Staff Noticeboard/archive1

**Welcome to the GTA Wiki Staff Noticeboard**. This is a space for staff to issue notices and invite discussion amongst staff. Here, staff can explain recent events, things to watch out for and potential changes; or request comments, suggestions and ideas on anything on the Wiki.

This page is to be edited by Staff only. If you would like to discuss an issue mentioned here, please use the talk page.

Please start a new section for every new topic, and don't forget to indent properly and sign your comments.

## Task List

I'd like to remind all our Staff of the Task List I created. This outlines the various cleanup and administrative tasks for admins and editors. Pick some tasks that you can regularly check on, and try to keep on top of those. Managers should ensure that all the tasks on that page are looked at periodically, if not regularly. Feel free to add more to the list, comment on the talk page, or discuss here - Gboyers talk 01:44, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

## Orphaned pages

Something we need to work on is Orphaned Pages (Lonely Pages). These are 141 pages which nothing links to (excluding categories). Categories are NOT the main way of navigating the Wiki, they're meant to be used to *"find more stuff like this"*. Articles are the main way to find things, and lists can be very effective if used well. So can we start spamming links to some of these orphaned pages? It's pretty much a one-off job, then we can just keep an eye on it. Thanks - Gboyers talk 01:50, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

## Potential Candidate Administrators

I'd like to suggest the following users be considered for candidacy for advancement to Administrator status:

* MattyDienhoff
* Elbarto90se
* MasterChief117
* Hardrock182

In my opinion, these editors seem to make very good edits, handle things in a mature manner, and generally work to improve the wiki and the community. **Eganio*Talk*** 03:05, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

We should probably hold a big event to appeal to members to try to become staff. We do need new admins, and it is best for us to have the biggest selection to pick from. We should give everyone the opportunity to become staff, and show them how they can do the right things to be considered. This is not just a ploy to cover the Task List, but a genuine opening with real opportunity. I think this would be a great initiative for the site, the team, and (most importantly) the visitors. Don't offer anyone the jobs yet, we'll fix up all the recruitment pages then start blasting the word out. Gboyers talk 03:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
## E-mail from Sukhoi-35BM

I would like to post here a copy, word-for-word, of an e-mail I received today from Sukhoi-35BM. I responded to his e-mail on his talk page, since he does not have e-mail activated on his GTA Wiki user account.

I've been wanting to use that template for a while, now ;) --GuildKnightTalk2me 03:46, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

How sweet! I'm surprised he could tell that I'm a "cocksucker" just from my photo! Must be psychic. Anyway, I think I'm going to take a hiatus from here for a while...feeling a little exposed and unwelcome. **Eganio*Talk*** 06:03, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
GK: Spot on again, proving I've made the right choice. Ed: Don't take it personally - of course he's going to be upset if he's suspended. In fact, looking at his comments (and the reason he got banned) he's the type of person that IS going to cause a fuss. We'll let him make a formal complaint, and we'll handle it properly, so you have nothing to worry about. If he kicks up a fuss again, he's out. I remind you both that this page is public, so keep it professional. Gboyers talk 12:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

## Community Portal

The Community Portal needs a bit of a re-think. At the moment its just news, bulletins and a few basic instructions. It needs to be the first place people go for non-encyclopaedic content, such as help/instructions/tools, discussion/forums/talkpages, userpages/editorials/forums, info/staff/policy. It shouldn't just be a collection or widgets, nor a collection of links. It needs to be well laid out, user-friendly and accessible, without being overcomplicated or useless. I'd appreciate it if someone could sketch up some plans for this in their user space, and then we'll see where we go from there.

This fits into the idea of having portals for each subject, and also the heightened amount of community discussion. Remember that this is a wiki all about information, so proactive discussion is key - we don't want or need loads of fancy widgets or multicoloured fun sections; however we still need to engage our community and provide all the support we can for people to extend & improve our information. Gboyers talk 03:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Just wanted to point something out: I think if the Community Portal is intended to be the first place people go for non-encyclopedic content (to use Gboyers' words), then it should be more prominently displayed on the main page. As it stands, it is at the very bottom. I think in the interest of user-friendliness, it should be at the top with or under the *Contents* heading. We've already got many of the principal aspects of the Community Portal (e.g. Help, HowTo, Editing) listed there...maybe we should consolidate/expand on the main page. Thoughts? **Eganio*Talk*** 07:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Also, please see GuildKnight's Sandbox and the concomitant discussion. She's got some great stuff (as usual!). **Eganio*Talk*** 08:01, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the Community Portal needs to be more prominently positioned, more heavily promoted, and more commonly used. However, it would be silly to do that with the Community Portal in its current state. This should happen only after the new portal has been implemented. I've made a couple of edits to GK's sandbox, and it's looking pretty good. I'd like to keep thinking what can (usefully) go on that page, without duplicating the Main Page. Gboyers talk 04:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

## Swearing

A couple of users have been writing mission pages which include a lot of inappropriate/informal language and swearing. An example of this is here. I deal with this whenever I see it, but keep your eyes peeled for walkthroughs that are worse than just badly-structured. Gboyers talk 02:47, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't actually aware that the word used there is considered swearing... the ignorant American, again!  ;) --GuildKnightTalk2me 04:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
## Cleanup

I notice the Cleanup category has been growing recently. Can we make a big effort this week to bring it down to a manageable size? Most of them are simple cases of structuring it like a wiki, but some of them may be a little trickier. If we can get rid of all the easy ones this week that would be awesome - Gboyers talk 02:49, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying to tackle some of the articles in the cleanup category, but every time I remove one, it seems new ones pop up! So far, we're still around 60 articles...I'll keep it up, but will need some help! **Eganio*Talk*** 23:09, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
## Page Naming

We need a bit of a think on page naming. Do we use Michelle (IV) or Mickey (GTA IV). If we use it for other games, do we switch to Michelle (SA) (which is a city) or Michelle (GTA SA) or Michelle (GTA San Andreas)? And what if that character is in more than one game, and still needs to be disambiguated? Gboyers talk 00:19, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that we should use as detailed desciptions as possible, while maintaining brevity. Therefore, I would opt for Michelle (GTA IV), Michelle (GTA SA), Michelle (GTA LCS), etc...I think it's fine to use shortened versions of game names in titles, which can be expanded upon in the article...the only question is, do we use colons, i.e. (GTA:SA), or just leave it as a space?
Hopefully I'm not misunderstanding your point, but when a character shows up in more than one game, I think it's fine to leave their nomenclature centered around the game in which they play the biggest role. There should be references to their appearances in other games within the article, but I don't think including every appearance on a disambiguation page is the way to go. We can use in-article text and categories to show that a particular character has appeared in more than one game, and should defer to their most prominent appearance as default. Thoughts? **Eganio*Talk*** 21:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
## Watching Talk:Michelle (IV)

Gboyers and I have had an extended discussion about how to "protect" users from finding out about the Karen spoiler. We have decided that the Michelle (IV) page should remain protected for the release of the PC version so that new users that don't know about the situation don't place Karen info on the page. The problem that arises with that is that users that don't know about the Karen spoiler *can* still read the talk page (the place that new edits MUST be posted for an admin to put on the page). We are in hope that users will see the line that says: *"For spoiler discussion see this talk page"* and know to post Karen info there. However, in case this fails, Gboyers agrees with my idea that if staff could all keep an eye on talk:Michelle (IV) and move any Karen info ASAP, and inform the user who posted it, that hopefully we can keep accidental viewing to a minimum. (BTW, Gboyers stated that although this isn't the usual thing to put on the SN, he agreed to put it here on this occasion). Thoughts? **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 10:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't state that at all - it's the perfect thing to put here. I meant that we wouldn't normally cause such a fuss over a talk page containing spoilers. Usually you read a talk page at your own risk - for example, if we discussed things that got deleted (eg swearing), the discussion surrounding that usually stays on the talk page no matter what. We can't go round cleansing things, but keeping an eye on it is probably the best course of action for this one.Gboyers talk 10:54, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
## Main Page Renaming

As you can see in the discussion here, one official Wikia Helper (volunteer intersite admin) decided to rename our Main Page to "Grand Theft Auto wiki" without our consent, and without any discussion in our community. This is because Wikia want all the main pages to match the name of the wiki, for popularity in search engines, which means more money in advertising for them. However, I feel Main Page better serves the title of that page within this wiki. Discussion on what to name the page is going on here. I reverted the move, since it wasn't discussed with us beforehand. If this is repeated without our consent, please revert it. I have protected the ability to *move* the front page (anyone can still edit). I will not have Wikia interfering like this again, especially not for advertising or financial purposes. Gboyers talk 17:56, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

## Staff Colours

I have introduced staff colours. Now, any link to your user page (not talk page) will be coloured bold green (for managers), bold blue (for admins/sysopns) or grey/italic (wikia staff). I can alter the colours and styles infinitely, so let me know if you think they should be changed. At the moment every link is coloured, but I could restrict it to recentchanges/history/diff type pages (to highlight where staff are). I doubt this will work in every browser, but it's still nice to have for who it does work for. Let me know what you think of the idea, and the colours. FYI I've forced links to my name to be in lowercase (since my name is G Boyers not Gboyers, so gboyers is fine) - so I can also add querks like that to your name if required. This is a manual process, so has to be changed for any new/leaving staff. Gboyers talk 00:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, I checked your edit to that page, you *did* do it for me, but it didn't work (my signature is always bold, so check recent changes). Secondly, I think the point of this is to make staff stand out to other users, RC is full of blue links, and bold blue for pages your watching, so I think there might be a colour that would stand out a bit more. Otherwise, it's great! **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 00:14, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
I made it bold and darker blue as a start, as it stands out without being massively different. However I think two stand-out colours would not be too many. What would you suggest? It couldn't be red or blue, but it could be orange, purple, pink, light blue, brown. I'm not sure about black, because that could be confused as being *less* of a link, since it isn't obvious that you can click on it. We could use a darkish grey though. Alternatively Admins and Managers could use variations on the same colour - such as green for one; bold+green for the other. Lots of possibilities! FYI I'm removing Eganio and Guildknight from this system, as I'm rendering them as inactive staff (unless/until they return). Gboyers talk 03:35, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
**EDIT**: I fixed you BGTAFE, and made admins orange! It stands out doesn't it? When we've decided on colours, we should redesign the staff templates & page to match (how pretty!). And then we can fix the promotions procedure (might just make it "Managers decide" again) and bring some more staff on board. Gboyers talk 03:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
What has the promotion procedure become? It is managers decide isn't it? As for Eganio and GK, I agree that they are inactive. Just FYI, Eganio has edited three times since he disappeared and one edit was to a user talk page. He said something about "sorry for the delayed reply, I've been busy", so it seems like he plans on coming back. GK *is* on sometimes and has said on her userpage that she's busy and is coming back (you probably already know most of that, but anyway). The orange does look better, and the templates/colour matching sounds like a good idea. **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 03:58, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Two things. Firstly, MediaWiki:Monaco.css still says *ADMIN - Blue - bold*, (you didn't change it when you changed the colour) and *Not talk page*. The other thing is, why did you force talk page links into lowercase? I noticed when in RC I saw a link to User talk:A-Dust. **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 07:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I was only going to finanlise the comments etc on monaco.css when we'd decided on colours etc. Currently we're still in "testing it out" mode, unless everyone agrees. The talk page link lowercase one was cos I must have copied the wrong bit from my line (which is lowercase for reasons I explained earlier). Feel free to fix both of those problems (since you asked me first)! Gboyers talk 11:41, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Admin can't edit the *MediaWiki* namespace. It must be either managers or just you. I get the "View Source" button instead of "Edit this page". **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 22:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
## Moderators & Current Nominations

Firstly, read Staff as I have re-introduced the Moderator group, rewrote all the text, and listed (most of) the specific rights of each user group. Let me know if that makes sense, or if you think something should be altered. There are 3 nominations for staff, so once they have agreed to the nomination (and explained why they think they should be staff), please ask some questions and try and find out whether they would be staff. Key indicators are helpfulness, knowledge/skill, and diplomacy (balanced decisions). After a few questions have been answered (or after a week or two), you should state clearly at the bottom whether you are For or Against the promotion (and sign your comments). I'll then make the final decision in a week or two, based on their answers, their past contributions, current activity and your "votes". Hope that makes sense - Gboyers talk 18:54, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

From reading that, either the new "moderators" user group is going to be much more important than the old "patrollers" group, or patrollers had many more abilities than I thought. So once we have the new staff, should we consider a moderator template (like {{manager}} and {{admin}})? **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 00:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
We used to have moderators, but they got disabled when we got fully integrated into the central wikia codebase. Patrolling rights (and a pretty badge) was the only thing we could do for people after that. But now we have moderators back. Due to this, {{moderator}} has always existed (which you could have checked). You'll also notice the colours are not in line with the font colouring we now have, which I'll sort out sometime soon. Gboyers talk 01:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

## Lonely Pages :(

Can I draw your attention to Special:LonelyPages, which shows a list of Orphaned Pages - ones which don't have any links TO them, and aren't transcluded into other pages. Can you go through a handful of these each, and either add some relevant links (so people can find the pages) or propose them for deletion? Bear in mind that a lot of these might be spam pages that people have set up, that have got through the patrolling net; and a lot will be useless. If you aren't sure what to do, just add {{orphan}} which places it in Category:Orphans for someone else to have a look at. Also, that list isn't always right, so check out "What links here" in the sidebar before you do anything else. It just would be nice to get rid of that list quickly. Gboyers talk 13:56, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

## IRC

Ive set up a page here: GTA Wiki:IRC/Staff. If all of the staff would fill in what times you could be available to join the IRC channel, it would be appreciated. We'd like to see if we can arrange an IRC Staff meeting. Any questions on the talk page. --GuildKnightTalk2me 17:31, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

## Staff Colours & Ranks

I have now fully implemented name colours for Staff, and also added little rank stripes to them. This will show up automatically on any link to your user page. A slightly lighter colour will show up for any link to your talk page, with no rank stripe showing up. In case you can't figure it out, Moderators are dark blue (one rank stripe), Adminisrators are dark orange (two stripes) and managers are dark red (three stripes). These features will only work on modern browsers, and will look normal for anyone else. Do you think these are useful, too distracting, too similar, too different, or what? Let me know - Gboyers talk 22:29, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I like it. The icons are small and unobtrusive, and the colors are less distracting now. The Mods' colors don't really stand out against normal links, but it does have the icon. Oh, and my talk link isn't colored.  :| --GuildKnightTalk2me 06:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I also like it, although I can only see it when I'm logged out. As soon as I log back in, everything changes back to blue text. Either way, I think it is a good addition. A-Dust 19:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Make sure you've got your skin set to allow admin overrides etc. And clear cache etc. Or just wait and it might fix. Gboyers talk 20:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just allowed the admin overrides and very quickly changed it back. If the pages are to look like that, I'd rather stick the blue links. A-Dust 20:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
## phpBB Forums

What do you guys think of the phpBB forums that wikia are offering in beta? They're certainly an improvement over our wiki-based forum, but do you think our community is ready? Let me know what you think. Gboyers talk 22:40, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I too think that they are better than the current wiki-based forum and think it would be a good way to try and encourage users to contribute more to GTW, whether that is in forum discussion or in terms of contribution. However, I think if the phpBB forums are to be used there should be a link on the main page and in the navigation box. As for the wiki being ready, there is only one way to find out. A-Dust 01:06, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
I was looking at that a while back, I also think they could be a good addition to the wiki. **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 04:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
## "gta games" section

The "gta games" section under the navigation box really needs updating. GTA Advance (a game five years old!), The Lost and Damned and GTA Chinatown Wars need to be added. Also, is there anyway to capitalise the words in those boxes? Just something that annoys me. A-Dust 01:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Very strange - I never saw this message! I apologise for the delay, it is now compelted. Administrators can edit this here, but should be careful when doing so. Check whether it works, and revert your edit if it doesn't. Gboyers talk 01:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
## Wikia Welcome Tool

What do you think about adding a Welcome header to the Wikia Welcome Tool so that users don't end up with talk pages that have a welcome at the top before the TOC? I asked Wikia about this (thinking that it was a Wikia-wide thing) and they said that this can be done by editing MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user (I don't know why the link is red, but it still works) and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon (but only managers can edit them). Also, the tool only seems to work using admin/managers usernames, so Gboyers might have to ask Wikia to enable it for moderators (if you want to). **Biggest GTA Fan Ever*Talk*** 07:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Some good suggestions! I'll do that header part. It's a red link because the page hasn't been filled in. The content isn't in that page until we put it there, what you see is actually imported from wikia (since we dont have it customised yet). We just edit that page and it works. We can also change whose name appears (eg so it could be the same person every time) - but we could make it randomly pick between a list of staff? I don't think we can still make it use the last person to edit, so perhaps it's better staying as it is to make sure they get someone active to speak to?
## Protected Pages

NB: If Moderators cannot edit this page, post on the talk page instead. I will try to remedy this situation fairly quickly. The problem is that there are two levels of protected pages. There are ones we protect to stop them being broken or vandalised (like {{GTA}} or the Main Page occasionally), and there are ones we protect to stop deliberate abuse (such as Staff). Of course moderators should have access to the first group, but not the latter. Currently we trust Administrators with access to all protected pages, but Moderators are often quite new and only being tried out, so giving them unrestricted access to the entire wiki is a very big step. If we allow moderators to access these, it will make it harder to become a moderator (which I want to be quite easy), or if we don't them I might be tempted to promote people to admin quicker. What do you think? Gboyers talk 01:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

## Portals

What do people think of our current portals - Portal:GTA IV, Portal:Characters and Portal:Vehicles? None of them look finished, so could anyone volunteer to jazz them up and keep refreshing the featured articles. Check out some portals on Wikipedia such as wp:Portal:Architecture and also on Wikiversity such as Primary Education. Feel free to just hack the portals to pieces and change them completely. We should also think about doing more with the Community Portal, as currently there's a big jump between visiting and getting involved. I'm also trying to make more use of "edit this section" links, so people can edit content without being hit by the big scary code - so bear that in mind when designing portals. Gboyers talk 01:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

## Images from German Wikia

After talking to staff from de:, they have asked if they can use images from our wiki. The problem is that they don't want to go through and add a copyright template to every single image they've taken. Since we have a lot of images from their wiki, I have agreed that we no longer need to specify the source for images used across these wikis. This allows us to use any image on the German GTA wikia without expressly saying where it came from (but if you can, it helps), and they can do the same with our images. I will try and agree with Wikia a method where we can simply include images from another wiki, like `[[:de:Bild:Image.jpg]]`, but I doubt that will happen. Gboyers talk 15:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)