GargWiki talk:Community Portal

Since someone suggested it earlier, I decided to go ahead and open up the community portal for general discussions/suggestions for the whole of GargWiki. Enjoy! --Moeen 17:33, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Yay! Thank you Moeen. Now I have a place to make a suggestion: Does the side and border of the website have to be bright white? I like the dark blue of the rest of the site, it is easier on the eyes, but the white is hard on the eyes. Maybe it could be some other color, such as light blue? I know this is minor but little aesthetic things impact a website's overall viewing experience. -- Vaevictis Asmadi 23:06, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

You're welcome.  :-) As for the background, I think in order to change it you have to edit the default skin used by the wiki, which is not something I know how to do, but I'm sure it can be done. Speaking of knowing how to do things, the link to Help on the sidebar links to a page that doesn't even exist! It would be nice if you could actually get help from the help page. Maybe some of the people running this place can put something there? Surely there's a MediaWiki manual for this site? Also, we could put up some general guidelines for writing articles on the GargWiki in the help section or on a related page. --Moeen 12:20, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

Yes! A very good idea. And filling out the Help page would also be good. -- Vaevictis Asmadi 10:49, 9 September 2007 (CDT)

Italics

Got another question. I've gone through the wiki and italicized all capitalized references to Gargoyles the television show and Gargoyles the property. Should references to Gargoyles the comic book also be italicized? Right now the wiki is inconsistent, but I have seen Gargoyles: Bad Guys italicized. -- Vaevictis Asmadi 23:21, 7 September 2007 (CDT)

Just my opinion, but I do think the title of both the television series and the comic book series (as opposed to the titles of episodes/issues) should be consistently italicized - gdw

I've been using Wikipedia conventions (which I always fall back on in cases of confusion), which basically say television series, plays, films, comic book series, etc are all italicized. Episode titles are not italicized, but they are put in inverted commas "". On GargWiki we tend to use both italics and quotation marks for episode citations, but I think that's a special case. -- Supermorff 10:32, 8 September 2007 (CDT)

So I went through and changed all the ones I could find. But here's a question. We're italicizing the names of episodes and comic issues in this Wiki. Should we also italicize the parenthises? The current state seems slightly inconsistent. My personal preference is to leave the parenthises non-italicized, but my main interest is to standardize the formatting throughout the Wiki. What format should we set? We could do it like this: ("Monsters") or like this: ("Monsters"). -- Vaevictis Asmadi 14:29, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Are we italicizing the episodes and comic issues? I'm not sure that's consistent on the wiki either. But my opinion of it is that it is the citation that is italicized, not the episode. So I prefer italicizing the parenthises too, but that's just my preference. -- Supermorff 17:19, 13 September 2007 (CDT)

Creating new pages

OK, I'm still a bit new to wiki-ing, so I'm not familiar with all the procedure. I'd like to add a new page for the Disney Adventures comic "A Study In Stone" (which would be counted in Apocrypha, of course, but I don't knw how to make a new page, or even if I can, not being a mod. Help? -- Demonskrye 14 September 2007

You absolutely can! Anyone can create a page, and you can do it in one of two ways.

The first way: if you edit a page to include a link to your required article (in this case by adding the text [[A Study In Stone]]) it will produce a red (broken) link. Note that, when you edit a page to make a link like this, you can just use the preview button and you don't even need a to save. Next, you click on the red link (as if it was a non-broken, regular link), and it will take you to that page's "edit page". From there you can edit the page as if it already existed, and when you save it'll be right there.

The second way: you type in the title you want in the search bar to the left of the screen and push "Go". It will tell you that "No page with this exact title exists". If you click on the red link on the words "this exact title", it will send you to the edit page of the page you want.

If you want to practice first, try creating your own user page by clicking on the link to User:Demonskrye. -- Supermorff 09:15, 14 September 2007 (CDT)

Much thanks! The article for A Study in Stone is now up and viewable in the Aprocrypha category. We can move it into one of the sub-categories, but until "Apocrypha Epsiodes" becomes something like "Apocrypha Storylines", I don't think there's an appropriate one for it. Also, I'd suggest that we put the info for making a new page into the now empty "Help" section.

A similar question. I've now done a couple of articles for the Disney Adventures comics, so I think we could use a "Disney Adevntures" subcategory in Category:Apocrypha. I checked over on MediaWiki, but I'm still confused about how a subcategory is made. -- Demonskrye 17 September 2007

Those pages look pretty good. Creating a category is just like creating a page, except that you need to include the "Category:" prefix (note the colon). So either add the category to a page and use the red link, or type "Category:Whatever" into the search bar and hit "go", then proceed as before. For a subcategory, you just need to categorize the category. -- Supermorff 16:33, 17 September 2007 (CDT)

Help

Since there's nothing in the help section, at some point I'll copy the help pages from MediaWiki here. In the meantime, you can find all the help you need here. --Moeen 12:03, 15 September 2007 (CDT)

Google rankings

On 19 September 2007 (about 7 pm GMT), a search for 'Gargoyles' on Google turns up GargWiki at number 92 (the Gargoyles page on Wikiquote is 93). 'Gargoyles+Disney' is even worse at 132, and even then the link is to Category:Apocrypha (there's another link to the Episode Guide at 145). 'Gargoyles+TV' has a link to Grimorum at 18, but GargWiki doesn't appear until 75 (Talk:Main Page).

Obviously, this is not a great situation to be in. Wikia has a few suggestions to improve the rankings here. Section 2 is particularly interesting. -- Supermorff 13:24, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

So perhaps our rankings would be better if the name of the main page was something like "GargWiki - The Disney's Gargoyles Wiki" rather than the way we have it now, which Google may not get? Demonskrye 19 September 2007

I don't feel that Google rankings are as important as other might think, and our priority should be to improve the content here as best we can. But regardless, whatever you do don't spam or vandalize other sites with links to GargWiki. It is precisely this kind of behavior (see here for a more specific example) that got us blocked from Wikipedia, and probably other sites as well. If that happens, we'll be down even lower than we are now with the rankings. So please keep that in mind. --Moeen 15:25, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

That's true. I didn't think of that. Yeah, I never meant to even imply that spamming other sites was in any way a good thing. Cos it's not. Seriously.

But changing the name of the Main Page might not be a bad idea, as long as we can do it without causing too much disruption. "GargWiki - The Gargoyles Wiki" is probably enough, or just "Gargoyles Wiki" as inour logo. But it might make the page look odd. I notice that the Main Pages on Wikipedia and Wikia sites don't have titles, as other pages do. Is there some way we could do that here? If not... maybe it's not worth it. I don't know. -- Supermorff 16:12, 19 September 2007 (CDT)

Community Portal upgrade

I'm thinking of moving this page to GargWiki talk:Community Portal, and turning GargWiki:Community Portal into an actual project page. I mean a proper "Welcome to the Community Portal, and here's what we got going on" sort of project page. We could have links to all the ongoing discussions throughout the wiki, which would be useful, and I'm also thinking of having a "Requested pages" section, where users can (basically) request a page. Thoughts? Comments? -- Supermorff 12:54, 8 November 2007 (CST)

Sounds like a good idea. This site really does need a page introducing new users or potential users to how things work around here. Plus we really need some guidelines, and given that there doesn't seem to exist any anywhere on this site, this would be good place to set some up.--Moeen 14:43, 11 November 2007 (CST)

GargWiki:Policy has some behavioural guidelines, if that's what you mean. Is that what you meant? But anyway, since this could be a complicated reorganisation I'll start writing up a draft of the new page before I start doing anything. -- Supermorff 10:28, 12 November 2007 (CST)

I've written up a page - not quite everything I had originally intended, but it's a good start and we can always expand it later. I'll make the switch-over now. -- Supermorff 09:12, 1 December 2007 (CST)

Done. -- Supermorff 09:20, 1 December 2007 (CST)

A history lesson

Does anyone here know how GargWiki came to be made? When was it started, and who by, and what prompted its creation? I'm just asking because it would be nice to get a little background (not necessarily a lot) to flesh out the page GargWiki:About. I know that it must have been created on or shortly before 26 July 2006, because that's the first edit I can find and it's also when User:Jeb, User:Greg Bishansky and User:Trio were made administrators. If anyone does know, feel free to answer either here or at GargWiki talk:About... or just add the information to the page. Thanks in advance. -- Supermorff 10:38, 12 November 2007 (CST)

Upgrading the Wiki

Looking into Matt's suggestion for an Appearances section, I've noticed that this wiki lacks some of the functionality of other wikis because it's out of date. In particular, the version of MediaWiki used here is 1.5.1, whereas the latest version is 1.11.0. Granted we usually don't use the full functionality of the wiki, but it's still useful to stay up to date. Not being a system admin, I can't update the wiki myself, but it would be nice if whoever is the system admin is would do so.

As far as using Wikipedia's referencing system, to install it follow the installation instructions here. It's only two steps, but requires accessing the system, something I can't do, but a system admin would be able to do.

P.S. Happy New Years to everyone! --Moeen 03:00, 1 January 2008 (CST)

I commented on this at Talk:Appearences Section, but I'll repeat myself here: you can search for admins by using Special:Listusers, but the ones that are most likely to be able to help you are Greg B, Matt, or Jeb.

Happy New Year to you too. -- Supermorff 15:34, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Sounds like you guys know more about the Wikipedia software than I do. You'll have to talk to Jeb or Greg B. -- Matt 15:36, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Alright, thanks. I'll inform Jeb and Greg B. on their talk pages and see it they can do something about it.--Moeen 15:44, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Speculation

Poking around the wiki, I think that there are a few too many places where personal speculation makes its way into the articles. Now there's speculation that I think is OK and speculation that I think doesn't belong here. Speculation that I think is OK is speculation that's based on established real world or Gargoyles universe fact. For example, since we know that gargoyle children generally receive physical characteristics from both parents, often favoring the appearance of the same gender parent and the coloration of the opposite gender parent, it would be fair to speculated that children of know gargoyle couples will probably resemble both of their parents, possibly even in that pattern. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Artus will definitely look like a lavender Broadway, but the suggestion that he might have some of Broadway's physical features and Angela's coloring would be OK. If we didn't know that Elisa was going to be dead by 2198, I would consider it fair to say that she probably would be, given that she would be 230 years old by that time, which is well beyond human life expectancy as we currently know it. Short of major scientific breakthroughs or magical intervention, it would be safe to say that Elisa would probably not be around in roughly two centuries. I think Greg Weisman speculation is also fair game. greg has suggested, but never outright confirmed, that Zafiro and the gargoyle beasts may both have vestigial limbs, Zafiro due to appearing to be four limbed and the beasts as an evolutionary leftover from their common ancestor with gargoyles. I feel no problem with putting that in as canon-in-training as a possibility rather than a certainty until we either have Greg say it's not so (leading to it being deleted) or see someone take x-rays a Zafiro and/or the beasts (leading to it becoming canon). What I'm not OK with is speculation that is based more on guesses or predictions of character's behavior. I took a section out of Zafiro's article that suggested that his hair coloration and facial features could be presumed to be fairly common among the Mayan clan. We don't have any way of knowing that. We apparently know from Greg as canon-in-training that Zafiro's snake-like body structure is very common, despite the fact that he is the only current member of the clan to have it. But for all we know, he could be the only gargoyle in the Mayan clan with white hair and a serpentine face. Similarly, I think there's too much assumption about future hatchlings and their knowledge of their biological parentage. It is OK to assume that Nashville will have a closer relationship with Brooklyn and Katana for a while at least because they will be the only adult gargoyles he spends the majority of his time with. But once Brooklyn and family return to Manhattan, who knows? He may become particularly close to Angela or Broadway or Lex as well. And we have no evidence that Brooklyn and Katana will teach him to put importance on biological parentage. Yes, when he starts asking questions, he'll probably either be aware that Brook and Katana are his biological parents. But if they place no importance on that, if they tell him "We are two of your parents and we love you, but you have other parents and other family out there and some day you will get to see them and they will be just as much your family", it won't matter so much to him that the rest of the clan isn't related to him by blood. Same deal with Angela. It's more tempting to assume that she'll put more emphasis on biology because she is so interested in her own parentage. But things could change. When Nashville arrives and she actually sees the rest of the clan start to parent him, she may start to feel differently about what communal parenting really means. I think it's highly likely that she might tell her kids that she's their biological mother before they necessarily ask (though it's still not something I would assume). But I just don't think we can assume how she'll be raising kids who have yet to be conceived.

Thoughts? -- Demonskrye 10:47, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Apocrypha

At the head of any CIT article is a banner making it clear that's all it is. Shouldn't we have something similar for Apocrypha. To be clear, I think it's 100% appropriate for there to be articles here on, say, Dr. Phobos or Judge Bates, but shouldn't we have a (red?) flag of some kind at the top? -- gdw

This problem has been raised at Talk:Angels in the Night. -- Supermorff 05:26, 4 February 2008 (CST)

I'm glad this has come up again since the recent appearances of many of these apocrypha pages has beenn irking me. I like the idea a lot of a red flag banner at the top of such pages. I want this site to be about all things Gargoyles, including the non-canon stuff, but I think there needs to be a well seen line between the canon and the not canon, and that line is nearly invisible on pages like Dr. Phobos and Judge Bates. Frankly, I don't even like the apocyrpha sections on pages like Brooklyn. -- Matt 08:59, 4 February 2008 (CST)

If you do this, I think you should only provide the banners for in-universe apocryphal articles, and not the out-of-universe articles (issues, episodes, the video-game, etc.). -- Supermorff 04:59, 7 February 2008 (CST)

Actually, Supermorff, I was thinking this was something you'd be better at then myself. I have no idea how to create a banner. And I think we would all trust your skills and judgement. I don't mean to seem like I'm assigning you this though, but if you want to do it at some point, that'd be cool. -- Matt 07:45, 7 February 2008 (CST)

To be honest, this is way down at the bottom of "things I plan to do". Way down. Since I'm not entirely settled on the idea anyway, I probably won't get round to it for a long while.

But making a banner isn't so hard. Have a look at the source code at Template:CIT article, then just change the details a bit. You don't need to know what it all does (I don't), but you can figure out enough to get by. The text is easy to change, but you can also change the background (as long as you know the hex code of the colour you want) and other things. Then it's just a matter of tweaking until it looks the way you want it to. -- Supermorff 12:04, 7 February 2008 (CST)

I've created a Template:Apocrypha article and implemented it on some TGC character pages. It's not quite a banner, but let me know what you think. -- Supermorff 06:49, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

I love it. Great job man! -- Matt 08:02, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm a little bit concerned that some people might not see it because it's so small and so far over to the right. But otherwise, I think it works quite well. -- Demonskrye 09:37, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

I've increased the width and the font size a small amount, so hopefully it should be a bit more noticeable. Better? -- Supermorff 10:48, 26 April 2008 (CDT)

Yes. I hadn't realized that the banner hang out at the right edge of the window, regardless of size, so I withdraw my concern about it being too far to the right. -- Demonskrye 07:31, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Joining GargWiki

Okay, we really need a mechanism set up by which new users can join GargWiki. If we're still concerned about spamming, then we should get a system that is completely disconnected: something like the Ask Greg comment room, but just for this... Or we could actually redirect users to the Ask Greg comment room. Get them to say 'I have registered as such-and-such, please allow me to edit GargWiki'. Or something. Would this be possible? -- Supermorff 07:13, 4 February 2008 (CST)

Could someone please attend to Antiyonder's request for editing powers? (I still feel like going through Station Eight is a pretty awkward way to go about this.) -- Demonskrye 10:36, 6 September 2009 (CDT)

Family tree

Behold! A day and a half of my life wasted: User:Supermorff/Tree. -- Supermorff 04:35, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

That is very cool Great job, Supermorff. Hey, are you going to the Gathering this year? -- Matt 07:06, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Nice job! Do you think we could put it in an article with a text version that would allow people to easily get to the articles for all these individuals? -- Demonskrye 07:35, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

I had wanted to use the same templates as they use at Wikipedia (have a look, e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_of_Normandy#Family_tree), in which each box can contain arbitrary wiki markup (including links), but our current version of the MediaWiki software doesn't seem to support that. We could do another version with links, but plotting family trees in text alone is difficult and looks a bit rubbish if it's not done well. Might be worth a try though.

As for the Gathering, alas I will not be able to make it. My last year of university is wrapping up, and I have suspicions that two flights acros the Atlantic would not help me with revision. I could be wrong. -- Supermorff 08:29, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Another Character Page Idea

So, I'd say the Appearences sections on the character pages have been great and have really added to the information on this site. So, in response to the success of that section, I have another idea. Notable Quotes. Just take 1-5 quotes from a character and put them on the page if we want to. I was thinking making a new section called Notable Quotes and adding them there. I wouldn't want more than five or so, least it get cluttered. Another idea is putting a quote at the top of the character's page, but I feel that there is too much going on up there already. So, what do you think? -- Matt 21:31, 7 May 2008 (CDT)

Hmm. Maybe. I am skeptical. Couldn't we just link to the Gargoyles page at Wikiquote? On the Main Page maybe? -- Supermorff 04:21, 8 May 2008 (CDT)

MediaWiki software update

Has there been any progress on updating the MediaWiki software that this site uses? I tried adding the possibility of collapsible tables. It didn't seem too complicated when I read how to do it, but it hasn't worked anyway, at least not as expected. I assume it's just not compatible with the version we've got. The current stable version of MediaWiki is 1.12, and we're still running 1.5. Time for an upgrade? -- Supermorff 15:53, 31 May 2008 (CDT)

image requests

Moved from GargWiki:Community Portal#Requested images

Hi, guys. I just wanted to let you know that I'll be fulfilling these image requests soon now that I have plenty of time on my hands. I hope to have them done by the weekend. Take care! D Taina 12:20, 7 May 2008 (CDT)

Thanks DTaina! You rock!!! -- Matt 17:46, 7 May 2008 (CDT)

Hey, guys. DT here. If you know of any articles that have low quality pics (such as VCR screenshots or logos), or if you just want more pics, don't hesitate to let me know so I can get to work. D Taina 17:25, 9 May 2008 (CDT)

Just a thought

So, I'm thinking of creating a Misconceptions and urban legends about Gargoyles page. Mostly as an answer to a lot of really wacky theories I've seen out there. Some, like "Gargoyles was originally an anime," "Disney hates Gargoyles and conspired to kill it," "Space-Spawn look like gargoyles," "The Gathering of the Gargoyles is always in Montreal," "Goliath embraced the human way in Mark of the Panther," "Lexington can't be gay because he went after Angela," and so on and so forth. Thoughts? Suggestions? ---The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Greg Bishansky (talk).

I like the page so far and the concept in general. I think we just need to figure out places we could link to it from so it's not just sitting there all by its lonesome. Possibilities include the Gargoyles TV series page and places in character or episode articles that mention these misconceptions. -- Demonskrye 14:38, 6 June 2008 (CDT)

Owen/Puck

Okay, so far, we've merged all alternate identities for characters into single entries. Molly and Banshee are now merged. Jon and John are now merged, etc. What do we do about Owen and Puck? I asked Greg his thoughts and even he thinks that one is not so clear cut. "It's a judgement call. I'd tend to combine them under a Puck/Owen Burnett entry with both the Puck and the Owen Burnett entries redirecting. But I think you should discuss it with the gwiki crew. Get a consensus." So, thoughts? --GregX 17:00, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

I think it can go either way. I see no problem with having them in separate entries, but if you guys want to change it, then that's fine by me. DTaina 17:55, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

It's a tough call. It would make sense to do the merge of aliases and alternate forms across the board. But the Puck/Owen thing just feels a little different. Aliases are fairly simple: you just pick the name that the character either had first or uses most frequently. "Dominique Destine" is just Demona's human alias. "Talon" is the name Derek Maza adopted after he was mutated, but his family still calls him "Derek." Alternate forms for one of Oberon's children are a little more difficult, but it seems that there's usually a primary identity we can all agree on, like with Banshee. And speaking of Banshee, her disguise was revealed in the same episode where she was introduced. The fact that Owen is Puck, of course, wasn't revealed until near the end of season two. And Puck is more dedicated to playing his role than any other fey we've seen with the possible exception of Titania (and even in that case, there isn't the marked difference in personality between Titania and Anastasia that there is between Owen and Puck). Owen almost is a separate person because Puck is committed to making him one. So should Owen retain a separate entry? And on a more practical note, would we be looking at an unusually long article if we merged the two or just less repetition? -- Demonskrye 20:00, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

I definitely think they should not be merged. As User:Demonskrye said, they are two totally different entities. I think it's fine as is.--PGFish 22:53, 11 June 2008 (CDT) Also, I'm not too crazy about merging Titania and Anastasia Renard. It feels too confusing to me for appearances sections and so on...what about episodes like Walkabout where Anastasia appears but not Titania. Just my two cents.--PGFish 22:59, 11 June 2008 (CDT)

I suppose if we are going to be consistent be have to merge them together. I mean with Talon/Derek, Jon/John the merger seems fairly easy and obvious and not very problematic. They are, afterall, the same person using alias'. With Oberon's Children, I wonder... PGFish makes a good point about appearances section issues. I dunno. The more I think about it, the tougher it seems. ultimately though, I feel we should be consistent. Puck and Owen are the same entity. Puck and Owen can't exist at the same time anymore than Derek and Talon can. So, I suppose I'd go for merging them. As for the Appearances Sections, I suppose we need to be consistent there as well and list all the episodes where either Puck or Owen (or any other alias' used by that entity) have appeared. It may be confusing, but simply remember that we are following the person, not the form of the person. Puck is always Puck, even when he is pretending to be Owen. -- Matt 00:47, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

Yes, but Puck isn't Puck when he's Owen. It's not simply an alias, but a seperate entity. When Owen is around, Puck doesn't exist.--PGFish 01:01, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

This is exactly the reason I have by-and-large been against merging aliases and alternate identities, because I knew this was where it was heading. I firmly believe that Puck and Owen should have separate pages.

Before I get down to my personal opinions, here are a few logistical facts:

1. The naming issue. You can't very well call the merged page "Owen Burnett", since Owen is an identity created by Puck. You can't call it "Puck" because Puck has appeared in just 4 episodes, compared to Owen's 30+. You also can't call the page "Puck/Owen" or similar, because this will create a subpage of "Puck", which is a redirect and it will wreak havoc with the MediaWiki software. So where do you stick a page like this?

2. Do we intend to merge the various sections as well? Will we merge the Appearances sections? If so, are we going to list appearances (As Puck) or (As Owen), which we've avoided in other cases? Will we just keep two separate Appearances sections? Will we merge the History sections, and mention "As Owen", or "As Puck" every other paragraphs? What's the point?

Now for my personal opinions: We don't gain anything by merging the two articles, except a heaping pile of confusion for new visitors. If I wanted to look for specific information on Puck, I would not look in Owen's article, so I fail to see the benefit in forcing me to look through a combined article for both characters. And yes, I do believe that they are separate characters, not just because they have different appearances, voice actors and personalities. They also have very different spheres of influence in the Gargoyles universe - spheres which only overlap at young Alex.

Something to consider when comparing this to other examples: The once-separate identities of Anastasia and Titania have now mostly been combined. Does anyone expect that Anastasia will ever appear again, with no mention of Titania? And yet Owen continues to appear without mention that he is Puck. I wouldn't (in all honesty) be surprised if Puck appeared without mention that he was Owen. So those two situations are not really comparable.

Also, whereas Anastasia and Titania were written (and cast) with the knowledge that it would be revealed that they were the same person. It wasn't until "The Mirror" was already written that the writers realised that Owen and Puck were the same person. In all the other cases that we've merged, there has never really been any doubt that the two characters/names/identities were always supposed to be "the same". With Owen and Puck, they were initially different and later combined (obviously it made perfect sense and worked beautifully, but that's not the point).

My final thought: Consistency, which is all fine and dandy, is a secondary consideration to making the best, clearest and most helpful encyclopedia that we can. We don't need to minimize the number of articles we've got, and this isn't Wikipedia in which we'd need to merge all similar characters just so they're notable enough to be mentioned at all. Merging in this case is not only unnecessary, but unhelpful. -- Supermorff 08:45, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

On a separate-but-related note, the Owen article is woefully short. More than half of the History section is actually about Puck, which could well be causing some of the confusion. We should expand the history section - give specific examples of Owen doing his job (keeping Elisa out in "The Edge", pulling a gun in "Enter Macbeth", taking the swab in "Double Jeopardy", summoning the commandoes in "Masque" and "Bash"). Some parts of the Characteristics section (such as his turning to stone by Demona, and his gaining a stone hand) should be mentioned in the History section in their proper context. We should mention that he's good at judo. We should add the anecdote about Owen being written with some unknown secret in his backstory, and then say how Greg and several other writers realized, simultaneously and separately, that Owen and Puck were the same person. We should re-word the opening paragraph, so that Owen seems to be a character in his own right and not just some alias used by Puck, because he's more than that, and we should treat him as such. -- Supermorff 08:45, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

Okay, after reading what Supermorff had to say, I want to change my vote. I think Owen and Puck should remain seperate. I think I know how to work this all out. I think alias' should be merged so Dominique Destine should be with Demona, John Castaway and Jon Canmore should be the same page, Talon and Derek, etc. These are the exact same person using different names and perhaps looking or acting different, but they are not new people. Meanwhile, alternate identities should remain seperate because they are two different people.

So, alias' merge, alternate identities remain seperate. What do you think? -- Matt 21:23, 12 June 2008 (CDT)

I agree with Supermorff 100%, too. You guys have my vote! DTaina 11:29, 13 June 2008 (CDT)

Young character pictures

Recently a lot of pictures have been added of younger versions of several characters. These picures look great, and thanks both to GregW for suggesting the idea and DTaina for doing the hard work and providing them all! However, I would like to suggest that some of them be re-labelled to include either the age of the character or the year being depicted. So Princess Katharine is the best way of doing it (by the way, we need a young one of her too), but many others are less clear (I'm not sure why, but Bodhe seems like a particularly bad offender to me). Anyone agree? Disagree? Like pancakes? -- Supermorff 16:30, 16 January 2009 (CST)

Makes sense to me.--Gweisman 01:42, 17 January 2009 (CST)

A Scottish Family Tree

So, I unfortunately lack the photoshop skills, but I want to make a Family Tree of the Scottish royal family for the wiki. From Kenneth mac Alpin all the way down to Luach and Canmore. Anyone up for it? --GregX 23:01, 14 August 2009 (CDT)

I was just pondering that this afternoon, actually. I'd suggest using this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Familytree The end result then supports hyperlinks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_family#Family_tree I can do it, but not until after the Gathering. I'd have to import additional templates too. -lumpmoose 23:16, 14 August 2009 (CDT)

This has already been done! Supermorff has already made one here. It could perhaps use some updating given the new information, however. -- Matt 16:12, 15 August 2009 (CDT)

I'm willing to update this and format it into a Scottish Royalty page or something, if Supermorff doesn't mind. But I'll need the original code. The family trees I've found are image files. -lumpmoose 22:53, 30 August 2009 (CDT)

When I started doing this (a very very ling time ago), I wanted to create the Familytree template here. However, I think we have out-of-date MediaWiki software on this site, so all I could do was produce the sourcecode and copy the picture from another wiki. The sourcecode is all listed on that page Matt linked to, but it won't work here. If you could make it work, I'd love to see it on its own page! -- Supermorff 16:31, 25 December 2009 (CST)

Things of a more... "adult" nature

So, thanks to Blue Mug-A-Guests at various Gatherings, and occasional tidbits at Ask Greg, I'm wondering, do we stick any of this into the GargWiki? We always said we'd be all encompassing. --GregX 15:15, 13 April 2010 (CDT)

Can we provide sources for it? Stuff at AskGreg is fair game, but I'm hesitant to add things directly from Blue Mug-a-Guests unless someone posted about it at AskGreg, thus giving Greg a chance to correct or whatever.

It being of adult nature doesn't bother me at all. -- Supermorff 12:10, 14 April 2010 (CDT)

Well, I started with a tiny one in Demona's entry, just to see how well it goes over. Maybe if it's not too awkward, we can add more where appropriate. --GregX 20:59, 26 April 2010 (CDT)

Weapons

So, DTaina had a great idea about putting together entries for weapons. Kinda like what we did for Exo-Frame. Still trying to think of how we'd do it. Obviously, particle beams need an entry. Demona's various big fucking guns could get an entry. I'd love it to be Demona's Big Fucking Guns but I won't fight for it ;) --GregX 17:40, 20 April 2010 (CDT)

New Screenshots

You may have noticed some screenshots getting replaced by higher quality PNG files. Well, recently DTaina and I downloaded the latter half of season two in German. The quality of the video and picture is beautiful. DVD quality even. Much better than the ToonDisney and Jetix versions we've been using. So, for characters that popped up in episodes not on DVD, we'll be replacing their images with high quality PNG files. This will be a timely process, I think. But worth it. --GregX 14:49, 16 August 2010 (CDT)

Already noticing the improvement! Nice work! -- Supermorff 16:45, 17 August 2010 (CDT)

Images

I see lots of unused images on the database. May I delete them, or do you guys prefer to stow images for later use? Also, I'd like to categorize images using a simple template I usually customize for each wiki in which I'm most active. Upon community approval, this would also be dependent of us having parser function work. Thogial 07:06, 14 May 2011 (PDT)

You just linked to the uncategorised files. Unused files are here. -- Supermorff 00:28, 15 May 2011 (PDT)

Doh. That's what I meant. Thogial 02:13, 15 May 2011 (PDT)

Criteria for "Non-Canon" Art by Canon Artists

Since this issue just hit the fan, maybe it's time we really discussed this, and came up with official rules. I think a MAIN PIC needs to show the character off as best we can. If Greg Guler or Frank Paur were releasing art of characters, I'd be all for including them also. In other words, I want those pics up, so let's revise these rules. Here is what I'm thinking:

Unofficial art by official artists is welcome on GargWiki. Encouraged even. But there should be certain criteria. Depicting a canon character is perfect. Depicting a non-canon scene is not allowed. For example, we have two main pics from Karine Charlebois. One depicting Katana and one depicting the Redemption Squad. Both are terrific and fit the proposed criteria perfectly. However, art of, let's say for example, Katana fighting Hakon even by an official artist like Charlebois or Paur, cannot be used because such a thing hasn't taken place in canon.

Karine also has beautiful art of Brooklyn up, with everything we've seen since the end of "Phoenix." Except for the eye-patch. And since we don't know when he received his injury relative to when he received all his weapons and the armor, that art would not meet our criteria.

What do you all think? Thoughts? Suggestions? --GregX 10:44, 19 January 2012 (PST)

I vote for canon pics. I feel that the purity of the canon material is more important than whether or not it looks good. Take Wikipedia for example. How many articles have you seen with grainy and badly drawn pictures of TV show characters, even though higher quality fanart pictures have always been available? We can have character models that were drawn behind the scenes. And we can have fanart here and there, but it shouldn't dominate the canon material. For me, canon and CiT should be above everything. And you guys can always count on me to touch up canon screenshots or scans that look a little sub par. What do you guys think? DTaina 11:04, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Taina, I think you missed what was being said. We're discussing revising the rules, with a VERY STRICT criteria to allow us to use the best resources we have. And as for wikipedia... I think it is a TERRIBLE website full of misinformation that is dumbing us down as a culture, and I refuse to use them as an authority on anything. And Colbert agrees with me ;)--GregX 11:11, 19 January 2012 (PST)

I'd revise the rules to never let fanart take the top spot. As a fan artist myself, I think I know where I'm coming from on this. DTaina 11:24, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Yes, but you aren't a canon artist doing a fan-art, really the only ones who can respond to this with weight are Karine, Greg Guler, Frank Paur, Chris Jones, and anyone else who worked on the designs in the show/comic. For my part, I can see both sides of the argument, and have remained relatively neutral in these proceedings, however, if I am to cast a vote, I vote with in favor of GregXB's proposal providing that all of the safeguards and requirements he has requested are strictly enforced. --Griffinwyrm7 11:32, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Perhaps if the non-canon pics included some form of disclaimer identifying them as such in the captions? I'm not opposed to revising the rules, provided whatever rule we do eventually decide on is both clear and unambiguous. Algernon 12:03, 19 January 2012 (PST)

I agree with Greg that we should attempt to use the best picture available. But to me, the best picture available will always be canon over non-canon (or CiT) by default. Greg, I had the same thought about Karine's Brooklyn art in regards to the eye patch and armor and stuff and you should be able to see that by the same logic we cannot include the Katana picture. We have never seen Katana and the Phoenix together. I admit, I'm sure she has seen it plenty, but in the canon it has yet to happen. Therefore, by your own logic, the Katana picture isn't canon and shouldn't be allowed. But regardless of whether you accept that argument or not, the majority seems to be against the picture as the main pic, but fine with the compromose of having it lower on the page. -- Matt 14:58, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Matt, no offense, but you are reaching so far, I want to ask you how the food in China is tasting. And what majority? There are three in favor of the pic... and who knows who else is going to come in to vote. --GregX 15:44, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Matt: If I read you correctly, your comment actually supports Greg's proposal. Greg said that we know Brooklyn will receive his injury and his gear, but not when. By the same logic, we know that Katana will someday travel with Brooklyn by way of the Phoenix, but not when. Unless Greg Weisman joins Scientology or something else that might severely distort the master plan, we know it's going to happen. So I don't see any harm in Karine's Katana pic. If someday we get more canon Gargoyles in some form and a better pic of Katana comes along, I would be in favor of using that pic instead. But right now, I think Karine's is the best we have. --User:Harvester of Eyes

Except that it isn't canon. The fact that it is or isn't a superior pic is irrelevant. The quality of the picture is not the point. The point is that this site has always been about putting canon first, then CiT, then apocrypha. Bishansky has been one of the strongest supporters of this policy. It is only when that policy conflicts with his personal desires that he decides that a discussion needs to be had about the matter. At best, Karine's Katana picture only qualifies as CiT and the canon picture should take precedence.

Look, Greg, this is a wiki. If you want your own Gargoyles site where you can do whatever you want regardless of what others think, that's fine. But don't try to hijack this site for that purpose. The community-based nature of this site means that we don't all always get our way. For instance, I HATE the negative and immature "reviews" of various apocrypha elements (specifically some TGC episodes) and I am greatly annoyed by the subjective statements, stupid captions, crude jokes and other unproffesional edits that litter many of the pages on this wiki. And I know I am not alone or even in the minority on a lot of it. But I choose my battles because this isn't my site. And it isn't yours either. It is a work of the all the contributors. -- Matt 17:29, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Matt, was there really a need to get this personal? Really. Yes, this is a community. Look at all the people here discussing this issue. I didn't just change the rules willy nilly. I called for an official discussion on this, and made a proposal. A proposal that we are discussing and voting on already. Yes, it was a little inappropriate to make that remark about how far you're reaching, I get that. But you had to get really personal. So stop accusing me of being Sauron. Were I Sauron, I'd have blocked everyone and done what I wanted, but no... I wanted to have an actual discussion and vote. And from the looks of things, you don't have the majority you were boasting about. Hell, we even had Katana's designer, Robby Bevard, another canon artist, come in and say the one in the comic is off model. If you have personal issues with me, you have my e-mail address. For the record, I have no personal issues with you. --GregX 18:07, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Matt: Do you specifically know someone who likes the Goliath Chronicles? If you do, please invite them to defend their opinions here. And I would also like to add that I wrote a very unflattering article about the Assassin on this wiki, which someone edited. And I respected that, because my opinions on the Assassin exist on other sites. But what is being suggested here does not seem unflattering. --[Harvester of Eyes]]

I designed Katana, and colored the issue she appeared in. Ben Dunn was incredibly off model in many, many respects, (The world will never know just how much I had to redraw, and how much more I wished I had time for...) and had no knowledge of the series, he was ONLY brought on because deadlines needed to be met. As it is, I redrew half the pages Katana appeared on anyway and had to add all the weapons on Brooklyn. It was NOT the optimal art. If I'd had more time before the deadline, or the artist had been more open to redrawing pages, she'd be closer to on model and there wouldn't be a need for this discussion in the first place. I'd say use the cleaner full body shot by a different artist that worked on the books. Deadlines are the bane of this sort of thing... Didn't Enter Macbeth have retakes done? Didn't Vows have its ending changed after the first airing? Didn't the mutates all get complete redesigns after their first appearance? I'd say, at the very least, have the professional full body shot (by one of the folks that worked on the comic!) available on the wiki for viewing, even if its not the first and foremost pic.--Robbybevard 17:56, 19 January 2012 (PST)

I agree that Karine's art can stay, but it shouldn't be the foremost pic. It should be canon and CiT first, right? DTaina 18:02, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Makes sense to me. I hate the final product as it appeared in the book for a variety of reasons, but... canon should be first. Maybe it can be really small. As is, I've always assumed that Katana will have some sort of redesign or tweaking anyway whenever she next appears in some form of media. Since the final art really was not good or ideal. --Robbybevard 18:17, 19 January 2012 (PST)

I'm glad you agree Robby. And thanks for all your hard work, by the way.

As far as I can tell, no one has suggested that Karine's picture be completely taken off the site. Everyone seems to be alright with it being on Katana's page somewhere. It really just comes down to some of us prefering quality over canon and some of us prefering canon over quality. Obviously, I'm in the latter group.

As for the TGC pages. There are fans who like TGC. I'm not one of them, but that isn't the point. The point is that those pages take this site down a lot in my opinion. Most of us strive to make this site professional and objective and canon-centered and those pages make the site seem like a joke. And most of us are not laughing. That is my opinion, of course. I'd prefer to do away with all the nonsense myself, but I'm content to only worry about the canon and CiT material and resign myself to the fact that others will use this site to attack Gargoyles apocryphal material they didn't like.

Which brings me back to Katana. As a canon page with a depicted canon character I feel we should focus on her canon appearence. For good or ill, the canon picture is the canon picture for now and nothing is going to change that. If Karine (or whomever) produces a better quality CANON picture down the road, I'd love to replace the current canon picture with the new one. But until that point, what we have is what we have.

Or perhaps we should enlist Karine or other canon artists in re-drawing all the art we don't like into non-canon portraits and landscapes for use as canon material. Please. -- Matt 18:23, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Yeah, we wouldn't want that to happen. I'm fine with fixing up little animation errors, editing out grain and logos... but it has to stop somewhere. DTaina 18:30, 19 January 2012 (PST)

So recap -- this is really TWO issues in one -- 1) Do we allow unofficial art by official artists on GargWiki? AND 2) Would an unofficial piece of art be OK to take the main focus of the article, in particular, in cases when Canon material is also available (especially when the quality of the two works is being considered). The first issue is clearly the most non-controversial -- Everyone seems loves Karine's work on Katana, myself included (and that's not to mentioning her other unofficial work featured in the Dingo, Redemption Squad and Religious Studies 101: A Handful of Thorns pages). In my eye, the precedence of unofficial art by official artists is what allows us to have CIT to begin with -- Greg Weisman's own continued and unofficial work as creator of the show. As for the second issue, I give my vote for Canon material before CIT and anything else unofficial (this is why Apocrypha is located at the bottom of a character's page and why CIT is tagged at the top of the page or marked in blue type . . . but that doesn't mean that the unofficial work by the official artists can't be included in the Wiki. Just trying to clear things up a bit while adding my own two cents --Pheon 18:36, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Tallying it all up, okay, I lost. Cool. That's democracy. We had an official discussion, and for now, I lost it. That's what democracy is. Good thing I don't throw my weight around here and behave like a dictator like certain people like to insinuate, and then not apologize when they get called on it. --GregX 18:46, 19 January 2012 (PST)

Based on the outcome of this discussion, I've swapped back the positions of the Katana images so that the canon image appears first. (This seems to have slightly mucked up the position of the other images on the page, so if someone can figure out how to fix that please do - I'm sure this has changed since we upgraded wiki software.)

Robby, your comments about the process and the final artwork are very interesting. Would you be opposed to having them on the relevant wiki articles? -- Supermorff 02:59, 20 January 2012 (PST)

JEB's Resignation

JEB recently resigned as our administrator. Of course we here at GargWiki thank him for getting this site started and for doing as much as he did since it's inception... which was quite a bit behind the scenes. How ever, we need another admin to become the primary point of contact for technical or administrative issues from this point forward. Scott Sakai (who runs the server with Gorebash) can take care of the patching and other server-side activities. However, someone else would need to take care of the administrative tasks (i.e. everything else that is done through the web interface). I would do it, but I have no idea how. So, is anyone interested in the position? --GregX 11:47, 16 March 2012 (PDT)

I also have no idea how. I doubt any of the regular editors know how. -- Supermorff 13:21, 16 March 2012 (PDT)

No idea here either. I was gonna recommend Supermorff! Guess not. -- Matt 17:03, 16 March 2012 (PDT)

Yeah, my first instincts said Supermorff too. Hmm, anyone else? I think Thogial has some wiki experience. --GregX 17:17, 16 March 2012 (PDT)

I've left Thogial a message about it. If he can't do it, I'm willing to learn. (Although I'll be busy for the next three weeks or so. After that, I'll be willing to learn.) -- Supermorff 02:41, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

I'm afraid I'm not the guy. I do have wiki experience; I know my way around CSS, though I'm (almost) totally ignorant of Javascript. However, I'm not entirely sure my experience would address the needs of this site... At Wikia we run wikis via CSS and JS, but here I gather it's more like a web hosting forum site (web interface and whatnot) and I've never done that. You're looking for someone who knows how to solve problems when they occur--not someone who needs to learn how to do it first. For instance, I have no clue on how to solve the software issue we've had since you moved the site...

On the other hand, if we can't find a suitable replacement, then the best alternative would be something as per Supermorff's suggestion: we round up three or four members to chime in and learn who to do it, intuitively or otherwise. -- Thogial 05:51, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

Hi, JEB here. I really don't think it should be that hard to replace me on the web side of the wiki; anyone who's had wiki and admin experience (like most of you above) should be able to do it after a quick review of the options on Special Pages. There's also plenty of advice on operating Mediawiki wikis on the web. Whoever steps up to the plate, I thank him and wish him well. Jeb 14:09, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

Hey, Jeb. Well if that's the case, then I'd be happy to lend a hand. But not alone. Must this be a one man's job? Because I'd feel more comfortable with some backup... Supermorff? If we can share the load, I'm game. -- Thogial 15:03, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

I could try my best to learn also. So, what do you say? Supermoff, Thogial, and I sharing the load? --GregX 17:23, 17 March 2012 (PDT)

The more the merrier. Since you two have been here the longest, I'll be L-3. -- Thogial 18:07, 17 March 2012 (PDT)