This page is an archive of an old Talk Page. The contents have been moved from another page to clear space and to preserve history, so this page is locked from editing. If you wish to ask about the corresponding page, or respond to an earlier message, you may direct any comments to the current talk page. If you wish to refer to a message on this page, link to Zelda Wiki:Hyrule Castle/Archive 1.

Hyrule Castle

Userboxes

How do you make user boxes--Zanramon 13:25, 24 January 2008 (EST)

To create a new userbox:

1. First, choose a name. This should always be {{Template:User xxxx}} (where xxxx is your description)

2. To create it, just edit any page (such as the Sandbox), type {{Template:User xxxx}} and preview. This will give you a redlink to your desired userbox template.

3. Then, just copy and paste the code from any other existing userbox. Substitute a new image, text, hex colour codes (help available here), and usage instructions. --Adam ^(talk) 11:44, 25 January 2008 (EST)

4. Make sure that the category is correct. It should be [[Category:Userboxes|aaaa]], (where aaaa is the first letter of your description) This correctly sorts the userboxes in the category.--Matt 18:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Movies

How many movies are on the wiki?--Link hero of light 14:21, 7 February 2008 (EST)

All of the pages which contain videos should be listed here; I add to the list each time an article not already listed there has a video inserted into it. --Adam ^(talk) 15:02, 7 February 2008 (EST)

Merging

How do you redirect/merge page? At first I thought only sysops could do it, but I've seen other non-sysop users do it.--Link hero of light 23:53, 12 February 2008 (EST)

Merging two (or more) pages into one is actually quite simple:

First, you should identify the articles which you want to combine, and ideally check that there is a general consensus from others that merging is a good idea (either the {{merge}} tag should be placed on the article beforehand, or the merge be discussed).
The initial step of the merge itself is to identify which article is to remain (i.e. which of the articles you will merge all the information into). The other will later act as a redirect to this article. Usually, the smaller of the two articles will be merged into the larger, however if for example one article has an incorrect name, the one with the correct name would be retained. For simplicity, I'll call the article where the information will be merged to A, and the article which will be cleared to make a redirect B.
After having decided step 2, the next step is to read all the information in A and B, and decide where and how the information in B should be inserted into A. It will normally have to be rephrased slightly, although sometimes it can simply be cut and pasted. It may be appropriate to place the merged information from B under it's own header within A. Try to avoid duplicating any information already within A.
Once the information from B has been transferred to A, the final step is to delete all text from B and replace it with the syntax:

#redirect[[Article A]]

This turns B into a redirect page. If the information added to A has been placed under a new header, it may be appropriate to point the redirect there:

#redirect[[Article A#New section title]]

I hope I've explained clearly enough, please leave a comment here if you have any other specific queries. A good place to start merging would be the articles here, or in Category:Articles to be merged (as long as no objections have been raised on the relevant talk pages, it's safe to assume that everyone is happy for the merges suggested here to go ahead). —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 01:42, 13 February 2008 (EST)

The new game link templates

So... what exactly is the criteria under which these are used? Are we now to use these instead of piped links, or what? --Ando (Talk) 15:51, 7 March 2008 (EST)

They're used to automatically generate exactly what you would type manually to create a piped link. For example, typing {{subst:FSA}} instead of {{FSA}} has the exact identical result, but you type only 13 characters instead of a whopping 73! Good time saver, no? (I got sick of hand typing these links a long time ago...) —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 16:12, 7 March 2008 (EST)

Alright, awesome. I guess I'll start utilizing these. :D --Ando (Talk) 16:16, 7 March 2008 (EST)

something strange

Something strange happened and I was wondering if someone could explain it. I attempted to flag a picture that was no longer in use for deletion. I saved and saw that everything looked fine. I was just checking the recent changes and I saw Captain Cornflake had deleted it, well there would be nothing strange about if my contribution had not been recorded in the recent changes and my cotributions, I even checked and made sure that I hadn't clicked the "hide my edits" button.--Link hero of light 23:46, 8 March 2008 (EST)

When an article is deleted, all revisions to that article are also deleted. That's why they would disappear from Recent Changes. Does that clear it up? —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 07:18, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Yep.--Link hero of light 11:31, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Subdivision formatting

Many pages use subdivisions containing the name of one of the games, but many of these pages use different formats. Some pages don't italicise the game names, whereas some do; those two pages also demonstrate how some pages use the subdivisions to link to the games mentioned in the subdivisions, and others don't. My point is, this creates a great inconsistency throughout the Wiki, and needs to be addressed. I personally prefer just a straight-up, non-linked subdivision (most articles have a link to the game right under the subdivision anyway), italicised to match the rest of the mentions of the games. --Ando (Talk) 09:58, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

I'm sure you and I aren't the only ones to have pondered this subject in the past. I've always had trouble myself deciding which of the many options I prefer; I don't think they should be links (as you point out, any correctly written article will reiterate the game name below the header, making a title link redundant), and I don't think it's necessary to use the full "The Legend of..." prefix. Am I reading correctly that the format you'd propose is as below? (If so, I would concur) —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 10:30, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

A Link to the Past

Yep, that would be what I'm thinking. I guess we'll go with this then, eh? Sounds good. --Ando (Talk) 10:35, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

Questions

Moved to The Heart Container

Tables

How do you make the tables that have an abbreviation of the game, times beaten, times started, and Greatest completion in the game that i see on some peoples user pages? --David (Talk) 18:25, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Well, the easiest way to do it is to just go to edit the user's page that you see one of these tables on, only instead of actually editing it, just copy the code for the table off of the page, then paste it onto your page, editing it as necessary. Tables start with {| and end with another }, so it should be easy to find. --Ando (T : C) 20:00, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Thats the problem. I am having a hard time finding the persons user page. I will continue to look though. --David (Talk) 20:35, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Well, Douken has one, which he ripped off of me, which I ripped off of someone else whose name escapes me at the moment. :P --Ando (T : C) 20:37, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Yes! That was his name! I'm going to write it down. Thank you. --David (Talk) 20:48, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Oh boy, make sure you add that little bit of info to your user page "I ripped this off of someone's user page who had ripped this table of of someone's user page who had ripped it off of someone else's userpage". LOL.--Link hero of light 20:54, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

I will be sure to do that!

--David (Talk) 21:05, 4 April 2008 (EDT)

Help!

Okay, these problems are killing me! I was making changes to my user page, when all of the sudden, I notice that when I leave and come back, there is nothing changed on the user page, yet when I go to the editing box, all the changes are still there! Please help me! It's happening on other peoples user pages too! I can't see my edits or their edits on the talk page unless I click on edit! This is so annoying! Thank you for listening. --David ^{(T : C)} 15:20, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

This just happened to me too, but it wasn't on a user page. My last edit Ambi's Palace isn't showing on the main article, even though the history says it should (or rather, shouldn't) be there. Oddly, the Possessed Nayru link isn't working either, even though I've made that article since the shown edit of Ambi's Palace. --Douken 15:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for answering, Douken. The only way i can read what you wrote is by editing what i said. I think that we may have to make new accounts If we cannot get this straightened out. At least we'll be able to copy and paste our user pages onto new accounts ;). By the way, I had asked Jase the question, so we'll have to see what he says. --David ^{(T : C)} 15:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not having this issue. I'm able to see all edits made since the update. :/ I guess it's really just a matter of seeing what happens (and what Jason has to say about it). --Ando (T : C) 17:10, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh... It seems to be working normally for me now. For a while it was just the Palace page that was messed up, but now even that's working. Hopefully it'll just be a time-solving issue with you too, Seablue. --Douken 17:43, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I got it fixed. It was my browsers cache. I dumped all the files and now everythings back to normal. Thanks to all who anwsered :) --David ^{(T : C)} 18:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Image template thing

I'm not sure I understand about the new image template ting. I read what Jason said but I don't understand it. Could some one help?--Link hero of light 22:49, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Alright. Basically, what they are, are templates that let whoever's viewing the file know where the image comes from. There are three templates right now:

Template:FoundImage, which says that "We got this picture from such-and-such site" (preferably only Zelda Wiki sites).
Template:c-nintendo, which says that "This picture comes directly from Nintendo" (such as official screenshots, box art, etc.).
Template:Imagenosource, which says that "We don't know where we got this".

Just pull up any image page that lacks a template and throw one in. We're also, I believe, working on a template for self-made images (screenshots that a user made, for instance), so that should be available soon, hopefully. --Ando (T : C) 04:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Except that {{c-nintendo}} has to be on almost every image (excluding only the non-game-related stuff), i.e. every image containing Nintendo content in any form. Also, the wording of {{FoundImage}} applies only to extra-Wiki sites, so I guess we'll need another similar one for "Masterminds" images... Fear not, all will become clearer as it's put into practice, and once we have all templates set up I'll write an "idiot's guide" (excuse the phrase ;) to the whole thing! —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 06:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

But what if it's not by Nintendo, but by Phillips instead? For example, a picture of Ganon from Link: The Faces of Evil, which was produced by Phillips for the CD-i instead of by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo. Is it c-nintendo, because they invented the character, or ImageSelf, because I captured the image myself? —mrfunnyd 19:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Erm, both. It's a safe assumption that, for almost any image uploaded here, the legal copyright holder will be Nintendo. However, it's also important that the source of the image is attributed (i.e if it was obtained from another website or if you produced it yourself. That make sense? --Adam 14:32, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Rules

Okay, here goes...

Every new image uploaded must be correctly attributed to its creator/editor/redistributor. There are four possible options when doing this, and a template for each:

FoundImageZW - Applies to images taken from one of the sites connected to ZW.org.
FoundImage - Applies to images taken from any other website.
ImageSelf - Applies to images scanned/captured/photographed/drawn/photo-edited by yourself (in other words, "your own work", copyrights notwithstanding.)
Imagenosource - Applies to images whose source is uncertain, unknown or currently undeterminable.

To correctly attribute your image, simply go to the image's page after upload, and add one of the above as appropriate, in the format {{ name exactly as listed above }}

In addition, should the image depict any characters or elements of Zelda games, or other Nintendo games (including, but not limited to, all screenshots, artwork [official or otherwise] and symbols), you must also display Template:c-nintendo. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 20:51, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay I have just one more question, if you are positive you know that a picture was taken by someone other than yourself, may you add the Imageself template to the picture as long as it says that it was taken by the person who actually took it? Or does the person who took the picture have to add the template themselves?--Link hero of light 03:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to go ahead and add that Imageself template to a few pictures, tell me if I shouldn't.--Link hero of light 02:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Sound Clips

To help people know more about some pages, I think that Sound Clips should be used. For example, see the trivia section, point 4, the page Death Mountain for Twilight Princess. If someone could show me how to add a sound clip, i'd be greatful.

:-)

DanBinstead

Right. Well, I've never actually uploaded an audio file before... And there isn't actually an example of that happening on Zelda Wiki. In fact, it may actually need an extension we don't have (Jason would be the most likely to know that). I'd say that right now your best bet is to just link to another site's hosting of that particular audio file in the manner of [http://...... Audio file from (website)]. An example can be found on Saria's Song. --Ando (T : C) 22:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Wanted Pages

I noticed that many of the links in the wanted pages have only the wanted pages link refering to them. Is it supposed to be like this?--Matt 20:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Um... what? If you're talking about all the wanted pages with "1 link" next to them, all that means is that only one other page on the site has a broken link to whatever the wanted link is; a page that isn't the Wanted Pages list. To see which pages have these red links, just click on the "x links" text. Is this what you're referring to? --Ando (T) 21:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

What he was referring to (as far as I can tell), is that, apparently, somewhere down the line someone decided to make a page called Wanted Pages This pages contains many links, some which are the only links of their kind. Because of this, many wanted pages site wanted pages as the only article that links to them.--Magnus orion 23:28, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes that is exactly what I'm saying.--Matt 11:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that was me. It worked very well almost a year ago when I first made it, and the wiki had well over 1000 wanted pages. Now it's reached the end of its usefulness, and clearly a year on the links to many of the articles which had been listed on Special:Wantedpages no longer exist. For clarity, the original scenario was a list of many hundreds of articles with only one link. These were a mixture of valid Zelda content, irrelevant non-Zelda links and clogging talk pages. The goal was to elevate the valid Zelda wanted pages to 2 links, hence making them easier to find and create. Anyway, I can either recreate the page now based on the current Wanted Pages, or delete it entirely. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 21:18, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has...

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but wikipedia has got a new little gismo, so that while users type something into the search box, a little tab below, shows all the possibilities of what you could be wanting. It's hard to explain, but search for something at wikipedia.org, and you'll see what I mean. Now I have no idea what it would take, or cost to get that, but possibly a good edition to our wiki???...... --Melchizedek 08:49, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

This would be something to throw at Jason. I'll see what he has to say about it.--Ando (T) 22:22, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks for that. Keep me in the loop, so I know what's going on, and can help in any way if wanted. Regards, --Melchizedek 06:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Is it alright

I got all my pictures from doing google image searches so I dont know the exact website their from. Is this alright or do I have to find out exactly where their from? --Heroofstuff 03:11 pm, May 1, 2008

Well, it's highly respected that you find the websites that you took the image so you can properly give credit to the websites. We do this because unless it is part of the Zelda Wiki Collaboration, credit must be given to the website. Although we do have a template available if you can't find the website, it is generally better to give the credit. If you have anymore questions about anything, feel free to let me know on my Talk Page. --Seablue254 21:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you need anything?

Hello, I'm a pupil from Germany and I also worked in other German Zelda-Wikis but there are no big wikis in my language. I want to ask you how I can help this page. My English can be terrible, so I don't know if this is the right place to ask. Maybe I can find pictures for this page or translate texts. I would be very happy if I could help you Sirius 20:46, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Your English? Terrible? Hardly. Your English is better than quite a few native speakers I know, actually. And besides, even if you make a little mistake, someone else can fix it for you. It's no problem. ;)

As for your question, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking. Are you wanting to know if you can make a German-translated version of the wiki or just if it's okay for you to edit pages here? If so, go on ahead. Edit as much as you feel you can. Text, pictures, even little edits; anything is welcome and much desired.

If you need anything else, let me know! --Ando 21:35, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey there! Welcome to Zelda wiki! Now, I'm sure that Ando has explained many things to you and probably answered your question, BUT, if you were asking about help on this page only, it's fine, however, there will not be much action here. Anyway, if you have any more questions, tell us here, my talk page, or the Chatroom. Happy to help :) --Seablue254 22:02, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much! :) Writting German articles sounds good. I made a example on my discoussion-page ( http://zeldawiki.org/User talk:Sirius ). Maybe I can look for articles which have no pictures, and make some for them. I'm very happy that you are so friendly, thank you :)—Preceding unsigned comment added by Sirius 05:00

OK. HOWEVER, considering this is an ENGLISH Wiki, you should try to write in English, however, in the event you try German, name the German translation "Name of article (German)", so that no one is confused :) --Seablue254 14:11, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thank you :) Sirius 14:18, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Uh... Sea, maybe not? I can't find where he actually said it, but I remember Jason stated before that it didn't seem necessary to have multi-language articles (I may be remembering incorrectly, but)... Sirius, you may want to bring this up with him on his talk page before you do anything too big, okay? (By the way, that was actually pretty cool seeing the German version of the article. :P) --Ando 18:01, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

DARN IT! I have a thing for being wrong >:-O --Seablue254 20:33, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Talk Bubbles

With the recent attempt to make one of these, I think that we should clearly state a policy on them. I really don't like them. They don't have a way to give the time of the post. They add a bunch of nonsense to talk pages that really make it look unprofessional. The poor color choices that people make makes it difficult to read what is actually being said. This is not good for color-blind people. They are more common than you would think. (No, I'm not color-blind. Just thinking of those who are.) These talk bubbles also are too complex and therefore drastically increase loading times on the talk pages. They are too big and make the pages look too cluttered.
I assume that these are the same conclusions that the staff here came up with, right? It would be better to make this not allowing talk bubbles a formal policy that everyone is made aware of.--Matt 08:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Aye, pretty much everyone on staff said the same thing (except, like, one person but whatev', right?). Heck, not just the totally color-blind people need to be thought about; I have a friend who is only slightly "color deficient", and he could almost not complete a color-puzzle at the end of Metroid Prime Hunters, so I shudder at what might happen if he tried reading some of the talk bubbles I've seen. Heck, I've had trouble reading them, and I'm totally not color-blind at all. Not to mention the annoying "catchphrases" before the actual text, and the fact that most of them contain no timestamp. I'll try to figure out somewhere in the official policies to place this and get it put in there within the next couple of hours. --Ando 13:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I hate'em too.The Sage of Cosmos 20:11, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Prepare Ourselves

Over at Zeldapedia, a forum has been started to decide what to do about XXXXX. This links to the tree pages he harassed on are on the forum page. Word about will spread across that site very fast. A many people that primarily contribute over there also have accounts here. We might want to consider temporarily protecting these three pages from editing. At the very least, Ando and Seablue254 shouldn't archive their talk pages and not one should edit XXXXX's talk page until this thing is resolved. That way the links over there will still go to the correct place. There are four or five admins active today over there right now. Let us hope they can reach an agreement quickly so that we don't have to protect the pages. If anyone makes anymore comments about XXXXX then make them polite. If you can't then don't comment on him at all. They'll probably notice. I'll look bad if we insult him right back. It would make us no better than he was. Keep things clean.--Matt 23:52, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. Anyways, i want it to be known that my talk page should be reverted if messed up/vandalized. I won't archive it because it's wayyy to small, but srsly, if i get trolled or anything in the chatroom, i'll whip out +b faster than Indiana can crack his whip. --Seablue254 00:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, looks like we don't have to worry about people messing with those pages, judging from how the talk is going. They wouldn't stand for it. At least something is being done.--Matt 00:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Aw man. I liked my comment. Time for a quotes section! --Seablue254 00:25, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Formal Apology

As a part of the above topic: I'm a admin at Zeldapedia. I've been noted of the vandalism that User:XXXXX has committed here and it is being discussed right now. And I'd like to apologize on behalf of Zeldapedia. On another note, if you have any wiki related discussion (because we both are working towards the same goal) please contact me on my page there. Oath to Order 03:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. We fully understand that his was not the opinion of the entirety of Zeldapedia and I'd say that most of us don't hold it against you or the rest of Zeldapedia (some are probably still sore against XXXXX, but that's about it). Thank you for looking into the matter, and I hope that our two Wikis can still co-exist. ;) --Ando 04:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

NOW I'm happy <3 —S e a b l u e 12:17, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist

When you go to "my watchlist" and then to view and edit watchlist, all the pages you put in there are there. But in addition to that, there are sometimes red-links to pages with a seemingly random combination of numbers for a title. Does anyone have a clue what these are? I've noticed them a while ago but still can't figure out what they are.Matt^(Talk) 02:26, June 23, 2008 (UTC)

My theory: It's supposed to go by clicking the "watch" button, and it says "watching..." then confirms that it's being watched by switching to "unwatch", right? Well, you ever had it hang up on "watching..." and never actually complete the adding-it-to-your-watchlist function? What if these bizarre number red links are generated while the system's trying to watch the page, or perhaps there's a glitch that prevents it from watching the page and so it spews out nonsense in its place. This is only my theory, mind you, but it makes sense to me. --Ando 03:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Page Query

I have a suggestion for a page, but feel that I should ask permission for it, because it is mainly speculation. Since the Zelda series is full of speculation and mysteries that I believe we should discuss in an article, I would propose a Mysteries article, or at least a disambiguation page or a split page that has links to several separately discussed mysteries, such pressing matters like "Bongo Bongo's Origin" or "Relation of Majora Mask Boss and the Four Giants", just to name a few. The question is: Should I ask for such a page, or guidance for work on such a page here or on another part of the Community? Darqlink51 01:45, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Hm... I'm not so sure that a page like that is really necessary. After all, something like that could be covered on the individual subject's page after a {{theory}} tag (that's what it's there for, after all!). We just got rid of a "Lore" article that really didn't seem to be within the realm of the Wiki's coverage, and a full article dedicated to the mysteries of Zelda seems to be along those same lines. It's a perfect idea for a good theorizing topic on a message board, though! —Ando (talk) 02:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Capcha Help Link

When saving a page after adding an external link, the page is still loading and you click the box to enter the answer to the math problem, and the toolbar finishes loading and your click instead goes to "more info" (Captcha help) link. I have a very common resolution. The image to the right shows the problem.

Some user's browsers don't save POSTDATA and they could lose their changes the tried to make. The solution is to either move the link to another part of the sentence or to remove the link altogether. To do this, all we have to do is edit the system message page MediaWiki:Captcha-addurl. Thiis should be dealt with soon. For now, "Tired I am, rest I must." (°‿°)Matt^(Talk) 07:09, July 5, 2008 (UTC)

Hi Matt. We've recently changed the setting of ConfirmEdit, the Captcha extension (as you may have read on Ando's talk page). Could you please check the above scenario again - I believe the captcha should no longer appear in such a scenario. Let me know if there are still changes to be made. Thanks! —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 11:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Plainlinks

Well, with the new edit tool box of ours, my Plainlink template is now obsolete. However I think that the information in it is valuable. I'm sure that everyone here will agree it is better to use plain links on the types of internal links listed on the template page. There is a system message that should be altered so that it is a plain link. It is MediaWiki:Noarticletext. There might be others, but I'm not sure what they are now.Matt^(Talk) 03:03, July 15, 2008 (UTC)

A Puzzle

NOTE: Discussion moved from Ando's user talk page.

I have a little puzzle for us to solve. The articles in the main name space that are listed on the page Pages that link to Ocarina of Time do not actually link to that disambiguation page. The only thing that these articles have in common is the Cite template. Now that I look at it, a lot disambiguation pages I have looked up have this problem. I examined the Cite template code and there is nothing that could be causing this, but nevertheless, all the pages with the cite template turn up on the "What links here" for the game disambiguation pages. It did not do this a just after my last edit of the cite template. Do you have any idea what is going on?Matt^(Talk) 22:34, July 15, 2008 (UTC)

After looking at this page, I'm convinced it is the Cite template. The normal articles listed on that page that do not actually link to the given disambiguation page all have the Cite template in it. That is the only constant. I spent well over two hours rigorously examining the Cite template's code. There is no way in hell that it could possibly do this. But it is doing this. Hmm... Perhaps changing all the game links in the code to the game link templates?Matt^(Talk) 07:31, July 16, 2008 (UTC)

I see what you mean. That's actually very bizarre.

So basically what we're seeing is that what you type as the game title in the cite template shows up in the "Pages that link to x" page (so I guess that if OoT, TWW, etc. were to be typed we'd be seeing those as well). This is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed; I can already see the new users seeing all of the pages linking to "Ocarina of Time" and, not knowing what they're doing, making all of the cite template links full game links.

It makes no sense, though. Why on earth would it be doing that? The absolute only possibility I can think of is to remove the cite template's ability to make something a whole game link and require the user to manually enter the entire game link. (Maybe you know how to make it automatically chop off the first part of the link for display? Or just have an extra field so that it's {{Cite|quote|person|TLoZ: MM|MM}} [with the full link, obviously] where the last field is the link display?) —Ando (talk) 12:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorta understanding...and sorta not. In 13 year old speak, please. —S e a b l u e 13:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Um... I'll try?
The cite template works as such: {{Cite|[quote]|[person who said it]|[game subtitle]}}, automatically linking the game subtitle to its full proper title. So {{Cite|You have suffered a terrible fate, haven't you?|Happy Mask Salesman|MM}} generates
"You have suffered a terrible fate, haven't you?" — Happy Mask Salesman (Majora's Mask)
Notice that the "Majora's Mask" link automatically sends you to the PROPER game title instead of the Majora's Mask disambiguation page. However, if you were to look at this page, you'd see that it would tell you that this page is linking to the disambiguation page instead of the game page, because what was typed in was only "Majora's Mask", not "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask". So basically whatever you type in that last cite template field generates the correct link, but the Wiki thinks that it doesn't. The problem here is what I described in my above post (not to mention that it could get very annoying for someone trying to find the ACTUAL disambiguation links within pages). —Ando (talk) 13:21, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to try something. Maybe it will fix this.Matt^(Talk) 14:30, July 16, 2008 (UTC)

With the changes I made, it is even more impossible for the Cite template to do this. But it is still doing it. I asked for help on MediaWiki.org. But they seem to make it a point to ignore help requests there, so we may never get a respose.Matt^(Talk) 14:59, July 16, 2008 (UTC)
PS: Is it just me, or does the first sentence in this post sound weird?

And yet it appears to have broken the part near the game link, at least for Majora's Mask, anyway (as you can see above). I tried looking at the code and found nothing, but then again I'm not good with Wiki template code, so... (I really should get to studying that). —Ando (talk) 15:14, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi guys. I'm finding myself wondering why this discussion is not in Hyrule Castle. But anyway... Matt, my suggestion at some basic troubleshooting would be to revert the cite template to an earlier revision (perhaps this one?) then see if the problem is fixed. If so, add in parts of the code piece by piece until you find the precise cause. I'd help, but I'm out of my depth on the exact functioning of some of the stuff in there. Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but this is the logical approach to me. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 21:47, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Let's save Ando's space. Move this discussion to Hyrule Castle. I guess I'm going to have to fix the template in the manner you just suggested. But that could take a few hours. Most of our visitors are in the US, so if I do it later tonight, it won't cause that much confusion.Matt^(Talk) 23:56, July 16, 2008 (UTC)

This marks the end of the moved portion of this discussion.

Big thunder storm. Can't risk it. I'll have to wait until tomorrow night to do it.Matt^(Talk) 04:13, July 17, 2008 (UTC)

The irony. Mere moments after saving my previous statement, the power goes out. I'll try tonight. It would not make sense to do it during the day.Matt^(Talk) 15:31, July 17, 2008 (UTC)

It appears that my first attempt, on my birthday (the 16th), to fix the cite template actually worked. It just took a few days to take effect. That's one problem solved.Matt^(Talk) 04:36, July 20, 2008 (UTC)

I seem to remember hearing that certain pages such as that will sometimes take about 24 hours to fully propagate throughout the system. Sorry I didn't remember before. :P Glad that it worked, though. —Ando (talk) 17:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

This problem was larger than we though. Earlier today, Seablue discovered that the Delete template was causing pages to show up in the wanted pages even though the links to those pages do not exist. Upon investigating the wanted pages, I found links to talk pages of articles that I had recently marked with the Move template. I then made a change to both the templates that would fix them. The wanted pages updated for the Move template right away, but did not for the Delete template. We'll have to wait a day or two. I then checked all the other notice templates that make links to talk pages. Every one of them was exhibiting this behavior. I made the same fix to all of them. I have carefully considered and pondered on the reason for this. I now believe I know exactly what happened. It is because of the #ifexist function. Here is what the function is like:

{{#ifexist:Page name|Text if page exists|Text if page does not exist}}

What is happening is that if there is an internal link in either of the two "Text if page ***" fields, then the link will count on the page no matter if the target page exists or not. The only way around this is to make the link like an external one, but using the plainlinks feature from the edit toolbox to make it look like a normal link.Matt^(Talk) 18:30, July 21, 2008 (UTC)

To the right is an image displaying the problem. The link to the indicated page did not, and never did, exist. But that did not stop it from showing up in the wanted pages. This happened in all other special pages that display what articles link to another article. This issue has been dealt with and is explained above. In a day or two, once the server catches up and updates everything, this should no longer happen.Matt^(Talk) 21:40, July 21, 2008 (UTC)

I just had a little talk with an extension developer over at MediaWiki. It is confirmed. This problem was caused by the #ifexist function. He said that that was how the function works. I have suggested that they program out this susceptibility of the ParserFunctions extension. It may be some time before we can see results. For now, we'll just have to format the links as plainlink external links.Matt^(Talk) 05:32, July 22, 2008 (UTC)

Bug

It seems ever since ZU's hacking and server updates, none of our videos work, and I can't get a thumbnail to appear on my page. I think we will need some debugging. —S e a b l u e 13:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

The ones on my page seem to work, is it just certain videos? What happened over at ZU anyway?— Ste v e 10:08, 28 July 2008 (EST)

Someone hacked in and changed the header and that. They had to revert the site to an earlier version.Matt^(Talk) 14:12, July 28, 2008 (UTC)

Yup. However, they had some music made out of EPIC WIN. They also chaged the place to Gardening Universe, with a video from Marty Chang. His dad's Asian! —S e a b l u e 14:16, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Now, I'm trying to upload a pic, and I get this: Could not copy file "/tmp/phpC8sfQC" to "temp/e/ef/20080729152305!Sealogo.png".

What now?! —S e a b l u e 15:24, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I checked off "ignore any warnings" and it worked, unfortunately, you won't be able to make it a thumbnail pic.— Ste v e

Isn't there a way that someone could put a firewall on the sections of the zeldauniverse.net server so that problems in one section cannot affect the other? I know I've heard of this before. It has to be done either by Jason or the guys that are physically at the server's location. I'm not sure which.Matt^(Talk) 15:37, July 29, 2008 (UTC)

There must be someway, otherwise we won't be able to upload any new images without being unable to make display them any smaller (which most images are).— Ste v e

For the benefit of relative newcomers (i.e. all of you ;), this has happened before (almost exactly a year ago - weird!), and Jason fixed it. I've just brought it to his attention. Please hold tight, and try to refrain from uploading any new images for a little while. I'll update on any progress here. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 18:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you so much, I was hoping someone knew how to resolve this problem.— Ste v e

I PM'd him over ZU a few ays ago about it also. Maybe he's doing something? —S e a b l u e 19:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to give a (slightly late) update on this, Jason has now resolved the issue, so there shouldn't be any further problems. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 18:08, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Voting for something?

Hi, Im a new user here, but im probobly pretty stupid for not knowing this, but here it goes: I dont know how to vote for a picture in the wiki. Do i just edit the page and put my vote or what?

Yes, that's exactly how it goes. Stick it in like this:

# Yes, I really like (insert picture name)! Its dead eyes make me fell cold with fear! --~~~~

That's probably not what you were going to say, but lo and behold! This is how you do it. --Felicia's Champion 03:41, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, votes for featured articles go here, and featured picture votes go here. —Ando (talk) 04:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Forums

We need a way to talk about subjects, while remaining on this site, that are not about improving an article. I've done some quick research. There are two ways we can do this. Here they are:

Option A: Add this forum extension

Option B: Create a forum namespace

With "Option B", it would be like on Zeldapedia. Only it would be better here since we don't have to worry about those annoying talk bubbles. "Option A" would be like a more traditional forum. I prefer "Option B". But we'll have to decide.Matt^(Talk) 23:07, August 17, 2008 (UTC)

Option B sounds good; there's all ready a restricted part of the wiki where only the sysops/bureaucrats can talk. But however, I ask why we even need this, considering we all ready have our community pages? We're using them right now! However, Option A would help organize these community pages. Hrm... —S e a b l u e 23:19, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

We do not have such community pages. "Hyrule Castle" is for technical issues for the whole wiki. "The Heart Container" is for individual technical/editing/image issues. We have no pages for discussing theories, games, or just general things, other than user talk pages. It would be better to have a namespace just for that, so that there is no confusion and that it is more open to everyone.Matt^(Talk) 00:03, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. Can I get you in the 'room for some more discussion? I'll enter when I see you answer. —S e a b l u e 00:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I found another one we can use:

Option C: Use the extension LiquidThreads

I like this option far more than "A". So it is between "B" and "C".Matt^(Talk) 00:18, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Eh. I like B better. Anyways, i'll be right in :) —S e a b l u e 00:20, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I prefer option B, short and simple— Ste v e

As stated in a chat between Matt and I (That is still ongoing), I choose a combo of A and B. —S e a b l u e 00:32, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Um, what? Why... is this needed? There are already plenty of message boards for just discussing "stuff in general". Need I remind our users that we have such sites as Zelda Universe and Zelda Dungeon, each with their own message boards for discussing these things? Heck, Sea, you yourself are a part of at least Zelda Universe (not sure about anyone else). I'm honestly not sure why we "need" this. No actual reason has been provided yet. —Ando (talk) 14:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Also, Sea, you say that you're not sure why we have separate staff boards? It's so we can have secret staff discussions without everyone else seeing. ;)

It is intended to clean up the article talk pages so that talk about the article's subject can be on a forum page. We all know that this is a big problem. Even if we don't want to admit it. Having the forum here in the wiki means that we can instantly tell that it is a certain Zelda Wiki user talking. In the forums of our member sites, this is not possible. I was thinking less along the lines of general discussion and more of Zelda-oriented talk. I'd still say we should do this. Note: The LiquidThreads extension was developed by Wikia.Matt^(Talk) 14:39, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

By the way: Now that I think on it. I'd like to veer away from the tradition forum and go only with option "B".Matt^(Talk) 14:40, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. I'm still waking up. Seablue isn't going to respond. He's on vacation until about Thursday or Friday. So we won't here from him much, if at all, until he's back.Matt^(Talk) 14:43, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

The problem you mention is exactly why we have this. Its purpose is to redirect conversation of a subject to a message board. I'm sorry if I see absolutely no gain in this whatsoever. I'm also pretty sure that the bureaucrats wouldn't agree to this due to conflicting interests; we start a message board here, that's that many more members that now have less incentive to join their own message boards. Also... what's it matter that LiquidThreads was made by Wikia? :P —Ando (talk) 15:10, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

That is why we choose "B". With "B" it will be like any other talk page, it just has that purpose. It still won't be a full-fledged forum, so long as we don't choose "A". Look at just about any talk page on Zelda Wiki. Well over half of them are discussions about the article's subject. Even us senior members do this too. This problem won't go away. If we just ignore it, it'll just keep getting worse. We have to deal with it now. We could encourage users to take discussions about help playing a game to a member site's forum. But we can use the proposed forums here for more general Zelda-orientated discussion. Also... We take pride in avoiding using anything made by Wikia. :PMatt^(Talk) 15:21, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I'm with Ando on this one. He's right in saying that few if any of the other sysops would agree to a forum of any type; "the wiki can clearly never have a forum" - Jason's words, not mine (disclaimer; not a direct quote). And the reason I created the OT template was precisely to reinforce this basic principle. In my opinion, the absence of a forum is what keeps our site credible (and makes certain areas of Wikia a bit of a joke.) That's not to say that talk pages can't contain article-related theories or opinions, it's just that they can't be only that. In short, a wiki is defined in equal terms by what it includes and what it does not; we're not a strategy guide, a news site, or a forum (see these examples: What Wikipedia is not or more simply Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.) There's also no reason why completely random discussion can't still take place here, either in the talk namespace or the chatroom. Unfortunately, the small number of users who occasionally want to engage specifically in traditional, pure forum-style discussions will have to look elsewhere to meet this desire; there is neither the space nor the requirement for such an area here, in my opinion. —Adam ^{[ talk ]} 20:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

You know, we already have something like a forum. A chatroom. Anything not having to do with the article can go on in there. God knows how many times people that are not even part of the wiki have come in, and us in there have helped, I have done it at least three times. —S e a b l u e 18:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

And Ando, of course I know why you have the secret staff boards. To have those secret staff discussions. Though I think you're having more of a par-tay in there >:(

Wiki Upgrade

Okay boys and girls. I did some research, here is what we're getting in this new version of the wiki software:

New special pages: FileDuplicateSearch, ListGroupRights
Redisigned Special:UserRights and Special:SpecialPages
More options on Special:Recentchangeslinked and Special:Whatlinkshere
New parser functions: PAGESINCATEGORY, PAGESIZE
Can hide categories with __HIDDENCAT__
Friendlier behavior for users who click a red link but can't edit.
Image redirects
Drop-down AJAX search suggestions.
Search results show image thumbnails.
Allow the search box and toolbox in the Monobook sidebar to be moved around arbitrarily using special sections in MediaWiki:Sidebar: SEARCH and TOOLBOX
Double redirects created by a page move can be fixed automatically.
Automatic edit summaries can be disabled with $wgUseAutomaticEditSummaries
Duplicates of images are now shown on the image page
When a page doesn't exist, the tab should say "create", not "edit"
Add links to page and file deletion forms to edit predefined delete reasons
Add category table to allow better tracking of category membership counts
Use category table for more efficient display of Special:Categories
Added PAGESINCATEGORY: magic word
Allow inclusions, links, redirects to be separately toggled on or off on Special:WhatLinksHere
Organize Special:SpecialPages into sections
Say "log in / create account" if an anonymous user can create an account, otherwise just "log in", consistently across skins
Special:Shortpages and Special:Longpages now returns pages in all content namespaces, not just NS_MAIN
Show image links on Special:Whatlinkshere
Add information about user group membership to Special:Preferences
The User class now contains a public function called isActiveEditor. Figures out if a user is active based on at least $wgActiveUserEditCount number of edits in the last $wgActiveUserDays days.
Remove redirects from Special:Unusedtemplates.
Allow setting 'editprotected' right separately from 'protect', so groups may optionally edit protected pages without having 'protect' perms
Preview/edit toolbar spacing now works consistently
Hide (undo) link if user isn't able to edit page
Redirects listed on file links on image pages no longer redirect.

Some of those sound real nice. I personally what us to move the sidebar toolbox in between the community and navigation sections. Well, let's hope we get this upgraded without too many problems occurring.Matt^(Talk) 01:17, August 18, 2008 (UTC)
PS: Someone fix the main page! Add a "Clear" tag just after the new table.

Haha. I fixed it before I even read your request because I am quick and smooth like that. Anyway, yeah, the new release has some sweet stuff; I looked at the new features list a while ago. I particularly like some of what they're doing with the Whatlinkshere pages. :D —Ando (talk) 03:48, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Since we're going to be tinkering around with the wiki installation, I might as well mention a few extensions I thought it would be nice to have. AutoLink is a good one. Remember when we had those talk pages with the noclog tmeplate in them? This extension might have made it easier. I'm not sure. Also, EditCount would be nice.Matt^(Talk) 07:56, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

I think that for the search box thing it needs to be *SEARCH. The asterisk is important.Matt^(Talk) 12:05, August 18, 2008 (UTC)

Also, move it to the top. The wiki software reset it to just over the toolbox. —S e a b l u e 18:14, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Is someone going to fix the sidebar? It is a simple matter of adding an asterisk.Matt^(Talk) 05:01, August 24, 2008 (UTC)

We're actually having issues with a lot of Wiki-related things right now. Jason's looking into a fix, and once something's found, the sidebar placement should also be on the to-do list. —Ando (talk) 05:15, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

No offense, but it would have taken less time to edit MediaWiki:Sidebar so that it says *SEARCH, than it did for you to post a response here. What are the main issues we're having problems with? I know that a few of the new features are actually options that need to be enabled in the php. I saw that when I was looking for the changes in the change log. Look at the change log on MediaWiki, it'll have all the answers, I hope.Matt^(Talk) 05:22, August 24, 2008 (UTC)