Amazon is copyrighted and owned by LEGO. or C-LEGO|I found this file on Amazon.( <-- Or just simply something like this so it's not as confusing?) I know the wording suggestions here aren't the best, but I think we can improve from there and come up with something we're happy with. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 15:26, 12 July 2017 (UTC)
        
        Oh yeah, I was thinking of something like that at one point in the last week or so (didn't see your reply). I'm happy to do that NovaHawk 02:17, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
(unindenting): @NovaHawk: Sure, go ahead :) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:23, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
For {{C-eBay}}: I think this is probably accurate. See http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html:
When providing content using the Services (directly or indirectly), you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined above) you have in that content in connection with our provision, expansion, and promotion of the Services, in any media known now or developed in the future.

I bolded some words that I thought were especially important here. Since it says "any media", I suppose this would include photos since it's a type of a media. So any photos uploaded to eBay () would give eBay ownership of the photos uploaded by the person. (at least if I think I'm interpreting this correctly; preferably I'd like it if someone could double-check over my words to see whether or not the interpretation is accurate) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:50, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Okay, so I'm going to post this before I disappear off to work. I seem to be very short of time recently, (I was moving inbetween work last week, away all weekend, etc) but I have caught most of these comments.
I understand some of the causes of this problem can be solved by technical solutions. I know the upload form is a big part of this, and it's something I've been thinking about for a while. I think there is a bit of movement upstream to solve many of the issues we are discussing, are going to run into and a host of other bits and pieces. I think that the team upstream are working on some prerequisites to a solution. That being said, I've not thoroughly reviewed any of that, or any of the potential solutions or stopgaps.
Licensing of images doesn't require a Law degree - I don't have one, as is the case for many Wikimedians who upload to Commons. It's actually fairly simple, and one day (soon, I hope!), I'll get round to improving the templates and explaining things more correctly.
I'll readdress much of this post-1.29 deployment (scheduled for tonight/tomorrow morning) and we'll see what we can do. In the mean time, how long do we have to wait until we can call the vote on cleaning up some of the mess a consensus? --Lewis Cawte (talk) 08:18, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
- It doesn't look like anyone else is interested in voting, so I call this a consensus. We can talk about licensing in a new section, as well as technical solutions. (I'll make a new section) SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:23, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Pages that are too long

Can we all agree that certain Super Heroes, Friends, Ninjago and Star Wars pages are too long? There's too much information on them and it's overwhelming to both edit and read. Also if your only looking for a single version of a character, good luck. :P Even crawling through the minifigure gallery on Batman is a pain.
I propose we do the "tab" like feature at the top and condense the articles into different sections. I know this was proposed in the past, but people (including me) opposed it, but now the pages have got even longer and I feel we really need to do something. :P Basically everything would revolve around a few variants and just those variants, read my SH example and it makes more sense. Additionally we could split the pages instead and have the main page be a gallery type disambig page and link to the different versions.

Super Heroes

This is the only one I have an idea for at the moment, as I feel it's the most obvious. For example Batman would have comics, 1966, DCEU, TLM, TLBM, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Beware The Batman and possibly video games? The majority of these have different variations and big backgrounds, certainly enough to warrant subpages. I think this format could work for smaller characters like Batgirl and Wonder Woman too, as they would look cleaner and more accessaible than they currently do. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Thank you for starting this thread. :) It should have some really important discussion. If all of this reply shouldn't all be under the SH heading, feel free to move it or to make me move it. TL;DR is now in the comments section below. Anyway, I think that the only splits really necessary regular/TLM & TLBM, and even then just for Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and Joker, plus maybe Harley and Alfred. You'd think backgrounds would be a mess, but if you actually look at what's at Batman#Background, it's a pretty manageable size. The real issues are descriptions and variant galleries. A couple of points:

See this section of this forum. I think it's relevant.

But TL;DR: The point I'd take from it is that the background is a backdrop to explain the character's context; not a multi-volume opus about their life and times.

While Batman's background is short enough now, its missing; two video games, 1966, TDK, DCEU and TLBM. I'd still agree splitting the pages would look a lot cleaner. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Yes on the video games and TLBM, because those are especially relavent to us as a LEGO wiki, but those would also be under subheadings. Sort of like how Deadpool#Background gets more specific once you reach the subheading that has to explain a particular occurance. No on the 1966, TDK, and DCEU. I don't think those are necessary. There is very little going on with 1966 Batman canon wise and the DCEU background isn't tremendously different from canon. What are we going to say that's different? He actually doesn't know who Shazam is yet in this universe? TDK admittedly might be different enough because its universe plays by different rules than the rest, but I think that's a really rare counterexample it would be harder to pull for a lot of characters. I don't think it calls for special treatment because of that. If we are writing a background and not a biography then it would still be basically the same as the regular background, just substituting the fantastical stuff out for grittier things. Also BP:NOT. What we should probably do instead of writing indepth backgrounds on each of these versions is leave some external links to wikipedia or other relavent wikis. Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

What's the point of a description? How extensive does it need to be? Would a few lines describing what a genral Batman figure looks like, and then a few more about the types of minifigures he has (based on what movies/shows, what super suits he has, differences between regular and TL/BM etc.) be acceptable? I think that sort of description would work well for something like Friends where it's just a bunch of the same parts recombined, or BIONICLE where there are common motifs running throughout. The benefit of this, I think, is that rather than trying to do something that words just don't do and don't have to do--we have images of all of these figures on the same page--is to explain and inform what is going on with a minifigure, not to overwhelm with insufficient imagery.

If people want examples of what I imagine this looking like, let me know and I can write up a few. I think I'd pick a figure from each Friends, BIONICLE, and Super Heroes or Ninjago, but if there is any particular theme/figure people would like to put my way, that's totally reasonable. We would want to make sure this could work.

Yes, descriptions need to be shorter. I'd be in shock if anyone willingly went to Olivia's description without going to the minifigure gallery. Descriptions should ideally be short and sweet. I think it be great if we had even one example and then I could give a few and we can decide what looks good and what doesn't as a community (all three of us :P) Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Glad you like that idea. :) I was afraid I'd get some bite back. :P I'll get to work on trying a few. Hopefully soon. Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Variant galleries are more of a pain to keep up to date. I haven't really got a solution for that one. I'm not really satisfied with the way that this looks all split-up, but it makes it a little more manageable. I think that there is something satisfying about seeing every version of a minifigure in one place together though. This is actually the largest reason why I've been kind of cold on the idea of splitting articles in the past.

I was thinking about that too, I thought about maybe a button that says "view all" or something and takes you to a sub page with all the different minifigure galleries tied together. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Huh, I hadn't thought of a subpage. That might work. I was sort of thinking that "view all" would pull the information from all of the tabs and just display them all at once on the same page; that way people could "view all" but it would be easier to edit because the numerical sequences would be shorter and you could just stick it on the end of the right category in most cases. Sorry if it wasn't clear, I was suggesting tabs on a variant gallery as an alternative to tabs at the top of the article. I'll put a tl;dr in the comments below in case people miss this in what's supposed to be "How to make Super Heroes" work and can discuss it easier. Sorry again. Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe just tabs in the variant gallery, plus a "view all" feature would work well? We could use a lot of your headings that way: for Batman, I'd imagine something like "Comics and Cartoons," "Super Suits," "Live Action," "LEGO movies," "Mighty Micros," and "Other scales" for DUPLO and the microfigure. Batman might be the only character who is messy enough to really need that though; I think Wonder Woman#Gallery of variants is fine for now (but disagree if you don't think so!).

I like your headings better. :P I'd argue the pages are messier than the minifigure galleries and as you said it's really only Batman, Joker and a few SW characters who need their galleries cleaned up. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Backgrounds and definitely descriptions are messy, yeah. I think they can be rewritten to be more concise though. Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

This gives me an idea for how to do Star Wars too; they can be divided by sub theme then: for example, if we decided Leia Organa#Gallery of variants was too long, we could have a tab for each movie she appears in and an "Other" if she needed it. Something like Darth Vader#Gallery of variants wouldn't need tabs, I think, because it's mostly a slew of redesigns. It just needs to be organized better.

Great idea! Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Would we merge the three Robin characters all back to one Robin article and just do tabs for the different characters? Not sure if I like that idea, but I thought I'd bring it up.

I think this is ideal. Kids don't know which Robin is which and while we're teaching some a bit of comic knowledge, others are fustrated when they can't find their favorite varation or when their friend tells them there's more variants of Robin than he can get from our Tim Drake page. I need to think of more arguments for this, but I think it's a fantastic idea. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Nova mentioned this on my talk page recently as he was asking about the Vixen split and how he wished he could just go to a single Robin page. I think that's totally fair, especially as you mention that kids won't necessarily be able to tell the difference between them (especially since we had an issue recently where we didn't know which version of the character the DUPLO version was supposed to be and just had to pick one). Just one Robin page with tabs would probably be better. By tabs I do mean variant gallery tabs (for "Dick Grayson," "Tim Drake," "Damian Wayne," "Other figures," and maybe "TLBM." ) I can imagine how that page would look pretty easily actually; even while covering all four Robins (Red Hood would be relevant background even if he weren't released as a figure) the description and background could be kept pretty concise. Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Like Nova says in the comments below (and I've brought this up when we've discussed things like costumes that Ninjago characters only wear in the TV show), we should probably also decide what we mean by variant. I'm just going to leave this here; it's not how we use the word, but that doesn't necessarily matter. Berrybrick (talk) 23:18, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Did we ever come to an conclusion of outfits only worn in the show? I'm sorry I completely forgot. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I don't know. I think I was shot down. :P It might not matter though. I think all Nova means is that we have to be careful in how we divide things. I might have just gotten excited because it still bothers me a little when I see a gallery of "TV series variants." :P Berrybrick (talk) 14:24, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

If you don't want to read what I wrote above, there is now a TL;DR in the comments section below. Feel free to ask questions there even if you didn't read what's above; I won't get annoyed. I get that it's messy so reading/replying to it might be difficult. Berrybrick (talk) 14:42, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Comments

Just a general note- minifigure galleries should no longer be on theme pages. This was voted out some time ago as they're ridiculously hard to main, extremely long and take up so much space. But most weren't removed. NovaHawk 23:40, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Soup and I were discussing this in PM earlier. I think this is for minifigure articles, not themes. Unless I misunderstand what you (and/or Soup) mean. Berrybrick (talk) 01:27, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, yeah that all makes much more sense now :) I didn't really read the original statement properly either. So we're talking about splitting into variants? Yes please. We'll need to be careful about defining what makes a variant and the specifics of it. I've been all for this for a long time but never brought it up again since the last score was like 1/6 against or something :P NovaHawk 02:15, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah that's what I meant Berry :P Nova now we don't even have 7 people :P I think it's easy to split them for comics, but for SW/Friends/Ninjago not so much. I'd love to hear your ideas though as I'm blank. Soupperson1 ^Jeepers!

TL;DR on the stuff I was saying in the Super Heroes section above: what if, instead of tabbing the pages themselves, we:

A) Write more concise backgrounds instead of biographies. ie, this is a background and this is a biography.

B) Chop descriptions down to being explanations of a character's general design and particular features rather than trying to catalog every detail for every variant when there are pictures a few headings down--I'll try to write up some examples soon, but for now I'll again point you again to Deadpool#Description, but this time contrast the first paragraph about the regular Deadpool figure with the few lines at the end about Deadpool the Duck.

(The Deadpool example isn't perfect though, since there is a clearer distinction between those two figures than, say, the seven hundred costumes Cole has had. This is why I'll try to write up a few better ones soon with minifigures who do have that issue.)

C) Put tabs on the gallery of variants instead (when needed), including a "view all" tab so that people can still have everything together, but it is made more organized and easier to edit without creating a mess like this.

Doing all three of the above would, theoretically, make pages much shorter, more readable, and more informative. Thoughts? Clarifications? Berrybrick (talk) 14:37, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm fine with that sort of setup for chracters with fewer variants, but when you have like 7 billion different versions I still think the page would get out of hand. I was thinking of something like this for those really long pages where you could break them up into different "groups" of variants. You could also have a short background for the whole overall character in the "All" section, but other short backgrounds on a specific time in that characters life for the other smaller sections (the length of background I have there is probably about the length I'm suggesting) NovaHawk 02:13, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

The brevity of that is really appealing. I'm still not sure about splitting everything up so much though. Berrybrick (talk) 02:43, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

I get that nobody but me seems to be enthusiastic about the idea, so I'm not trying to force it (which is why I didn't ask anybody to do it for me) but I wanted to give a mock-up of what I've been thinking with tabbed minifigure galleries. There's an example here and I also went ahead and put it on the Batman article for an idea of how it would work in context, but only because I have a WIP there. Again, this is a mock-up and there are a couple of issues with it, so I'm not suggesting this exactly, but wanted to give an idea. Berrybrick (talk) 15:51, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

With a bit of colour added to the tabs I think it's fantastic. My only gripe is we don't show the evolution of the figure, though the order certainly looks neater now than doing it by year. Perhaps we could have an image in the description showing the evolution of something? I think this is the best solution we have to the galleries being to big at the moment. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
- (Side note I'd change the heading of "Super suit and novelty suits" to just "Super Suits", as the only "silly" one is really the pirate.) Soupperson1 ^Jeepers!
  - Feel free to put suggestions on Talk:Batman. I want to respond, but that'll probably derail the forum. :P Berrybrick (talk) 20:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
Video game section- definitely, I've been meaning to suggest that for ages (although, two TabAreas on the one page doesn't work at the moment, need to find a way around that (note to self- this?). The normal gallery I think is definitely an improvement over what we've got too NovaHawk 01:48, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't really like this sort of nesting myself, but I've seen it on other wikis where they have two levels of tabs in the infobox. If we can't find a way to make two tabbed areas on the same page, could we have a video games tab in the regular gallery, and then sub-tabs for the games there? The only reason why I didn't put the video game variants in the regular gallery with Batman is because there are so many that they really do need further division. With somebody like Wonder Woman a single video game tab would work fine though. Berrybrick (talk) 20:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Automatic set navigation templates

Ok. So, Template:Star Wars sets, which used to be a manual (and in parts outdated) list of every Star Wars set has just been upgraded. It now simply contains the following code: {{NavTemplate/SetAuto|theme=Star Wars|template name=Star Wars sets|defaultTab={{{1|}}}|1999|2000|2001|2002|2003|2004|2005|2006|2007|2008|2009|2010|2011|2012|2013|2014|2015|2016|2017|2018}} (edit- also contains some extra parameters now to set background/text colours, but you get the idea)

Basically, this means that we should only have to touch this template once a year, to add a new year. The lists themselves should now be automatically updated. Anyway, here are some other points:

Since these lists are all broken down into sections, if you are creating a page on a polybag, buildable figure, microfighter, Ultimate Collector's Series, BrickHeadz, Mighty Micros, a promotional item, or an item also in the Juniors or DUPLO themes, please add the following parameter:
- |SetType=Polybags/Buildable figures/Microfighters/Ultimate Collector's Series/BrickHeadz/Promotional/Mighty Micros/DUPLO/Juniors
- Please note that this applies for all pages, not just Star Wars. The templates will be added elsewhere later, it saves me from having to go through a stack of things if we get into the habit of it now.
- Other things like merchandise, product collections, etc are already taken care of automatically (if the |Type=M/PC/etc system already in place is used as it should). Video games and books are in there as well automatically.
This kind of automation isn't just for the larger themes (that need the larger tabbed template)- I've also converted Template:Indiana Jones sets. The code just doesn't look as pretty.
The one problem I have found is with sorting. MediaWiki sorts numbers by character instead of the number itself, eg, 4 comes after 200 (since 2<4). I'm trying to find a way around this, it isn't as simple as sorting by the item number parameter in the infobox (if you try to sort by item number, pages without a known item number will be left off the list)
If you find any other problems or want to help with changing over any templates, let me know. Please don't simply replace the code in the templates- I found a lot of pages in SW that should have been in Category:Star Wars sets but weren't. If the template was simply replaced, they would have been left off the new template entirely.

NovaHawk 01:57, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

This is amazing. Would this be a good time to decide what date goes in an infobox when a 2018 set is given an early release in December 2017? I ask because of things like this. Berrybrick (talk) 13:42, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah that kind of thing is really annoying, and I've never known what to do. I mean, if they're released in 2017, they're released in 2017, but if they're actually a part of the 2018 wave they feel like they should belong in 2018 too... I really don't have an opinion here. (~~also, just noticed from your edit on Rey's speeder that the default tab isn't working. I know why, just got to find a way to code it so it works~~ wow. that was a lot easier to fix than I thought it would be :P) NovaHawk 01:07, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

I found an issue but I haven't got any idea what is going on. 76085 Battle of Atlantis is showing up as "Justice League sets" on the nav template. Justice League sets redirected to this page previously, but I have since deleted it and nothing has changed. Dummy edits and refreshing the cache haven't fixed it either. I haven't seen anything else like this going through the other DC sets. Berrybrick (talk) 14:41, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
- That was a weird one, eventually got it to work by deleting it then restoring it. Had nothing to do with the template though- Special:Browse was stating that the name of the page was "Justice League sets". I'm going to assume it was a problem caused by the old server- SMW has been running much smoother on here and the pagemove (which is when the problem would have have likely originally occurred) happened a month before moving to ShoutWiki NovaHawk 23:56, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Language links

Are we meant to be removing these? I was under the impression that we were keeping them because it'd save us a lot of work if we ever got a wiki in another language again or got one of the others to move over. The templates are empty right now so they don't show up on pages or affect readers in any way. But I'm fine with removing them though (because I really can't see us getting a wiki in another language). Just looking to find out what we're meant to be doing with them NovaHawk 22:52, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Main Page content

Looking at the main page, I think a few things really need a change:

Featured article. We haven't had a FA in like two years. I've suggested this before but it got voted down pretty quickly. But maybe having the same article up for the last year might have changed some minds. Can't we just put in a good, up to date article in there from time to time and just not assign the page a "featured" rank? It might actually give people something to read from time to time.
BotM is completely dead. Maybe we should consider removing it, even temporarily?
We have no link to the fan space in the main nav- any reason why?
Maybe we should have a manual list for "recent reviews" and stick up any good reviews? Might give good reviews a bit more attention and encourage people to make more of them.

NovaHawk 00:32, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Those are some really good points you made, Nova. You have my full support. Vasko (talk) 06:51, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

As Vasko said, some very good points/ideas. I'm happy to agree with pretty much all of them, however, I am wondering why we've run out of Featured Articles? Why are there not more articles hitting the FA mark? Is it because people don't feel they can improve articles to hit the standard anymore? --Lewis Cawte (talk)

10:58, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

I updated the draft on http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/new . 174.192.25.65 12:30, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

@Lcawte: Yeah I think we've lost a lot of editors, and the editors we do have are busy trying to just keep up with making pages on new sets. Also I don't we don't really even truly know what an FA is anymore. Honestly I'd be happy to just do away with the whole FA system entirely, or just make the status achieved by winning a monthly vote on any solid up to date complete article NovaHawk 13:17, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Forum

Special:Wikiforum is getting spammed by IPs, and noone's actually using it. Any chance of changing it back to requiring an account to make a post there? NovaHawk 12:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Merge See also/External links

Holycharly's been doing things a little differently with some of our "bottom list sections"- according to the MoS at the moment we have "See also" and "External links" as two separate level 2 headings. But I think this way's much better (a level 2 "See also", with "Internal links" and "External links" as separate level 3 headings). If the section's all internal or external links, then no level 3 headings are needed. Alternatively, we could drop the "Internal links" level 3 heading altogether and just have something like:

Unikitty! and {{set header}}

I ran into a bit of a problem with {{set header}} while making the sets for the Unikitty! today. We have a shortcut in this template for using ! as a pipe since | doesn't work. While we haven't had a problem with this for nine years, Unikitty! (obviously) has an exclamation mark in it. This means if you typed "Unikitty! (theme)!Unikitty!", it'd detect the first exclamation mark as the pipe instead of the second. I've made a change so that the detection for the exclamation mark is diabled if "Unikitty!" is typed in, however this means if you need to pipe, you need to no use {{!}}.

Basically- if you need to have Unikitty! in the set header linking to the theme, you need to use "Unikitty! (theme){{!}}Unikitty!" or "{{th|Unikitty|sh}}", NOT "Unikitty! (theme)!Unikitty!". Let me know if anyone has any questions :) NovaHawk 02:23, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Incredibly confused

How are we handling stuff relating to The Incredibles? To date, it hasn't really had any mainstream sets- we've got 3 Juniors sets, a BrickHeadz set and a video game- is that enough to call it a theme? Or do we just call it Disney? Also on the topic of Disney- is Disney Princess a subtheme of Disney or is it its own theme- the online shop calls lists Disney Princess sets as Disney, but the boxes have Disney Princess on them which makes me lean towards it being a subtheme but I'm no expert in Disney Princess sets... NovaHawk 23:47, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Image URL

Just in case anyone's reading, the magic URL we used to have to grab images from no longer works. Managed to piece it together pretty quickly, basically just need to replace cache.lego.com with sh-s7-live-s.legocdn.com. So you need:

https://sh-s7-live-s.legocdn.com/is/image/LEGO/75952_alt1?op_sharpen=0&resmode=sharp4&wid=2000&fit=constrain,1&fmt=png-alpha

And replace 75952 with the item number you want, remove/change _alt1 as usual, etc. NovaHawk 10:30, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

"Late 2011" vs 2012 sets

Where do we stand on that whole "its a 2012 set really, but 2012 sets start getting released in December 2011" mess? Especially where we use automated templates, having only "December 2011" in the box means it gets categorised as a 2011 set, etc. CJC (talk) 17:32, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Favorite Lego theme

It's Ninjago. What about yours? 72.76.127.231 21:06, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

#Purge

Hey everyone. Today I want to announce the start of a revolution that will permanently change this wiki forever.

Me and my friends are starting a new group called the Purgers. Our goal is to permanently make this wiki unusable and spread vandalism everywhere. Our group started when our leader Cardinsto was permabanned from Fandom. Cardinsto said that his hamster got on his PC and vandalized the page, but he got banned anyway. A person named PitTrader snitched on Cardinsto and got him banned when Cardinsto had a perfectly legitimate excuse.

Our Goals:

Get Cardinsto unbanned and with administrator role (not succeeded) Get PitTrader permanently banned (succeeded) and everyone else who was his friend (not succeeded) Spread chaos and anarchy until we do so. Replace min-droid with a better bot

We will do this everyday until we have all our goals met. if you want to join us, simply let us know or follow our plans

Also lets get a hashtag going #Purge

Do you realise this isn't Fandom or even affiliated with the Fandom site? Anyway, good luck. The entire ShoutWiki staff team (the place Brickipedia now lives) regularly check this site (and are contributors in our own right), but, now we'll just be showing Brickipedia a bit of favouritism in making sure you lot waste an awful lot of your own time. Doesn't bother me... Also, Fandom staff have not been known to just unban people, sucks to be you, but, there are various Brickimedians that have been permabanned from Fandom. --Lewis Cawte (talk)

21:28, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

What is this?

Something wrong

When I save my changes, an edit conflict, but no. There noneMaster of Energy (talk) 10:40, 19 June 2020 (UTC)