User talk:TJ Spyke

Welcome to Memory Alpha, TJ Spyke! I've noticed that you've already made some contributions to our database – thanks for your edit to the Gowron page! We all hope that you'll enjoy our activities here and decide to join our community.

If you'd like to learn more about working with the nuts and bolts of Memory Alpha, I have a few links that you might want to check out:


 * Our policies and guidelines provides links to inform you on what is appropriate for Memory Alpha and what is not. Particular items of note are the and  policies, the editing guidelines, our point of view, copyrights and guidelines for proper etiquette.
 * How to edit a page includes a basic tutorial about how to use our special wikitext code here on Memory Alpha.
 * Naming conventions provides guidelines on how to name a new page that you may want to create.
 * The Manual of Style is an overview of the basic guidelines for how to format and style your articles.
 * How to write a great article is a list of suggestions that can help you put together an article that might end up on our Featured Articles list someday.
 * See the user projects page for current projects of our archivists, or help us to reduce the number of stubs.
 * Look up past changes you have made in your contributions log.
 * Keep track of your favorite Memory Alpha articles through your very own watchlist.
 * Create your own user page and be contacted on this page, your talk page.

One other suggestion: if you're going to make comments on talk pages or make other sorts of comments, please be sure to sign them with four tildes (~) to paste in your user name and the date/time of the comment.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in our Ten Forward community page. Thanks, and once again, welcome to Memory Alpha! -- 31dot (Talk) 17:26, August 15, 2010


 * The above named user is the most currently available administrator to contribute to Memory Alpha; their signature was automatically added by User:Wikia. If you have any immediate questions or concerns, you may contact that user through their talk page.

Discussions
Please keep discussions in one place, thanks.– Cleanse ( talk 06:05, August 24, 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes
I gotta ask, what's the point of changing links when they already redirect to the appropriate page? -Angry Future Romulan 03:30, August 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right. Our standard has been (and wiki best practices are) that if a redirect exists, use it instead of a piped link. This doesn't mean to create a redirect in place of every piped link, but just use existing redirects rather than the equivalent piped link. -- Renegade54 04:05, August 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * I won't do it anymore if I am not allowed, I just didn't think it was a issue to have it go directly to the right page rather than a redirect. It just seemed better to have the links be exact. TJ Spyke 02:32, August 29, 2010 (UTC)

Redirects
It's all nice to change some redirects, but keep a few things in mind: So, when you're cleaning stuff up, keep those things in mind. Those things are very important. -- sulfur 02:10, September 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Credits are that way for a reason. That's how they were on-screen. Don't change them.
 * Sometimes it is desirable to have a link go to the redirect. That way you can see where things are used.

Since you didn't respond to this before, I must reiterate things again and mention some others:
 * When you see a rank redirect that is follow by a name, and the rank redirect is the one with all capital letters? Don't change it to one with lower case letters. It's a title in that case.
 * Please do not remove blank lines in the Memorable Quote sections of articles. If you do not realize that you are doing this, please stop using Wikia's fancy editor on Memory Alpha. It tends to break more than it fixes. Most of the time when reverting changes made with the editor, the entire article has to be reverted, even if a single change is made correctly.
 * Do not change mentions of "Federation" to "United Federation of Planets" or "Romulan Empire" to "Romulan Star Empire". We use the terms stated in a particular episode intentionally.

Many of your changes have had to be reverted due to these (and other) issues. Please take care when you are making these changes. -- sulfur 10:12, September 24, 2010 (UTC)

I brought this up previously, you are still changing some redirects to the base article. Please note that a number of times, the choice of the redirect is intentional (ie "sexual attraction" vs "sexuality"). If enough pages link to a specific redirect, sometimes that suggests that a separate article should be created for that redirect. If you keep changing these redirects to point back to the base article, this tracking ability is lost. As such, please carefully consider your redirect changing. -- sulfur 17:49, February 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, in that case I didn't think it was a big deal. I will try to be more careful. TJ Spyke 17:51, February 8, 2011 (UTC)

Ones that are obvious misspellings are just fine, but when you come across one that links to a specific part of a page or one that is more specific wording to the context, those are best to leave as is. Again those allow us to see what actually links to a page in what manner. -- sulfur 18:17, February 8, 2011 (UTC)

Linebreaks
When editing, please do not change &lt;br /&gt; tags to simple &lt;br&gt; tags. Also, when you edit, you tend to remove blank spaces in templates and so forth. These changes do not gain anything, except to make it more difficult for future editors to read the source in the article. This also makes it more difficult to see what changes have actually been made to an article.

If you happen to be using Wikia's fancy editor, I would strongly recommend removing it, as it tends to break templates and a number of other things. That can be done under your preferences. -- sulfur 20:53, February 16, 2011 (UTC)
 * OK< thank you for helping again. I didn't think the br one mattered, or that deleting blank spaces mattered. TJ Spyke 20:55, February 16, 2011 (UTC)

The 'br' that we use (the first one above) is actually the correct tag in HTML5, whereas the old one is being deprecated. In terms of blank spaces, blank lines being removed are fine, but the spaces in templates are helpful. :) -- sulfur 21:09, February 16, 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia episode links
When adding links to Wikipedia for episodes, please check to see if there is actually any information on those pages beyond a simple sidebar and brief plot summary. If there is not, then the link to that article is not worth adding. -- sulfur (talk) 14:23, November 26, 2012 (UTC)

Troy link to "Troi" page
Please note that the choice of link at the top is very intentional there. We do not link to disambiguation pages directly if possible, and link to their name with "(disambiguation)" after it. The link that was at the top of the page presented that already. As such, please don't change things like that without understanding why they are presented that way already. -- sulfur (talk) 19:35, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there any way to fix the disambiguation link? Because the page is just at Troi, but the generic disambiguation link goes to "Troi (disambiguation)". TJ Spyke (talk) 19:39, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

That's precisely what should happen. The page should be at the bare name (when possible), but have a redirect from "X (disambiguation)". That way, when working to clean up links that go to disambiguation pages, it's simpler and cleaner to look at the lists of these. -- sulfur (talk) 19:40, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * But it should be possible to have the disambiguation link go directly to "Troi" rather than to "Troi (disambiguation)" (which redirects to"Troi"). TJ Spyke (talk) 19:42, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

It can, but we don't want it to go directly to the page. We want it to go to the redirect as I mentioned above. -- sulfur (talk) 19:44, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * But there is no reason, it makes no sense and does no benefit anyone. TJ Spyke (talk) 19:45, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

Again, the reason is for maintenance purposes. A report exists that shows all pages that link to disambiguation pages. By having redirects from "X (disambiguation)" to "X" (where "X" is the disambiguation page) cuts down the number of "false positives" on this list tenfold, thus making it easier to find and fix links that go to the incorrect page. We've based our practice on the one at Wikipedia, as it simplifies this process immensely. That's the reason and that's who it benefits. -- sulfur (talk) 19:59, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * I have been a editor at Wikipedia for many years, and they always prefer having it be simplified when possible (so they would have links go directly to "Troi" rather than make it go to a page that just redirects to "Troi". Doesn't matter to me, it just makes no sense. TJ Spyke (talk) 20:16, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

That policy has been in place at WP for 2+ years now. They're making them go to redirects if the link is intentional. That's the whole point of the policy. -- sulfur (talk) 20:29, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * Not if the disambiguation page has no parenthesis. If the Wikipedia page was at "Troi", they would prefer linking to that rather than "Troi (disambiguation)". At least every admin I have talked to with is fine with that and has no problem fixing links so it would go directly to "Troi". TJ Spyke (talk) 20:45, January 9, 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect. I direct your close attention to both the policy above, and the initial discussion that took place in September 2010. Then look at the Light disambiguation page in the "see also" section. Find the link to "Lyte (disambiguation)" and follow it. See where it takes you. -- sulfur (talk) 20:52, January 9, 2013 (UTC)
 * Light doesn't apply to this situation because "Light" and "Light (disambiguation)" are separate pages, it would be different if "Light (disambiguation)" redirected to "Light" (like the Troi situation). TJ Spyke (talk) 20:54, January 9, 2013 (UTC)