User talk:CygnusTM/archive2

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April Show

Just thought I'd suggest Sons & Daughters as the April show. Good new show and all the episodes, etc. are listed.

Typo in site notice

The correct spelling is "affiliated". —Naddy 21:58, 25 March 2006 (EST)

Adding newly created shows to watch list causes an error

I'd cut-and-paste the message but it's been swallowed by my browser. Basically, if I create a page and tick the box to watch the page as well, I get an error message, and when I click on the page link in "Recent Changes", the page comes up with the message "This page has no text." The problem only comes up when I try to add and watch at the same time.

This is why the Recent Changes page appears to have the same page added multiple times. --Lampbane 23:48, 7 April 2006 (EDT)

  • A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden) from within function "WatchedItem::addWatch". MySQL returned error "1048: Column 'wl_notificationtimestamp' cannot be null (db.tviv.info)".

NCIS/Kill Ari

I see you changed Kill Ari (1) to Kill Ari (Part 1) etc "to match [the] on-air title". I thought it was a convention on The TV IV to always use the format "... (1)" for multipart episodes? —Naddy 13:33, 9 May 2006 (EDT)

Edittools

Thanks a lot for adding the MediaWiki:Edittools. This looks rather complete for European languages that use the Latin alphabet, plus IPA. I hope it doesn't prove too overwhelming for our users. —Naddy 14:38, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

7th Heaven

The CW announced last week that they were ordering 13 episodes of 7th Heaven for next season. http://www.thefutoncritic.com/newswire.aspx?id=7152 Oh okay you fixed it while I was typing this up all good. Can you add Scrubs to that list NBC just renewed it this morning. --The-jam

html entities in system messages

Some system messages, such as MediaWiki:Nextdiff contain html entities such as "→" but when they are actually shown in a system page, like this one: http://tviv.org/w/index.php?title=FRONTLINE/Season_Seventeen&diff=prev&oldid=138076, it is translated to "→" is there any way to fix this? could you just revert to using the unicode character "→" instead? -quadpus 04:02, 16 June 2006 (EDT)

MediaWiki:watchdetails is also showing up incorrectly and should probably be set to the default. -quadpus 06:03, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

Lostdude815

While keeping an eye on Lostpedia, it looks like Lostdude815 has launched a vandalism campaign via a bot after getting into a hissy fit with their users. He hasn't contributed much here (aside from editing my user page with an insightful "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"), but you might want to consider a pre-emptive ban in case he turns his attention to the TV IV Wiki. --Cheshire Cat 00:23, 8 July 2006 (EDT)

Actions taken by JCaesar

Last night, during a dispute about an article, JCaesar abused his powers by claiming that I was not allowed to continued editing the article in question until he had finished his current edit. There were actually two disputed sections in the article, One that I dispute, one that he disputed. That's important to remember. By this point, he had removed the part he disputed, but the part that I disputed remained. But I was not trying to reinsert the portion that he disputed nor was I trying to remove the part I disputed. I simply placed a {{Disputed}} tag on the top of the page.

He then blocked me, claiming that I was not disputing the article because I had not read what he was writing yet. Of course, I wasn't disputing the material he was working on (even though, now finished, the part that I was disputing has been changed). I was disputing the current revision as this is all that one can possibly dispute. Then, because he was having computer trouble, he came to my talk page and said that if I made any edits to the page until he finished, he was block me again, even edits unrelated to the dispute, he would block me again. He essentially used his technical power to get the upper hand in a dispute and punish a good user for disagreeing with him.

Now, having traveled the web and knowing that people in charge don't like to take action against others they have placed in charge, I doubt anything will be done about these 2 blatant abuses of power. But, now you know what a dangerous despot you have given a measure of power to. --MateoP 10:25, 23 July 2006 (EDT)


Hello from Wikia

Hi CygnusTM,
I'm the CEO of wikia and I've been watching and admiring what you and the other members of TVIV are doing here. The content is awesome - we have some nice TV content on Wikia (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Television) but nothing compared to what you've built. I've also been keeping an eye on your traffic via http://www.alexaholic.com/wikia.com+tviv.org and it looks like not many people have been able to find what you're doing. I was wondering if there was a way we could work with you, to build the largest, most visited TV site together? Gil

Would be great to talk - thanks for your note. Is there a good time to talk? MY skpye Id is Penchina, or I can call you. Gil
Just checking in again to see if I could interest your group in joining us - and I thought you would enjoy our new photo uploader tool. check it out at wikia.com. When you edit a page, click on the photo link and play with the new toy!
I thought you might enjoy seeing our new jazzy skin for mediawiki. We launched http://entertainment.wikia.com this week and it's already fairly active. We'd still love to talk to you about joining us at somepoint. http://www.marveldatabase.com did in november and their pageviews have tripled since then, due to our more robust server infrastructure, our tuning of mediawiki and the traffic they get from our home page. Meanwhile, I'll be busy reading your HEROES info. Love the show. Gil
CygnusTM - hvae a minute to chat? I can email you my phone number or skype ID. It's been a while since we chatted so I wanted to reconnect and brainstorm on whether we can do anything together. Thanks
Gil

Citations plugin

Please install the citations plugin so that we can add citations when necessary. This is especially important for glossary articles and in development shows. It only requires uploading 2 small files and editing the localsettings.php to add a line. Download and instructions can be found here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php

thanks. --MateoP 10:32, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Great, thanks. I think this will allow us to make longer encyclopedia style subarticles on shows (more like on wikipedia) without running into verifiability troubles. --MateoP 11:50, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

More troll activities by JCaesar, will you continue to do nothing?

JCaesar has been vandalizing Jessica Walter by removing all of the information on it. This is, of course, not how a wiki works. You improve pages, you don't remove all of the information because you don't like it for whatever reason. He's vandalized this page 3 times now. On the most previous time, he protected the vandalized edit. This is an abuse of power. Page protection is not a power to enforce one's own opinion.

This guy obviously has no clue how wikis work. He has no concept of wikietiquette or wiki philosophy. I realize that you are bored with the project and don't want to contribute any more, but for those of us who do, you still have a responsibility as the webmaster to ensure that you only give sysop privileges to people who understand how wikis work, not to your friends on message boards. Step up and do something about this glorified troll. --MateoP 10:05, 23 September 2006 (EDT)

I removed credits copied from another site without regards to Wiki formatting, internal consistency and copyright issues. Twice. As stated repeatedly in discussion pages, proposals pages and multiple forums, these copied credits (which were quite popular some months back) are inaccurate, verging on copying issues, and (as expressed by multiple people, myself included but not solely) should be removed from the site altogether. This fact has never been disputed or argued. I only removed them from one page (removing them from all pages on which they appear is a massive project I have no interest in starting right now). I also added categories and switched around formatting to be more consistent with current conventions. All of which was removed. Twice.
So I'll be stopping my current ongoing project of the ABC Movie of the Week to fill in full, fully formatted credits for Jessica Walter tonight. (After sleep and work.) After which I will, of course, unprotect the page.
I'd also like to state for the record that, if you (CygnusTM) have expressed boredom with the Wiki, it's news to me. When, precisely, did this boredom arise? I'm shocked. Further, I'm surprised to discover that we were friends prior to my sysop-hood. Other than my occasional notes of thanks to you for setting up this site, I can't remember a single time we might have talked in person, on the phone, in IM, in e-mail, in PM's, nor even in trading responses on the forums. Can you? I hope I've not forgotten such a time. -- JCaesartalk 10:17, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
You honestly have no clue how wikis work. There is no copyright violation. Information can not be copyrighted. As for formatting, those are suggestions that the wiki strives for. We do not simply remove information because it's not currently in proper format. Page protections are for sensitive pages such as the main page. It's not for getting your way in disputes. That is among the most egregious abuses of power imaginable (not surprising, as you think you own the wiki).
If you want to put the page in proper formatting, then do it. Don't vandalize the page because you don't like it. This isn't your blog.
CygnusTM, step up and stop letting this guy throw his weight around. It was clearly a mistake to give someone power who doesn't understand wiki philosophy (more information = good, for starters). Either put him in line or remove the powers. The fact that you sit around and do nothing, even after being notified of his abuses in the past, puts you in the wrong as well. --MateoP 10:34, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
Information can not be copyrighted. No, but specific collections are. The legal term you want to search for is "compilation copyright". —Naddy 11:08, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
Page protections are for sensitive pages such as the main page. Or for pages which would otherwise be engaged in edit wars. Such as pages which have had edits rolled back twice within six hours, and three times since last edit. In any event, the page will be unprotected once proper, non-copyright-infringing edits have been made, within 24 hours. That seemed to me a much better solution than blocking a user who might be reverting edits multiple times and laughably referring to it as "reverting vandalism." I've been told that's not the best way to handle those situations. -- JCaesartalk 11:19, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
There is no copyright infringement. If there is, bring it up on the talk page (and be specific). Otherwise, 3RR takes care of edit warring. You protected it to get your way. One of the most egregious abuses of power possible on a wiki. --MateoP 12:00, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
Frankly, the IMDb copied information is fairly unreliable. Occasionally actors will be credited for shows that they weren't in (Christopher Meloni was credited for 4 Conan episodes even though it appears that he was only in 2) or, worse, actors are credited for shows that don't even exist. Sarah Thompson was credited for "Manchester Prep," which turned out to be the subtitle to Cruel Intentions 2, in which she had a role.
To call this vandalism is extreme, to say the least. Vandalism is an active and malicious intent to do harm to the wiki. It would be like telling Naddy that he's vandalising the episode pages that he changes/removes guest credits from because it was blatantly stolen from TV.com. Or when someone (DCEdwards, maybe?) removed the hotlinked images from Christopher Meloni and Marishka Hargitay's pages. More information isn't good when that information has the potential for being faulty or when it's just the same information that everyone else has without any attempt to improve on the list or when there's a potential conflict with copyrights. --IndieRockLance 11:24, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
Indiscriminately removing all information is vandalism (see blanking). Removing incorrect information is, of course, fine.
There is no potential copyright infringement in this case. It had the name of the show, the name of the episode, and the date. Where is the copyright infringement in that? Be specific. There isn't a unique format that was stolen. --MateoP 12:00, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
As Naddy helpfully mentioned earlier, this is a possible case of compilation copyright infringement. Taking the information from IMDb and presenting it in the same general format and order (albeit omitting film references) is a questionable area. Those situations should be avoided whenever possible.
And, about the "vandalism," I qualified vandalism as a deliberate and malicious attempt to damage the wiki. That is not the case, so it is not vandalism. Hell, look at this passage from the same Wikipedia article that you linked: "Any good-faith effort to improve the encyclopedia, even if misguided or ill-considered, is not vandalism." Just because you have a grudge against JCaesar doesn't mean everything he does is a blatant attempt to impose fascist rule on the internet. --IndieRockLance 14:09, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
As for the copyright issue, there still hasn't been a person to make the case for "compilation copyright". I did research on the issue and it is pretty clear that editorial decision making is necessary for compilation infringements. This page describes compilation copyright as such:
You can also do creative editing or collecting work. So that while facts can't be copyrighted, clever, creative organization of the facts can be. This is called a compilation copyright and it's somewhat complex.
The emphasis is mine. Listing credits by series, episode, and date is not a creative organization. It is a generic one. No one can reasonably think that IMDB owns the rights to list credits like this. To make matters worse, the organization wasn't even the same between our page and theirs'. Here is their page of her credits here. And ours here.
1) IMDB listed all of her acting credits together. We separated starring and guest roles.
IMDB has changed its format over the last four or five months. Also, what constitutes a "starring" and "guest starring" role is clearly taken directly from IMDb, which is sometimes (frequently) wrong.
2) IMDB listed the year as the date for all credits. We listed day, month, and year on the credit page (IMDB only does this once you click on specific episodes).
No, it lists date, too. (And, again, the format of that page has changed over the last few months.)
3) IMDB listed all of her acting credits, we only listed her television credits.
Get as semantic as you want. There is no way you will convince me that the people who initially created those credits months ago (and there are many such people) had to spend a whole helluva lot of time on them. Whereas fixing some of them has required a huge time investment, and it's a very incomplete job. -- JCaesartalk 21:34, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
So again, even if they were the same, and they're not identical, there is nothing unique about the format that causes copyright infringement.
Let's go even further and look up the U.S. Copyright Office's description of "compilation" here:
Compilations and abridgments may also be copyrightable if they contain new work of authorship. When the collecting of the preexisting material that makes up the compilation is a purely mechanical task with no element of editorial selection, or when only a few minor deletions constitute an abridgment, copyright protection for the compilation or abridgment as a new version is not available.
The emphasis is mine. There is no original authorship in the IMDB or our database. It is purely mechanical. There is no editorial selections taking place. --MateoP 15:26, 23 September 2006 (EDT)
Frankly, the IMDb copied information is fairly unreliable. In regards to this, I can also specifically remember having to remove an actress' IMDb-copied credit as an uncredited appearance in a TV movie which served as the pilot to a TV series, because she played a character in the series who was played by a different actress in the TV movie. Yet the IMDb still credited her for appearing in the TV movie, when she was on another series in another role altogether at the time. (I think it was for Kolchak: The Night Stalker, but don't quote me on that.)
I understand why those IMDb credits were copied back when. Months ago, the TV IV had nothing on actors, and only spotty information on series, and the copying of credits was a quick and easy way to fill in something. Since then, our own internal credits have improved, and while IMDb is still a useful source, it's one which must be verified and double-checked whenever possible, and our own site and the leftovers from TV.com are proving more and more to be much better first sources of information. If you check the edit history on some of those IMDb-copied credits pages, you'll see it's much easier to just remove everything and start from scratch than to try to repair the damaged IMDb credits, and edit histories on all pages suggest people are much more likely to fill in blank fields when applicable than to try to verify pre-existing information. Plus, there's the compilation copyright issue.
If it's vandalism to remove inaccurate, badly formatted, outdated and possibly illegal information from this site which is easier to replace by someone else down the line and is more likely to be replaced by someone else down the line if removed than if let be whenever I happen to run across it, then, hell, I guess MateoP's got me. I'm a vandal. -- JCaesartalk 11:37, 23 September 2006 (EDT)

More abuses by JCaesar

Now JCaesar has taken to harassing me because he doesn't like the fact that I voted against a show he voted for. See The TV IV:Proposals/Featured Show (October 2006) for the belittlement given because I voted against a show because of ratings concerns. Notice that in the comment field, I never once addressed or responded to anything he said. The harsh language and belittlement was completely one-sided and unprovoked. I'm assuming civility is something one would expect from everyone on TVIV, but especially sysops. Why do you continue to allow an uncivil editor who abuses his power in order to get his way in disputes to continue to do these things without so much as notification of indiscretion? I'm assuming you haven't logged in for a while and aren't aware of these continual abuses. I am confident that you will take proper action once you read them. Thanks. --MateoP 16:36, 24 September 2006 (EDT)

Why do you continue to allow an... editor... to continue to do these things without so much as notification of indiscretion? In CygnusTM's defense, as this is a publicly viewable forum, I should state that he has (relatively recently) privately called me to task on one of my actions in one incident regarding a user of this forum. I will not speak of the incident except to say that my actions in it have ceased and that I have publicly and privately admitted I did not handle it as well as I could have, and my motivations were less than becoming. It is both presumptive and inaccurate to assume that CygnusTM is unaware or unconcerned with actions taken on this forum, whether by users or by sysops and admins. -- JCaesartalk 22:43, 24 September 2006 (EDT)

Boredom

I really couldn't care less if you personally edit. But since you don't (and none of the other Administrators or Bureaucrats do either), you need to promote someone. I suggest Naddy.

I hold you personally responsible for everything he does. That includes using the protection and blocking power to get his way in disputes, to vandalize pages by indiscriminately removing content, and by forcing his preferences on everyone else. By talking down to other users who he disagrees with. You are as guilty as he is. --MateoP 15:54, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

No 'move' on articles

I'm not sure if you're the person to tell this to, but if you're not please pass it on to whoever it should go to. I wanted to move an article, but noticed there is not a move link on articles, not for me anyway. I realize we're still settling in to a new server, so I'm not trying to push this or anything, I just wanted to make sure someone knew about it. -Joltman 08:12, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Search bar position

http://tviv.org/Talk:Main_Page#Search_bar_position

Affiliates

Hi, I have a german heroes fansite and added a link to your wiki, perhaps you could add a link to my site too? I didn't want to make it myself, without previously asking.

Have a nice day, Berit .................. www.heroes-news.de

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