Infosphere:Conference Table/Old format

The Conference Table is for discussion of the Infosphere, and proposals for new ideas. For information about upcoming changes to the Infosphere, see Current events. __NEWSECTIONLINK__ Click here to start a new discussion.

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Background Jokes
I was thinking, both the simpsons and Futurama are known for their background jokes. Should there be a list for the background jokes on every episode? I think if we're to be a collective hub of Futurama info it would be important to do so.Anarchy Balsac 18:35, 7 January 2008 (PST)

do you mean a master list or for each episode dr zoidberg 14

Yeah, something like a trivia list except it says "background jokes" as its title.Anarchy Balsac 07:01, 11 January 2008 (PST)

great idea i say yes dr zoidberg 14


 * Would they need time-indices? --Buddy 18:36, 3 February 2008 (PST)
 * Wouldn't hurt, though it would make the task more tedious.Anarchy Balsac 21:21, 15 February 2008 (PST)

You could also make an article containing all the jokes from season 1, one for season 2, one for season 3, one for season 4 and one for the upcoming movies.It would be easier than going through all the episodes and adding a new section. Fryandgarfield
 * Hmm... *searches* reminds me of this group of articles List of computer science references, which aren't linked from anything except each other and are far from complete. - Quolnok 18:26, 25 March 2008 (PDT)
 * I see your point. Maybe we should merge this idea with that one (since most of the computer science references are background jokes anyway) and put it in the sidebar to draw more attention(hence more editing) to it.Anarchy Balsac 12:38, 27 March 2008 (PDT)

Background Jokes: break
Okay, I think we need to start this topic again. As I am watching Futurama now and then (often a lot), I am not paying much attention to the actual plot, but noticing parts of the screen I am supposed to stare at. As a consequence, I have begun noticing a lot of background jokes. Now here is how I think we can do this. Make a huge article (list of background jokes), and get rid of the lists I created when I first joined this place. In addition to that article, we can have noticeable mentions on each episode's page. And then of course a link to the list article. My rule for a background joke to be a background joke: Something that is in the picture but unreferenced by characters and/or unimportant to plot. --SvipTalk 18:53, 20 May 2008 (PDT)
 * Yep there should be an article. Just so long as we know the other, abandoned, ones are disappearing. Bits and pieces of these are already spread through trivia sections and commentary articles, and can be copied over. - Quolnok 06:44, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * Maybe in a similar format as list of deleted scenes? Well... almost similar, I was thinking listing the background jokes by appearance in a big table.  And also make a list of alien language appearances (this one deserves its own list in my opinion). --SvipTalk 07:03, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * There had been an attempt at an AL sightings section in episode articles... Yeah they should have a page too. Format should definitely sort by season/episode. Perhaps as subsections of episode have "Physics" "Computing" "Literature" "Television" sort of thing, if the background joke is just a fart joke or something, "other" is still an option. - Quolnok 07:15, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * The subsections seems a bit overkill if you ask me. Maybe keep it a list for each episode in the list, then have a bold type in brackets, e.g. (Physics).  e.g.:
 * Behind Fry at Mr. Mbutu's apartment reads the text "10 Sweet 20 Home 30 Goto Home" in a frame behind him. This is a reference to the programming language BASIC.  (Computing)
 * For episode I, Roommate, however, I still wondering how we should do this right. A list or a table?  With a table we can apply an image, but not always will an image be necessary.  Hm. :S --SvipTalk 08:22, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * I was thinking something similar, but make it a page like the Miscellanies sections. Both the Simpsons and Futurama have loads of freeze frames per episode. We should probably take a vote on the list or table thing.Anarchy Balsac 06:29, 22 July 2008 (CEST)

So I take it opinion is generally in favor, but there just isn't agreement over the exact implementation. I think as long as the criteria for a background joke is established, the rest can be worked out through the editing. I'm all for the criteria Svip proposed, so if we can agree to that, I think we can probably start this and get the ball rolling at least.Anarchy Balsac 05:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Referencing other episodes.
Should we place a "References to Other Episodes" section into an episode article if it is not present (I've seen a few with "Inside References")? There are a bunch that I think would link together many episode but aren't there and I was wondering if there is a reason for it or if it's just that there were more important things to complete at the time. -Mini-Me 00:34, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * I'd prefer "Continuity", sounds more sophisticated. And I think the reason if they are not there, is because we are slackers. --SvipTalk 01:05, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Sounds good, but I noticed shortly after posting this that there are a couple of notes under Trivia that should be in Continuity. Should that all be filtered around or new/unadded stuff in Continuity only? -Mini-Me 03:47, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Those are probably items left astray from our old standards. Something we should have fixed months ago.  But we have a lot to see to, and we are few contributors. --SvipTalk 11:27, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Wasn't somebody just saying that there wasn't much left to do? That's crazy talk! --Buddy 20:11, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * I could start sorting through those, starting at 101 and working up (while doing the remaining commentaries, of course). Not particularly busy this year and that back up I did will help out a ton. -Mini-Me 01:13, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * What of the prerequisite sections that a few (four) articles have? That's another section that fits this grouping. It also has those fancy hidden text whosits Svip came up with, see here. One of those still has the fast forward section too... - Quolnok 03:27, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * Found that discussion: Talk:Bender's Big Score - Quolnok 03:31, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * I'd like to stop you there, let us not use those systems until they are more or less perfected. As of right now, I am not entirely pleased with them.  And there may be too much rework to do if we began splattering all over the place.  So let's leave them where they are now, and call it that. --SvipTalk 03:53, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * Stop me where? I was simply noting that they existed. - Quolnok 05:06, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * No, what I meant, is that someone might pick it up and believe it needs addition, so I am just stopping them in doing it right now. Seemed like the appropriate time to mention it. --SvipTalk 12:36, 24 August 2008 (BST)

After thinking about it for a while now, I'm not very content with just having the major ones listed, especially when the show has a vast amount of little call backs and foreshadows. Perhaps a page can be put together with all episodes listing out how they link to others. I wonder how long that would be. Or something else entirely. Just an idea. -Mini-Me 17:05, 5 September 2008 (BST)
 * Foreshadowing can easily fit into a section on the relevant article for the concept or character (as well as its appearances section). Episode articles shouldn't have pages of stuff in these sections. Unless I'm mistaken, these sections were based on the ones used at hrwiki.org (considerably shorter animations) they tend to include the most relevant stuff in the article then create an extra article for pretty much any recurring concept, we don't have it quite to that extent yet. On a related note, anyone want to do a Nicknames article? - Quolnok 02:03, 6 September 2008 (BST)

Image standards and choices
I have been dealing with a lot of thoughts regarding the images on our wiki, both legally, picking and standards.

First of all, licencing. I think we need a standard box on every image page (could use one of those MediaWiki: messages to add it), stating the usage, the licence and whatnot about the image. I know we have our disclaimer page, but it would be neater for legal reasons to have it on the image page. Now I know, we have not yet have any legal issues regarding our images yet, but it is better to beat the competition before they reaches us.

Then is picking. A good example of what I am worried about is the Dr. John A. Zoidberg article. I don't like the choice of picture for this article, especially because Zoidberg is only drawn with teeth in 3 episodes, making the picture giving a misrepresentation of him. Another example is Kif Kroker, no where else do we use the design sketch for characters in their infobox, however, speaking of design sketches, I think they should be supplied in every article they are available (so, at least all main characters and major secondary characters). Then comes a third example, a bit different, as to supply my thoughts, the Zapp Brannigan article. While the picture is not extremely bad, I think we can actually provide a better picture. I am speaking of the picture where he says "I am the man with no name", cause the facial expression and line sums the Zapp Brannigan character up quite well. And it omits having Kif in the picture.

Standards is basically a relying on the picking, plus some more technical issues. I propose that for every character article, where an image can be provided, it must have been taken from the show or film (depending on where the character is). If a design sketch is available for a character, it must be provided in the article, but only as an image within the article, to give air to the article, and avoid give the reader the feeling that it is not just text. While content is good, images helps. And lastly, this is not a standard, but rather an encouragement, if you see an image for a character, and think it can be done better, don't hesitate, don't go silent, provide arguments in its talk page, be either the image's talk page or the character article's talk page.

There was probably more I wanted to add, but I forget now. But I guess this is enough to get some discussion started. --SvipTalk 22:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A lot of those early pics were uploaded by myself (at the time, there were no other users who could get screenshots of DVD's...) and I tried to use the following standards:


 * A full-screen image (I think the first Zapp pic was a cropped close-up)
 * As soon after the character first appeared as possible (keeping the first criterion in mind)
 * The Character depicted should, if possible, be the only character on screen
 * Fairly representative of the character (keeping the first two criteria in mind)
 * So that's where we get a lot of the primary and secondary character pics. But I'm all for updating them. Especially if it'll look better in the long run. Especially, as you note, the teeth thing. Zoidberg shouldn't have teeth (I didn't even notice them in the pic, so good observation), so it should really be updated. And Zapp's should have Kiff removed. I think I picked that image because it was so boastful that it was perfect, but it does have another character in the image, so it's not ideal. And now that nearly all of our members can provide screenshots, there's no reason they can't be updated. As for the character design sketches, they actually used to be on several pages, but they were deemed unsuitable for the main image, and they just went away. I'm sure they're still in the database, and they'd be fine lower down the page, but they just weren't good main images (as you pointed out for Kif). --Buddy 23:18, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Levelling system
I have been thinking of copying a system that Wikipedia uses to decide what are good articles and what are... not so good articles. I am not directly copying the system, but only the idea. I propose our own system to more fit our needs.

The levelling system will consist of 5 levels, indicating the quality of an article, along with 3 focus levels (plus a null-level), indicating the focus and the attention the article needs.

The proposed quality levels are as follows:


 * Stub
 * The article have just begun, and have only has 1 or 2 sentences, and indicates very little.


 * Start
 * The article have described the content of the topic at hand, but fails to evaluate it or give a thorough description of the subject.


 * Developed
 * The article gives its readers a fair overlook of the subject at hand, but the article is still lacking touch.


 * Good
 * The article conforms to all standards set, and its description is thorough and broad.


 * Brilliant
 * The article meets all the requirements of a good article, and in addition has an extra touch that just makes it nice to read.

The first 3 levels can be picked by a bot (which will be the intend in the end, I will add some code to my bot which will decide whether an article is a stub, start or developed), the two latter levels will be picked by users, and the last level, Brilliant must be picked by a vote.

Featured (or previously featured) articles will be mentioned, but will not fall into the levelling system, but the levelling system will be a good indicator when to pick a featured article.

The proposed focus levels are as follows:


 * Null
 * A focus for this article has not been set (default)


 * C
 * Little or no focus


 * B
 * Medium focus


 * A
 * High focus

Each talk page for an article, will include a template on top indicating the levels and whether or not it has been featured before. The template have not yet been created. The first discussion is on whether this system works. --SvipTalk 14:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I like it. It'll let the users know which articles we can focus on, and it may draw attention to articles that are very stubby, so they can be expanded. --Buddy 17:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have further developed it, you can see Talk:List of title captions as well as Talk:The Time Bender Trilogy: Part 1 for articles currently using it. As you can see, it will possibly replace the  template.  In addition to that, I have written up an article explaining it here; Levelling system. --SvipTalk 18:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Types of characters; splitting secondary characters into 3
I know I am bringing this up again, but a concern have been raising in my mind, as have been pointed out by the last time we ran this around here. The issue was that with my new specification of naming Steve Castle a secondary character, because of his importance in "Future Stock", despite only appearing once, this may spark a lot of subjective opinions on who is secondary and who is tertiary.

Therefore I am suggestion splitting secondary characters up in 3:
 * Major secondary characters
 * Major secondary characters are characters that are pretty close to actually being primary characters, but for a specific number of reasons aren't. Examples of these characters include Zapp Brannigan, Kif Kroker and Mom.


 * One-time secondary characters
 * One-time secondary characters are characters playing a major importance in one single episode/film/comic, but either unknown later or not appearing at all (possibly because of death). Examples these characters include Steve Castle, The Zookeeper and Nudar.


 * Secondary characters
 * The ungrouped mass.

Discuss. --SvipTalk 16:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Inline episode/film/comic references
I think I have brought this up before, but I am going to do it again, cause apparently I did not make myself clear the previous time. Whenever mentioning an episode, film or reference within a context, can we please not use the, and  templates? I still urge you to use them in appearances lists, infoboxes, overviews, among other things. But the whole line of brackets and icons doesn't really go well inline.

Therefore, I am recommending, that when mentioning an episode or comic, put it in quotation marks like this; "Space Pilot 3000" or "Monkey Sea, Monkey Doom!". It should be apparent by the context that we are speaking of an episode and/or comic. If you really which to distinguish yourself between the two, use phrases like in the episode "Space Pilot 3000" or in the comic "Monkey Sea, Monkey Doom!".

As for films, keep them just italic, e.g. Bender's Big Score. The reason? Simply because it looks better inline. If you are not convinced, try using the differences inline sometime. But, don't write links to episodes/comics without the quotations or films without the italics, unless you are mentioning them in "vague" format, e.g. "in the first episode". --SvipTalk 15:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * hehe. whoops, shall do from now on--My leg feels funny! 20:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, the icons should be changed to some hue of cyan to match the new colour scheme a little better. --Buddy 22:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. See All My Circuits for an example.  If they still appear in red, do a refresh.  Your browser is caching! --SvipTalk 14:58, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Bender's Big Score on UMD?
I just obtained a link to an Amazon page for Bender's Big Score on UMD (for those not in the know, UMD is the format the PSP uses), which have apparently been released (at least they claim to have 3 new or used copies in stock). This made me think of the fact that Volume One was released on VHS and VCD. However, we never mention these "lesser" known media. So the real issue is, should we make room for "other media"? Obviously keeping DVD in focus. --SvipTalk 20:40, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Another terrible Sony-proprietary format! Why do people support these?! --Buddy 04:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, Blu Ray isn't proprietary (or bad, just slightly unneeded). UMD on the other hand - I have five discs, all games, for PSP. This is the only place anyone will ever get to use the discs making them very niche. Nonetheless, I might be tempted to pick up an ItWGY UMD if it comes out here for cheap. Oh, and yes these most definitely deserve a mention. Our merchandise section is very incomplete. - Quolnok 11:34, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it was "bad", I just hate Sony and I'll never buy anything with the "Sony" label on it. And yes, other companies can make players now, but with sony technology, of which Sony still gets a portion of the money. Bleh. Stupid Sony. But I'm done ranting now. You know how some people have an irrational hatred of Ford or Pepsi or Microsoft? I'm that way with Sony. The end. --Buddy 22:42, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Needing Image Template
I've noticed that many pages don't have a lead image. If we create a "needs image" template (using the 'Awaitong Screenie.jpg' image) then it might become clear which pages need images and we would be able to upload one for them.-- Neutral President [ U | T | C ]''' - I have no strong feelings one way or the other. 00:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I suppose, though I feel the number is not as high as you claim. And it is basically a notice for editors, and I think most of our editors realise it. --SvipTalk 01:11, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of the articles have Image:AwaitingScreenie.jpg and Image:No Character Image.png in place of the images, and they only link to these and images, although, there are some others like Trials that have no images. 01:36, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

If I didn't already mention this very thing somewhere, I was totally thinking it last week. I was going to start taking screenshots of needed stuff, and then noticed that the practice of putting the placeholder image up has fallen out of... well, practice. It's much easier to go on a screenshot-spree when there's a handy list of images that are needed, and it's also easier to put the image on the page, what with these fancy new templates everywhere, when there's a simple placeholder to replace. --Buddy 05:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I know I still throw it on articles I can't be bothered capping. Yes we should still have this in use to find the pages without images. - Quolnok 06:20, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This had me thinking though, I was considering making my bot swoop around articles and detect most likely articles to lack images (which would be articles with infoboxes, but without an image). In addition, since our 'do not crop images for character' policy, it could also swoop around images and detect whether they have been cropped (simply by taking their resolution and calculating whether it is within a usual 4:3 or 16:9 format), in addition, I think a category for 'character images' would soon be in order. --SvipTalk 14:37, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Anything that would make it easier for someone to mass-upload needed screenshots would please me. --Buddy 04:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Donations for new server
Our current host is great. Don't get me wrong. And we are not paying a penny for it, so it's like Wikia without the ads (and all the other crap). But there is one hitch, it's run by one guy, and that guy is not me. Occasionally, some of his actions would lay the webserver down and it just needs to be rebooted. And rebooting it is snappy, like that. Only problem is; I cannot reboot it, and he isn't always there. Which is why it was down once for 12 hours at least.

And that's not good. Therefore I am suggesting we purchase our own dedicated virtual machine (same setup as now), but our own, with no other things running and just this website. My friend would also prefer it this way, because his other stuff isn't critical to be up 24/7, ours is.

So that's the idea (I'll give you the details on the server when I can finally obtain them). But here's the hitch; servers costs money, and I do not have the currency, therefore I am suggestion we made a call for donations in the sitenotice, like Wikipedia does from time to time. I shall look into what at least one year of this setup will cost, and then ask our readers and contributors for it. It is of course not required to donate, but it would certainly be appreciated.

In addition, I think we should ask for the same curtsey that Wikipedia grants its donators; the ability to be listed (if they want to). But that is more of beauty thing. I'll keep you posted, once I get the details on the server, I will prepare the sitenotice. --SvipTalk 11:36, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If we must, we must. We certainly wouldn't be the only wiki doing this. - Quolnok 12:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Might also want to put out a call to the other Nerdlingers at PEEL and other fansites. As someone who paid out of my own pocket for the first few years of this site's life, and had a donation link on the bottom since the beginning, I don't hold out much hope. You wanna know how much was actually donated to the server costs of the site? Zero. And lots of it. I am torn as to whether or not I would donate, being so spurned previously. It's like, nobody ever did it for me, so why should I? But on the other hand, if it means the difference between life and death for my precious Infosphere, I guess I must... --Buddy 01:42, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If it makes it any better, you are donating to me. And didn't I donate a lot of my effort for this wiki? --SvipTalk 01:45, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Time is money. So sure. --Buddy 23:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Do we get one of those cool money-thermometers? --Buddy 23:26, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I was think we should! Though, it'll probably be a "manual" setting.  But let's see what I brew up. --SvipTalk 23:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Donations: break
I have set up our donation campaign, as well as a site notice, which you have hopefully noticed by now. If you have any suggestions to change of the language, either do it yourself or tell me. --SvipTalk 17:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Main Page suggestions
it looks great though, but i think i we had some things like "featured image of the fortnight", a "did-you-know" section or "user of the month". i think if these got up and running and people nominated for then and stuff it would be really cool. the "index" should also be updated with more characters and stuff--My leg feels funny! 09:18, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Seeing as there are five or six active members, the "Member of the month" thing would last half a year at best. But I do like the "Did you know?" thing. We could put little tidbits of trivia in there, of course with links to full articles. In fact, what might be even better is a JS cycling thing that's random every time you load the page. We could probably create a hundred or so of them... --Buddy 21:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * fair enough about the user of the month, but if someone could get the did you know up and running, i'd help with it. how about image of the fortnight?--My leg feels funny! 22:08, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Notability
Wikipedia has a notability requirement, but as a rule, we shouldn't. The problem is... I can sense that there is a certain limit on notability that please like Wookiepedia and Memory Alpha does not have. I mean, think about it, Coolio was a guest star on Futurama twice... surely he deserves an article, albeit short, but he is certainly worth it.

And for that reason, I think we should go back to the deep down simplified; "if it is related to official Futurama work, then there can be an article". --SvipTalk 15:17, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This has been my belief from the beginning. Minutiae is our bread and butter here. The whole point is to be as detailed as possible about anything and everything Futurama. I figure that, as we write articles, just about every noun (especially Proper Nouns) (and even some verbs) should be a link. Eventually there will be enough to fill up the "Wanted Pages" list, and we start creating them. In fact, when I first started, the Wanted Pages list was my main way of choosing what pages to work on next. A lot of these minor articles are going to be stubs at first, but surely we can fill them in (alternatively, we could just classify them as "minor" and forgo the "stub" markings. I mean, if we've written all there is and it's still short, what more can we do? --Buddy 02:43, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Stubs and minor articles are in my book two different things. A stub is an article that could possibly be longer.  A minor article is an article that may not be able to be much longer.  But this is also a reason I proposed the redirect rule, cause most of the stuff we could (and should) have articles about.  But even guest stars needs an article.
 * Imagine this; a reader wants to know what it was Coolio did on the show, cause he knows Coolio did something, but not entirely sure what, then bam! There is an article, and everything is clear.  It works for mostly any subject Futurama touches.  Just like the French article, sure we mention French when it is appropriate in articles, but what if you wanted an overview from the "French perspective"?  Well, now you can. --SvipTalk 09:54, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Originally if it was very small we attempted to put it in a shared article, but there was only a hundred-odd articles back then and we still hadn't completed the episodes. I'm still fairly sure we should avoid fanfics/fanart but everything else can have a place. - Quolnok 12:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This is why I specified the statement, "if it is related to official Futurama work, it can have an article". That includes episodes, comics, the game, merchandise and other work by people officially recognised by Futurama.  The last may require individual consideration. --SvipTalk 12:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Reception and production
Two things. I realise we have a production article, but we do not have sections on production in episode articles or film articles where it may be appropriate to have some discussion about the production of a film or episode. This section should most serve as its own section, rather than being inside Additional Info.

In addition, what we do not have is a 'reception' section, something Wikipedia has, this would give the readers a view about the average reception of an episode, film or comic. If a section gets big enough, it may be preferable to move it out of the Additional Info and into its own section. --SvipTalk 20:16, 12 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I love the idea of having "reception" on each episode. It'd be great to call out what things were great and what things didn't quite work. And what the hell is wrong with "That's Lobstertainment!". I mean, I can't stand that episode, but it's got some of the funniest Bender moments ever. I can't figure out why I don't like it. --Buddy 02:45, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey, why not? So long as it doesn't turn into purely whoever wrote the section's personal opinion, it'll make a good addition. - Quolnok 12:12, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Animatics
It is a well established fact that there exists animatics for Futurama, yet we have no real articles on this subject. I propose we create yet another namespace, "Animatic:" for episodes with animatics.

Since not every episode has it, or rather, very few does, I propose that we omit the navigations, and just have a complete list in the infobox. will also get a new parameter called "hasanimatic", which is simply a boolean value.

Speaking of the episode infobox, I also propose that we add a "hasnocommentary" parameter, since I am not sure Volume Five will include new commentaries, if every released.

And of course, I shall introduce a template for citing animatics. --SvipTalk 12:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This falls into the "official Futurama productions" category, so yes we can have something for them. - Quolnok 13:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll get around to doing Hell is Other Robots animatic as I think i'm the only one with that dvd. i'll wait until some of the other ones are finished--My leg feels funny! 23:47, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And I can do Bender's Game Part 1 animatic. Hey--why isn't there the films in the infobox?
 * Most likely because while there are animatics for the part ones of BWaBB, BG and ItWGY, he's secretly planing to do a section for storyboards and the boxes label these three as "storyboard animatics". I think they are closer to animatic than storyboard, however. Oh, and as they are for the episodes rather than the films, these will be linked to from the episode articles infobox and the disc features section, but not the film infobox. - Quolnok 05:59, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Something I'ma work on.
Am I the only one that's bothered by how blurry-looking the Infosphere in the corner looks? I'm sure it's just a matter of the resizing process or something simple like that. So, just as I did for the Crew Portrait, I think I'll trace the Infosphere in SVG. That should give us a nice, sharp, clean image to use. It'll be spiffy. Though, with all that surface detail, it'll take a little longer, but we'll see what I can do.

Tangent: Now that we've got spiffier wiki stuff that handles SVG files, should I upload my files in their SVG format? For example, the DOOP logo, the Slurm logos, the Planet Express logo and the Earth flag. Are they good in PNG? --Buddy 07:32, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Top corner or bottom corner? I'm guessing top, but it isn't that blurry to me. If the SVG is better quality, go for it. - Quolnok 08:06, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I was referring to top corner. Bottom corner is still missing its left half, though... --Buddy 08:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ...no, it isn't. Perhaps you have a lower darkness setting on your monitor than I have on mine. Or you need a cache refresh. - Quolnok 08:48, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I demand more connections!
I was gonna start it myself to look cool, but I don't have the time. So, somebody start a Twilight Zone page and list all the connections. Not the least of which is the Scary Door. --Buddy 16:31, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I could do it. After all, I did do that Allusiony page. Although, I am already in my pajamas.
 * Oh, nevermind, not enough information. Forget me.

Categories for voice actors?
I was thinking that our voice actor articles has "memorable characters", but what if our readers want a list of all characters voiced by this voice actor? So I am thinking a category like Category:Characters voiced by Billy West. I think the infobox should take care of itself, so in the future, you should provide links around the voice actors, the infobox will do that itself, especially now with the table, where we can split up the actors for specific tasks (e.g. Michelle and Robot Santa are both voiced by two different actors, so they should be split in the table for the future or something). --SvipTalk 15:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Calling all Nerdlingers!
Well, I've scoured my previous haunt for people to participate in my plan, so now I come to the Nerdlingers to see if I can fill out my necessary number or participants. First, if you're interested, you may read this, for some more information. Basically, it boils down to this: I need some volunteers' physical addresses. If'n you trust me enough to give them unto me, please do so by email (unlike a forum's PM feature, the user talk pages here aren't secure, so don't put anything on my talk page you don't want the whole world to see. I'll be mailing out items, two each to each volunteer. One you may keep, and one you will be asked to forward on. They are tiny, and fit in an envelope, so no special postage or shipping will be needed beyond a standard postage stamp. If necessary, I'm offering to reimburse anyone's postage if they so request. Any takers? --Buddy 23:24, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Bob bob, what exactly is this? What are we volunteering for? --SvipTalk 23:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * For to give me a mailing address, no matter how foreign, such that I can mail you items, one of which will be further mailed by yourself, at whatever the standard postal rate is, to be reimbursed if you so desire. That is all. --Buddy 23:41, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I am not sure I can follow without an exact purpose. Because right now, it seems rather pointless.  --SvipTalk 00:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Anyone else with a little more sense of adventure? --Buddy 02:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * it sounds like drugs...but i don't know if i want to do it.--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 06:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Mailed to whom? Is this part of a diabolical plan involving collecting stamps from overseas? - Quolnok 11:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You're the closest one so far, but it's more about the postmarks with the stamps. Each of you will be given a word to write, in your own handwriting, and then the message will be reassembled by the recipient. --Buddy 16:16, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes, I forgot...
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you guys I'm working on years instead of that year template that redirects to the timeline. I hope that's alright.
 * I'm assuming you mean like, each year is its own article. Just like how "Alien Species" and "Planets" and such would be expanded into separate articles. Yeah, I think that could work. --Buddy 01:13, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, then we need a bot to change the year templates.
 * Yeah, I'll get the bot to do some work once you get the year articles done... well more articles done at least. --SvipTalk 08:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Are you sure we need all of those? Surely the ones where nothing important happened can be skipped until they become relevant. - Quolnok 03:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, several of them can easily be replaced by a redirect. --SvipTalk 04:59, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

maybe the ones without anything in it can go to their century or decade article?--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 05:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd should say so. They seem rather useless and close to just placeholder pages for stuff that might never come.  Another thing, however.  Should we deal with century in the way Futurama does (e.g. 21st Century is 2000-2099) or like it is commonly accepted these days (e.g. 21st Century is 2001-2100)? --SvipTalk 06:27, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That could work.

Infosphere:Portal
We have 1,300 articles. More than 1,000 pictures. And we still don't have. We have way more than we need, so we should have enough for putting these into portals. We could make, like,
 * People (like Fry and Leela)
 * Robots (like Bender and Planet Express ship)
 * Society and Culture (like Robanukah and Amazonians)
 * Technology (like Omega Device and Hovercar)
 * Earth (like holidays or places),
 * Futurama (like episodes, films, comics)
 * Et cetera, et cetera.


 * What is the benefit of a portal over a category? Because, from what I can tell, it's basically the same. Granted, I don't know a lot about portals, so this is a real question. --Buddy 22:05, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Categories are sorted by the software, which of course is nice, but that also means that it does not prioritise which article is better than another. The benefit of a portal is that we can control the content to present the user ourselves, so we can present interesting articles for this sort of category, that we, as editors feel the need to present; where as there could be a link to the category stating, "all articles". --SvipTalk 23:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So it basically adds a hierarchical structure to it and allows us to promote more important pages over the more minor ones? Sounds nice. --Buddy 00:02, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So, it has the go-ahead?
 * No objections from I. --Buddy 00:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to disagree with this. I don't like the idea of portals. Sounds too confusing.--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 06:04, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't get your argument; portals are to reduce confusion over categories. It would also be a lot nicer to link to a category for characters rather than a category of characters (also, use the name 'characters' rather than 'people'), where we could give a short introduction, some interesting articles, more and so on. --SvipTalk 08:41, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Chinese Infosphere - coming up
Yeah; I know, Chinese? I dunno Chinese, and I bet none of you do. But the people over at flyine.net would really appreciate a Chinese version of the Infosphere. To explain it plainly, Flyine is a Chinese science-fiction fan site, which also have a large Futurama 'sub'-community, whom makes an effort of translating the episodes into Chinese subtitles as well translating Infosphere articles into Chinese as well.

When I saw that, I got the impression that perhaps we should offer them a place here, so they could more easily contribute to their Chinese brethren. And remember, Futurama can still be fun with subtitles.

Oh, one more thing; since I am pretty busy for the time being, I won't be setting up zh.infosphere.org until around Monday. Just a heads up. --SvipTalk 13:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I can't speak Chinese. But I know a good number of Japanese Kanji, so I might be able to decipher at least the gist of what they're saying. :D --Buddy 17:26, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, just English for me, and some American, beside that a handful of words in other languages that can't form useful sentences. I guess we'll need a new Sysop for zh if it grows large. - Quolnok 00:32, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Uhh, they're doing the wrong Infosphere...

And so, the Chinese Infosphere is up; hopefully, their members will begin editing soon enough. I suspect their first contributions will take form in the form of close to direct translations. --SvipTalk 12:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Linking to Redirects
I can't find any existing policies on this in the help pages, and I've seen several people do it, so I thought I'd bring it up here. While users are free to link to either a redirect or the actual article when creating or editing pages, a direct link is always preferred. You should not be changing any direct links to redirects. Feel free to change links like Bender to Bender, but leave Bender or Fry as is. We should probably update this too. - Quolnok 01:09, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, well, personally, I still think redirects are obnoxious in search results. They should just automatically filter out. And as for the other thing, I think it was a de facto standard to link directly as often as possible, but there were a few *cough*lazy*cough* editors for a while there, and I think they specifically asked if they could link to just Fry . But yeah. Is there any way to create a box that can automatically detect if a link is for a redirect and edit the link to the direct link? The main reason for redirects is in case people get things wrong or just guess. Like entering "Bender" in the search box will get them to the correct page, rather than just saying "No such thing, try again, meatbag." We should try to be correct in articles as much as we can. --Buddy 01:15, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Pixelations
Like millions behind me, I use Microsoft Paint for my JPG images. But those damned pixels bug me. Is there any other software that doesn't pixelate pictures, like PNG's? I need to know for those portal images.
 * As of XP, MSPaint can save in PNG format, which won't pixelate. Personally, I use a pirated copy of Photoshop CS. It's a few generations outdated, but it works fine.--Buddy 18:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want something that is free, perhaps you should try GIMP (Windows download)? --SvipTalk 18:40, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * GIMP doesn't seem to work, so I guess someone else will have to get those images. Unless someone else has another?
 * Perhaps we can add a tag to artefacty images so that other users can replace them. But you could still continue to upload. Imperfect images are usually better than no image at all. --Buddy 21:47, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Well i always use ms paint and save them as png. and that works out fine for me.--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 22:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Really? I tried that and it says "the file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again." Mind you, I'm not a computer wiz.
 * also, don't think it does it with XP, when saving jpeg images on Vista, it dosn't pixellate images if saved in jpeg--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 23:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Dang you people make me glad I don't use Windows... --SvipTalk 00:00, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I dual-boot Vista and Ubuntu. I find them both equal, other than gaming. Not many fancy games for non-windows systems. --Buddy 00:34, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You know you have to "Save As..." and change the "File Type" to PNG, right? You can't just save it with a .png extension. That's probably that "incorrect extension" thing. --Buddy 00:34, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * (Slapping head)
 * haha, what a noob. no offense or anything...--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 02:59, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Personally, I use GIMP on Vista. I did have Photoshop 7 on my old XP machine but when that died I went with something a little less pirated. A more direct link for Windows GIMP is this one, you'll want the base package. Like Photoshop, there is a bit of learning to do. - Quolnok 04:04, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Season 6 is fact
Future of Futurama says it all. Sources like Hollywood Reporter and Variety are pretty damn reliable. Apparently it remains Fox, so the -ACV- code remains, and we are dealing with a 26 episode season (Official word from Comedy Central). I am going to get working on the episode "placeholder articles". --SvipTalk 23:15, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe I speak for all of the Nerdlingers in the world when I say: Whoohoo!!@!!! --Buddy 23:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We're back, baby!
 * woot! heaps good news! yay!--I&#39;m Scruffy... the Janitor. 07:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy! - Quolnok 10:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

More Categories
I'm thinking that episodes and comics need more categories. At the moment, I'm thinking along the lines of "media featuring legal proceedings", "media featuring invasions", "media featuring weddings", "media featuring funerals", "media featuring sports" and "media featuring singing". - Quolnok 10:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Not a bad idea at all. I am certain we can up more categories if we could think of more.  Or if I could.  Which I can't.  At present.  Damn. --SvipTalk 11:53, 28 June 2009 (UTC)