User talk:MrLanceVanceDance

Revision as of 13:20, 14 September 2011 by Gboyers (talk | contribs) (→‎Re: Blocking)

File:Furniture.jpg
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Pay n Spray articles

Hi, I must ask is it really necessary to have articles for each individual Pay 'n' Spray. They would all pretty much have the same information on each page and there isn't much to tell about each other than it's appearance. --Gta-mysteries Talk 07:57, 4 April 2011 (BST)

Please don't blank your talk page after a Staff member leaves a message here. --Gta-mysteries Talk 08:17, 4 April 2011 (BST)

Re: Grand Theft Wiki

In reply to Grand_Theft_Wiki

Grand Theft Wiki is not part of Wikia. We used to be, but we moved last October. Wikia decided to keep a copy of our site open, even though we moved, so that they can continue to make money on adverts. They banned all the old staff, and their new staff are copying the new content which has been added here. They also have horrible new policies such as "Don't let new users edit". So I'd ask you please to continue to edit this site rather than the Wikia copy. Thanks - Gboyers 11:14, 15 April 2011 (BST)

Clothing Articles

Hey, thanks for all the effort you're putting into the wiki, but clothing outfits do not need seperate articles, as it would simply be duplicate information of Clothing in GTA Vice City. Sorry, but I'm going to have to re-direct those pages. Chimpso (Talk) 09:30, 24 April 2011 (BST)

Just to add to this, as it's been going around for a while, I've started a topic for discussion at Grand Theft Wiki:Style Guide/List pages. Please join the discussion as this is something we need to agree on. Gboyers 20:22, 24 April 2011 (BST)

Stubs

Hey, I noticed a couple of times that you added a stub tag to pages, and also added Category:Stubs. The stub tag actually adds that category automatically, so there is no need to add it yourself. In fact, if you add it yourself, it's possible that when the page is expanded and someone removes the stub tag, they may not see the categorisation, and leave it there. Thanks! JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 11:20, 27 April 2011 (BST)

Re: Spread the word

In reply to "Help spread the word"


Thanks for asking that question! There are 3 main ways you can help out:

  1. Tell your friends about GTW - put it on your Facebook/Twitter, mention it on any forums/websites you go on, generally just get the word out.
  2. Link to GTW from as many websites as you can - such as your signature on a forum, any editable sites like Wikipedia or IMDB, any sites you own/run etc, even put it on Talk pages on many different wikis.
  3. Persuade other websites, wikis, forums etc to link to GTW (especially if they are about GTA, Rockstar or gaming in general)

If you want to be really helpful, then you could look at Wikia's Special:RecentChanges, see who is editing that site, and send them a NICE polite message advising them that the community has moved here, and that you'd like the to join us at GrandTheftWiki.com. The new admin at that site is quite harsh, and he won't like it, but it's entirely up to you.

The unfortunate truth is that we have to "play the game" to be able to become visible on the Internet and grow properly. The more links to GTW (from as many different sites as possible), the better it looks to Google, and thus the higher ranking we get in the search results. The problem is that MILLIONS of sites link to Wikia, and so they always come top of search results, even if the individual wiki is completely empty. It's very unfair, and it's not how I like to run my websites, but it's what we need to do to grow and even to maintain the levels of activity we have. This is why I'm asking the community to help out and spread the word (: - Gboyers 01:24, 30 April 2011 (BST)

Wikia Plagarism

In reply to Wikia Plagarism

Content on this wiki is licenced under CC-BY-SA, which means that anyone can re-use our content SO LONG AS they link back to us. Recently, the new admin at Wikia has been breaching this by copying content and not linking back. This is just as illegal as if it was fully copyrighted. We have spoken to Wikia and WikisEditor several times, but they continue to breach. Every time you discover content copied without attribution (a link to GTW), please email sannse@wikia-inc.com and angela@wikia-inc.com. This is content that we have written and they are stealing without providing attribution, which is wrong, and they should not be allowed to get away with it until we notice. If they continue with breaches we'll have to simply revoke their right to reuse the content. Gboyers 12:40, 23 May 2011 (BST)

Yes, they breached the CC-BY-SA licence, so the agreement is terminated. They are not allowed to copy content from here without permission, just like normal full Copyright rules. They cannot use the CC-BY-SA licencing method anymore. However, we're still sorting out all the legal stuff behind-the-scenes. For now, if you spot ANYTHING that has been copied since the move, you should tell The Tom so that he can add full and proper attribution (by linking to GTW on every page with our copied stuff on). Once the legal stuff is sorted out, I'm confident that they can be forced to remove all content copied from GTW, including the stuff they kept when the site moved here. For now, concentrate on attribution. Gboyers 00:06, 31 May 2011 (BST)

Talk Page Categories

Hi, just a quick note to say that talk pages don't need to be in categories. If they're showing up in Special:UncategorizedPages, it's because the Poll: namespace doesn't exist so the wiki thinks they are normal main-namespace articles. I think the polls should be removed anyway since they aren't working, what do you think? Gboyers 20:23, 13 June 2011 (BST)

Hi

You need to read edit summaries. When you reverted my edits on Percy, Dick and Willy, you reintroduced errors. The proper thing for you to have done was 1) read my edit summaries, 2) understand that I was correct, and 3) updated the Love Fist article to properly reflect my corrections. I have now reverted your improper reverts and fixed the Love Fist article as well; I hope I do not have to argue with you over this further. McJeff 10:22, 12 July 2011 (BST)

UserWiki

By using Special:ToggleUserPage, you can switch your user page (User:MrLanceVanceDance) between being a fully-editable wiki page or a ready-made profile page (where you fill in the boxes). The UserWiki and User_profile namespaces store whichever version is not in use, allowing you to switch between them at will. gboyers talk 11:44, 1 August 2011 (BST)

Adding additional images for vehicles

You seem to be actively posting rear views of vehicles, but that isn't necessary.

Images showing front views of vehicles are often accompanied by links that lead to images depicting alternate views of the same vehicle, because it keeps image clutter down but will still be able to visually cover a vehicle just as well. The same applies for images showing, say, interiors or engines. The only exception is when these alternate images depict a remarkable feature that should be noted in the article (such as the design of a variant of the vehicle).

Hope you can understand. Thanks. :) - ZS 16:28, 8 August 2011 (BST)

Nomination for Promotion

Hi. You have been nominated to become staff. Please check out your promotion page, accept the nomination, and answer the questions. gboyers talk 20:33, 8 August 2011 (BST)

Congratulations, you've been promoted to Inspector. You now have the rights to patrol edits, and to move pages and images. As you're our only Inspector, we might add more rights as we see fit. Let me know if you have any questions! gboyers talk 17:11, 12 August 2011 (BST)

Does the above sentence not answer your question? The two rights of Inspectors are to patrol edits and move pages. Patrolling is where we check all the edits of all users who aren't trusted. You'll notice on Special:RecentChanges that users' edits have a red exclamation mark next to them, meaning they have not been checked. If you look at the diff, you can click "Mark as Patrolled" which makes the red exclamation mark go away. Edits of staff and Trusted Users are automatically marked as patrolled (that is the whole point of trusted users). You can click "hide patrolled edits" to see what needs doing. You can also make this process easier by going to Special:Patrol. All staff pitch in and patrol edits, as it makes sure we all know what's going on ALL over the wiki, but it's one of the key tasks we assign to Inspectors (formerly known as Moderators and Patrollers), as most users don't tend to look into what other people are doing. Secondly, you can move pages by going to the dropdown next to "view history". You may not be able to move pages that are fully protected (admin only), but these are very few. We may add more rights in future (see Special:ListGroupRights for lists of rights per group). Does that help? gboyers talk 05:10, 13 August 2011 (BST)

I feel I should also clarify an important point. The role of an Inspector is to inspect wiki content, make sure the wiki is up-to scratch. The role does NOT include any "power" or "authority" over users. Even administrators are not regarded as "more important" or "better" than other users, and they use their extra tools (banning users etc) when necessary, not because they want or feel like it or "because they can". I realise that you'll know all this already, but I wanted to make it clear just in case! Hope that makes sense, let me know if not. gboyers talk 05:14, 13 August 2011 (BST)

Oh no I'm sure - just wanted to make sure that had been made clear, because it is quite different to how many other sites do it. Do the above 3 replies answer your questions about tools? Are there any more rights you think would be useful? gboyers talk 05:18, 13 August 2011 (BST)
Hi, I would just like to add that you also have the rollback tool. This means that from Recent Changes, History pages, User Contributions pages and Diff pages, you will now see a [rollback] link (if a rollback is possible). What this does is reverts all edits by that user, back to the previous version by another user. This is a very useful tool for reverting vandalism in a single click, but should only be used when the reason for reverting is obvious, because it doesn't allow you to insert an edit summary (which may confuse users as to why you're reverting their good faith edits). Thanks! JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 06:52, 13 August 2011 (BST)

Monaco Userbox

Hi there, what exactly is the point of this userbox? It's not possible to use Monaco... JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 09:24, 14 August 2011 (BST)

Yes, it is possible to install a ported version of Monaco in MediaWiki now, I even have a copy of it on my computer. But the userbox isn't clear about being for other wikis, and besides, I'm sure that userboxes are supposed to be about this wiki. Perhaps it should be reworded to be for people who miss (or preferred) Monaco? Thoughts? JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 10:01, 14 August 2011 (BST)
Monobook is Wikipedia's old skin, and the predecessor to Vector (GTW's current skin). Monobook can be used on GTW by changing your skin preferences. You can see a preview here. Monaco is Wikia's old skin, before Oasis, which isn't installed on GTW. It looked like this (although that's been modified using CSS). JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 10:17, 14 August 2011 (BST)

Was that last part supposed to be a question? If so, Vector is what you are looking at. For an unmodified version see any Wikipedia page. Monobook on GTW looks like here, or unmodified like this. Monaco unmodified looked like this (without the red words of course). I can't show you GTW's modified version, as Monaco is not installed, but it looked really good! And no problem, happy to help =] JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 10:43, 14 August 2011 (BST)

I have been working on getting Monaco back, but it is quite heavily built into Wikia's custom code and has proved a bit of a challenge. You may find a present sometime, though. I personally prefer Vector as it's small and clean and lets us get straight into the content, but I shall try to get Monaco up-and-running for those that prefer it. gboyers talk 17:30, 14 August 2011 (BST)

Userbox

Just out of curiosity, was it from me you got the userbox about the Vice City soundtrack and 80's music? --Andreaz1 12:45, 14 August 2011 (BST)

Yes you may use that image anywhere on this wiki, so long as it is representing GTW. You don't need to give credit in the userbox, because if you click the image if takes you through to File:GTW.gif, which is where all the copyright information is (same with every image). gboyers talk 17:18, 14 August 2011 (BST)

I'm sorry but that response made no sense to me whatsoever... Or am I COMPLETELY missing the point here? --Andreaz1 12:18, 15 August 2011 (BST)

LOL, the above message is a response to this. In response to your message, MrLVD removed the userbox from his userpage. JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 12:23, 15 August 2011 (BST)

Grand Theft Mods

Hey, could I have your feedback on the status of our upcoming Grand Theft Mods site? If you can't access our forum, let me know. Thanks - gboyers talk 07:34, 15 August 2011 (BST)

You should now have access to the staff forum - please check out the topics there and leave your opinion! gboyers talk 19:22, 28 August 2011 (BST)

Vehicle infoboxes

Just like to note a few things about the vehicle infobox added to those vehicle articles:

  • Thumbnail captions entered there do not need to end with a period. The infobox's code does that for you. Judging by your edits, you seem to have realized that.
  • Ensure the thumbnail size given for the lead image is the same. Make sure to check if the lead image is the same as well (Securicar and Enforcer).
  • vehicle_type and body_style could be used carefully. vehicle_type is used to describe the vehicle in general; body_style describes the specific body style of the vehicle, including the number of doors (i.e. For a Cartel Cruiser, vehicle_type = Civilian truck and body_style = 4-door pickup; for an FBI Washington, vehicle_type = Law enforcement car and body_style = 4-door sedan).
    • Both fields must also be used when necessary for completeness; only in rare cases where there isn't enough information could one field be used, in which case only vehicle_type should be used (Police Bike).
  • The top_speed and endurance fields no longer work. They had to be removed because they do not have a lot in the way to explain the vehicle's performance. There is just more to a vehicle than speed and durability only. You seem to have noticed as well.
  • Do specify if a fact is exclusive to a specific game. The Squalo and Predator, for example, do not seat four occupants outside GTA IV. Neither is it known if Securicars are manufactured by Brute outside GTA IV.
  • There is no need to leave additional spacing between the end of the infobox's code and the start of the rest of the article (empty lines between the "}}" and the article introduction). It leave an unsightly gap on top of the article.
    • Disambiguations should be placed above an infobox. They are always positioned above all else in the page for a reason (Police Bike).
  • Don't forget to check for spelling errors and consistency.

Thanks. - ZS 10:34, 16 August 2011 (BST)

Cleanup Tags

Hey, just a small request. It's best not to add lots of cleanup tags to an article, as it looks quite bad and isn't particularly helpful. I also notice you were adding cleanup tags to articles that were not particularly bad. If you look at Category:Cleanup, there are hundreds of articles that really do need our attention, so I'd rather make sure people concentrate on those instead of diluting it with good-but-not-perfect articles. I'm going to be altering the cleanup templates and categories to help us separate ones that urgently need fixing to those that 'could be improved' - do you have any suggestions for how we do that? gboyers talk 16:35, 16 August 2011 (BST)

Another small point - if an image is unused, you don't have to invent a crazy use for it! Just mark it for deletion unless you think it would be useful. I don't think anyone would want to use Template:Userbox:Fridgemagnets (and it's not really relevant) so both image and template will end up being deleted. gboyers talk 17:22, 31 August 2011 (BST)

Picture

How'd you upload a picture on your profile like you got of Lance Vance and how do you make it like a characters page? Gregallz5 14:55, 2 September 2011 (BST)

Suggestions

In reply to Edit Request

Hey, thanks for your suggestions. The staff forum is often the better place for staff-related suggestions, as I can go into a bit more detail about why we do things a certain way or what plans I have for the future, but I can answer both of these questions here:

Mediawiki (the software we run on) isn't really built for access control. Generally speaking, I can give you access to edit entire namespaces only (like Talk:, Template:, Community: etc) rather than individual pages/categories. The Grand Theft Wiki: namespace (called the "project namespace") is for pages about this wiki, it's rules and how we do things. I've deliberately kept this restricted to administrators only. Whilst Inspectors are somewhat staff, their role is not in running the wiki but in helping users and fixing problems.

I intend to recruit many more Inspectors in the weeks ahead, and I don't want to have to give them a huge list of what they can and can't change, and then have to check every page in the project namespace for accidental changes in meaning or unauthorised rules being added or removed. There is also some very important stuff, like copyright information, that absolutely must not be altered. It's much simpler to say the Project and MediaWiki namespaces are for administrators only - everything else can be edited by anyone. Those that I trust, respect and who I know can do the job without supervision can be promoted to Administrators, if we require more - then they will have the responsibility for making the wiki run smoothly, and have the ability to alter the project namespace to fix or change things. Only the Managers actually can authorise completely new rules or policy or big changes.

Generally speaking, the rules and policy don't change very often, and I don't have a huge list of exactly what administrators can/can't change - they are all very sensible people who I trust not to mess things up. I would not promote someone to administrator unless I knew they could be trusted to be able to change anything but to not change stuff unless they really needed to, and anything they did change would be correct. Inspectors, on the other hand, only have to be trusted with the rollback and move rights, and the staff badge - so a lot more people are eligible to be Inspectors.

If there are specific things you know need changing that you don't have permissions to do, just let me know. If there are lots of things on the same page, you could make the edits into a sandbox page and I can then copy-and-paste them into the real page.

Your suggestion of including the rules box is interesting. I don't want to come across as a very authoritarian wiki, where following policy is more important than common sense (like the GTA Wikia has become). I don't want the first thing every user sees to be a big red box of "do not" rules. However, a link to the rules would be reasonable. Generally speaking, the vast majority of our users do not break the rules. It is only a very very very small number of individuals who ignore staff and disrespect the entire wiki - and they would usually be told the rules very specifically the first time they broke them. I don't want to frighten and criminalise the vast majority of users who are normal and sensible.

I hope both of those answers make sense, but feel free to ask further questions on the staff forum if you'd like me to go into more detail. gboyers talk 17:04, 7 September 2011 (BST)

Hey, when I moved the Grand Theft Wiki:Skin page into the project namespace, I didn't realise that I was preventing it's original creator from editing it (I wasn't even thinking about that). I was wondering why you created it in the main namespace. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by that! As Gboyers mentioned above, if you plan to create any other pages like that, you could create them in a sandbox (such as User:MrLanceVanceDance/Skin for the skin example), and then ask an administrator to move it into the project namespace once you're finished editing it. This would simply be cleaner and more professional than creating wiki-related pages in the content namespace. Thanks! JFletcherTalk (formerly User:Biggest gta fan ever) 12:04, 9 September 2011 (BST)

Disambiguations

Hey, good work on the disambiguation stuff, but there's one small thing that we do differently here. This is going to sound like a HUGE explanation, but I thought I'd try to explain it properly.

If there is a title used by several things, such as Grand Theft Auto (which could refer to the series or the first game) or Downtown Police Station, usually there is one thing with is much more common. Most people say GTA to mean the series, so our Grand Theft Auto page is about the series. Since this is much more common than using it to mean GTA 1, we let the series keep that page. This is much better than using a horrible disambiguation page, much better than each page having a horrible bracketed title ("Grand Theft Auto (game)" and "Grand Theft Auto (series)"), and much easier than forcing EVERY link on the wiki to use the long page titles with brackets.

Brackets in page names should only be used where ABSOLUTELY necessary, because they are awkward, hard to guess, hard to type, and much less obvious for newer users to figure out (e.g. Do we use capital S for (series)?). In the GTA example, we get around this by having Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 1. Even though GTA 1 is technically called "Grand Theft Auto", this way is much more obvious and it's what most people know the game as. For Downtown Police Station, there's only one which is actually called that, the others can all have different names, so the VC one can take prominence. On the other hand, for Downtown (as in the area), none of them are predominantly the "main" one, so that's when we have to have a proper disambiguation page.

See wp:BBC on Wikipedia for a good example of this. Even though there are loads of things that BBC refers to, 99% of people mean the British Broadcasting Corporation, so that's where the page goes, and the disambiguation is separate. That is much better than having "BBC (corporation)" for all of them. Hope that makes sense. gboyers talk 15:50, 10 September 2011 (BST)

Re: Blocking

In reply to Blocking


That's actually a really good question. Most of the people who are blocked are spammers or vandals, so the reason for their block is completely obvious. For duplicate accounts, often their main account will be given a message instead of on the sockpuppet's talk page. Don't forget that, if you're blocked and try to edit, the message at the top of the page explains the reason (and length) of the block. Any short-term blocks, where the person has been arguing or edit warring etc, should come with a message, though. Maybe we need to be better at that? gboyers talk 12:20, 14 September 2011 (BST)

I won't disclose all the measure we use against spammers in public. They are different people, but we only have one spammer every now and then - not huge torrents of sockpuppets and vandals like the other wiki. But that is because we treat people fairly. GTA Wikia upsets its users by banning them for (almost) no reason, and they come back as vandals. As for a three-strike rule, I don't agree that that's a good method to use, simply because it is far too rigid. Every offence is of a different level of seriousness and a different level of "intent"; whilst every user would respond differently to different actions.
For example:
  • A user who registers only to add 1 spam link (not useful/relevant at all) might not cause much damage, but they should be permanently blocked because they show no intention to be an editor. No warnings necessary, because they would make no difference at all.
  • A user who posts good content but also spams a link to his personal website is a very different situation, because they could still be a good editor. They need to be shown what is and isn't allowed, where they can place links, and if they ignore the instructions from staff, then the blocking route should be pursued. We should be fair rather than blocking them straight away, and this should stop them turning into a vandal.
In both of these situations, the same offence (1 spam link) has been committed, but very different sets of actions need to be taken. If we were the GTA Wikia, then the way they strictly apply the blocking policy in EVERY situation (even to staff) means they treat good users (who make mistakes, or get carried away, or just don't know all the rules) as vandals and spammers.
Also consider a user who was warned for posting 1 spam link 2007, was warned for an edit war in 2010, and now has an argument in 2011. But in between, they have made thousands of good edits. A three-strike rule means we'd have to block them forever, which is ridiculous. You could probably find 3 examples of where a staff member has broken a rule. Then we have to make dozens of exceptions which are open to abuse, saying things like "if they have >100 edits then they are allowed 4 warnings, not 3" etc. That ends up being a ridiculous mess, then we'd end up having to demote/block staff who didn't follow it exactly. That's what's already happened on the GTA Wikia.
So this is why I make sure all my administrators are strong enough to make their own decisions based on what will benefit the wiki most, and what is fair for the users. If someone has a decent chance of being (or becoming) a good editor, then we should help them, not ban them for some silly or abritrary reason. Our promotion process is based around staff that can make fair decisions around complex situations, and I've not seen anything I really disagree with for quite a while.
Is there a specific user or situation you're thinking of where our current method of operating has failed or could be better? gboyers talk 14:20, 14 September 2011 (BST)