User talk:Greg Bishansky

That would be very cool, thank you. What would I have to do? -- Supermorff 07:10, 21 March 2007 (CDT)

Can I please ask you a question, Greg? How do I create a new article? -Vaevictis Asmadi Thanks. -Vaevictis

Honorifics in page names

I see you reverted my moving Dr. Anton Sevarius to Anton Sevarius. I guess you feel that it's preferable to include the honorific in the page name, but I'm slightly confused as to why. Every other page name that includes an honorific uses it only in place of an unknown name (e.g. Mr. Jaffe, Dr. Sato, etc). Furthermore, when a character's full name is known (as is the case for Mr. David Xanatos, Dr. Lydia Duane, etc), no honorific is included. The only other character treated similarly is King Arthur Pendragon, and one might argue that he's an exception if only because of the familiarity of the name "King Arthur". If you're willing, I'll change the page back and I'll even redirect all the links to the appropriate page, but otherwise I'll defer to your superior wisdom and leave it as is. -- Supermorff 13:21, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

I tend to agree that honorifics aren't part of the name. A "Dr. Sevarius" redirecting everyone to "Anton Sevarius" makes sense to me. But not so much having the Dr. as part of his name. Even with Arthur, I'd think you'd want "King Arthur" to route everyone to Arthur Pendragon. And I'd even suggest using "Mr. Jaffe" only to route readers to "Jaffe". Or "Sir Griff" to "Griff". The only exceptions I'd make is if the honorific isn't really an honorific but is in fact part of a character's nom de guerre. For example "Doctor Doom" or "Mr. Fantastic". Now, I can't think of any examples in the Gargoyles Universe. We do have nom de guerres, like Wolf or Fang, etc. But I can't off the top of my head think of a nom de guerre that contains an honorific. JMHO, btw. --Greg Weisman

Yeah, I guess that makes sense. But, I think Arthur should still have his title, usually if you look him up in a book or encyclopedia, he has his title before his name. As usual, I trust your judgement. -- Greg B

Taskforce

Taskforce is one word. Though we'll still use the acronym GTF, cuz humans are inconsistent with the names they love so much, Taskforce is still one word. Gargoyles Taskforce (GTF).

Timeline

Thanks for the clarification of the canon vs. cit training thing. As for the timeline, I really would like to do some more work on it. As it is, it seems kinda disorganized esspecially after 1994. I havn't done much there yet cuz I don't know what kind of format we should go with. Also, I'm think that perhaps we should put the Future Tense dates in a seperate section altogether of the Timeline. They never actually happened and having them where they are adds to the disorganization, IMHO. Let me know what you think. - Matt

Timeline

Well, that is starting to look a lot better. Sure you don't want to keep the Future Tense dates in a seperate section of the timeline?

Great work you and Matt have done on the Timeline. Do you think it might be worth splitting some years (particularly 1994, 1995 and 1996) off into separate articles, linked to from the main Timeline? There's easily enough information to warrant it. -- Supermorff 13:28, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Gargoyle Beasts

Hi, Greg. I want to talk about this "gargoyle beast" vs. "Gargoyle Beast" issue. While I understand that Greg (the other Greg) does use "Gargoyle Beasts", he doesn't seem to do so consistently. In comments 653, 5514, 8877 and [1] at Ask Greg, he clearly uses the lower case variety. In fact, sometimes, he even uses both "gargoyle beast" and "Gargoyle Beasts" together in the same comment, as in 609 and 92.

At other times, Greg (Weisman) also capitalises "Gargoyles" when referring to the species, as well as the word "Gargates" (but again, inconsistently). On GargWiki, "gargoyles", "gargates" and "gargoyle beasts" are very rarely capitalised, making lower case variations the preference largely by consensus. Even on the Gargoyle Beast page, there is only one instance in which they are called "Gargoyle Beasts" (in the intro paragraph), and otherwise they are "gargoyle beasts".

If you (or Mr. Weisman) insist that capitalised variations are correct, then that's fine (although it will mean that at some point we will need to trawl through every page on the Wiki and correct "gargoyle" to "Gargoyle", "gargoyle beast" to "Gargoyle Beast" and "gargate" to "Gargate"). Since they are not proper nouns in any case, my personal opinion is that they should all be lower case throughout (except when Gargoyles refers to the series instead of the species), and thus I think the page should be at Gargoyle beast. What do you think? -- Supermorff 13:28, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

I say, it's fine as is.

Not to be a pain in the ass or contrary, but I tend to agree with lower case in most instances (despite how inconsistent I know I've been and will probably continue to be). The words "human", "humans", "dog", "chimpanzees", etc. are all properly lower case, I believe, and the words "gargoyle", "gargoyles", "beasts" etc. should be lower case as well. Of course when used as the title of the show, "Gargoyles" should be capitalized, but maybe that's the distinction. (Though I'm quite happy to be overruled, if people disagree.) - gdw

Yeah, gargoyle beast in text. But, Gargoyle Beast as the title of an entry. That's the way I see it. Of course, as always Greg, what ever you think is best. - GXB

I'm not going to change it again, but in my experience Wiki article titles should always be the same as they appear in text. That way, when the title is used in the middle of a sentence, it can be linked without pipe-linking, as follows: "Gargoyles are to gargoyle beasts as humans are to chimpanzees." However, if there's a different preference among GargWiki users, then we should stick to that. -- Supermorff 19:35, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

GXB - I tend to agree with you for aesthetic reasons. That entries would be in Title Casing. But that within the text, something like gargoyle beasts would be in lower case. - gdw

Blacklisted

Greg, yesterday I learned that GargWiki has been blacklisted by Wikimedia. This means that all Wikimedia Projects (in particular Wikipedia) will automatically reject any edit that includes a link to GargWiki or any of its subpages. The reason for this seems to be several acts of vandalism and link spamming that have taken place both on Wikipedia and on Grimorum, which is what you might call a "rival" Gargoyles wiki. Some of these edits seem to be well intentioned, but their execution was disruptive and uncivil. I have already petitioned that the site be removed from the blacklist, and I have been informed that no action will be taken for at least one week, at which point I will make the request again and see.

To improve our chances of being removed from the blacklist at the end of the week, we have to be seen to be taking action against such vandalism and link spamming. At the very least, I suggest we create a Policy page here on GargWiki (for example at GargWiki:Policy) that promotes civility among GargWiki users and that specifically denounces any acts of vandalism, both on GargWiki and elsewhere. The policy would need to explain what vandalism and link spamming are, and why they are bad ideas. If you wish, I can draw up a draft based on Wikipedia policy pages, and we can hold a vote among GargWiki members to establish it as actual policy. If you or another administrator would rather draw up a proposal yourself, that is also acceptable. How would you like to proceed? -- Supermorff 17:10, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Sounds good to me, do it.

Hopefully, I should have a first draft ready in the next few days. -- Supermorff 09:06, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

That's done now (see GargWiki:Policy). Considering I was basically keying off pre-existing Wikipedia policy pages, it took a surprisingly long time. How should we let people know about the page to comment on it? -- Supermorff 08:23, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

Looks great to me.

Can I ask why there is another gargoyles wiki site? I mean obviously I don't want to vandalize it, but having just went over there it seems like one big stub. Do we know who is running it and why they feel the need to compete with us here? Did they predate us or something? I'm more curious than concerned. It seems like such a waste. If there are people who want to work on a garg wiki, maybe we can channel their energies here...

They didn't predate us. Other than that, I can't say. -- Supermorff 08:23, 16 April 2007 (CDT)

More Gargoyle Beasts

Having mostly settled on Title Casing as preferable for article titles, what do you think about the names of categories? Once again I would prefer changing them to lower casing where appropriate. Proper names (such as Category:Manhattan Clan) would remain as they are but others (such as Category:Gargoyle Beasts or Category:Organized Crime) would be changed. What do you think? -- Supermorff 17:14, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

For aesthetic reasons, capital letters.

It's hard to disagree with such a terse answer. So you apply the same aesthetic to category titles as to article titles? Okay. Aesthetically, I prefer lower case (the "Voice Actors" category in particular looks wrong to me), but I'll let the matter drop if you've decided. -- Supermorff 05:48, 20 April 2007 (CDT)

Still blacklisted

Yes. A new Wikipedia user has taken the opportunity to use Ask Greg as a conduit in an attempt to circumvent the blacklisting. It is making the removal process complicated. -- Supermorff 03:32, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

The new incident can be found here, and the ongoing discussion is here. Not much to do at this point except keep your fingers crossed. -- Supermorff 13:18, 21 April 2007 (CDT)

This is the current situation: we are still on the blacklist. We will remain on the blacklist for the foreseeable future. The important thing to remember is that this blacklisting is not intended to "punish" GargWiki, but rather to prevent what were quite obvious incidents of link spam. Admittedly, it hasn't done us any good, and the ruling might seem unfair, but they have the weight of precedent and guidelines behind them. For now we've got to accept it and move on.

A bigger concern at present is the risk that AskGreg might also be blacklisted, because User:GT75gs has been using it as a means of circumventing the blacklisting. If it is put forward, there is no argument we can use that could keep it off. The only action we can take is to get in touch with the responsible parties, calmly explain the situation and, in a civil manner, try to convince them to stop.

Eventually, we can go and suggest that certain pages be added to the Wikipedia local whitelist. Trying to whitelist the Main Page is a bad idea, considering that's the one that was used for link spamming in the first place. I think the best suggestion for a first article to try and whitelist is the article on Demona, both because it is protected and because it had previously been on the Wikipedia article on Demona before the blacklisting without any problems. However, any instances of link spamming in this time will serious hamper efforts to have any page whitelisted, so we should probably wait for at least a couple of months before taking any other action, just to be sure that the problem has ended. What do you think? -- Supermorff 07:06, 22 April 2007 (CDT)

I think somebody needs to write to User:GT75gs asap. His/her user talk page would be a place to start. Vaevictis Asmadi 19:02, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Thailog's Skin Color

I don't think of Thailog's skin as black. The color inspiration was the shift in uniforms for the Fantastastic Four when John Byrne took over. They went from light blue to dark blue after a trip through the negative zone. (Of course, I agree that Elisa's hair is black.)