Brickipedia:Forum/Archive/2016/2

Spambots and social profile userpages[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Nothing to worry about

May not be a problem, but every single one of the spambot accounts created on March 2 has a social profile userpage if you click on their redlinks. All it contains is a fake name though. Don't know if this is useful to anyone looking into the spambots, just thought I'd mention it anyway NovaHawk 09:58, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- The "real name" field is independent of the SocialProfile extension, and as such, since it shows up on the account creation page, spambots will happily fill in the field and SocialProfile pulls this data from MediaWiki's database (user.user_real_name) and displays it.
  In the past, spambots would use social profile pages like they use User: pages on a "normal" wiki to spread their spam, but this isn't possible anymore on Brickimedia, as we require users to have five mainspace edits before they can edit their social profile.
  tl,dr: Don't worry about it, the situation's under control. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 12:34, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Lack of files being uploaded[edit source]

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

We can worry about not having time to edit, but surely it doesn't take that much time to upload. It can easily be done in a separate tab or window or whatever. But I think everyone except Nova and Latenightguy (and me as of late, I was lacking in Jan/Feb) have uploaded about 50 files in the course of the past 5 months, at most. You know who you are if you've done less, just use http://meta.brickimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles?limit=50&user=Cow and replace Cow with your username. I don't think it's fair making Nova do the majority themes, surely he'd rather finish his Luke Skywalker FA instead. So does anyone have any ideas? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Uploading files without adding them to articles is a good way to create files that will never be used. CJC95 (talk) 16:13, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Obviously not those types of files :P There's a lot of offical set images we haven't uploaded; back printing of minifigures, in game/T.v. screenshots ect. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

But if the person who uploads them doesn't add them to the articles, how do they get there? :P CJC95 (talk) 21:06, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

What would be great is if we could some sort of extension where you type in an item number and it imports all the images of that set from lego.com... NovaHawk 08:02, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Bot rights removal[edit source]

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

Notice: I have removed bot flag from CJCbot, LcawteBot and SandBot. They haven't been used since 2014 and there is no need for them to have the bot flag therefore. Owners may request it back at any point if they need to do bot stuff. (Also other user rights have been removed from inactive users as per usual. They may also request back, etc.) CJC95 (talk) 19:27, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Minifigure Galleries[edit source]

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

It's annoying putting alternative faces and back printing in galleries and people often forget to do it. I made User:Soupperson1/MinifigGallery and I think it would work better compared to our current format. Thoughts? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Looks great! But having it on 3 separate galleries seems like it might take up a lot of room on an article unnecessarily. Clone gunner commander jedi _talk 21:23, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

There should be that many pictures on the article anyway. On larger articles like Batman it will save space as the gallery is overcrowded Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I like the idea, but I'm not a fan of having three galleries, it makes this area way too long. I still think we should have tabs which let you switch angles for each variant (which I suggested about a year ago but noone paid attention- link to example, link to JS you'll need to put in your personal common.js)

I like the tab idea but your example isn't working for me, it's just the normal Anakin. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Yep, like I said, you need to copy the code from User:NovaHawk/common.js to <insert name here>/common.js for it to work NovaHawk 06:54, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
Ooh that works, though I think the videogame variant should have its own section. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Of course- that was simply for testing, I should have specified that, sorry :P NovaHawk 07:31, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I tried doing multiple mini figures together it didn't work, I'll leave that stuff to people who know what they're doing :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Yeah, it's only set up for one- the JS code is probably going to be quite long if it's going to accomodate like 20 entries, so I didn't bother because I'm lazy :P It can definitely be set up to work with more though. NovaHawk 12:28, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Your the opposite of lazy! Your our most valuable contributor Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Why does it need more than the current three? (I would say "I'll add more entries", but we all know I'd forget :P) CJC95 (talk) 08:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Did this ever get used? Or does it still need to be updated> CJC95 (talk) 00:13, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
- I don't know, does it have enough support? If so I'll work on the code required to get it operational NovaHawk 01:34, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
  - It looks like there is support, from the whole four of us who discussed. I don't know who will use it any time soon, but could be useful. CJC95 (talk) 12:50, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Let's talk: Navbars[edit source]

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

Design

How do we unify the design of them all (although most are similar already)? Do we make it look more like our other templates? CJC95 (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

On a side note should we make the edges curved or add pictures, or the logo for the theme instead of the font? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I believe there is (in that, there was at some point), some sort of design guidelines for the site in general being worked on, so really it depends on those. CJC95 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Types

What sort of things should have navbars? Currently most themes have one for sets and minifigures. I imagine there are a few niche ones floating around out there though. CJC95 (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

We have an animal one, figure one, I'm not sure what else. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

We have a weapons one as well, and Template:People, and LEGOLAND stuff, and pretty much everything else in Category:Navigation templates :P We could use some subcategories there. NovaHawk 02:54, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Started a list at Brickipedia:Navigational templates. Please add any you know. That way we have some orderly way of upgrading them. CJC95 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Information overload

What do people think of the way big themes are split into years? How can we make navigating large swathes of information (e.g. {{SWfigs}}) usable without comprising information.

I was going to experiment with something like [1]. CJC95 (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
Based on something Codyn suggested, I made User:CJC95/Sandbox. Obviously all I did was take two different bits of code and stick them inside each other without much thought, but the basic idea is the important thing. CJC95 (talk) 22:10, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
- Absolutely love this idea. :P Aesthetics could of course be improved but the functionality is what's important, we can improve on looks later Codyn329 (talk) 22:38, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
- Liking the idea of tabbers- I'll write some CSS to fix the colours later. I'm thinking we could group things further, like in "Galactic Republic", have columns like Clone Troopers, Senators, Droids, etc. Also since the info isn't being shown all at once, maybe we should double up, eg have Leia in both Rebel Alliance and Resistance? But for sets, if we just had one template and used tabbers, that'd be great. NovaHawk 02:25, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Is there a way to get a specific one to be default for an individual page? Can we get it so that a 2013 Star Wars set can show the 2013 tab when it opens? CJC95 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Mobile

Some appear to be unusable on mobile - A few don't scale too badly but don't look like they belong with the mobile skin that much. Mobile use of navboxes is a hard one to deal with. Wikipedia handles it by just disabling them on the mobile site. I don't like that solution (it annoys me when I'm on mobile Wikipedia), but I'm not too sure how to address this directly yet. CJC95 (talk) 16:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

+2 to this; mobile is a very important segment and it deserves the appropriate attention (and if you ask me, Brickimedia's mobile support is pretty awesome) and "it doesn't work on mobile, let's disable it" is a non-solution. We have a lot of clever, technically-oriented people who can solve this problem; I'm sure of that. So let's build something that has never been seen before! --Jack Phoenix (talk) 16:38, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

When do we split them

I'm just curious when a navbar is big enough to be split and how big we want each section to be. http://en.brickimedia.org/index.php?title=Template:DCFigs&oldid=605762 is much smaller then the mini-doll figure section at FriendsFigs but do we want to split it? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Generally its UCS really, as it depends on the theme etc. How would you split up the Friends? If there is a logical way to split it, feel free to at least see what it looks like. CJC95 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Non physical section or not

I never liked non physical sections, if Victor Zsasz is a villain why can't he be in the villains section? I know you could argue were supposed to sell sets and what not, but are we not technically promoting the video games? Plus a lot of characters such as Peter isn't in production, so we wouldn't be selling anything besides second hand stuff. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I was going to suggest this - well, I was going to just do it and see what it looked like :P - I was going to suggest like, a superscript (cross) and then a note at the bottom saying "video game only", etc. CJC95 (talk) 21:28, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I think I'm the opposite of CJC here- I hate having these in line with physical figs. Eg, Template:NinjagoFigs, the Creatures section and to a lesser extent the Ninja allies section just looks a mess to me. If you did this with {{MarvelFigs}} where 2/3 of the characters are VG only, you'd have a very hard time finding the actual minifigures, which is what I'd be guessing a significant portion of people who visit here actually care about. If we went with the tabber idea, I think it could work for everyone though, eg VG SW Republic characters could be further split into Clone Troopers, Senators, etc, and non-physical? They'd be in Republic, just not the smaller category. NovaHawk 02:54, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Tabbers does solve this problem afaic, as you can just put smaller VG only sections on each category. This solve the issue with the VG only sections in current form. CJC95 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Here's an example with tabs I've been working on, let me know if anything needs to be changed. NovaHawk 09:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Naming

Here is an incomplete list of current navbars. The main reason is the lack of naming conventions. Some use just the theme name for a template, and hence they are missing from the list currently. Some use "Figs" and "Sets", others use "sets" and "figs". Some use initials for the theme name, others don't (this disparity even exists within a theme, so we have JWfigs but JurassicWorldsets. All these make it very confusing to actually find what template you want. Hence when they are updated and upgraded I suggest renaming them on the convention "Theme Name" + " figs" or " sets". (Note also the space between words). Discuss if you please. CJC95 (talk) 18:57, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

A whole theme name with a space is so tiring to type though :P Yes, sounds good to have some consistency, I'm always having to check what the names are for themes I'm not editing all the time, not having to think and just type the theme name would be good. NovaHawk 01:27, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Status

Where are we on design wise? I'd like to move forward with this. CJC95 (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Well there was no response on the example, so I wasn't sure whether to move forward with it. NovaHawk 00:43, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
- I was referring more to the apparent design guideline things that are in the works, although when I'm back on pc, I'll look again at yours and just start changing things (so next Friday probably) CJC95 (talk) 11:04, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

New namespace: Help/Brickipedia Help?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Nothing

Just wondering what people would think of a new namespace designed for people to ask questions. It'd basically be a fifth tab along with "Page"/"Discussion"/"Inventory"/"Reviews". Have questions about a set/minifig/video game? Hit the "help" tab and type in your question. Basically I'm thinking of this as an alternative to Brickipedia Answers which never happened because we don't have enough technical people who can make this happen, and it saves you from going to another wiki to ask a question anyway. Yes we have forums, but noone looks at those. Either that, or we could open up the Talk namespace to be about the set as well, not just the article- just because Wikipedia/Wookieepedia/every other wiki reserves their talk namespace for article talk, doesn't mean we have to. And it's not like the talk pages get used a whole lot here- we could just split the talk article into two parts. Anyway, just an idea I randomly had. NovaHawk 04:23, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
- Given our young audience having the 'Talk' tab is quite confusing as one would automatically assume that it's a page to talk about the subject and not necessarily about what could be done to correct certain information or otherwise improve the content of the article. Allowing a discussion area of some sort closely tied to the article itself would help boost interaction on the site though it would need monitoring and logged accordingly. None of us want a repeat of the disaster with article comments we had back at (dare I say it) Wikia. SKP4472 (Admin) 02:16, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
- Per SKP (except I don't dare). Maybe we could even rename "talk" to maintenance, or something like it but shorter? Berrybrick (talk) 06:04, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
I'd like to see more discussion on this, but its not going to happen here in the middle of the forum. I'll talk about it with you if I ever see you on Chat Nova. I'll close this in a day or so, and when we have considered this more/aren't in the middle of other big changes, we can discuss this again CJC95 (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

A change to the "featured article"[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was File under "good idea that never went anywhere"

By "featured article", I mean the box on the main page. Currently, every month it shows Black Knights. I'd like to propose changing "Featured article" to some other name (please add suggestions), and showcase a complete article for 2 weeks, giving priority to articles recently promoted to complete status. Any future FA's take priority, and run for a month as before. NovaHawk 08:00, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Strongly disagree, I like FA as they are. Besides if we do this no one will write FAs anymore. If we want variation we can just change it to an existing FA? If we want to share waste complete articles, we can add a section called "articles with the ratings recently changed" Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Can we still call it a featured article, and differentiate it from the complete ones somehow? :P If we want a new name though, I suggest Showdog, with the Dog Show Judge (once he is released) as a mascot. When he shows up, people will know it is special. Berrybrick (talk) 20:46, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- I was thinking something more along the lines of something boring like "promoted article" :P NovaHawk 23:34, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Sure. CJC95 (talk) 13:55, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
- Or we could finally use our mascot :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Request for comment: Implement more ads across Brickimedia[edit source]

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

This is a critical topic currently and probably will have a lot of mixed feelings. Considering the amount of ads were a fundamental reason we moved off Wikia, I'm not expecting a lot of support here, but as it stands right now, we don't generate enough income off a single ad to keep up with our expenses. Our site's expensive, and we only need more and more performance out of our server and right now we've got just about as much server as we can afford. Then we add in the fact that we have to ship contest prizes which is not cheap (actually usually costs more to ship one prize to one person than we pay monthly for the server.....), and I don't want to pay out of pocket for them, nor would Adrian want to. Hence, we need more income, and since we can't rely on donations that we almost never get (except that one time from NBP3.0), we have to resort to advertising. As a result, I want to ask for feedback, please comment stating whether you support or oppose an increase of ads per page (1-2 more perhaps), and if you support, suggest ad placements if you have any suggestions, or if you oppose, give some reason why. --ToaMeiko (talk) 21:10, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm fine with this as long as they aren't like, pop-ups or covering up text or anything. CJC95 (talk) 21:12, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
I too would be fine with having a few more ads, as-long as they're non-intrusive to our content. Clone gunner commander jedi _talk 21:16, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Can we trade in some of the sets LEGO gave us in exchange for them paying for shipping? It's honestly ridiculous how much that costs. Beyond that, some questions that I want to see addressed before proceeding with this: 1. Would there be a significant revenue increase? We're actually breaking even on the hosting costs these days ($45 last month, -$40 for hosting). 2. How much are we planning on spending for shipping things around? I'm coming to a point in my life where the finances are a bigger concern (as in, moving out and getting a job after the degree). I have no problem still paying for hosting and shipping contest prizes, but I want to make sure we have as much info as possible that I can include in my budget. Ajraddatz (talk) 21:23, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
- Quick answer, no we can't rely on LEGO to ship for us. They'll ship to one person who will then handle everything from there. At that point, TLG is out of the logistics equation, and the only involvement they want after that is us to send them a link to what the set(s) were used for. With more ads, we would get an increase in revenue, especially if they're prominent. Right now, with it being at the bottom of the page, I don't think they're getting much impressions and as a result not generating much revenue. For example, I've had https://www.harrellsecurities.com up for a little over a week and generated nearly $20 already, with a tiny fraction of the traffic Brickimedia gets. That's why I think we need to have some more ads, perhaps one near the top of the page as well since that will probably generate much more revenue than the one at the bottom. I see what you're saying about finances are a bigger concern for you now. They are for me too, that's why I can't pay out of pocket for anything for this site, since all my money gets reinvested into business or business-related travel, and anything I have left over has to go into savings. However, if we can ensure we break even and have some extra income to spare for times when we don't break even or need to ship out expensive prizes, I'm happy and able to take over the financial side of things here. --ToaMeiko (talk) 21:36, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Would we be able to add more adds on certain sections, like reviews or blog posts? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
- Perhaps, but those wouldn't be very effective since those don't get as much views. Blog posts especially don't get many views by visitors, and chances are none of our registered users will click them. Better to just put another ad placement or two on every page than on specific ones that could just be a hit or a miss as far as revenue creation is concerned. --ToaMeiko (talk) 23:54, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
Support, but as per CJC and CGCJ. And honestly, I'd much prefer it if any set we got from LEGO was just reviewed by whoever it's sent to so we don't have to pay out shipping costs all the time. It'd be nice to actually be making money on this site for once, and maybe pay back Ajr/NBP/Meiko who have already sunk so much money into the site. NovaHawk 00:35, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Support I honestly had never noticed that this site had ads until a few weeks ago. Anyway, I strongly support having more ads on articles. One solitary advertisement at the bottom of the page is not going to make much of a difference. This site generated $45.00 last month. Barnick's generated $20.00 in a little over a week. This site surely has many more viewers than the one that he linked. If we are barely making enough to keep this boat afloat, something needs to change. LCF ^(talk!) 01:42, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
So, would the ad in the sitenotice be considered unintrusive by the people supporting only if the ads are unintrusive? I honestly don't know because I have adblocker and just saw a huge empty white gap (which I quickly took care of) NovaHawk 05:57, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- The way I look at it, it's not in the content, it's not in front of the content, and it doesn't cover the content, so it's not really intrusive. All the content is still there, just 90px farther down (or less on mobile). If other people feel otherwise it can be changed but there aren't too many good ad placements in our interface other than that which wouldn't be within the content section. --ToaMeiko (talk) 06:07, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- I don't see the issue in it. CJC95 (talk) 14:09, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Support: With the ad adversity, I trust that this will be handled carefully. Berrybrick (talk) 20:42, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Comment: I applied for the LEGO Shop Affiliate Program, got approved, and now converted most of our ads to LEGO ads. They generate revenue a bit differently so we'll see how it plays out in comparison to the current Google Ad at the bottom of each page. --ToaMeiko (talk) 23:16, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
- Ooh, awesome. I'll try to remember to click a link on here before buying stuff for the May the 4th promotion. Also, do we have some sort of affiliate id we can stick on the end of URLs? I was thinking we could make a change to {{QuoteLEGO.com}} and stick something on the end of those links to the shop as well. NovaHawk 23:33, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
  - I haven't looked into all of it but I believe we do. This is one of the codes (among many) it offers me:
```
<a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=flo3EmTGydA&offerid=115554.10000011&type=3&subid=0" >The Official LEGO Shop: The best selection of LEGO bricks in the world!</a><IMG border=0 width=1 height=1 src="http://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=flo3EmTGydA&bids=115554.10000011&type=3&subid=0">
```
    I don't know if that img tag is necessary or whatever but maybe the only part we need is the href? idk what do you think? --ToaMeiko (talk) 23:52, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
    - FYI also, linksynergy.com seemed to be blacklisted earlier which is part of why I'm using iframes to load these ads instead of using wikicode. Jack Phoenix might know how to bypass that blacklist for this? --ToaMeiko (talk) 23:54, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
Would it be possible to have the advertisement in the bottom corner not be a gif? It's extremely distracting. I can see some people who just look at images and info on the site finding the top advertisement annoying, but if your a reader you can just scroll down. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
- @Soupperson1: All of the available graphic ads at that size are gifs. --ToaMeiko (talk) 22:34, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
- Ugh, we have gifs now? Isn't that a bit 90's/early 00's? Please tell me it isn't one of those fast-flashing banners saying you've won $1,000,000:P Would definitely support changing to still images if that was possible NovaHawk 06:53, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
  - @NovaHawk: No, they're LEGO Affiliate ads. Example --ToaMeiko (talk) 17:59, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
- The only gifs I've seen are teh LEGO ones if you scroll down the sidebar. CJC95 (talk) 15:57, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

76052 Live Build with Beyond The Brick[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Probably nothing

Beyond The Brick asked me if I'd like to live build 76052 Batman Classic TV Series - Batcave with them for their channel. Considering this would count as RLUG activity with this round of LUG support, and saves us the trouble of having to pay for shipping on a set this large (and heavy), is anyone opposed to this? Could manage to give us some publicity again which we haven't gotten from another online LEGO community in a while. --ToaMeiko (talk) 19:44, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. CJC95 (talk) 19:46, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Neutral. It sounds like a great opportunity and would usually instantly support it. However, I believe it was scheduled for Berry to review, I'd feel bad supporting if it meant taking that off him... NovaHawk 21:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
- Wasn't aware of that because I can't really keep track of those things. Guess we better start saving then because that's gonna be pricey to ship... --ToaMeiko (talk) 00:16, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
  - Just checked, apparently the proposal hasn't been closed (I've given up paying attention prizes/budget stuff), but it has 3 suporting votes and 0 opposing, the last comment taking place on February 17. NovaHawk 03:16, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
Support but if it was meant for Berrybrick like Nova said, then Berrybrick should do it. Codynguyen1116 (talk) 23:38, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm guessing as usual, this has discussion has turned into nothing and any opportunity has passed anyway? NovaHawk 00:43, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Administrative footnotes in regards to user rights and potential mergers. Feel free to ignore.[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Administrative details is all

Customs

A note that the following accounts have user rights at customs that they don't have here, and notes regarding their status here:

BFN has admin there. He also has admin here if he becomes activity again - No issue here.
MeikoBot has admin there. I assume that was for a specific task, and bots can have admin for specific tasks if needed here. No issue.
Nexus has patroller there. He lost patroller here due to being inactive, but can have it when he comes back to activity. No issue.
1999bug has admin there. He is not currently active, so this is not a major issue, however I'd suggest to be able to administrate the new customs namespace here he would need to pass an RfA here. However, as he is not active, we have no real issue.

So basically, no issues, but this is just a note for the archive, so to speak. CJC95 (talk) 20:40, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

BoTM minimum threshold[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Minimum 3 votes for BoTM.

It was decided (see the archive, where it shall be within a short while of me submitting this) that there should be a minimum threshold for a nominee to gain Brickipedian of the Month. However no specific threshold was discussed. This should probably be decided, or else the minimum threshold policy is hard to enforce. CJC95 (talk) 23:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Anyone? :P If not I'll just set the minimum as three. CJC95 (talk) 13:47, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Three sounds fine. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was exclude BoTM from unanimous rule of voting

Exclusion request.

BoTM needs to be excluded from the global unanimous rule. It is necessary for a BoTM to last a month. As there is no opposes, they are all unanimous, as long as they have one supporter. This would mean any threshold would not ever be used, as every BoTM request would pass instantly after a week. So obviously the global unanimous rule can no longer be global. CJC95 (talk) 00:36, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
- Oh yeah, definitely. forgot about that one, sorry NovaHawk 10:43, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Merging the Magazine namespace back into main[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Pages moved. LegoFan4000 ^talk 13:03, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

It's really not needed. We don't have one for books, or for episodes of TV shows, etc. The reason is because we had a few scans of a couple of UK mags, but that's not enough to justify a namespace. Just stick those scans on the articles in the main space. CJC95 (talk) 15:20, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Support NovaHawk 22:37, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
- Is there actually any content in said namespace or can the Magazine namespace pages just be deleted? Support either way. It's a useless namespace that 99% of people don't know exists. --ToaMeiko (talk) 00:55, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  - there is content, but all formatted as mainspace articles, so it just needs to be moved back. CJC95 (talk) 11:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
Codynguyen1116 (talk) 01:08, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
If its useless then we should get rid of it. LegoFan4000 ^talk 01:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
- Rip magazines :(. I'm OK with it being removed. Ajraddatz (talk) 05:23, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  - Wait we're still having magazine articles aren't we? NovaHawk 06:12, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
    - Sure --ToaMeiko (talk) 10:42, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
      - Really, the last one was 4 years ago. LegoFan4000 ^talk 11:26, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
        I beg to differ :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
        I don't think he meant the release of magazines, but the articles being created for individual issues. There are more actual magazines then ever - there was a LEGO Star Wars one in the supermarket the other day :P CJC95 (talk) 11:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
  - Yep, just merging the existing ones back into the mainspace. CJC95 (talk) 11:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
    - LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:08, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
      - Since we have enough support to merge it, I guess we'll do it. LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:09, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Done. All pages moved without leaving a redirect. LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:56, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Increasing positive communication within users[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Technically, this was passed, but it was 3-2 and I'm not sure how I'm meant to enforce it, as I'm not sure what it really means. I imagine no one else will work it out, so archived.

I want to talk about increasing positive communication within users: Although we generally have nice, calm conversations in chat (which is great!), that doesn't need much improvement. What I think needs to specifically improve to increase this, is how we welcome users. Right now, welcoming others are based on a pre-formatted, maybe half-arsed template, and simply substituting the transcluded template on user talk pages. Although I do understand that if the resources are low, it would be more realistic to make such thing to make an automated message on people's talk page.

However, let's say we do have the resources - or we just work harder. Whenever I joined other wikis, and saw that the message was just one of those annoying bots saying "Hey, thanks for you edit on 'so and so' page, bla bla bla etc...", it's really annoying. It'd be nice to know that, "Hey, a user hand-wrote this message to me. It's real. It's not from a bot or automated." It has this little spice of appreciation, and I'd say "It's all the little moments that make life big." ( originally quoted by Echo Park).

There wouldn't be a full-blasted guideline or policy on here on how to write messages, it just has to be real and honest. You just write it. And knowing, that a person would voluntarily spend their time writing something for a person they don't even know is powerful. And hey, maybe the message doesn't contain everything a user needs to know about a site - but just writing it I believe would cause the welcomed user to get curious, and actually have a higher chance of staying on the wiki. Not only that, it'd increase the likelyhood of that user responding back to the welcomer. Thus, 1-1 communication, 2 people at the time. If everyone did this, these tiny numbers could stack up and make this site overall hopefully a better place.

What do you think? More user-written welcomes? Less welcome templates? Maybe even deleting it?

Codynguyen1116 (talk) 03:50, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Support

As nominator Codynguyen1116 (talk) 03:50, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Definitely. I (try to) do this at BS01. Even a "hi" after the welcome template could make a difference, or at least I'd like to think so. -- MtMNC (talk) 04:34, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
Agree. -- CPplayer90210 _talk 10:52, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

Oppose deleting the welcome template at least. If people want to do custom-written welcomes every time, fine, I'm not saying welcome templates should replace that. But people make an edit, they get welcomed. Unless you want to wait for them to make like 10 edits to get a feel for the user (which I think would be a bad idea, no welcome at all after an edit or two would be weird), I can't see there being a whole lot of variation in anyone's custom welcome to people. I can also see custom welcomes being less useful if they don't supply the information the welcome template does (assuming the information on the welcome template is useful, it's been a while since I looked at one). Basically, totally ok with a "hi" after a welcome template or something similar (I usually try to remember to hit the "thank" button on a new user's first edit), but against removing the welcome template altogether. NovaHawk 11:21, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I agree 100% with Nova. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Discussion

I agree with Codyn's sentiments, but also Nova's concerns. ~~I think I missed any suggestion of deleting the welcome template though?~~ (Silly Berry.) Anyway, if voted into effect, what exactly would be done? Surely this is more of a behavioral thing than a policy thing? I definitely will not oppose (because I do like the idea) but making it a policy sort of makes it fake in my opinion. Berrybrick (talk) 14:18, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
I don't think our current welcome templates are that great, perhaps suffering from too many pointless links, but I don't think the idealised world you are attempting to describe above is one that will happen. What will happen is that every message will be basically identical anyway, just "Hi! Nice edit on X. Any questions just ask!" to welcome all users instead. Or maybe sometimes I'd end up typing "Hello" instead of "Hi". or "good" instead of "great". But it won't be personal really. So I don't care for the idea, or our current method, but I'd point out that we can't enforce a policy to write "real" messages. I guess I'm leaning towards oppose, but it can stick here in the discussion for now. CJC95 (talk) 18:44, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
What we really need is better warning/notice templates for talk page messages. Right now we have very vague and ugly boxes that don't tell a user what they did wrong and how to fix it in the future, plus hardly anybody uses those templates anymore. So 90% of the time someone does something wrong, their edit gets reverted but only rarely does someone put something on their talk page explaining why the edit(s) was reverted. Compare the rather lacking selection of warnings and notices we have, Category talk:Warning templates, with English Wikipedia for example wp:Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. Also note that ours are all boxes that imply the user did something bad, whereas Wikipedia's are inline text with a signature at the end making it read more like a human message, and the first couple levels of warnings are a bit more forgiving as well. Just an idea/concern I've had for a long time. --ToaMeiko (talk) 19:00, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

Edits from Brickia[edit source]

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

We have at least one user (GoldNinjaMX) who has recently come here from Brickia and wants to move some edits he made. What is to be done? Berrybrick (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

I just googled it and there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. LegoFan4000 ^talk 23:17, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Well, ~~most contributions here seem to be customs,~~ as Customs have always been treated as the creator's property (both on here and Brickia), I have no problem with that being moved once we have Customs merged to here (and would similarly have no problem if people moved back to Brickia and took their Customs with them). As for the rest, not so sure. NovaHawk 23:30, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Wait, sorry, only saw one page. 1894 mainspace edits, 1089 customs edits. NovaHawk 23:31, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I should have been more explanatory. He wants to move mainspace content from Brickia to here. I think at least one article in question was Ninjago (World). Basically, what would we have to do for that to be legal (it is CC-BY-SA licensing), and then would it be ethical and worth any potential trouble? Berrybrick (talk) 00:08, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Import them, using Special:Import after exporting them from Wikia. It is best to change them a bit here once imported, not for copyright reasons, but to not be penalized by search engines. Ajraddatz (talk) 01:46, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I'd think that moving is customs here is completely fine, as well as pages made entirely by him. The harder part would be adding over his edits. If you carried over his edits you would have to move over the edits of other users that haven't joined here. I would say to stay away from bringing edits over.Albus Potter (talk)
I'd warn against making this a regular thing. CJC95 (talk) 10:43, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
- I'm a bit uneasy about it myself, we have a good thing going with Brickia at the moment- they don't copy our stuff and we don't copy theirs, basically we go our own ways. I would hate to see that change. We did also say that we wouldn't take any edits of theirs after February 2014, this would go against the "agreement" to me. Oppose. NovaHawk 10:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
  - The main issue as I see it is that other users have edited the page since GoldNinjaMX has. If he was the only one who edited, then fine, he can take them and put them wherever he likes, but as soon as someone just changes one character on that page, we have to import it and then we can, like you say, start some tit-for-tat thing. Additionally, moving in versions of pages we have hear just means someone (and I can imagine it would be at most one of five people :P) would have to compare the edit histories to ensure we don't lose any content, don't add any rubbish, and I'm not sure that is worth the hassle. I guess I am basically opposed to this, now I think it out more. At the very least, I'm troubled by it. CJC95 (talk) 11:32, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
    - Import requires admin or sysadmin rights. LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:37, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

(Somehow) stop spambots from creating accounts[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Spambots are bad

I have noticed lots of spambot accounts being created every day, and i'm thinking that there has got to be a way to stop this. They seem to be getting past the captcha just fine, but they are stopped by the abuse filter. So, in otherwords, we need to try and stop automated spam account creation from happening altogether. LegoFan4000 ^talk 18:59, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

We simply need any other account creation captcha than the one we have right now. However it's good to note that spambots are often better at solving captchas nowadays than humans, so the question is is it worth the extra step and inconvenience for human users to prevent spambots from creating accounts? --ToaMeiko (talk) 19:06, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Theres also recaptcha, or we could restrict account creation to a certain user group. LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:02, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

That would mean only people who had accounts could create accounts? So we'd have no new users? CJC95 (talk) 21:08, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

People could request to have accounts created. LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:31, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

That is not worth the hassle it involves (can we stop adding jobs for the admins to do? :P), and while stopping spambot accounts, would decimate legitimate account creation. Honestly, the current situation where we just have lots of spambots that can't do anything is fine. CJC95 (talk) 21:57, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with CJC here, this has also been discussed originally in github:449. Codynguyen1116 (talk) 22:35, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I am agreeing more with ToaMeiko. LegoFan4000 ^talk 23:32, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

You're right, not only there has to be but there is a way to stop some spambot registrations. It's the email blacklist, which is a part of the SpamBlacklist extension. Of course it's not a perfect solution since it requires people to maintain it, since spambot (operators) will always find a way around such limitations, but it will catch some of them...or rather, would — for whatever reason it doesn't appear to be functioning correctly because over the past three days, 18 accounts were registered with a mailcatch.com address, for example. I'm quite puzzled by this, and as such, I've asked some helpful core MediaWiki devs for input. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 12:44, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Thats a good point. LegoFan4000 ^talk 23:11, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

One somehow got through the abuse filter. LegoFan4000 ^talk 16:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

I just went on to GBC and Ideas and found lots of pages that to me looked like spam. (especially Ideas). All are marked. It looks like the Abuse filter on Ideas was not set to disallow, thus allowing spambots to create pages. LegoFan4000 ^talk 23:04, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying us about this! In the future, I think you can skip the tagging part altogether (since these pages in question were obviously spam and totally unrelated to LEGO) and just ping me or another sysadmin and we'll take care of it. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 04:44, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Lots of sites use ReCaptcha NoCaptcha, and it seems to work really well. LegoFan4000 ^talk 18:26, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

It also looks like some of the spambots are getting through the abuse filter. LegoFan4000 ^talk 18:28, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

There has been another mass of spam pages on GBC. LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:25, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

@LegoFan4000 - Thanks for the notice, blocked locally and globally (including the IP), and mass-deleted the spam pages. :) Codynguyen1116 (talk) 17:40, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

There are a couple more spam pages on ideas. I modified some abuse filters that were tagging these edits, so that they get disallowed. LegoFan4000 ^talk 00:17, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

It might help if new users aren't allowed to add pages for a week after they join. It may have happened, but I have never seen a "good" new user create a page.-Albus Potter (talk) 12:23, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

On my wiki, on that form, I use a type of Captcha called ReCaptcha NoCaptcha, and I have not gotten a single spambot account creation after that. Albus, i'm not sure that we would benefit from that just because the spambots try to create pages right after their accounts created, and after a few unsuccessful try, they don't try again after that. LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:32, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Interviews[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Ideally, yes.

Should we try and get interviews with LEGO related people? And if we did get one where would it go? Under news or a user blog? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Great idea, however who would be willing to be the interviewer? Who would we specifically interview - LEGO Ideas project creators, LEGO designers(etc)? As for the second question you asked, I'd say Brickipedia News section. Codynguyen1116 (talk) 17:02, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Anyone who's officially involved with LEGO (if any of those people would give us the time of day :P) Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

They'd go under news. If you want to interview LEGO Group employees that has to be done through LEGO's PR department so please contact me before attempting an interview with those individuals. --ToaMeiko (talk) 18:30, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Sure, what does attempting a review involve anyway? I'd assume it just be tracking them down and emailing them a few questions. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Minifigure gallery ordering?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was This isn't an issue anymore.

Is there a rule for how to order? Alphabetically I assume, but I can't find that in BP:MoS, unless I haven't looked hard enough. It wasn't in the theme section at any rate. CJC95 (talk) 19:11, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Is this on theme pages? I didn't think that having minifigure galleries at all was in the MoS. :P Berrybrick (talk) 20:22, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

It may not be on the MoS, but every theme page seems to have them :P CJC95 (talk) 20:35, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

(oh, the site isn't locked). It was voted to remove them from theme pages (I'm pretty sure in the MoS overhaul, Berrybrick proposed removing them because they're so long and difficult to maintain, I supported, and noone else commented so it was passed), but we never actively went around removing them. There is no rule in place for ordering as far as I'm aware. Possible alternatives for use in sets would be order that they appear on the box, or alphabetically. No idea for minifigure pages- for licensed minifigures with a lot of variants I like to do chronologically so all the remakes of the same variant are grouped together (example) :S NovaHawk 07:05, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Well this is the definition of a late reply. :P Could we not use {ThemeGallery} if the minifigure galleries are hard to matin, that's automatic right? I do agree with Nova on the licensed minifigure pages though. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

If that is the template we experimented with for a while, it would include video game characters and exclude variants. Plus it looked a bit off (though I'm sure our developers could probably find a way to fix that). Berrybrick (talk) 03:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Clean up the interwiki table[edit source]

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

Interwikis allow to link to certain — usually external (=non-Brickimedia), usually wiki — sites somewhat quicker than by using the standard external link syntax, and when using an interwiki link as opposed to an external link, the external link arrow isn't shown next to the link, just like with normal links (such as this one).

While our interwiki table is considerably cleaner than most sites', I'd still like to propose at least some removals:

all non-wikia: Wikia interwikis — typing [[bionicle-wikia:Some page]] is almost exactly as long as typing [[wikia:c:bionicle:Some page]]. You can link to any Wikimedia site (Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, etc.) by using the syntax [[project:language code:Page name]], i.e. [[wikipedia:fr:France]] to link to the French Wikipedia's page "France" or [[wiktionary:fi:lollapalooza]] to link to the Finnish Wiktionary's page "lollapalooza". Likewise, you can link to any ShoutWiki site with the syntax [[shoutwiki:w:subdomain:Page name]], i.e. [[shoutwiki:w:fi.24:Jack Bauer]] to link to the Finnish Wiki 24's page "Jack Bauer", so I'm not sure what's the benefit of having multiple .wikia.com interwikis. For prefixes like "wookie" or "wookiee", most users don't remember offhand how many e's there is in that word, so they'll likely find it easier to type "wikia:c:starwars:Page" when they mean "Page on Wikia's Star Wars wiki".
acronym: and dictionary: — I'm under the impression that these aren't really used anywhere, and truthfully, why would they when we have Wiktionary?
mediazilla: — Bugzilla is dead, long live Bugzilla! But actual bug reports against any and all MediaWiki things developed upstream are to be made in Phabricator.
sourceforge: — SourceForge ♥ adware. (There's also the fact that this is relatively unused here, given that Brickimedia's software is developed either in GitHub (original, first-party additions, like the Refreshed skin etc.) or on Wikimedia's infrastructure at wikimedia.org.)
wikinfo: — oh look, it's an outdated fork of the English Wikipedia which allows original research. (There's also the fact that its URL is outdated, so if we want to keep it in the interwiki table, its URL has to be updated.)

Thoughts, comments, suggestions, feedback? --Jack Phoenix (talk) 16:19, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok with me. LegoFan4000 ^talk 00:27, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

+2 ;) Codynguyen1116 (talk) 00:49, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks like it'll make everything less confusing. --

CPplayer ^{Leave a message!}

15:34, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Sure (although, would really like to keep "wookiee:" as an alternative extra, because I know I'll forget about this and wonder why the link doesn't work. And it's so much shorter :P). Just wondering why we need the "c:" for the Wikia links? Why not just "wikia:harrypotter" instead of "wikia:c:harrypotter"? NovaHawk 11:56, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

It's largely a leftover from the days when "Wikia" was known as Wikicities, hence w:c: (on Wikia sites; other, off-Wikia sites use wikia:c: as the w: interwiki prefix is either left for Wikipedia or left unused). http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:harrypotter:Hermione_Granger redirects to http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Hermione_Granger, as you'd expect and want, but if you leave out the c: part, you're redirected to a page called "Harrypotter:Hermione Granger" on www.wikia.com, Wikia's corporate site.
That being said, we could change the wikia: prefix so that it includes the c: part, too; right now the wikia: prefix points to http://www.wikia.com/wiki/$1 but we could change that to http://www.wikia.com/wiki/c:$1 so that you'd only need to type [[wikia:harrypotter:Hermione Granger]] to link to the aforementioned page. The only "disadvantage" of this is that the wikia: prefix then cannot be used to link to pages on Wikia's corporate/main site, www.wikia.com, but given that the "old" www.wikia.com was rebranded as "Community Central" years ago and moved to community.wikia.com, I'm not sure if anyone even needs to link to the current corporate domain. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 12:16, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Support

, I can have my bot find-and-replace as necessary upon removal of certain prefixes. --ToaMeiko (talk) 19:17, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Done. I left the DE and FR Wikia ones though, since they're already shorter to type. LegoFan4000 ^talk 00:35, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Reverted many of them- unless a bot's already gone around and removed these links, there would be dozens of broken links all over the site. They can be removed after confirmation that that's taken place. I had a look through MeikoBot's contributions and couldn't find any, but I could have easily missed those edits. (And while many prefixes have never been used and I totally understand removing, I still fail to see why we're removing prefixes that are convenient for editors just so a table can look "prettier") NovaHawk 01:48, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Fixed the links, and removed them again. Unless I overlooked anything, I believe the Storyref template was the only page with these links. LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:38, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

@NovaHawk: I agree that the links should be changed beforehand to ensure that no additional broken links are intentionally introduced. That being said, it's not like the refreshLinks jobs even run due to github-bm:457. So far I've been clearing out the job queue every now and then, but that's hardly an automated, scalable solution.
I understand that editing needs to be as streamlined as possible to ensure the site's growth and a stable editor base, but quite honestly I fail to see the convenience factor when it comes to the links that were removed. Interwiki links are already a power user "tool", the average newcomer is likely to paste the whole URL as-is as opposed to using an interwiki link (and by newcomer I mean "new wiki user", not necessarily "new Brickipedia user" — a person can be a new Brickipedia user but they can have years of editing history over at Wikipedia or a ShoutWiki wiki, for example). If we don't have any sensible rules as to what we want to have as interwiki links and what we don't want or need...it's gonna be a slippery slope, that's for sure.
If we truly want to improve the overall editing experience, that is likely best achieved via other things, such as installing VisualEditor (which, no doubt, isn't exactly a trivial task), LinkSuggest and such. Let's be honest, wikitext is an awful spaghetti mess and while we're comfortable with that, chances are that the majority of the population isn't, and that should be our primary concern. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 20:50, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Oops, somehow missed this reply, sorry :) I completely get that new users are more likely to use full URLs, and I'd love to see LinkSuggest back, I think we had that on Wikia and was really useful. I guess I'm just not sure what's actually wrong with having 3 or 4 shortcut links for some regular editors to use, and why a clean interwiki table is actually an advantage? Genuinely curious, not trying to just argue and be annoying :D But if having heaps of different interwiki links cause some sort of huge queue on the backend (I'm not really sure what refreshLinks is), then I completely understand why they need to be minimised @Legofan400: There are stacks of links around, take the quote on Darth Maul or the background section on Crix Madine for example, it's just very hard/impossible to find them through a search (either on here or through Google, I just tried both and didn't find any). Please don't remove them again until confirmation that a bot's fixed all the links, there's no "undelete" these and they have to be manually punched in again ;) (edit- actually, now I think about it, I don't know about "stacks", we probably didn't have these around on Wikia and used w:c:, but there are still probably a few around. Storyref was definitely the main place they were used) NovaHawk 13:00, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Can we request concept art?[edit source]

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

Out of curiosity can we ask for concept art from the RULG? They don't seem to mind sharing concept art in general, such as having a whole site dedicated to concept art of Chima. So could we ask them for like non licensed concept art? I'd personally love to see Friends and Ninjago, and it be a great "exclusive reveal" for us. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Ok with me. LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:26, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Minifigs: a picture is worth a thousand words[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was This was April's obligatory idea that will be discussed alot then forgotten.

(Credit to CJC95 for the title)

Currently minifig articles have lengthy parts/print descriptions. That seems counterproductive to me. Chances are, when visitors search for minifig articles, they want to see an image, not a description. Minifig articles already have lots of pictures, so why should visitors bother reading about a minifig's torso print when they can just look at it? And certainly if the descriptions aren't being read, the time spent writing them could be put to better use improving the site in other ways.

An argument could be made that descriptions fill up minifig articles with content. But if the content isn't particularly insightful, what's the point of having it? All it does is detract from useful and interesting material, which is what visitors come to the site for. Pages like Batman and Obi-Wan Kenobi are prime examples of this. There's so much text, but (respectfully) it says so little of consequence! Thanks to all that text the images--the good stuff--are relegated to the bottom of the page. If visitors load the page only to see a wall of text instead of the images they came looking for, they're going to continue their search on another site.

I suggest an alternative to the current system. Minifig pages should focus on images, not descriptions. Place the images in the very first section of content. Next to each minifig, place at most a few bullet points of description focusing only on particularly noteworthy aspects of that minifig.

What are your thoughts? -- MtMNC (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit: the above applies to the "Background" sections too. Brickipedia isn't primarily a storyline wiki. IMO any story information should exist exclusively on those pages detailing the media where the story actually took place. To use the Batman example, there shouldn't be any story info from the DC comics (they don't even have to do with Lego!), and story info from, say, Lego Batman 2 should exist solely on the Lego Batman 2 page. -- MtMNC (talk) 00:11, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Numerical analysis - I stuck the Batman description in a word-counter. It was just shy of 3700 words, about 1 in 50 of those words are "suit", and would apparently take someone with an average reading level 13 minutes to read. CJC95 (talk) 23:58, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
Completely agree, I suggested removing descriptions from minifigure articles a couple of years ago but it got shot down. As long as we have images of every angle of the minifigure (front, back, side, alt face expression, and a shot with gear which covers head/body removed), I think we could stick all the shots in some sort of new template, get rid of the descriptions and as you said, have a section for any relevant notes about that particular minifigure variant. Not sure about the background suggestion- I think it's good to have info on who the minifigure's actually based on, although a lot of them could be cut down. Also not all characters have a LEGO-based backstory, they just appear in sets (eg, Quinlan Vos) NovaHawk 00:19, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
- Hmm, good point: some description is necessary. Maybe descriptions could be moved to the intro of the page? For Quinlan Vos, it could be something like: "Quinlan Vos is a minifigure released in 2011, as a part of the Star Wars theme. Vos was a Jedi Master who fell to the Dark Side while on an undercover mission. After turning back to the light, he served as a general in the Clone Wars and survived Order 66." We already link to Wookieepedia at the bottom of the page, so people interested in reading more can do so. Maybe we could incorporate the Wookieepedia link more prominently though. -- MtMNC (talk) 00:33, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
  I think its more important just to limit the background to stuff that at least relates to LEGO sets. There was what, one set based on the dark knight trilogy, but we have a few paragraphs on the movies. CJC95 (talk) 21:18, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
I've made this sometime ago but I haven't publicly posted it except with people on chat, but I'll share it with you guys :) https://jsfiddle.net/codynguyen1116/p1c3h30f/ a MediaWiki gallery component reimagined, with an arrow that'd bring up the description on a click. That part hasn't been written in JS yet, but currently it has most of what the idea is. Codynguyen1116 (talk) 00:26, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Sure. I wouldn't mind asking in a survey, but sure. Berrybrick (talk) 00:30, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
- Good point, I'd support holding off on any change until we see if readers actually find this content useful- it'd be stupid to remove it all only to find people actually wanted it there. That is, if that survey ever actually happens. NovaHawk 05:55, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
Good idea! -- CPplayer ^{Leave a message!} 01:57, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
What would be the point in the site if we got rid of descriptions? :S The only thing that would seperate from other sites would be the background sections, which are much harder to write by the way. Someone may be wondering what the symbol on one varation of a Stormtrooper is or what Maya's skirt is called. Oppose Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
It's not getting rid of every description. You can still say what the symbols and stuff are, because that is useful information.. But do you really think that people will gain something from being told that Batman's trousers are black (as the Batman article no doubt says for every variation). At least we can all agree that the Darth Vader article does this much better than say the way Anakin Skywalker does. Would anyone (including yourself) read that? Even if there is a good piece of information about the symbols on his belt in there, no one will ever find it. Ever. There doesn't need to have every word removed, just...all the crap, useless ones. (summary - I, and I assume most others here, wouldn't even care if we kept descriptions, but they need to be actually reader friendly, not just spurting every bit of information.) CJC95 (talk) 21:45, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
What would updated descriptions even look like? I tried my best to make Olivia's as short as possible, but she lacks detail. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
Well, that would work better if the bit that said "In 41100 Heartlake Private Jet" had a picture of that one next to the description, and "In 41034 Summer Caravan," also had that picture. Pictures would help the description surely. Why should I care what colour her top is in that set if I don't know what it looks like? :P CJC95 (talk) 21:33, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Ok with me. LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:28, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

This is just an idea of a new minifig page layout- obviously the template needs to be made prettier so there aren't awkward white spaces and the tabs need to be layed out differently, but you get the idea. Note the "seaweed" variant has a notes section for important notes about that particular variant, which would replace the description. I think this length background would be good for a max length as well. I dunno, just an idea, let me know what you think. NovaHawk 06:27, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
- Good response. Thanks everyone. NovaHawk 12:13, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  - Well, it was either write a one line nothing response or put off responding until I had time to actually look at it properly and be useful. CJC95 (talk) 13:08, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
  - Overall I'd be interested in seeing a version with the formatting improved. Some potential issues with a) low-res images b) big blank space when no back printing/alternative face c) minifigures with 15 or so variants d) Mobile - it don't work. e) large stretched out infobox on the RHS. CJC95 (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Fan namespace

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Done? I assume so as Fan wiki is here.

Ok, so the LEGO Fanatics Wiki has been imported into the "Fan" namespace. All the Customs and Stories have been imported here, and any userpages from Customs have also been imported (anyone who had userpages on there should have received a message on their talk page here). There are still a few things that need to be cleared up:

Most links won't be working since all pages are in a different namespace. I've made a simple template, {{fan}}, if you want to fix any links (eg, {{fan|Pet Shop Chaos!}} goes to Pet Shop Chaos!)
Categories were not imported in the dump, and I've intentionally not done this as an organised category structure was passed on the wiki before it closed but wasn't implemented, so please don't go around making any categories just because they're redlinks.
Main page needs to be updated to at least acknowledge this part of the site.
Change to Customs infoboxes- for any new customs- just type your name in next to Creator, ie,

Vote/Rating extension broken?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was I guess not

Anyone else having problems leaving a rating or a vote? NovaHawk 12:14, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I thought you meant page ratings, with the ratings for customs I do. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

That hasn't been set up yet, will get it set up in the next 24 hrs or so NovaHawk 12:54, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Should be working now NovaHawk 00:59, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Contests[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Nothing.

Okay are last contest was a mess, I'm (wo?)man enough to admit that, but the fact of the matter is contests get us new viewers and "potentially" new users. We still have all the DTCs of the year and the maze, I doubt reviewing any of them will get much traction (though I personally still want to see Berry's bat cave review, that we never sent despite being green lit :P). I suggest we give away the Star Wars hoth set as that's been reviewed and complained about to death and unless we can add something new (a positive review) I'm not sure it's worth doing. I have an idea for a contest here, User:Soupperson1/JuneContest. It's basic but after the last two contests I don't want any potential negative feedback. We could also use Nova's "coming soon" olympics themed contest, but perhaps we could advertise that to the side of a regular contest as it'll be going on for months. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I don't know what sets we have available since it changes every so often (I think the Batcave is gone). Only Meiko would know. Berrybrick (talk) 14:22, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

I am not aware as to the status of sets to give away. CJC95 (talk) 19:26, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Meiko was kind enough to remind me of what we have on the table: Brick Bank, Assault on Hoth, Classic Batcave, Ghostbusters HQ, Burj Khalifa, Venice, Minifigures Series 15, Disney Minifigures; he says that either the site or the recipient will need to pay the shipping fees though. Berrybrick (talk) 02:26, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Pride month celebration for Brickipedia[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Month passed

June is officially pride month (which includes LGBTQ for example), and in celebration of this I was thinking that we as Brickipedia should do something to celebrate! First idea is to make our logo rainbow-y, although I don't quite have any other ideas. Who supports this? :D Codynguyen1116 (talk) 03:31, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can tell June is only LGBTQ pride month (at least in the US). Are you sure it isn't just sexual pride month? I'm only skimming a Wikipedia article, so please redirect me. :P I'm not fond of this idea though because I think that if we recognized this month it would only be fair to recognize others...that might be kind of fun if we still did themed logos, but I don't know. It's also a political action and I really do not want to politicize things here. Berrybrick (talk) 03:39, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
- Everything is or can be interpreted as a political action. The fact that we don't charge readers, let alone reusers of our content, a fee for accessing the site? Politics. The fact that we don't stamp huge, obtrusive watermarks on our images and/or other media files? Politics. When we support or oppose a proposition? Politics.
  Complete neutrality, while desireable in a way, is probably never possible. Even Wikipedia, Google and several other high-profile websites based in the US spoke against some controversial bills not that many years ago — in ways which were far more radical and visible than just slightly altering the logo. This is, of course, far from being a simple question, but I don't see this being harmful to Brickipedia and/or our mission.
  tl,dr: No objections to Cody's proposal from me. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 03:50, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
  - Fair. But I don't think that this is a necessary political action whereas the issues you've listed are things that we would have to take a stance on just by virtue of being an online encyclopedia. This is an outside agenda though and I am frankly not okay with that. Berrybrick (talk) 12:15, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Cool with me. -- MtMNC (talk) 04:24, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Strong oppose. Not not the month itself or anything, just featuring it on here. This has absolutely nothing to do with Lego and we're a wiki, not Facebook. Basically, same as Berrybrick, I don't want to drag this site into political issues. And I don't think featuring any sexuality issue on a site dedicated to what many perceive to be a little kids toy is remotely appropriate NovaHawk 04:38, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
- I just looked up "LGBTQ", and I agree with Nova. --CP player ~ LEGO rules! 23:32, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
I wrote a long thing but deleted it, as I basically found myself repeating myself a lot. The issue I currently see isn't with the month$ itself (I, and I'm sure everyone here in this forum, is pro-LGBT), but more of the implications - once you take a stand on one thing%, anything you don't take a stand on can be taken as a view - if someone asks us to mark black history or domestic abuse awareness month, we can't say no without making it seem like we oppose them. So, I have nothing against the month, the concept, putting a rainbow in the logo, or promoting LGBT awareness on the wiki - I worry about a precedent being set. Footnotes: ($ - Per Berry, the only thing I can find for pride month is the LGBTQ component. % - I am here including things that don't naturally concern us - yes, things like SOPA are political issues, but they would concern us, as we are a website. I don't see Wikipedia and Google taking a stance on SOPA as radical because it would (potentially) affect them - it is no different to a food manufacturer protesting food packaging laws, or what not. It would be radical if Wikipedia decided that it was going to campaign for abortion rights.) CJC95 (talk) 14:32, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Pretty sure everyone on here is a liberal or at least OK with LGBT+ rights, but I don't think we need to do any advertising of it here. We're a website about LEGO. Ajraddatz (talk) 22:41, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Strong Oppose, per Nova. LegoFan4000 ^talk 00:18, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
If were justing changing the logo for a week, whats the big deal? :P Im more open to celebrating holidays, but this is one of the more tricker ones. I don't think there's any gay characters in any LEGO sets and the only gay actor to have a minifigure is Luke Evans, so we cant write a blog or anything. If you have ideas for anything else, sure. And @ the rest of you Im not sure we should really classify this as a political statement, more than us being inclusive. Its like not celebrating April's Fools or Christmas. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
- We are already inclusive. CJC95 (talk) 10:57, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  - I don't think that there are any LGBTQ "yellow" LEGO characters (though very few of them have any defined sexuality at all) but there are a few licensed ones at least in the Simpsons Series 2 and some video games, and there are some gay pairings BIONICLE fans like to promote even if they are non-canon. On the next note, I'm still going to consider it as a political statement, whether or not it is an "inclusive" one. Berrybrick (talk) 17:25, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
    - Between what Berry said and what Soup said, I think a blog would work, and might be cool. It's not super political (not as much as a logo), and Brickset's certainly written articles with less material to work off of. 108.173.7.175 17:37, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
      - I stand by that doing it at all would be more political than I would like though. :P Berrybrick (talk) 17:50, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
        I'll have a blog done by the end of the month, unless anyone else wants to write it? :P Now what characters do we have Selma? Oaken' Post? :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
        As it is right now, the consensus is not to do anything officially. If you want to make your own blog that's fine (and if you do, I'd be happy to hep fill-out your list), but realize that it can't be an official "Brickipedia" blog. Berrybrick (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
    - I think you forgot about Dareth and Garmadon, Berry. --Knight
(putting this on new line because it's easier to read and it'll be too deeply nested) If Soup doesn't make an unofficial blog for this month I think I'll do it. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 23:25, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

If you want, I won't have it done until Wensday. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

New future template feature[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was New template

We tend to have a lot of articles that have a future template like {{future set}} still on them long after they've been released, I think I caught one from 2014 the other day. Anyway, there's now a way to find these. When you add the template, you can now include a date for the item's scheduled release. Eg, 30350 Volcano Jackhammer will be released on July 15, 2016, so it currently has {{future set|2016|7|15}} on it. On July 15, the set should hopefully be included in Category:Articles that may need to have a future item template removed (that's if the categories update, which as I'm typing, I realise might be doubtful. But even it they're a few months late, it's still better than a few years). Even if you only have the year or month, you can use things like {{future set|2017}} and {{future set|2016|12}} and the articles will be put in the category on January 1, 2017 and December 1, 2016 respectively. Guessing the release date is also fine, it's not information being supplied on the article, it's just a scheduled time to check if the template should be removed. So please date your future templates from now on if you can :) NovaHawk 06:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
- (Watch out for {{future figure}} and {{future figure variant}}, they already have a parameter 1 so for those two templates, it's more like {{future figure|mini-doll figure|2016|9|23}}, {{future figure||2016|9|23}}, etc) NovaHawk 06:15, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
  - I could probably make it so it changes the template to be hidden after the date. I did something similar with {{UpdateAfter}} CJC95 (talk) 13:29, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Okay, done it over at {{Future set/2}}. Feel free to use it and use it on others if you like it. A few notes that will only interest Nova and no one else:
- It currently still shows on the day of release. This can be removed with the = in the <=. (Actually, if you do this let me know first because a slight issue will occur currently...)
- I had to change how it compared dates, as your way had a lot of ifs [things are converted into days using a template I must have stolen from wikipedia a few years ago]. Still I've put functionality back to where it was so its all working as yours did.
- I shifted the semantic assignment and upcoming sets category assingment outside the if so it applies to the set even if the template is hidden. I figured this might be useful? It also might not.
- Finally, I left the "delay" in - this means that it can be set so it is removed five days after release or something like that. This is the fourth option. Defaults to zero. CJC95 (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
Well that's easier than a bunch of if statements :P Probably better to leave it on the day of release, it's more likely someone would remove it on the day of release than any other time. If it disappears on the day of release, noone will see it, so probably not think to remove it. <= {{JULIANDAY| {{{1|{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}} | {{{2|1}}} | {{{3|1}}} + {{{4|0}}} }} might be slightly more efficient than <= {{JULIANDAY| {{{1|{{CURRENTYEAR}}}}} | {{{2|{{CURRENTMONTH}}}}} | {{{3|{{CURRENTDAY}}}}} + {{{4|0}}} }} (probably by like a billionth of a second or something :P), but everything else looks perfect :) NovaHawk 02:02, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Ship pages?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Do what you like in Fan namespace

Should we add ship pages to the Fan: namespace? I'd imagine they'd be popular and could bring us new users. I did a mock up of Jalivia here, User:Soupperson1/Jalivia. I'm 100% willing and ready to do the Friends/Elves ones. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}12:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I guess that head canon would be okay as a "story". Your formatting is good, though I don't know if we would need an infobox for it. Berrybrick (talk) 14:27, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Neutral. LegoFan4000 ^talk 14:29, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

The mock up confuses me a little, because the fan namespace is generally for, well, creative imaginings, whereas yours seems awfully factual. Like, it seems like useful information that, if we were a wiki with "Relationships" sections on mainspace articles, would belong there. Which I guess brings another point to mind; if this ends up passing, I'd say it's only fair to extend it to platonic relationships as well, or enemy-ship, etc., not just romantic. 108.173.4.124 16:20, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

We need to have a namespace for that in universe based stuff like the stuff that doesn't make it on to here but makes it on to the mixers wiki and BZPower, but right now I think Fan is the best place for it. I was thinking the relationships should really revolve around the main or note worthy characters, whatever type it is. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Different relationships (and more :D ) is why I suggest extending it to head-canon because it doesn't make sense to limit it to just relationships. Like, if someone wants to compile some notes on Kai's secret life as a ballerina and we would allow pages "shipping" him with Eris, there shouldn't be an issue there. The concern I have (aside from the amount of garbage we would no doubt get, but I guess that is part of the fun? :P ) would lie with keeping content "clean"; Kai as a ballerina should be okay, but that Legends of Chima is all a hallucination that Cragger had after taking Chi? Probably not. I think things like that are more of an issue than whether people ship "important" characters or not. If you want this as a way to report on actual subtext in actual media, then that isn't what the fan space is for. :P Berrybrick (talk) 18:28, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I was hoping we'd keep to canon ships with facts and then move it to semi fan if we ever got it. If you wanted to do the Kai/Eris ballet fan fiction why not make a story? :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I thought this was about shipping anyone and everyone, but if it's just about subtextual couples then you've got me. :P Berrybrick (talk) 19:41, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

It;s the fan namespace. Why does this need discussion? CJC95 (talk) 20:35, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Fan isn't in a free for all, though if we're too afraid to get rid of those spam pages? :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

UCS. CJC95 (talk) 21:33, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Please no. Per CJC. Stick a small paragraph in each character's background section if absoutely necessary, but it definitely doesn't need a whole article. NovaHawk 00:39, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

If we did all the Nya/Jay moments it would be longer then the background :P Prehaps subsections like Olivia/Relationships? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

We don't need to record every single thing they ever said something to each other or were in the same room ;) Take [2] - just a short paragraph for every relationship (Mara's by far the longest, but she would have also been in at least 50+ novels with Luke) 10:57, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

I like the idea of a relationships section to be included under background. But what about a Main Article? :P People are invested in ships, anything romantic could be listed? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

@Nova - this is about it being on fan. CJC95 (talk) 19:47, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

That's what I thought, then it seemed like mainspace later on? Maybe I just got confused. I'm totally fine with it being in the fan namespace NovaHawk 00:03, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

If the intent is to convey actual relevant information though that's not what the fan space is for. Unless we are going to allow fan articles on flux capacitors and green t-shirts? LEGO Uncyclopedia ahoy? Berrybrick (talk) 01:20, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Well I figured it'd be more like people's interpretations of a relationship or what could be a relationship moreso than something based on concrete fact. For example, anything with Jay and Nya based on solid fact could be worked into background sections if deemed noteworthy, anything just based on what fans want or think would be for the fan page. Any relationships not explicitly established (eg "LLoya") could be just on a fan page and obviously not mainspace. I guess what I'd be more ok with is a "fan theory" subsection of Fans in addition to customs, stories and art, and this would just be a subsection of the fan theory supercategory. I'm not completely sold on the idea of having these kinds of pages, "totally fine" just meant neutral (not opposing in any way so fine if it goes ahead, but not really supporting either). NovaHawk 08:19, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I wanted it fan mainly so people wouldn't be flicking through random pages and think we're avid Cole and Jay shippers. Here's my two cents:We have a small relationships under background like the Luke one Nova mentioned and then at the bottom we say Main Article:Jole, and then it links to Fan with their moments together. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

The fan space should never be linked to from the main space. Wouldn't that be like Wikipedia saying "Read more about Iron Man here!" and link to fanfiction.com? A relationships subsection is fine though. Berrybrick (talk) 15:15, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

As if we're as professional as Wikipedia, but fanfiction.com <3 Point taken :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Stop treating DC and Marvel as subthemes?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Split them

Just wondering people think about not having DC Comics and Marvel as subthemes of Super Heroes, and instead rename the pages "DC Comics Super Heroes" and "Marvel Super Heores". To me they're more like parallel themes as they don't really share any of the same characters, universe, etc so it doesn't make sense to have them under the same theme :S NovaHawk 06:33, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
- I understand your thinking behind this but I'm having a hard time figuring if it's the best route to take or not. Neutral for now. --ToaMeiko (talk) 16:52, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
- I believe it was only listed as one theme when it was introduced at NYCC, I agree they should be seperated now as they haven't been grouped together since.. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Vote

Split

NovaHawk 06:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
*shrug* - in some places they already are it seems. CJC95 (talk) 23:53, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Don't split

Comments

Enacting

This needs to be enacted. When we have enacted it, please note it here so we can archive this. If there are any issues with implementing this, then discuss below. CJC95 (talk) 00:25, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Infobox colours changed, Marvel moved to Marvel Super Heroes, DC Comics moved to DC Comics Super Heroes. The only problem is what to do with Super Heroes- I was going to turn it into a disambig page, but then I saw it's an FA and would feel bad doing that NovaHawk 01:58, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
- The content seems mostly split into theme sections, so we can not take the DC stuff, move it there, Marvel stuff, move it there and make them both FAs, then leave any other stuff on the Super Heroes page / make it a redirect. CJC95 (talk) 12:51, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

(Re-)Enabling Gifts (and more!)[edit source]

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

The SocialProfile extension, which provides avatars, structured social user profile pages and more, contains some features which are not (yet) enabled on Brickipedia. These features include system gifts, or awards, which are automatically handed out by the wiki software after a user reaches certain thresholds, which administrators can configure; such as having 5 friends or having made 50 (mainspace) edits, and so on.
Then there are gifts, ordinary user-to-user gifts which users can give out to each other after administrators have set up some gifts.

Friends and foes are pretty self-explanatory, and to a degree, this "feature" does exist, but many references to it have been "hacked out" or explicitly toggled off; as such, the amount of friends (and/or foes) isn't prominently shown in the User Interface of the site. Some special pages, like Special:TopFansByStatistic, expose the amount (but not the "who's whose friend" relations normally shown on profile pages) of friends, for example. And edit count, on the other hand, has been public info for a long time.

Finally there's the User Board and the related Board Blast feature. User Boards are visible on users' profiles and they allow users to easily post a message — even a private message — to each other, without having to go to the user's talk page. Board Blast allows to send a user board message to multiple recipients at once.

In the bug ticket linked to earlier on, ToaMeiko noted his concern about the possible abuse of these tools (specifically the gifting feature) as well as the extra burden of work these tools can create for administrators. I don't share this concern nor the conclusions. Why? Because with everything, especially so on a wiki, things can and will be abused by malicious people. That's life. But just because someone decides to vandalize the LEGO page doesn't mean we put the wiki in full lock-down mode. Likewise, I believe that gifts and other such features mentioned above can be used to promote positive user interaction and engagement, and as such, these tools should be available to our users. If someone abuses them, we will simply ensure that the user in question can't do that anymore.

It is, of course, up to the community to decide how to use these and what policies, if any, govern their usage. But again, we assume a lot of things already and give our users some leeway — there are no technical restrictions on making 50 consecutive, single-character edits in order to bump up one's edit count; there are social limitations which, directly or indirectly, imply that such behavior is neither desired nor tolerated.
Jimbo Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, might be a controversial person with controversial opinions, but I think that his steak knife analogy is quite fitting for this situation.

tl,dr: Let's re-enable a bunch of features (gifts, awards, user boards, friends & foes) present in SocialProfile by default. Who's with me? --Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:45, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Support

Obviously. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:45, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:48, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Codynguyen1116 (talk) 21:50, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
Like Meiko, I'm against having foes enabled though NovaHawk 22:36, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
Sure, like Nova and Meiko I'm not sure about the benefits of foes, but the rest sounds great. Getting those badges on wiki was a popular feature, so I'm sure gifts will be too. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
But not foes! Ajraddatz (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

Weak oppose per my comment but won't prevent this from being passed if I'm the only opposition. --ToaMeiko (talk) 04:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

My 2 cents: Friends - We can have these but I don't see any fundamental reason why. The way I see it, our community is so tight knit, everyone would be friends with each other... We're not a social network and I don't think there's ever anyone here who doesn't know every other active user. We have no need for foes and even back when we had friends, we didn't have foes. I don't think foes is a constructive feature. I don't like UserBoard either. Everything it's good for can be done on talk pages or in email. Having two places where you leave messages for other users confuses people and many people never know when to set it to private or public (e.g. when it's used for contests and they're asked to set it to private, hardly anyone does that). There's also no notifications for new Board messages, except for in automated emails which get flagged as spam. Gifts I don't see a need for either, but awards maybe. However, that requires an admin set them up and keep them "fresh", which requires time out of admins' already-busy workload. We had a ton of badges at Wikia and transferring that over to here will be nothing but a nightmare and frustration that will take time away from doing more essential things around here our admins are tasked with. IMO the current social features we have are enough. --ToaMeiko (talk) 04:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)
- Everybody should be friends with each other, indeed, yet things like Facebook are amazingly popular nevertheless. :) Humans are social beings, and we cannot blindly stare at statistics and such. For example, one could argue that MediaWikiChat is a mere social addition to the wiki and is not relevant since it doesn't directly increase the amount of (quality) edits. That would be true. And likely the same would also be true for friend (and/or foe) lists. But people like having those things around as they improve the wiki's atmosphere and bring editors together. So why not?
  
  Regarding foes: you wouldn't be the first person to suggest that it's an unneeded/unwanted feature, and I understand that it might be controversial. To understand this feature, you need to understand some of the underlying history. Social tools were first developed at ArmchairGM, which was (well, technically "is", but...) a sports wiki. The developers, as well as pretty much all users were American. Needless to say, some people on the wiki had strong opinions about certain sports-related things, which differed from other people's views. This is, to my understanding, how the foes feature came to be. Furthermore, the feature is also related to the Challenge extension, which, as the name suggests, allowed challenging other users. Although I don't know how it was used in practise, but the theoretical goal was to fuel wiki growth and quality edits via foeships — people who were foes would challenge each other and the loser would need to edit a certain wiki page or somesuch. All this being said, though, personally I feel that people are somehow (too) intimidated by the name "foes" — it has been around for a long time, much like social tools in general, and I have yet to see people abuse it in some way.
  UserBoard is another attempt at solving the ages-old problem with talk pages — or in this case, as the name suggests, the problem with user talk pages. Talk pages are like a blank sheet of paper, and depending on who you are and what your background with computers and/or wikis in general is, this may or may not be a good thing. Because users are the heart and the soul of essentially any wiki out there, lowering the barrier to entry is important. Having a more structured mechanism (UserBoard) might prove to be useful to some newer users, because a blank sheet of paper (normal wiki talk pages) can be confusing. That being said, it's not a this-or-that choice, if and when both exist; people can choose whichever option they prefer.
  
  Regarding notifications: that's not totally correct. There are notifications, but — once again due to historical reasons — they're not as obvious as you'd think. Many wikis with SocialProfile have the UserWelcome extension (actually bundled with SocialProfile for years) and the WikiTextLoggedInOut extension installed, which allows them to have something like <loggedin><welcomeUser ></loggedout> on the Main Page, which then shows the user's personal social info to them if they're logged in. Needless to say, this is quite archaic when you take into account the fact that Echo has been a thing for a few years now. You'll be pleased to know I've submitted an experimental, definitely-nowhere-near-ready-for-production changeset to address phab:T64520 to bring Echo support to SocialProfile. I believe we can get it finished in a reasonable time. Testers & developers welcome! ;-)
  The "emails get flagged as spam", which is largely a separate issue, is likely an issue with the big email providers like Google — their automated algorithms mark MW emails as spam for a variety of reasons (which we can't know for sure) and contacting them about this is hard, if not outright impossible. One possible reason could be that since most installations don't bother customizing these emails and there are a lot of MW wikis out there, Google sees a lot of really similar emails and thinks "well, the difference is only a few characters (username/IP/site name/site URL), but since it matches a certain pattern, it's probably spam". So one possible workaround could be to customize the emails, but I realize it can be hard to do and it doesn't really scale (because of i18n, for example).
  I'm not sure why awards would need to be kept "fresh" — they're largely (IMO) a "set up once and forget about it" thing. Setting them up initially will take a few minutes, but I'll be more than glad to do that once we have a consensus on them (names/thresholds/images). --Jack Phoenix (talk) 12:44, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Implementation

So, this clearly passed. Which means someone has to do it - I know that everyone here prefers endlessly discussing things to doing them, but we should probably enact some of them occasionally. CJC95 (talk) 19:45, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know what the configuratory variables for Gift, also I'm pretty sure our SocialProfile extension is heavily coded with hacks and customized (or maybe it's not anymore) so I don't know if those databases for gift, system_gift, user_gift and user_system_gift are still existing or not. If they're not, someone smarter than me who has backend access and knows how to use the backend (because I sure as hell don't, unfortunately :P). @Jack Phoenix:, do you know how to enable it? I don't see it anywhere on the MediaWiki documentation, hmm.. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 06:43, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
- @SamanthaNguyen: Thanks for the ping! So I took a look at this — the appropriate database tables are still present in this wiki's database (and on every other wiki's, it would seem, which is nice). I commented out the two lines which disabled Special:GiveGift and the Special:ViewGifts special pages and added a few lines (right below 'em) which enable more statistics on the social user profile pages.
  We're no longer using a hacked version of SocialProfile, thankfully. Should we ever need to make changes to the core functionality of SocialProfile, I'd much rather prefer we do it with hooks and whatnot — so that the end result is somewhat more maintainable than a bunch of hacks and so that it doesn't prevent us from upgrading SocialProfile (speaking of which, I think the version we're currently using is at least slightly outdated; somewhat relatedly, we'd really need to finish the Echo patch and have it merged & deployed, I think it'd enhance the user experience on Brickipedia quite nicely). Since I'm the maintainer and main contributor to SocialProfile these days, I'm more than open to discussion and making patches to support Brickipedia. :)
  Because we're doing some "unsupported" things — the whole "avatars, etc. are global" stuff — there is at least one bug I've been able to spot so far: I have two friends on this wiki, and they're now displayed (correctly) on my profile. But since user relationship data is also shared, these friends show up on my profile page on other wikis (e.g. Meta, GBC), but the count is incorrect (it should show "2 of 2" on other wikis, but instead it shows "0 of 0"); likewise, Special:ViewRelationships also claims that I have 0 friends (on other wikis). We'll need to file a ticket and look into this; feel free to do that, Samantha, if I don't get to it first. There are probably other things that need to be configured, so ping me if and when you stumble upon those. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 10:04, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
  - It works for me. Currently there is one gift, which is a gold brick. LegoFan4000 ^talk 11:35, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
We do have one problem I've found- you can't assign images to gifts. I'm guessing this is because uploading is disabled on en NovaHawk 00:43, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
- It was working for me. LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:10, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

LEGO set offer requests[edit source]

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

We used to handle this on Admin, but since that's been abolished, where do we want to do it now? Someplace like Forums where we discuss it or something sort of like FA and BotM where it gets its own page where we can vote or discuss? I would almost suggest giving something to BoTM or people who have otherwise done a lot of good stuff, but someone would have to pay for shipping. Moreover, do admins get first dibs, at least so we can set stuff aside for special occasions without requests taking up everything? Where can we find an easy access list of available sets? Tthat might be a small detraction to having it here. A policy should probably be drawn up. Any other things we ought to discuss? (And, in case it is relevant, this is what we've currently got: Brick Bank, Assault on Hoth, Classic Batcave, Ghostbusters HQ, Burj Khalifa, Venice, Minifigures Series 15, Disney Minifigures; Meiko is holding onto them right now, so I don't think we are in danger of losing them, but LEGO probably wants to see us using them.) Thank you many grazis. Berrybrick (talk) 02:43, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Pardon for doing this as an anon. I think it would be nice to, at least as a start, have the exact same pages/system as we had on the admin wiki. Including that helpful table of what has currently been purchased, and what resources are left. Maybe an added column on what the set's current state is too (for example, "In Meiko's temporary possession"), because I can't remember if we had that before. For BotM, I always thought that the honour/template was enough of a rush. :P It would be nice to give them something small, like a CMF, but I believe the last time that was discussed, it was decided that the shipping costs to do that were ridiculous? It would be great if there was something digital we could give away... In response to LEGO wanting to see us using the sets, and regarding how late it is to review some them, any ideas on other stuff we could do with them, something that might be creative or get us some press? Nothing immediately comes to mind (I'll update this if something does later), but you guys may have ideas. 108.173.7.175 16:05, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

We don't have a budget anymore, but LEGO offers us certain sets, which is why Meiko has them. If I remember correctly, we can still ask for sets that they haven't offered, but I don't think it would be good practice to do that when we haven't used the ones they have given us well. Berrybrick (talk) 17:17, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with everything else though. :P Except for maybe that it is too late to review them; Meiko's reviews have been "late" before, but still brought in a good amount of views. The only one I think might be absolutely too late to review is Series 15. Maybe if we had representation at BrickFair or something (which I don't know if Meiko is still interested in doing) we could just hand them out? Berrybrick (talk) 02:21, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

If I got a free minifigure I wouldn't necessarily check to see the website of the person who gave it to me. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

No, but it is better to do something with them than nothing at all. That isn't to say that there are no better ideas, however. Berrybrick (talk) 15:50, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Meiko got this email sometime recently. Berrybrick (talk) 00:25, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, don't have input on this one really - Not a good review writer (or writer in general), and also I don't know how it was like on Admin originally. If we legitimately don't have a budget anymore than that means it being a lot more conservative and wise with how we use them, whether if we build it and write a review or use it for a contest and if we can manage contests well and how well we can make a contest. Basically overall, no ideas, sorry :( I'll try to keep up with some if I can though! SamanthaNguyen (talk) 06:19, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Is this okay? Because if not, please say something before I Tweet it. Berrybrick (talk) 04:34, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I would try to make it more clear that shipping is paid by the reviewer/contest host, right now it's just tacked on at the bottom. Also, if Meiko is up for it, listing weights of the sets? I think that a limitation rule should be implemented as well, e.g. "If you have received a set in the past 6 months you may not receive another." Other than that, looks good to me. Brikkyy Talk 07:12, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll find the weights on Brickset or Bricklink, and I'll work on making the shipping part more obvious. I'm not too worried about expressly limiting people. If it seems like they are asking for too many sets, I think that is a valid oppose. Berrybrick (talk) 14:58, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Descriptive Videos on Set Articles[edit source]

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

Sorry for doing a second posting as an anon, but a thought popped in my head during the discussion of "what to do with sets"/"what could the wiki use", and I wanted to post it before I forget. You know how in Descriptions, when talking about a function like "applying pressure to the two joints at the side will cause the gears to move, which moves up the wings and creates...", might it be helpful to have little clips of these features in action, to act as a bit of a visual aid? It's something that would set us apart from other sites (& Brickia), something that is genuinely useful (you don't have to hunt down a review, skim through the whole thing to find the clip, etc.), something that adds clarity when the descriptions are too complex to explain with few words, etc. Most of us, I imagine, have the capacitiy to record and upload short clips. And for sets that none of us own, maybe we can get permission from people like LEGOJANG to download, cut out (maybe mute talking), and upload these tiny portions from their video reviews? Ooh, actually, contrary to the idea of muting, it would actually be great to get and post some audio from sound bricks that LEGO has included in their sets. Anyway, hope that this idea seems helpful, and do-able. Let me know your thoughts. 108.173.7.175 16:21, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Though I am skeptical that anyone would ever do anything (me included :P ) a large YES. One question though, if two sets have an identical feature (I'm thinking the turntable waists on this year's Toa) would a video that showed how the function worked using a Tahu set be acceptable on Gali's article? Berrybrick (talk) 17:30, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
- The "skeptical anyone would do anything" was an issue, I realize. However, everyone has a smartphone, I assume, so a quick vid isn't a huge investment like, say, a review. When I get back, I'd definitely be happy to work on this. As for the identical features thing, yes, I think that would work, so long as a note/caption is included explaining they are identical. 108.173.7.175 17:40, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
  - I don't have a smartphone. :D I do have a camera though, so I guess that doesn't relieve me. :P I would like to see some guidelines on this though, such as what the audio should be (muted with no background noise or obnoxious music, please). Berrybrick (talk) 17:47, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
    - I wouldn't say muting is always necessary, since some might count the "clicks" and stuff as part of the experience. But yeah, definitely nothing other than the set itself included audio-wise. 108.173.7.175 17:58, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
      - I'm just worried that the audio won't be very clean. Maybe that won't be an issue if we get permission from YouTube reviewers, but I could see it being one if it were just any old one with a smartphone. :P Berrybrick (talk) 18:20, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
- (Who are you Mr. Anon? :P). All sounds great, like Berrybrick I don't know if we'd get it to happen, but I'd be happy to allow them in articles NovaHawk 00:42, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
- My only issue is if we link off to the YouTubers there's a strong possibility we could loose a portion of our readers to them. Unless we just watermark the videos with their name and don't link them? But that seems pretty bad out. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
  - I'm not quite sure I follow. We provide a very different service than YouTube reviewers. "I wish I had more information on the Power Miners theme. I know; I'll watch all of LEGOJANG's Power Miners reviews! It'll only take a few hours and I'm sure to get all of the story information!" :P 108.181.132.192 15:28, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
    - I mean on set pages, if they're just looking for images of the set they'll go "ooh I could watch a video instead". While we're supposed to be an encyclopedia we currently do not have enough editors to prove that. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}
      - I don't see what is wrong with this. Why would we not give readers what they want if it is in our power to do so? (I know that that isn't ethically sound, but I don't mean for us to take it that far. :P ) Berrybrick (talk) 17:22, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
      - Honestly, if we have any competition in that regard, that would be Brickset. Watching a video is a completely different experience from reading a Bricki page. Jang brings it a bit closer by adding some information at the front of his videos, with things like prices and the like... which he gets from Brickset. :P Long story short, a review is depth and opinion, while we're breadth and objectivity. Also per Berry. 19:22, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Creating articles for 'subthemes' that appear in both Ideas and Dimensions[edit source]

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

I had the idea to create articles for 'subthemes' such as Back to the Future and Doctor Who, which both have their own Ideas sets and Dimensions packs. In particular, it's somewhat odd to refer to certain minifigures as being from the "Ideas" theme or the "Dimensions" theme. While of course, that is necessary, it would be nice to also have a separate article for all of the LEGO BTTF & DW sets/media. These proposed articles would pretty much look like the Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope article. From what I've seen, this is acceptable by the MOS, but I have yet to see any of their type. This is intended to be a general discussion, as I'd like to see opinions on this idea. LCF ^(talk!) 20:57, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't be bothered. Even if we had articles for things which only appear in Dimensions, like Oz. Berrybrick (talk) 21:04, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Per Berry, the pages would be really small and probably could fit on the main Dimensions page. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Berry doesn't appear to be dissenting... LCF ^(talk!) 23:14, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

If you're reading it quickly, it's easy to misinterpret it as meaning "couldn't be bothered", as I did the first time. :P I'm guessing that's how Soup read it. 96.51.149.32 23:30, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

^Thanks anon, who I must assume is BFN. :P Soupperson1 ^Jeepers!

Like Soup, I think they can stick to the Dimensions page- they're not actual themes (so I don't see how it's "acceptable by the MoS" since it doesn't even mention these), and most of these pages would be about one set. Maybe if we did pages on licenses, I don't know :S NovaHawk 23:40, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

While a lot of these (like Oz) might be small for their own subpages (I don't think so, I'm pretty sure we have smaller, but idk offhand), they're still the names of very popular properties and, as such, will be searched for by people who may not necessarily want to read "Dimensions" as a whole. At very least, if we don't make subpages, perhaps add them as sections to Dimensions that can be redirected to instead of just the main page? 96.51.149.32 00:01, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

We don't do that already? Redriecting like that's definitely how it should be done NovaHawk 00:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

That would be a lot of subsections. That doesn't looks good. I'd suggest a list page before that, but again, I'm fine with them having their own articles. Berrybrick (talk) 00:23, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, that doesn't always look the best, which is why I might lean a bit towards creating pages. But we at very least need something. 96.51.149.32 00:30, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I think we should have somewhere that talks about all the worlds/universes/whatever (I don't play Dimensions :P) but you're right, the main theme page probably isn't the place NovaHawk 00:32, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't be against making an article similar to List of The LEGO Movie Worlds and Locations for subject matters such as The Wizard of Oz, Portal, Adventure Time, etc. which appear only in Dimensions. However, if I didn't already make it clear enough, I was specifically talking about franchises such as BTTF and DW, which do not have a respective parent theme - they belong to both LEGO Ideas and LEGO Dimensions, so placing all of the information for either franchise in either the Ideas or Dimensions articles wouldn't be correct. That's where my dilemma arose. The only possible solution would be to create separate articles or not create them at all - but like Nova pointed out, I suppose, the MOS doesn't actually say anything about that. Perhaps for situations such as these, there could be amendments to the MOS? LCF ^(talk!) 01:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

It looks like we're not getting any more BTTF/Who stuff (I think someone on Eurobricks confirmed no more Doctor Who or Simpsons) so we could probably leave them with the rest as subsections on Dimensions, but link to the ideas set. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

21304 Doctor Who --LCF ^(talk!) 19:21, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

That's only one set that came out the same time as Dimensions, my argument still stands. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

We've sort of been doing this already with The Simpsons and Disney being separate from Minifigures. Can we go ahead? It's not like there won't be interest for them, so I don't see why not. Berrybrick (talk) 01:52, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Discontinue ROTM and COTM[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Shut them down

I'd like to shut these two down- we hardly get BOTM nominations as it is, and I don't think why positive contributions to the site can't be recognised on the main page nomatter the namespace a user might mainly contribute to- it's still all Brickipedia after all. Thoughts? NovaHawk 03:07, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Okay. Berrybrick (talk) 03:11, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

I cannot recall any ROTMs or COTMs in two years, and with the merging of everything, I don't see why not. Latenightguy (talk) 03:21, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

support - we have a small community too, so we have a pretty limited set of choices. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 06:06, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
Support I don't see why a BOTM can't help out all sections. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Technical links[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Resolved LegoFan4000 ^talk 22:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Do we need links to GitHub and Phabricator on the main page? They're only used by technical peoples and a couple of regulars aren't they? NovaHawk 13:15, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
- They cn be helpful at times, and I think most of us use both of those services. LegoFan4000 ^talk 14:11, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
  - I don't. :P I'm not most of us, though. Berrybrick (talk) 19:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
    - Actually I do use GitHub when I'm directed there. Maybe if the link made it clear that that is for bug reports (which it might...I don't know :P) it would make sense to keep. I don't know what Phabricator is though. Berrybrick (talk) 19:51, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
      - Phabricator, at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/, is the new (for us, anyway) bug/issue/feature request tracking platform. It's free and open source software, initially developed at Facebook (more info on the relevant Wikipedia page). Brickimedia doesn't really use GitHub anymore (save for some non-MediaWiki things? I'm not sure to be honest), so please file all your bug reports, feature requests, etc. on Phabricator and don't forget to add the Brickimedia tag; Phabricator is used by lots of other projects, including but not limited to most of the Wikimedia Foundation's as well as third-party MediaWiki extensions and skins, so adding the tag helps everyone to find the relevant issue and avoids WMF people from incorrectly closing (etc.) our issues as invalid or somesuch.
        You'll should be able to log in with your Wikimedia (i.e. Wikipedia/MediaWiki.org/etc.) account; see mw:Phabricator/FAQ and mw:Phabricator/Help for more info and don't hesitate to ask if you have any further questions or concerns — I know this can be very confusing! --Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:26, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
- Well yeah, many of us use them, but what I mean is the main page is for readers moreso than regular users, what kind of reader would find it useful to go and look at the code behind the website? NovaHawk 00:46, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
That depends on the answer to the following question: Who is the main page intended for? And what is it's purpose? CJC95 (talk) 11:19, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
- Okay, while I'll answer my PoV. The main page is for visitors. I say that because I only visit it once a year, but also because if I go to Wikipedia's mainpage, I don't expect to see things like phabricator. That being said, I didn't even notice them there when I was critiquing the Main Page yesterday. Even so, they need to be white if we are keeping them. I don't think we even use GitHub anymore... CJC95 (talk) 14:45, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
  - All the icons are now black. LegoFan4000 ^talk 19:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
    - But white looked better :P CJC95 (talk) 19:12, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
      - I went with black, because I couldn't find a version of the phab logo in white. LegoFan4000 ^talk 20:57, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Vote

Keep

No reason not to. LegoFan4000 ^talk 19:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I might be misunderstanding, but I think it makes sense to have a link to "report a bug". "Github" and "Phabricator" probably don't make that very clear though. Berrybrick (talk) 01:49, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
I've got nothing against having a link on the sidebar or whatever saying "report a bug" like you said, but bug reporting is a very different thing to social media so grouping them together makes no sense. And grouping two icons most people would be unfamiliar with with other well-known social media icons makes it look like they're some form of social media as well. NovaHawk 04:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
That makes sense. I thought this was just about leaving them on the main page. Berrybrick (talk) 14:26, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Remove

NovaHawk 00:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Mabye if we threw them at the bottom with some zany phrase like "Like coding? Join us at github!". Otherwise the main page is mainly for our readers, (which are supposed to be) kids. If they start following us the social meid's they could confused with GitHub. :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Comments

At the very least they should be white to match the other icons NovaHawk 00:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
- All the icons are now black. LegoFan4000 ^talk 19:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
  - And they don't go with the blue/white colourscheme that the rest of the page has. NovaHawk 01:15, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Not really sure.. Also, would like to point this out: FontAwesome is installed on all the wikis here, so we can have consistent sizes and styling (plus easily make them white with CSS since it's an iconfont project) - This is what it'd look like:

<div class="social-icons">
     <i class="fa fa-facebook" aria-hidden="true"></i> 
     <i class="fa fa-google-plus" aria-hidden="true"></i>
     <i class="fa fa-twitter" aria-hidden="true"></i>
     <i class="fa fa-youtube" aria-hidden="true"></i>
     <i class="fa fa-github" aria-hidden="true"></i>
</div>

With this in CSS, we'd set .social-icons .fa to color: #fff;, Which would look like this using the #css parser function:

.social-icons .fa {
     color: #fff;
}

There is no FontAwesome icon for the Phabricator logo, but we can manipulate this SVG icon. Since it's an <svg> element, we can remove this declaration fill="#333" and replace the attribute value to transparent. The fill sets the background of an SVG, so this would make the background transparent. Hope that makes sense. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:22, 15 July 2016 (UTC) Edit: This would be an improvement from image files, since they can't be easily manipulated compare to an HTML element customizable with just a few simple lines of CSS.

A question about ads[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Resolved LegoFan4000 ^talk 22:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to know whether Brickipedia makes money just from me viewing ads? I disabled my adblocker because I want to support the independent Brickipedia, I loathe Wikia and I obviously want en.brickimedia to succeed because competing against an out of date version of your own website really does suck.

That said, I never click an ad, only view them so is it worth me keeping my adblocker disabled? Thanks alot, Lachlan (talk) 18:51, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi, I wouldn't worry about it- I block ads too :P I mean, it'd be great if you did want to click them every so often, it does make a small amount of money, but they have be clicked pretty rarely otherwise the ad people ignore your clicks as they're obvious clicks to try and generate money and not view the ads. But don't feel pressured to not view the site ad-free :) NovaHawk 00:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

As long as the ads here stay acceptable here (as in not in the content like Wikia started doing again) I'll probably keep it disabled. If I'm ever out and about using Brickipedia I might click one and help you out a tiny bit :P Thanks, Lachlan (talk) 10:32, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

There are no ads for logged-in users. LegoFan4000 ^talk 12:00, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes there is. CJC95 (talk) 12:39, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Only the bottom one. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Only in refreshed, but, at least not in vector. LegoFan4000 ^talk 21:04, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Well I am in Refreshed and the only advert I see is the one at the bottom. Lachlan (talk) 21:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

I doubt ads are setup properly on the other skins, as hardly anyone uses them. CJC95 (talk) 21:08, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

We get a small amount of money from viewing the ads (a few cents / day). Don't worry about it one way or the other - one person viewing or clicking on the ads isn't going to make the difference! Ajraddatz (talk) 23:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Current state of ratings (@admins)[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Resolved LegoFan4000 ^talk 22:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I noticed Berrybrick wondering why we have two "complete" ratings in the ChangeRating special page. This is because of when we redid ratings a while back- Class 2 was to be renamed Complete and Class 1 was to be removed, and it was to be decided for each C1 article as to whether it was to go to FA or Complete. Basically, the top "complete" is actually "class 2" and should never be used- use the bottom one which is actually "complete". As we don't have a C1/good anymore, you should never assign C1 to an article- it's only there simply so the current C1s display C1 instead of nothing/Standard (which is a rating below the current "complete"). Maybe one day we'll have a forum where we vote on each C1 as to whether it should go to FA, C2 or (if it's actually bad and should never have been C1 in the first place) Standard, but I'm working on other stuff right now and don't really see anyone else setting it up :S NovaHawk 00:01, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. If we can decide on where that would be done, I could set up a few entries...I'm sure that we wouldn't want to be voting on dozens of articles at once, but a few would be good to start. Berrybrick (talk) 00:13, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
- I removed them. LegoFan4000 ^talk 00:40, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
  - If they were meant to be removed, I would have removed them as soon as the change took page. The whole point was to keep them there so they'd still display on pages and we'd be able to keep track of the pages that need to be re-evaluated or moved from C2 to CA. NovaHawk 01:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Brickipedia:Forum/Class 1 article re-evaluation is now up and running NovaHawk 01:07, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

User Rights[edit source]

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

Admins can give admin rights on Brickipedia and only Brickipedia. But, on every other wiki admin can't do that. Crats can. On Brickipedia admins and crats were merged but not in the other wikis. On meta admins can add chatmods but on Brickipedia they can't. I am proposing that we merge admin and crat on the other wikis and let Brickipedia admins add chatmods. LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

This is up to each of those wikis individually. You could probably bypass some of that though by discussing it on a meta policy forum with subsections for each wiki; you'd want to make sure that the admins and whatever community of those sites knows about it though, and for that reason, I would suggest keeping it on their own sites. And obviously, don't bother with Customs. :P –Berry

Other wikis being? –CJC

Ideas, GBC, Meta.LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Ideas: Not a community we have involvement in (also not a community with users....) GBC: Independent project Meta: Will make no difference to anything really. –CJC

As far as I know, Meta and Ideaas were still meant to be shutting down anyway, but noone's done anything about it. GBC is completely independent of us. (and this kind of policy stuff belongs on Brickipedia:Forum, Wikiforum's just for general discussion) -Nova

(from wikiforum)

(pretty sure this is the right place for this)

Putting this down here because otherwise too deep of nesting. Also I comment how I wanna comment. :P @NovaHawk: Sorry, I don't have control on closing the sites, I'm pretty sure only NXT or George can close the sites. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 17:45, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Opinions on this

I would also like to repost that we add an autopatroller group separate from the patroller group. LegoFan4000 ^talk 16:17, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I think just as useful a discussion would be as to what patroller is for. I don't know if we really need everyone who makes a few good edits to be autopatrolled. CJC95 (talk) 19:43, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Per CJC. I think that patrollers aren't something we need a lot of because we don't need a lot of edits to be patrolled. That does sort of ask the question of why have those rights at all if we've merged admin, bureaucrat, and chat mod all together, but patroller is probably a good right for people looking for adminship. I'd rather see it requested and reviewed than just handed out. As for autopatrol, I don't think that we are getting enough edits that patrolling is some overwhelming chore. It does make sense that this would be something handed out, but I do think that a lot of the users who have gotten it recently probably shouldn't have it. Berrybrick (talk) 21:48, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Well Berry explained everything for me, not enough edits to be patrolled :P Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Minifigure poses in infobox[edit source]

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

Personally I prefer if the minifigure poses in the infobox and we use the face on one in the gallery of variants. Thoughts? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

I don't think that this is something which really has to go into the MoS. When editing the page, do whatever you think looks best as long as you are following the MoS and not instigating edit wars. UCS, basically. Berrybrick (talk) 21:51, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd much prefer to see the actual minifigure and all its printing than it being twisted in some stupid position. But yeah, I don't think it needs to be in the MoS. If there's some sort of conflict it can be brought up on the article's talk page NovaHawk 22:25, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

So do you pefer the Tink in http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/71040_The_Disney_Castle#Minifigures_included or the one on Tinker Bell? Soupperson1 ^Jeepers!

Well I'd prefer the one in the gallery so you could see the full body printing since the wand's out of the way. The one in the infobox isn't bad though, definitely not enough to make me want to change it, I'm talking some of the poses with arms out/legs bent and side-on like some of the images they have. NovaHawk 00:08, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Instructions links[edit source]

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

(I'm going to have to read those new really long subtheme entries above sometime aren't I? :P). Quick question- does anyone remember how we're meant to be doing instructions links- are we using the template which goes in External links, doing it through the infobox or both? I've completely forgotten and wasn't really involved in the instruction template stuff in the first place. Of course having links in either place is much better than nowhere, just wondering which way we're doing it :) NovaHawk 23:31, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I think the infobox link is the more recent one, but I don't remember either. I don't know if I even contributed to the forums back then. :P Berrybrick (talk) 04:28, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

The LEGO Batman Movie stuff[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was separate theme

Are we treating this as a subtheme of DC or a separate thing? I was thinking it should be separate since it's a whole theme set in a non-standard DC universe. But all the characters we know of are DC- I guess it'd be a bit weird to have the Kabuki Twins not in the DC Comics minifigures category :S Maybe treat sets as a separate theme but use DC nav templates on minifigures? NovaHawk 00:55, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. I'm glad you said something, so yep. Berrybrick (talk) 01:02, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good :) What do you think about it being in the infobox/categorisation? Should we have a Category:The LEGO Batman Movie minifigures? Also should The LEGO Batman Movie go in the infobox for theme, and if so should we use <br/> (indicating a separate theme like Dimensions or The LEGO Movie) or {{si}} (indicating a subtheme of DC)? NovaHawk 10:55, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the themes should be kept separate because I think that The LEGO Movie has just as much a claim to this as a subtheme, so it's just easier to have it be its own thing. :P The Ninjago Movie too when that comes out for consistency's sake. That said, a category for TLBM minifigures probably isn't a bad idea, and if they are sharing the DC template, I think that can be a subcategory of DC figs. Maybe we should wait to see what we are dealing with though in regards to lineup. Berrybrick (talk) 14:25, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

It has its own site on LEGO.com, so we treat it as a separate theme. I'm not sure should we put the minifigures into the super heroes template as we don't put the Batman ones in it. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

That's a very good point, I forgot about the Batman theme. I support a full separation then NovaHawk 00:01, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Yay, I don't often make good points. Full separation! We could always add a section underneath non-physical called "Other DC characters from other themes"? Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Millions of spambot acccounts being made[edit source]

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

Any way to prevent these accounts from being created or at least cut them back down to a more normal level? It's starting to clog up the RC NovaHawk 05:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks for bringing this up again. I had been waiting for upstream to do something, but I might as well be hunting for unicorns instead. So I did some digging and it turns out that SpamBlacklist's current versions have a bug: when the extension is loaded via wfLoadExtension (or wfLoadExtensions), as it is on Brickimedia, the function SpamBlacklistHooks::registerExtension() sets the $wgBlacklistSettings variable, overriding any and all local sysadmin customizations, such as line 306 of that same LocalSettings_ext.php file, which told MediaWiki to use the email blacklist stored on meta on all of our sites. Due to this bug, the email blacklist was being applied only to Meta (as you can see from the relatively low amount of spambot registration compared to this wiki, for example) and not to any other site.
  There isn't currently a proper fix for this, but as a temporary hacky workaround, I added the "use meta email blacklist" line from LocalSettings_ext.php to /extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklistHooks.php; based on some quick tests, it's no longer possible to register an account with a blacklisted email provider. You should be able to test this out by trying to create a new accout that uses a blacklist provider on this wiki; it should no longer be possible.
  tl,dr: Software bug, fixed hackily (but the fix nevertheless works). --Jack Phoenix (talk) 02:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
  - Thanks very much for sorting this out, I've definitely seen a drop in spambots in the past few days :) NovaHawk 23:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
    - So over the last couple days (July 29th and July 30th) 25 new accounts were created; of these, one (!) looks like a legitimate user. The other 24 were either using some new domains that I just blocked or yahoo.com/mail.ru. Should we want to target these domains, I believe it'd curb the problem even further. On ShoutWiki we impose additional restrictions on signups from these (and a few other problematic) domains due to the widespread abuse. Google, for example, has seemingly upped their anti-spambot game as Gmail isn't a spambot favorite anymore the way it was some years ago. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2016 (UTC)
We can also install mw:Extension:RecentChangesOption and add a RC filter on Special:RecentChanges to allow users whether or not they want to hide the account creation log, if anyone wants it. ;) Only thing that needs to be added is this to github:Brickimedia/LocalSettings/LocalSettings_ext.php (along with installation to github:Brickimedia/extensions:

# RecentChangesOptions
require_once "$IP/extensions/RecentChangesOption/RecentChangesOption.php";
RecentChangesOption::create(/* $hideDefault */ false)->filterLogType("newusers");

Thoughts and comments? SamanthaNguyen (talk) 02:17, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I can't see it being a huge problem at the moment- if you see the RC at the moment you can still see the last 3 days if you show the 250 most recent changes. If there was more editing going on or if the rate at the spambots were being made wasn't fixed then sure. I'm not opposed to it though- I'm perfectly fine with giving people the option to not see the user creation log if they don't want to, as long as it doesn't have any adverse effect on the server. NovaHawk 03:24, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
- That extension needs some love. I'm not sure if the old PHP-based i18n file (which is what this extension uses) even works anymore (without that backwards compatibility shim).
  As far as coding style goes, I'm not sure if the author is familiar with MediaWiki's coding style, frankly. Fixing that isn't such a big deal since it's a relatively small extension, but it's still icky. There's also a reference to LogPage::logName in the main PHP file, on line 106, but that function was removed in MW 1.27. Performance-wise, it's probably not that much worse than what Special:Log already is, though do keep in mind that I'm not a performance expert. The fact that you have to add additional PHP code to LocalSettings.php in addition to the require_once line (since this extension doesn't have an extension.json file, although adding one and ditching the current PHP-based setup file should be trivial enough) isn't very clean nor future-proof.
  tl,dr: Not totally hopeless, but needs love. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 21:19, 1 August 2016 (UTC)
I guess I don't see it as enough of an issue to an extension that, as Jack says, would need some TLC before we use it. CJC95 (talk) 22:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I think we've got spambots uploading files now. Berrybrick (talk) 17:56, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Forums[edit source]

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

Why are there 3 different forums?

The Forum namespace
This page
WikiForum

LegoFan4000 ^talk 14:05, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure about wiki forum but we use this rather than the other forums for discussions about the community because it's easier to edit. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Forum namespace is a relic of discussions before we moved them all here so that it's harder to miss discussions. Wikiforums are for discussion that aren't related to running the site, like what your favorite color is or why you capitalize your username. Berrybrick (talk) 14:58, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Personally I've found the situation always somewhat messy (though for whatever reason I've managed to ignore the existence of the Forum: namespace until now). It'd definitely make sense to have everything in one place, but what the one place is...I'm not so sure about that. I'm slightly biased towards WikiForum — given that I'm one of its main authors — but at the same time I recognize that it has certain shortcomings, such as the lack of developers. UltrasonicNXT's last WikiForum commits were in this January and mine were over a year ago (and even those weren't any huge bug fixes or anything like that, but rather just simple maintenance and future-compatibility tweaks; ref). Right now there are 7 open tickets on Phabricator tagged with the WikiForum tag, but from two of those (phab:T135568 & phab:T141416) you can already see that without active maintenance and maintainer(s) things are going to break. Also, bear in mind that these tickets are only the ones reported on Phabricator — it's more than likely that there are other issues that are yet to be uncovered.

The Forum: namespace is most commonly associated with the DPLforum extension, which is an unelegant yet popular extension for implementing very bare-bones "forums". The advantages are that it provides clearer topic separation than what this page does (this page is basically always huge, even if individual "threads" aren't that big), and because threads are simple wiki pages, they can easily be searched. Just like with WikiForum, DPLforum is also an unmaintained extension — the last functional change was made this January (ref).

And then there's this page. I'd really really really like to see us deprecate this page. I'm no fan of DPLforum, but even that is a better solution than a gigantic page that mixes together all sorts of discussions, technical and non-technical. --Jack Phoenix (talk) 15:54, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Agreed with Jack. Also I deleted every age in the forum namespace, and the corresponding templates, so feel free to remove that nampspace now. LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:56, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Um, why? I won't shout "we need those archives!" but I don't see why they had to go. Unless we really needed the server space (do we?) I would cast my hypothetical lot against doing that. Berrybrick (talk) 22:22, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

^ This constant deleting of things that shouldn't or don't need to be deleted is getting really old. NovaHawk 23:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

The reason we have this space is because people ignore stuff less here. With the Forum namespace, nearly all posts went unseen and everyone ignored them. As for WikiForum, most of our discussion seems to happen in blogs or chat instead, which is why its so unused. CJC95 (talk) 16:17, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Install the donate extension here.[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was passed, installed

With the closure of Meta at stake, I have been moving stuff to here. One item of which is the sidebar. On that is a link to donate. That extension is not installed here, and we want to be able to donate right, . So I would like to prepose that we install the donate extension here. LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:36, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Support

LegoFan4000 ^talk 15:36, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
I guess, I don't see much harm in it. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Oppose

Comments

~~Obviously this should happen if Meta closes, but is Meta closing? I thought those plans changed. Berrybrick (talk) 15:46, 2 August 2016 (UTC)~~

Okay, I guess it is. :P This seems like less a thing to vote on and more the sort of thing to remind someone to do, however, but if we must, consider this a support. Berrybrick (talk) 16:05, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Installed in github commit 7e66885, thanks for the reminder peeps. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
- Its not working. Special page is invalid. LegoFan4000 ^talk 23:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
  - It's just cache, you should see it at one point soon. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 01:26, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
    - It doesn't show in special:version either and that is supposed to happen as soon as you install the extension. LegoFan4000 ^talk 11:08, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
      - Re:closing Meta, it's actually not exactly as simple as "let's just do it"; see phab:T141318 for more (technical) details.
        As for the Donate extension discussed here, there's nothing terribly interesting going on. In the linked GitHub commit, Samantha installed the extension, but this commit is not yet deployed on the server, so obviously the extension isn't live here either. Someone who's more git-savvy than I am should update the config files for good, methinks... --Jack Phoenix (talk) 16:41, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Add a facts section to the main page?[edit source]

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was Done. LegoFan4000 ^talk 18:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

I was on coasterpedia a bit today and one thing that I saw there that could be done here is the rankings section on the main page: http://coasterpedia.net/wiki/Coasterpedia_The_Roller_Coaster_Wiki I figure we could do a few facts like: minifigure with most variants, longest running theme, most popular theme, longest article ect. Soupperson1 ^{Friends are Forever! <3}

Awesome idea! --CPplayer90210

20:26, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

It's a good idea, the main page certainly needs updating. What might be a good place to start is adding some Brickipedia statistics, such as number of sets in database, number of parts, characters etc. Lachlan (talk) 20:27, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

I saw something like this on the Combine OverWiki. I like the idea, and it would certainly be a nice addition to the homepage. LCF ^(talk!) 21:32, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Sure, have mocked up here. Also changed some things around. Any help would be appreciated. LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:20, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Done. LegoFan4000 ^talk 18:10, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Charity donation link in sitenotice?[edit source]

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

Got a message on my talk page about a GoFundMe page for Wes Jenkins (Creative Director, Writer and Designer for LEGO Island) - full info here. Just wondering if we wanted to put a link in the sitenotice or not? This does close August 19 so looking for some quick responses please. NovaHawk 09:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Support

Can't be bothered if I'm acting consistently with anything I might ever say or do--this is childhood. :P Berrybrick (talk) 15:21, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Okay CJC95 (talk) 22:11, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good! SamanthaNguyen (talk) 02:10, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

Oppose

Comments

(personally neutral) NovaHawk 09:29, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
- Neutral LegoFan4000 ^talk 11:28, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
Since this has unanimous support and the closing date's so close I'm going to close this off now. Would someone mind adding this to the sitenotice please (I don't really know how to word things like that :S) NovaHawk 06:50, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

The following section is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. The result was No action taken

User Rights

Admins can give admin rights on Brickipedia and only Brickipedia. But, on every other wiki admin can't do that. Crats can. On Brickipedia admins and crats were merged but not in the other wikis. On meta admins can add chatmods but on Brickipedia they can't. I am proposing that we merge admin and crat on the other wikis and let Brickipedia admins add chatmods. LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

This is up to each of those wikis individually. You could probably bypass some of that though by discussing it on a meta policy forum with subsections for each wiki; you'd want to make sure that the admins and whatever community of those sites knows about it though, and for that reason, I would suggest keeping it on their own sites. And obviously, don't bother with Customs. :P –Berry

Other wikis being? –CJC

Ideas, GBC, Meta.LegoFan4000 ^talk 17:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Ideas: Not a community we have involvement in (also not a community with users....) GBC: Independent project Meta: Will make no difference to anything really. –CJC

As far as I know, Meta and Ideaas were still meant to be shutting down anyway, but noone's done anything about it. GBC is completely independent of us. (and this kind of policy stuff belongs on Brickipedia:Forum, Wikiforum's just for general discussion) -Nova

(from wikiforum)

(pretty sure this is the right place for this)

Opinions on this

I would also like to repost that we add an autopatroller group separate from the patroller group. LegoFan4000 ^talk 16:14, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

{{archive|result=Moved upstream at phab:T152737|content=

Weird stuff happening[edit source]

Got a big long error while trying to edit 79106_Cavalry_Builder_Set (it worked fine when I did exactly the same edit the second time). A similar thing happened to me a few hours ago when trying do stuff with the article feedback tool (it said "a database error has occured"- just got it then on the third try). I don't know if we're still meant to report this stuff on GitHub or if it got moved to Phabricator, so I'm just leaving it here :P Haven't run had this ever happen before except in the last 8 hours or so. Error message for the 79106 edit below. NovaHawk 04:47, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Exception encountered, of type "RuntimeException"
[3b8796f9] /index.php?title=79106_Cavalry_Builder_Set&action=submit RuntimeException from line 181 of /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/MediaWiki/Database.php: A database error has occurred. Did you forget to run maintenance/update.php after upgrading? See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#Run_the_update_script
Query: SELECT DISTINCT t5.smw_id AS id,t5.smw_title AS t,t5.smw_namespace AS ns,t5.smw_iw AS iw,t5.smw_subobject AS so,t5.smw_sortkey AS sortkey FROM `smw_object_ids` AS t5 INNER JOIN `smw_di_number` AS t1 ON t5.smw_id=t1.s_id INNER JOIN `smw_di_number` AS t3 ON t1.s_id=t3.s_id WHERE ((t1.o_sortkey<='79106') AND t1.p_id='181' AND ((t3.o_sortkey!='79106') AND t3.p_id='181')) ORDER BY t1.o_sortkey DESC LIMIT 6 
Function: SMW\SQLStore\QueryEngine\QueryEngine::getInstanceQueryResult
Error: 5 Out of memory (Needed 2096432 bytes) (localhost)

#0 /var/www/core/includes/db/Database.php(1076): DatabaseBase->reportQueryError('Out of memory (...', 5, 'SELECT DISTINC...', 'SMW\\SQLStore\\Qu...', false)
#1 /var/www/core/includes/db/Database.php(1600): DatabaseBase->query('SELECT DISTINC...', 'SMW\\SQLStore\\Qu...')
#2 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/MediaWiki/Database.php(179): DatabaseBase->select('`smw_object_ids...', 'DISTINCT t5.smw...', '((t1.o_sortkey<...', 'SMW\\SQLStore\\Qu...', Array, Array)
#3 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/SQLStore/QueryEngine/QueryEngine.php(420): SMW\MediaWiki\Database->select('`smw_object_ids...', 'DISTINCT t5.smw...', '((t1.o_sortkey<...', 'SMW\\SQLStore\\Qu...', Array)
#4 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/SQLStore/QueryEngine/QueryEngine.php(226): SMW\SQLStore\QueryEngine\QueryEngine->getInstanceQueryResult(Object(SMWQuery), 5)
#5 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/storage/SQLStore/SMW_SQLStore3.php(380): SMW\SQLStore\QueryEngine\QueryEngine->getQueryResult(Object(SMWQuery))
#6 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/storage/SQLStore/SMW_SQLStore3.php(371): SMWSQLStore3->fetchQueryResult(Object(SMWQuery))
#7 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/query/SMW_QueryProcessor.php(510): SMWSQLStore3->getQueryResult(Object(SMWQuery))
#8 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/parserhooks/AskParserFunction.php(163): SMWQueryProcessor::getResultFromQuery(Object(SMWQuery), Array, 2, 1)
#9 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/parserhooks/AskParserFunction.php(120): SMW\AskParserFunction->doFetchResultsForRawParameters(Array)
#10 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/ParserFunctionFactory.php(248): SMW\AskParserFunction->parse(Array)
#11 [internal function]: SMW\ParserFunctionFactory->SMW\{closure}(Object(Parser), '[[Item_\xE2\x84\x96::<79...', '?Item_\xE2\x84\x96', '?Title', 'sort=Item_\xE2\x84\x96', 'order=descendin...', 'limit=1', 'format=template', 'template=Set he...', 'searchlabel=')
#12 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(Object(Closure), Array)
#13 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), '#ask', Array)
#14 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#15 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(106): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#16 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifObj(Object(Parser), Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), Array)
#17 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array('ExtParserFuncti...', Array)
#18 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), '#if', Array)
#19 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#20 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(122): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#21 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifeqObj(Object(Parser), Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), Array)
#22 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array('ExtParserFuncti...', Array)
#23 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), '#ifeq', Array)
#24 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#25 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3665): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#26 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#27 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(157): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#28 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::iferrorObj(Object(Parser), Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), Array)
#29 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array('ExtParserFuncti...', Array)
#30 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), '#iferror', Array)
#31 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#32 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(122): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#33 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifeqObj(Object(Parser), Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), Array)
#34 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array('ExtParserFuncti...', Array)
#35 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM), '#ifeq', Array)
#36 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPTemplateFrame_DOM))
#37 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3665): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM))
#38 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(Array, Object(PPFrame_DOM))
#39 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3342): PPFrame_DOM->expand(Object(PPNode_DOM), 0)
#40 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(1239): Parser->replaceVariables('{{Rating}}\n{{Se...')
#41 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(439): Parser->internalParse('{{Rating}}\n{{Se...')
#42 /var/www/core/includes/content/WikitextContent.php(331): Parser->parse('{{Rating}}\n{{Se...', Object(Title), Object(ParserOptions), true, true, NULL)
#43 /var/www/core/includes/content/AbstractContent.php(497): WikitextContent->fillParserOutput(Object(Title), NULL, Object(ParserOptions), true, Object(ParserOutput))
#44 /var/www/core/includes/page/WikiPage.php(2117): AbstractContent->getParserOutput(Object(Title), NULL, Object(ParserOptions))
#45 /var/www/core/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklistHooks.php(54): WikiPage->prepareContentForEdit(Object(WikitextContent))
#46 [internal function]: SpamBlacklistHooks::filterMergedContent(Object(RequestContext), Object(WikitextContent), Object(Status), '', Object(User), true)
#47 /var/www/core/includes/Hooks.php(201): call_user_func_array('SpamBlacklistHo...', Array)
#48 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1477): Hooks::run('EditFilterMerge...', Array)
#49 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1864): EditPage->runPostMergeFilters(Object(WikitextContent), Object(Status), Object(User))
#50 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1331): EditPage->internalAttemptSave(NULL, false)
#51 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(560): EditPage->attemptSave(NULL)
#52 /var/www/core/includes/actions/EditAction.php(58): EditPage->edit()
#53 /var/www/core/includes/actions/SubmitAction.php(40): EditAction->show()
#54 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(490): SubmitAction->show()
#55 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(287): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(Article), Object(Title))
#56 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(714): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#57 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(508): MediaWiki->main()
#58 /var/www/core/index.php(41): MediaWiki->run()
#59 {main}
Backtrace:
#0 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/SQLStore/QueryEngine/QueryEngine.php(420): SMW\MediaWiki\Database->select(string, string, string, string, array)
#1 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/SQLStore/QueryEngine/QueryEngine.php(226): SMW\SQLStore\QueryEngine\QueryEngine->getInstanceQueryResult(SMWQuery, integer)
#2 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/storage/SQLStore/SMW_SQLStore3.php(380): SMW\SQLStore\QueryEngine\QueryEngine->getQueryResult(SMWQuery)
#3 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/storage/SQLStore/SMW_SQLStore3.php(371): SMWSQLStore3->fetchQueryResult(SMWQuery)
#4 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/query/SMW_QueryProcessor.php(510): SMWSQLStore3->getQueryResult(SMWQuery)
#5 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/parserhooks/AskParserFunction.php(163): SMWQueryProcessor::getResultFromQuery(SMWQuery, array, integer, integer)
#6 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/includes/parserhooks/AskParserFunction.php(120): SMW\AskParserFunction->doFetchResultsForRawParameters(array)
#7 /var/www/core/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/src/ParserFunctionFactory.php(248): SMW\AskParserFunction->parse(array)
#8 [internal function]: SMW\ParserFunctionFactory->SMW\{closure}(Parser, string, string, string, string, string, string, string, string, string)
#9 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(Closure, array)
#10 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(PPTemplateFrame_DOM, string, array)
#11 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#12 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(106): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#13 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifObj(Parser, PPTemplateFrame_DOM, array)
#14 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(string, array)
#15 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(PPTemplateFrame_DOM, string, array)
#16 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#17 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(122): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#18 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifeqObj(Parser, PPTemplateFrame_DOM, array)
#19 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(string, array)
#20 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(PPTemplateFrame_DOM, string, array)
#21 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#22 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3665): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#23 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#24 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(157): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#25 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::iferrorObj(Parser, PPTemplateFrame_DOM, array)
#26 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(string, array)
#27 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(PPTemplateFrame_DOM, string, array)
#28 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#29 /var/www/core/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions_body.php(122): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#30 [internal function]: ExtParserFunctions::ifeqObj(Parser, PPTemplateFrame_DOM, array)
#31 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3789): call_user_func_array(string, array)
#32 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3523): Parser->callParserFunction(PPTemplateFrame_DOM, string, array)
#33 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPTemplateFrame_DOM)
#34 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3665): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM)
#35 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php(1177): Parser->braceSubstitution(array, PPFrame_DOM)
#36 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(3342): PPFrame_DOM->expand(PPNode_DOM, integer)
#37 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(1239): Parser->replaceVariables(string)
#38 /var/www/core/includes/parser/Parser.php(439): Parser->internalParse(string)
#39 /var/www/core/includes/content/WikitextContent.php(331): Parser->parse(string, Title, ParserOptions, boolean, boolean, NULL)
#40 /var/www/core/includes/content/AbstractContent.php(497): WikitextContent->fillParserOutput(Title, NULL, ParserOptions, boolean, ParserOutput)
#41 /var/www/core/includes/page/WikiPage.php(2117): AbstractContent->getParserOutput(Title, NULL, ParserOptions)
#42 /var/www/core/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklistHooks.php(54): WikiPage->prepareContentForEdit(WikitextContent)
#43 [internal function]: SpamBlacklistHooks::filterMergedContent(RequestContext, WikitextContent, Status, string, User, boolean)
#44 /var/www/core/includes/Hooks.php(201): call_user_func_array(string, array)
#45 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1477): Hooks::run(string, array)
#46 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1864): EditPage->runPostMergeFilters(WikitextContent, Status, User)
#47 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(1331): EditPage->internalAttemptSave(NULL, boolean)
#48 /var/www/core/includes/EditPage.php(560): EditPage->attemptSave(NULL)
#49 /var/www/core/includes/actions/EditAction.php(58): EditPage->edit()
#50 /var/www/core/includes/actions/SubmitAction.php(40): EditAction->show()
#51 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(490): SubmitAction->show()
#52 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(287): MediaWiki->performAction(Article, Title)
#53 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(714): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#54 /var/www/core/includes/MediaWiki.php(508): MediaWiki->main()
#55 /var/www/core/index.php(41): MediaWiki->run()
#56 {main}

I think Phabricator is fine for reporting these, just remember to tag any Brickimedia-related issues with the "Brickimedia" tag. (@SamanthaNguyen: am I correct in assuming that the GitHub issue tracker is completely deprecated in favor of Phabricator?)

tl,dr: AFAIK there's nothing that can be done about this as of now with the current resources & server setup.

The slightly longer version: the more extensions, the more complicated the codebase is (and not just from a developer's point of view), thus the more resources it needs. MediaWiki — the core software without any extensions — is well-optimized, secure and capable of a lot of things; but the core software does not come with certain features many consider essential, such as the ability for admins to see (malicious) users' IP addresses, the ability to use the world's ugliest programming language to build wiki templates, structured user profiles, user boards, gifts, awards, user levels or the commenting or voting functionality, for example. You get what I'm saying here.
Semantic MediaWiki is a massive extension with an active community and group of developers, but it's not deployed on (popular) Wikimedia wikis or anything, so there's probably some optimization that could be done there. Either way, the obvious solution to the issue at hand — "out of memory" — is painfully obvious ("throw more memory at it"), but sadly not feasible at the moment.

Should this issue occur again, please feel free to report it (but understand that our hands are pretty tied at the moment when it comes to issues like these — obvious software bugs are a completely different matter, of course). --Jack Phoenix (talk) 10:57, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I did experience this issue yesterday on that article as well, so I suppose a bug report should be submitted. LCF ^(talk!) 21:42, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Well you know what they say, "bug report or it didn't happen" ;) I created the ticket at phab:T152737. Also @Jack Phoenix: Yep, we've dropped GitHub. SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Shop descriptions[edit source]

So, ever since the LEGO Shop website was redesigned into the atrocious mess that it now is, the format for Shop descriptions has changed a bit. It's now:

Product Details
Do this thing with the set!
Features
Description

It used to be:

Do this thing with the set!

Description

Just checking whether we want to keep it as is (ie, the top line bolded and no extra titles), or look at changing it. NovaHawk 10:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

My vote's for keeping it as is NovaHawk 10:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
I think that our current format is practical. The large subtitles just seem to add space to an already large description. Latenightguy (talk) 13:10, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Keep it as is. --CPPLAYER90210 _{T ~ C} 20:50, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Keep as it was LCF ^(talk!) 21:40, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Keep per above. Berrybrick (talk) 22:34, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Keep. Not like we have a bot to perform these actions anyways. Although, a bot would be nice. :P SamanthaNguyen (talk) 22:51, 5 December 2016 (UTC)