Zelda Wiki:Discussion Center

Talk Bubbles
With the recent attempt to make one of these, I think that we should clearly state a policy on them. I really don't like them. They don't have a way to give the time of the post. They add a bunch of nonsense to talk pages that really make it look unprofessional. The poor color choices that people make makes it difficult to read what is actually being said. This is not good for color-blind people. They are more common than you would think. (No, I'm not color-blind. Just thinking of those who are.) These talk bubbles also are too complex and therefore drastically increase loading times on the talk pages. They are too big and make the pages look too cluttered. I assume that these are the same conclusions that the staff here came up with, right? It would be better to make this not allowing talk bubbles a formal policy that everyone is made aware of.--Mjr162006 08:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Aye, pretty much everyone on staff said the same thing (except, like, one person but whatev', right?). Heck, not just the totally color-blind people need to be thought about; I have a friend who is only slightly "color deficient", and he could almost not complete a color-puzzle at the end of Metroid Prime Hunters, so I shudder at what might happen if he tried reading some of the talk bubbles I've seen. Heck, I've had trouble reading them, and I'm totally not color-blind at all. Not to mention the annoying "catchphrases" before the actual text, and the fact that most of them contain no timestamp. I'll try to figure out somewhere in the official policies to place this and get it put in there within the next couple of hours. --Ando 13:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Prepare Ourselves
Over at Zeldapedia, a forum has been started to decide what to do about XXXXX. This links to the tree pages he harassed on are on the forum page. Word about will spread across that site very fast. A many people that primarily contribute over there also have accounts here. We might want to consider temporarily protecting these three pages from editing. At the very least, Ando and Seablue254 shouldn't archive their talk pages and not one should edit XXXXX's talk page until this thing is resolved. That way the links over there will still go to the correct place. There are four or five admins active today over there right now. Let us hope they can reach an agreement quickly so that we don't have to protect the pages. If anyone makes anymore comments about XXXXX then make them polite. If you can't then don't comment on him at all. They'll probably notice. I'll look bad if we insult him right back. It would make us no better than he was. Keep things clean.--Mjr162006 23:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. Anyways, i want it to be known that my talk page should be reverted if messed up/vandalized. I won't archive it because it's wayyy to small, but srsly, if i get trolled or anything in the chatroom, i'll whip out +b faster than Indiana can crack his whip. --Seablue254 00:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Ahh, looks like we don't have to worry about people messing with those pages, judging from how the talk is going. They wouldn't stand for it. At least something is being done.--Mjr162006 00:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Aw man. I liked my comment. Time for a quotes section! --Seablue254 00:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Formal Apology
As a part of the above topic: I'm a admin at Zeldapedia. I've been noted of the vandalism that User:XXXXX has committed here and it is being discussed right now. And I'd like to apologize on behalf of Zeldapedia. On another note, if you have any wiki related discussion (because we both are working towards the same goal) please contact me on my page there. Oath to Order 03:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. We fully understand that his was not the opinion of the entirety of Zeldapedia and I'd say that most of us don't hold it against you or the rest of Zeldapedia (some are probably still sore against XXXXX, but that's about it). Thank you for looking into the matter, and I hope that our two Wikis can still co-exist. ;) --Ando 04:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)


 * NOW I'm happy <3 12:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist
When you go to "my watchlist" and then to view and edit watchlist, all the pages you put in there are there. But in addition to that, there are sometimes red-links to pages with a seemingly random combination of numbers for a title. Does anyone have a clue what these are? I've noticed them a while ago but still can't figure out what they are. 02:26, June 23, 2008 (UTC)


 * My theory: It's supposed to go by clicking the "watch" button, and it says "watching..." then confirms that it's being watched by switching to "unwatch", right? Well, you ever had it hang up on "watching..." and never actually complete the adding-it-to-your-watchlist function? What if these bizarre number red links are generated while the system's trying to watch the page, or perhaps there's a glitch that prevents it from watching the page and so it spews out nonsense in its place. This is only my theory, mind you, but it makes sense to me. --Ando 03:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Page Query
I have a suggestion for a page, but feel that I should ask permission for it, because it is mainly speculation. Since the Zelda series is full of speculation and mysteries that I believe we should discuss in an article, I would propose a Mysteries article, or at least a disambiguation page or a split page that has links to several separately discussed mysteries, such pressing matters like "Bongo Bongo's Origin" or "Relation of Majora Mask Boss and the Four Giants", just to name a few. The question is: Should I ask for such a page, or guidance for work on such a page here or on another part of the Community? Darqlink51 01:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Hm... I'm not so sure that a page like that is really necessary. After all, something like that could be covered on the individual subject's page after a   tag (that's what it's there for, after all!). We just got rid of a "Lore" article that really didn't seem to be within the realm of the Wiki's coverage, and a full article dedicated to the mysteries of Zelda seems to be along those same lines. It's a perfect idea for a good theorizing topic on a message board, though!  02:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Capcha Help Link
When saving a page after adding an external link, the page is still loading and you click the box to enter the answer to the math problem, and the toolbar finishes loading and your click instead goes to "more info" (Captcha help) link. I have a very common resolution. The image to the right shows the problem.

Some user's browsers don't save POSTDATA and they could lose their changes the tried to make. The solution is to either move the link to another part of the sentence or to remove the link altogether. To do this, all we have to do is edit the system message page MediaWiki:Captcha-addurl. Thiis should be dealt with soon. For now, "Tired I am, rest I must." (°‿°) 07:09, July 5, 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi Matt. We've recently changed the setting of ConfirmEdit, the Captcha extension (as you may have read on Ando's talk page). Could you please check the above scenario again - I believe the captcha should no longer appear in such a scenario. Let me know if there are still changes to be made. Thanks! 11:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Plainlinks
Well, with the new edit tool box of ours, my Plainlink template is now obsolete. However I think that the information in it is valuable. I'm sure that everyone here will agree it is better to use plain links on the types of internal links listed on the template page. There is a system message that should be altered so that it is a plain link. It is MediaWiki:Noarticletext. There might be others, but I'm not sure what they are now. 03:03, July 15, 2008 (UTC)

A Puzzle

 * NOTE: Discussion moved from Ando's user talk page.''

I have a little puzzle for us to solve. The articles in the main name space that are listed on the page Pages that link to Ocarina of Time do not actually link to that disambiguation page. The only thing that these articles have in common is the Cite template. Now that I look at it, a lot disambiguation pages I have looked up have this problem. I examined the Cite template code and there is nothing that could be causing this, but nevertheless, all the pages with the cite template turn up on the "What links here" for the game disambiguation pages. It did not do this a just after my last edit of the cite template. Do you have any idea what is going on? 22:34, July 15, 2008 (UTC)


 * After looking at this page, I'm convinced it is the Cite template. The normal articles listed on that page that do not actually link to the given disambiguation page all have the Cite template in it. That is the only constant. I spent well over two hours rigorously examining the Cite template's code. There is no way in hell that it could possibly do this. But it is doing this. Hmm... Perhaps changing all the game links in the code to the game link templates? 07:31, July 16, 2008 (UTC)


 * I see what you mean. That's actually very bizarre.
 * So basically what we're seeing is that what you type as the game title in the cite template shows up in the "Pages that link to x" page (so I guess that if OoT, TWW, etc. were to be typed we'd be seeing those as well). This is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed; I can already see the new users seeing all of the pages linking to "Ocarina of Time" and, not knowing what they're doing, making all of the cite template links full game links.
 * It makes no sense, though. Why on earth would it be doing that? The absolute only possibility I can think of is to remove the cite template's ability to make something a whole game link and require the user to manually enter the entire game link. (Maybe you know how to make it automatically chop off the first part of the link for display? Or just have an extra field so that it's [with the full link, obviously] where the last field is the link display?)  12:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm sorta understanding...and sorta not. In 13 year old speak, please. 13:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Um... I'll try? The cite template works as such:, automatically linking the game subtitle to its full proper title. So generates Notice that the "Majora's Mask" link automatically sends you to the PROPER game title instead of the Majora's Mask disambiguation page. However, if you were to look at this page, you'd see that it would tell you that this page is linking to the disambiguation page instead of the game page, because what was typed in was only "Majora's Mask", not "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask". So basically whatever you type in that last cite template field generates the correct link, but the Wiki thinks that it doesn't. The problem here is what I described in my above post (not to mention that it could get very annoying for someone trying to find the ACTUAL disambiguation links within pages). 13:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to try something. Maybe it will fix this. 14:30, July 16, 2008 (UTC)


 * With the changes I made, it is even more impossible for the Cite template to do this. But it is still doing it. I asked for help on MediaWiki.org. But they seem to make it a point to ignore help requests there, so we may never get a respose. 14:59, July 16, 2008 (UTC) PS: Is it just me, or does the first sentence in this post sound weird?

And yet it appears to have broken the part near the game link, at least for Majora's Mask, anyway (as you can see above). I tried looking at the code and found nothing, but then again I'm not good with Wiki template code, so... (I really should get to studying that). 15:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi guys. I'm finding myself wondering why this discussion is not in Hyrule Castle. But anyway... Matt, my suggestion at some basic troubleshooting would be to revert the cite template to an earlier revision (perhaps this one ?) then see if the problem is fixed. If so, add in parts of the code piece by piece until you find the precise cause. I'd help, but I'm out of my depth on the exact functioning of some of the stuff in there. Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but this is the logical approach to me. 21:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Let's save Ando's space. Move this discussion to Hyrule Castle. I guess I'm going to have to fix the template in the manner you just suggested. But that could take a few hours. Most of our visitors are in the US, so if I do it later tonight, it won't cause that much confusion. 23:56, July 16, 2008 (UTC)

This marks the end of the moved portion of this discussion.


 * Big thunder storm. Can't risk it. I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to do it. 04:13, July 17, 2008 (UTC)


 * The irony. Mere moments after saving my previous statement, the power goes out. I'll try tonight. It would not make sense to do it during the day. 15:31, July 17, 2008 (UTC)

It appears that my first attempt, on my birthday (the 16th), to fix the cite template actually worked. It just took a few days to take effect. That's one problem solved. 04:36, July 20, 2008 (UTC)


 * I seem to remember hearing that certain pages such as that will sometimes take about 24 hours to fully propagate throughout the system. Sorry I didn't remember before. :P Glad that it worked, though. 17:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

This problem was larger than we though. Earlier today, Seablue discovered that the Delete template was causing pages to show up in the wanted pages even though the links to those pages do not exist. Upon investigating the wanted pages, I found links to talk pages of articles that I had recently marked with the Move template. I then made a change to both the templates that would fix them. The wanted pages updated for the Move template right away, but did not for the Delete template. We'll have to wait a day or two. I then checked all the other notice templates that make links to talk pages. Every one of them was exhibiting this behavior. I made the same fix to all of them. I have carefully considered and pondered on the reason for this. I now believe I know exactly what happened. It is because of the #ifexist function. Here is what the function is like:

What is happening is that if there is an internal link in either of the two "Text if page ***" fields, then the link will count on the page no matter if the target page exists or not. The only way around this is to make the link like an external one, but using the plainlinks feature from the edit toolbox to make it look like a normal link. 18:30, July 21, 2008 (UTC) To the right is an image displaying the problem. The link to the indicated page did not, and never did, exist. But that did not stop it from showing up in the wanted pages. This happened in all other special pages that display what articles link to another article. This issue has been dealt with and is explained above. In a day or two, once the server catches up and updates everything, this should no longer happen. 21:40, July 21, 2008 (UTC)

I just had a little talk with an extension developer over at MediaWiki. It is confirmed. This problem was caused by the #ifexist function. He said that that was how the function works. I have suggested that they program out this susceptibility of the ParserFunctions extension. It may be some time before we can see results. For now, we'll just have to format the links as plainlink external links. 05:32, July 22, 2008 (UTC)

Protected Pages Requiring Editing

 * This section is to be used to request the editing or correcting of a protected page. Requesting this here is faster and more likely to be noticed by an admin. Note to admins: It would be best to never archive this section.

As you may have noticed from the Recent Changes, I corrected many links linking to the Twilight Princess disambiguation page. I'm sort of a perfectionist, so I like to be thorough. It was already agreed upon that fixing these links on talk pages and user pages will help those users to remember how to correctly link to the respective page. There are still four pages left to be fixed at Pages that link to Twilight Princess. The one on the talk page stays because it is clearly said that that link is a link to the disambiguation page. But the rest are protected news pages. 15:15, July 20, 2008 (UTC)


 * The two pages in the category Wiki Exclusives need their links to "The Legend of Zelda series" corrected to "The Legend of Zelda (Series)". 17:39, August 13, 2008 (UTC)

Bug
It seems ever since ZU's hacking and server updates, none of our videos work, and I can't get a thumbnail to appear on my page. I think we will need some debugging. 13:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The ones on my page seem to work, is it just certain videos? What happened over at ZU anyway? 10:08, 28 July 2008 (EST)

Someone hacked in and changed the header and that. They had to revert the site to an earlier version. 14:12, July 28, 2008 (UTC)


 * Yup. However, they had some music made out of EPIC WIN. They also chaged the place to Gardening Universe, with a video from Marty Chang. His dad's Asian! 14:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Now, I'm trying to upload a pic, and I get this: Could not copy file "/tmp/phpC8sfQC" to "temp/e/ef/20080729152305!Sealogo.png".


 * What now?! 15:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I checked off "ignore any warnings" and it worked, unfortunately, you won't be able to make it a thumbnail pic.

Isn't there a way that someone could put a firewall on the sections of the zeldauniverse.net server so that problems in one section cannot affect the other? I know I've heard of this before. It has to be done either by Jason or the guys that are physically at the server's location. I'm not sure which. 15:37, July 29, 2008 (UTC)

There must be someway, otherwise we won't be able to upload any new images without being unable to make display them any smaller (which most images are).


 * For the benefit of relative newcomers (i.e. all of you ;), this has happened before (almost exactly a year ago - weird!), and Jason fixed it. I've just brought it to his attention. Please hold tight, and try to refrain from uploading any new images for a little while. I'll update on any progress here. 18:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much, I was hoping someone knew how to resolve this problem.


 * I PM'd him over ZU a few ays ago about it also. Maybe he's doing something? 19:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to give a (slightly late) update on this, Jason has now resolved the issue, so there shouldn't be any further problems. 18:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Voting for something?
Hi, Im a new user here, but im probobly pretty stupid for not knowing this, but here it goes: I dont know how to vote for a picture in the wiki. Do i just edit the page and put my vote or what?


 * Yes, that's exactly how it goes. Stick it in like this:


 * # Yes, I really like (insert picture name)! Its dead eyes make me fell cold with fear! --~


 * That's probably not what you were going to say, but lo and behold! This is how you do it. --Felicia&#39;s Champion 03:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, votes for featured articles go here, and featured picture votes go here. 04:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Zelda Music Links
Did anyone else notice that nearly all of our links to Zelda music files are dead? This must be do to the recent changes to the Zelda Universe.net interface. We'll have to go through all the music links and replace them with good versions. 00:33, August 5, 2008 (UTC)


 * FRIGGIN' ZELDA UNIVERSE NEEDS TO GET A MAKEOVER AND JASON DECIDES NOT TO TELL US OUR LINKS ARE DEAD ARGHLARGHGAH!


 * Well, if most of the links go to the same place, Jason should be able to help us. I hope. 00:51, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've already had to do this a number of times in the past. It'll be quite tricky to find all the affected pages. It may be an idea to create a template for "play this song" links - not only would this standardize the formatting, but it would allow pages containing such file links to be categorized if required, making this process easier in future. Matt? 18:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a plan. 22:37, August 12, 2008 (UTC)

Wait a minute. We don't need to put it in a category. All we need is the proposed template's "What links here" page. Simple· 22:58, August 12, 2008 (UTC)

Forums
We need a way to talk about subjects, while remaining on this site, that are not about improving an article. I've done some quick research. There are two ways we can do this. Here they are:
 * Option A:&emsp;&emsp;Add this forum extension
 * Option B:&emsp;&emsp;Create a forum namespace

With "Option B", it would be like on Zeldapedia. Only it would be better here since we don't have to worry about those annoying talk bubbles. "Option A" would be like a more traditional forum. I prefer "Option B". But we'll have to decide. 23:07, August 17, 2008 (UTC)


 * Option B sounds good; there's all ready a restricted part of the wiki where only the sysops/bureaucrats can talk. But however, I ask why we even need this, considering we all ready have our community pages? We're using them right now! However, Option A would help organize these community pages. Hrm... 23:19, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We do not have such community pages. "Hyrule Castle" is for technical issues for the whole wiki. "The Heart Container" is for individual technical/editing/image issues. We have no pages for discussing theories, games, or just general things, other than user talk pages. It would be better to have a namespace just for that, so that there is no confusion and that it is more open to everyone. 00:03, August 18, 2008 (UTC)


 * Good idea. Can I get you in the 'room for some more discussion? I'll enter when I see you answer. 00:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I found another one we can use:
 * Option C:&emsp;&emsp;Use the extension LiquidThreads

I like this option far more than "A". So it is between "B" and "C". 00:18, August 18, 2008 (UTC)


 * Eh. I like B better. Anyways, i'll be right in :) 00:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I prefer option B, short and simple


 * As stated in a chat between Matt and I (That is still ongoing), I choose a combo of A and B. 00:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Um, what? Why... is this needed? There are already plenty of message boards for just discussing "stuff in general". Need I remind our users that we have such sites as Zelda Universe and Zelda Dungeon, each with their own message boards for discussing these things? Heck, Sea, you yourself are a part of at least Zelda Universe (not sure about anyone else). I'm honestly not sure why we "need" this. No actual reason has been provided yet. 14:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC) Also, Sea, you say that you're not sure why we have separate staff boards? It's so we can have secret staff discussions without everyone else seeing. ;)


 * It is intended to clean up the article talk pages so that talk about the article's subject can be on a forum page. We all know that this is a big problem. Even if we don't want to admit it. Having the forum here in the wiki means that we can instantly tell that it is a certain Zelda Wiki.org user talking. In the forums of our member sites, this is not possible. I was thinking less along the lines of general discussion and more of Zelda-oriented talk. I'd still say we should do this. Note: The LiquidThreads extension was developed by Wikia. 14:39, August 18, 2008 (UTC)


 * By the way: Now that I think on it. I'd like to veer away from the tradition forum and go only with option "B". 14:40, August 18, 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry. I'm still waking up. Seablue isn't going to respond. He's on vacation until about Thursday or Friday. So we won't here from him much, if at all, until he's back. 14:43, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

The problem you mention is exactly why we have this. Its purpose is to redirect conversation of a subject to a message board. I'm sorry if I see absolutely no gain in this whatsoever. I'm also pretty sure that the bureaucrats wouldn't agree to this due to conflicting interests; we start a message board here, that's that many more members that now have less incentive to join their own message boards. Also... what's it matter that LiquidThreads was made by Wikia? :P 15:10, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That is why we choose "B". With "B" it will be like any other talk page, it just has that purpose. It still won't be a full-fledged forum, so long as we don't choose "A". Look at just about any talk page on Zelda Wiki.org. Well over half of them are discussions about the article's subject. Even us senior members do this too. This problem won't go away. If we just ignore it, it'll just keep getting worse. We have to deal with it now. We could encourage users to take discussions about help playing a game to a member site's forum. But we can use the proposed forums here for more general Zelda-orientated discussion. Also... We take pride in avoiding using anything made by Wikia. :P 15:21, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Upgrade
Okay boys and girls. I did some research, here is what we're getting in this new version of the wiki software:
 * 1) New special pages: FileDuplicateSearch, ListGroupRights
 * 2) Redisigned Special:UserRights and Special:SpecialPages
 * 3) More options on Special:Recentchangeslinked and Special:Whatlinkshere
 * 4) New parser functions: PAGESINCATEGORY, PAGESIZE
 * 5) Can hide categories with __HIDDENCAT__
 * 6) Friendlier behavior for users who click a red link but can't edit.
 * 7) Image redirects
 * 8) Drop-down AJAX search suggestions.
 * 9) Search results show image thumbnails.
 * 10) Allow the search box and toolbox in the Monobook sidebar to be moved around arbitrarily using special sections in MediaWiki:Sidebar: SEARCH and TOOLBOX
 * 11) Double redirects created by a page move can be fixed automatically.
 * 12) Automatic edit summaries can be disabled with $wgUseAutomaticEditSummaries
 * 13) Duplicates of images are now shown on the image page
 * 14) When a page doesn't exist, the tab should say "create", not "edit"
 * 15) Add links to page and file deletion forms to edit predefined delete reasons
 * 16) Add category table to allow better tracking of category membership counts
 * 17) Use category table for more efficient display of Special:Categories
 * 18) Added PAGESINCATEGORY: magic word
 * 19) Allow inclusions, links, redirects to be separately toggled on or off on Special:WhatLinksHere
 * 20) Organize Special:SpecialPages into sections
 * 21) Say "log in / create account" if an anonymous user can create an account, otherwise just "log in", consistently across skins
 * 22) Special:Shortpages and Special:Longpages now returns pages in all content namespaces, not just NS_MAIN
 * 23) Show image links on Special:Whatlinkshere
 * 24) Add information about user group membership to Special:Preferences
 * 25) The User class now contains a public function called isActiveEditor. Figures out if a user is active based on at least $wgActiveUserEditCount number of edits in the last $wgActiveUserDays days.
 * 26) Remove redirects from Special:Unusedtemplates.
 * 27) Allow setting 'editprotected' right separately from 'protect', so groups may optionally edit protected pages without having 'protect' perms
 * 28) Preview/edit toolbar spacing now works consistently
 * 29) Hide (undo) link if user isn't able to edit page
 * 30) Redirects listed on file links on image pages no longer redirect.

Some of those sound real nice. I personally what us to move the sidebar toolbox in between the community and navigation sections. Well, let's hope we get this upgraded without too many problems occurring. 01:17, August 18, 2008 (UTC) PS: Someone fix the main page! Add a "Clear" tag just after the new table.


 * Haha. I fixed it before I even read your request because I am quick and smooth like that. Anyway, yeah, the new release has some sweet stuff; I looked at the new features list a while ago. I particularly like some of what they're doing with the Whatlinkshere pages. :D 03:48, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Since we're going to be tinkering around with the wiki installation, I might as well mention a few extensions I thought it would be nice to have. AutoLink is a good one. Remember when we had those talk pages with the noclog tmeplate in them? This extension might have made it easier. I'm not sure. Also, EditCount would be nice. 07:56, August 18, 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that for the search box thing it needs to be *SEARCH. The asterisk is important. 12:05, August 18, 2008 (UTC)