Muppet Wiki:Current events

From Muppet Wiki

Elmo loves the wiki!

Current Events is a central spot on the wiki where the community can discuss topics that concern the whole of the wiki. Think of it as a talk page for the entire database. If you want to open up discussion about a particular article, please do so on the Talk: page for that article. Don't forget to indent and sign your posts to make discussion easier to navigate.

20,000 pages!

We did it! We hit 20,000 pages this afternoon -- a huge milestone! When we hit 19,000 pages this summer, we wondered if we'd get to 20,000 by our fourth anniversary on December 5th. I wasn't sure back then -- I figured we'd get there within a couple months of the anniversary, but I didn't think we'd actually hit it by now. But then another big anniversary came along -- Sesame's 40th -- and I think that's helped to get us all really energized and excited right now!

So this is a crazy, huge moment, and we should all be really proud of this beautiful and strange thing that we've built. 20,000 pages, with more than 4 million words and 56,000 pictures -- the longest and most detailed work about the Muppets ever written.

Obviously, Nate deserves a special bow today, because he's been on a new page run lately -- I think he's created 100 pages in the last few weeks, all of them interesting and fun. But he just gets one solo bow, because we've all put so much time and energy into this crazy thing.

So a big hug and cheer for all of the top contributors -- Scott, Andrew, Brad, Guillermo, Ken, Nate, Wendy, Michael, Peter, Enrique, Tony, Steven, Nick, Henrik, Paul, Garrett, Joe, George, Danny D., Ryan, Yoshi, Philip, Justin, Julian, Grant, Warrick, Alexander, Martha, Matt, Emma, Erik, Tom, Daniel... plus more... Phew! More than 2,000 people have helped out on the wiki so far.

2,300 Muppet characters... 1,600 Sesame Street episodes... 1,000 Sesame books... 870 Muppet songs... 119 Sesame Street monsters... 68 Grouches, 46 aliens, 20 discographies and 12 fictional holidays. So much stuff! And it feels like we're just getting started. When do we get to 21,000? -- Danny (talk) 23:50, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

What is a "collectible?"

Is there a consensus on this Wiki concerning what constitutes a "collecible?" Some say that a collectible is an item that was made to be collected. In my view, this use of the term is marketing ploy to get people to buy something by implying that it may be valuable some day. I believe that the term can certainly encompass Kubricks and Palisades and other items that are made to be collected, but that it has a broader meaning as well and includes unusual or rare items that were never intended to be collected but that nevertheless attract the interest (and dollars) of collectors.— Tom (talk) 21:02, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is taking place at Category talk:Muppet Collectibles. —Scott (talk) 21:03, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

Amicably resolved.— Tom (talk) 23:32, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

I spoke too soon. Discussion still active, albeit non-combative.— Tom (talk) 23:46, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

Titles of Headings: References and Muppet Mentions

Hi folks. I'd like to open for discussion the practice of using References and Muppet Mentions as headings within articles. I agree that reference tags can be grouped under a Sources heading to avoid confusion with references, but for newbies the difference between References and Muppet Mentions is not immediately clear without sifting through the lists that follow these headings. For examples, in the Star Trek page, I would advocate changing References to References to Star Trek in Sesame Street and Muppet Media and changing Muppet Mentions to Mentions of Muppets and Sesame Street in Star Trek Media. Sure, we lose the succinct alliterative quality of Muppet Mentions, but we gain clarity. In fact, I made these changes but was immediately reversed by an Admin, who argued that people would rather spend their time doing something other than changing headings. But what about consistency? Well, sure, if someone like me is changing the titles of headings as he comes across them, then some articles will still use the old heading format while some will use the newer, and I would argue, clearer format, but I think we all know that this Wiki is a work in progress and that consistency and standards are something we must work toward and should not expect to appear suddenly. I argue to allow editors to change headings for the sake of clarity (something that I really don't mind spending my time doing) without being perfunctorily reversed by Admins.— Tom (talk) 20:41, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate the thought behind this, but I think the suggested headings are unbearably clunky. I would be happy to revisit the words that we use, but the suggestion would have to be more appealing than "References to Star Trek in Sesame Street and Muppet Media". That heading is practically longer than the content under it. -- Danny

(talk) 22:40, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

Ditto. The categories themselves bear clear definitions of the distinction between References and Muppet Mentions, but originally both were catch all categories which we gradually split up by type (TV References, Movie Mentions, etc.) so maybe repeating the definitions on each subcat page is warranted. Additionally, if this is an issue that confuses a lot of visitors, it can be explained in Muppet Wiki:Policies and Guidelines (and perhaps that page itself linked to prominently). I personally don't see it as an issue, though, and definitely dislike the clunky suggestion of amending it to "Mentions of Muppets and Sesame Street in Nancy" or "References to Superman in Sesame Street and Muppet and Creature Shop and Other Relevant Henson Media" and so on, for each subject. Can you think of a wording you'd prefer that's not clunky and, ideally, wouldn't have to be tailored to each page? -- Andrew Leal (talk) 22:56, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

I can see that I won't prevail with my original suggestion. Hmmm. Short and sweet, eh? I agree that looking down the lists clarifies the difference between the two headings, but good style dictates that headings should do some of the work for the reader. As far as "References" goes, I don't have a suggestion, but "Muppet Mentions" could be changed to "Mentions of Muppets" to distinguish it from the other obvious possibility, i.e. Mentions by Muppets (or Mention in Muppets, etc.) The problem is that many of the "Muppet Mentions" are actually Sesame Street mentions that may or may not have to do with Muppets per se. Hence my clunky original suggestion. Personally, I'm not afraid of a little clunkiness, as long as it clarifies matters and doesn't grossly violate any grammatical or stylistic precepts.— Tom (talk) 23:32, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

Maybe "References to Star Trek" and "Mentions of Muppets or Sesame Street." Would have to be tailored to each page, but in a pretty obvious and straightforward way. I don't think there's one word that covers both Muppets and Sesame Street.— Tom (talk) 23:38, November 16, 2009 (UTC)

20,000 pages on the Muppet Wiki

We're getting there... any thoughts on how to mark or celebrate it when we do? Max riverbottom 05:00, November 11, 2009 (UTC)

Outdated redirects

Scott and I have been playing with the new search engine that we have on the wiki now. When we find odd results, then I've been talking about them with Kyle, who's been working on the new engine, and he's made some changes to make the results better.

I was talking to Kyle today, and found out that sometimes we're seeing strange results because we have so many redirects on our site -- a lot more than any other wiki. Obviously, that's because we're super awesome, and we care about what pages people go to when they're searching for something.

But -- there's one kind of redirect that we don't need anymore, which is the case-sensitive redirect. It used to be the case that searching for pigs in space wouldn't get you to the Pigs in Space page, unless there was a redirect for Pigs In Space. That got fixed a few months ago, hooray, so we don't actually need those redirects anymore.

We left them in anyway, cause who's got the time, but recently both Scott and I have been bugged by how ugly the redirect notice is, and now I'm seeing that it might be giving us quirky search results too. So we might as well delete them when we notice them. There's a ton of them, so it's not necessarily something that we want to devote ourselves to -- but if you feel like deleting them, please feel free. Just check "what links here" first to make sure that nothing's linking to that redirect. So there you have it. -- Danny (talk) 01:31, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

I'm looking at them right now and I'll do a little at a time. I'm also taking the liberty of deleting some which are remnants of multiple merges or format changes but which no reasonable person would use as a search term or expect to lead to a page, usually with colons (i.e. "Cameos: Fran Brill," which redirected to Miscellaneous Cameos but we now have the more sensibly named Fran Brill Cameos). Similarly, while Miss Piggy Calendars makes sense as a redirect, "List: Miss Piggy Calendars" doesn't (and is only around because the calendars category went through a ton of renames, reformats, and moves before finally maturing). I'm checking the links and being cautious about those, but things like that are just old remnants which show how the Wiki changed, not redirects that actually help users. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 01:47, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a great idea. And yeah, I'm sure these will get cleared up a little at a time, as we go along... -- Danny

(talk) 01:58, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Can we get rid of stuff like In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record (LP/CD), too? Those have been bugging me for years! -- Ken (talk) 02:50, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Done! As is, we have more than 1,000 redirects (with the result that it won't show beyond that; we'll see some more when the cache next refreshes at least), so if you see any more of that kind, mention them here. We might also urge everyone to be more careful when redirecting, since I'm spotting a lot of redirects which seem to have been created based on a whim and might bear discussion. The Royal Smart Person redirecting to Caveman Days makes sense (though redirecting to Sherlock Hemlock would make more sense). Then we have redirects for Lauren Kitchens and three other folks who appeared on Food Network Challenge; that's iffier to my mind, since I doubt anyone would search for them here by name and they're unlikely to be linked elsewhere, but it still makes a kind of sense. But then there's The Green Grouch of Yucchingham and the Five Grouchketeers, which redirects to Episode 3141. It's not a search term combination that folks would use, and episode 3141 is the only page to use that phrase at all so just typing the phrase leads to the right place. I haven't yet, but that's the kind of extraneous redirect which just feels like clutter. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:00, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

In point of fact, we have 11,408 redirects. I'm preparing a list right now. I see Ken already adding Delete tags to unused redirects and that's awesome. I just want to stress again, what Danny said, that we should make sure to click What Links Here on each of them and make sure we don't end up deleting anything that will create redlinks around the wiki. I'll have that list up soon. It's mammoth. —Scott (talk) 03:40, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've checked all the ones I deleted (especially since I noticed case sensitivity is fixed when searching but that doesn't change when someone links with a weird case). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:48, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Here's the full list of redirects: Sandbox:Redirects —Scott (talk) 07:57, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Possibly an easier way to do that is to look at Special:Allpages... Redirects are highlighted with italics. That way, you can see a list that's updated in real time. -- Danny (talk) 17:17, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Are we sure that redirects are what's throwing off the number of results on the first page? Each page is supposed to show 20 results, but the accompanying screenshot only shows 14 including the redirects. —Scott (talk) 02:19, November 7, 2009 (UTC)

I'm almost never sure about anything, but that's what Kyle told me. If I understand it correctly, the engine grabs the appropriate number of results, and then takes out duplicate redirects. So even with the redirect that it's showing, there are (apparently) six other redirect results that it's not showing on that page. -- Danny

(talk) 06:37, November 7, 2009 (UTC)

Ask Big Bird at NY Times

The NY Times website is currently having a feature where fans can send questions to Caroll Spinney and Carol-Lynn Parente, though many have addressed questions to Big Bird. So if any of us have any questions ::cough::that'dbegoodforthewiki::cough:: then I recommend checking it out (I've noticed that many of the questions are a bit stupid or innappropriate... I know that we all can ask much better, more intelligent questions). --Minor muppetz 02:08, November 7, 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that's cool. I check it out and it seems cool, but wondering on which ones they will address to answer and what kind of answer they will give us. Can't wait for the answers to the question come in from them. Here's the link in case people want to check it out --> Ask Big Bird a Question. --Steven (talk) 04:06, November 7, 2009 (UTC)

I thought I'd posted the link... Thanks for posting it. I'm not familiar with the website, but the paragraph before the questions doesn't say anythign about the questions being picked-and-chosen, though in some cases that might be better (a lot of people ask about Mr. Snuffleupagus's former imaginary status, Ernie and Bert's relationship, where Kermit the Frog has gone, etc.). --Minor muppetz 00:11, November 8, 2009 (UTC)

Shameless plug

I don't usually do this, but it seems relevant and appropriate. I've recently started writing a column for Examiner.com, as their "El Paso Cartoon Examiner" (I get paid per page view). This week (and likely next week), I'm doing a series looking closely at Sesame Street's animation connection over forty years. The first article is here, and naturally, I linked to the Wiki several times. Coming up will be a profile of Jim Henson's own animation work, and other Muppet/Sesame people who also worked in animation (including Karen Prell and noting Caroll Spinney's work as a cartoonist). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 06:55, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

That's a completely appropriate plug, and a great article! I like your spotlight on the Hubleys at the end; it's nice to draw people's attention to some of the interesting animators who have worked on Sesame. I did a post about it on Twitter... Hopefully that'll get some folks to check it out! -- Danny

(talk) 07:06, November 5, 2009 (UTC)

Great job, as always! I'm looking forward to future articles! -- Ken (talk) 05:22, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Here's the latest, on Jim as animator/animation producer. Not all inclusive, partially so others can chime in but mainly because Examiner's interface is a bear to work with so I didn't want to embed more than three samples. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 09:12, November 11, 2009 (UTC)

Redirects and categories

I just discovered something. We redirected the pages for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald to the page for Rose-Marie, which makes perfect sense to me. However, I was sad because Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald would no longer show up in the Celebrity References category. But I played around, and found that I could add a category to the pages for Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, still have them redirect to Rose-Marie, and have them show up in the category listing for celebrity references. Does anyone have a problem with doing this? I think it solves what was my biggest hangup with consolodating pages, in that the categories the individual pages were included in were lost in the listing pages. -- Nate (talk) 20:26, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

Other examples where it could prove to be useful. Just glancing through the redirects page, The Seven Deadly Sins, Avarice, Envy, Lust, Sloth, Vanity, etc., are all redirected to The Seven Deadly Sins. Placing a category tag for each individual page, would give them a credit in the individual character listings, but not have all the tiny fractual pages for each individual character.

It could also be really cool with the songs. Often times we don't even have pages for them, as there isn't much to say except, "it is on this CD", or it was in this show. And they redirect to those specific CDs, shows, etc. Adding a category tag to them would list them on the category pages, but not have tiny pages with virtually no information about the song. -- Nate (talk) 20:41, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

This actually came up recently, at Talk:The Cloverland Dairy Cow. While I'd copnsider it less vital for cases like Eddy and MacDonald (pages we likely would not have created at all had we done Rose-Marie), it's harmless and can be useful, and in cases of character merges, for the sake of the index, I'm all for it. I'm not so sure what you mean by songs, but given an example, I think it could work there too. We've done it before in the past but not widely, when it was deemed important for a title to show up in a category even if it redirects. So I'm glad you brought this up, Nate, and I think it's definitely worth doing more of. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:11, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

I'll work up some music examples after Halloween fun is over, but for now I'm going to have fun with it in my favorite places on the wiki, pop culture. While I agree Eddy and MacDonald pages aren't vital, they are celebrity references just as Polly Darton is a reference of Dolly Parton and so on and so forth. Just because they have faded from the pop culture lexicon in recent generations, they have their place in history and I think it's great to show the gamut of references. -- Nate (talk) 21:22, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

And if I had paid attention, I would have caught this at The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, which were categorized redirects after we merged them back with Dashiell Hammett (and is where I got honked off because The Maltese Falcon wouldn't be included on the movie references page). -- Nate (talk) 21:26, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it's nothing to do with obscurity (I love Eddy, and besides, take a look at Rudy Vallee Doozer, say, or Snub Pollard), just that the references really seemed to be more about the movie, but it certainly doesn't hurt to categorize the redirects, like I said. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:27, October 31, 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this conversation before! I agree with you guys -- I think having a category on a redirect page is a good solution to the problem of duplicate pages, like the Cloverland Dairy Cow or the Rose-Marie stars. I agree with Nate that we can use it for song pages (like the "Camping in Canada" songs) that we don't want to create separate pages for.

I do want to mention a little note of caution -- we should be careful about cluttering up the category pages. That doesn't apply to these examples at all, but here's a made-up example: I can imagine an eager person creating redirects for "Bunny #1", "Bunny #2", "Bunny #3" and "Bunny #4", all linking to "The Four Bunnies", and putting a Muppet Characters tag on all of them. So this is a good trick, but we should still be thoughtful about how to use it. -- Danny

(talk) 01:18, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Full agreement with that. It makes sense when we've merged characters in a grouping but only when said characters had individual names/identities to begin with or are otherwise something a reasonable person might look for on its own. In fact, we have quite a few anchored Frackles re-directs like that, mostly fan names, which I think there's no point in categorizing. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 01:34, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Image placeholder

Add a picture

Andrew asked on my talk page about the image placeholder, which is a new Wikia feature that encourages people to add an image to a page that doesn't have one. The idea is to give people who are browsing the site a way to help out. We don't like failure boxes on this wiki, because they're horrible and they never get taken off, but I think the image placeholder helps to call out a place where someone can help.

For example, there are a bunch of minor puppeteers and international people where it's hard for us to find images. The reader who's looking at that minor puppeteer page is likely to be someone who's interested in puppeteering -- or maybe even that puppeteer him/herself -- and they might have access to a picture that they can upload.

The placeholder makes it easier for people to upload a pic, because it opens right into an upload form, and then places it on the page, so people don't have to learn how to add the image code before they make their first edit. The placeholder disappears once somebody's uploaded a picture, so it doesn't hang around endlessly like failure boxes do.

So it's basically making the "Images Wanted" page accessible to the people who are potentially most likely to be able to help. What do you guys think? -- Danny (talk) 17:29, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

I personally like it. I think its a great little attention grabber for people. -- Nate (talk) 17:42, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

I was taken aback by it, and at first assumed it was another one of those automated "Whay You See Is What You Get" additions, not something intentional, since in the cases you mention, it likely would hang around endlessly, at least say several months to a couple years.

It would make more sense to me either a) if the person adding the template has an image but they haven't got around to it and want this as a short term reminder or b) it's a case where an image is in fact relatively easy to take care of (i.e. screengrabbing from Sesameworkshop.org but the original page editor doesn't know how to do that; breaking news where images are circulating but one wants to start a page first). In the case of the movie references you added them to, it's at least until Scott or someone else with the calendars can scan the relevant images which normally would be several days at the very least if not months if one has to locate the calendar itself and so on (though I guess it does spur one on in order to get rid of the box). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 18:59, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Part of the idea is to leave it around for new people to find -- it's not something that we're trying to hide. Obviously, we won't have it on major pages, which all have images already -- it would look silly for us to have "Add image" on the Kermit page or the Sesame Street page. But there are lots of pages where we don't have an image now, and a Muppet fan reading that page could help out -- with puppeteer pics, or Muppets Tonight screenshots, or a scan of a book cover. Having the placeholder there can encourage that person to help out, whether they come by tomorrow or a year from now. -- Danny

(talk) 19:11, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

mining the new 40th book

As folks start to get their copies of the new book, I'm sure we'll all be finding cool things to add to the wiki. I can never remember the exact title of the book, so I made a template to cite it:

<ref>{{40book|**}}</ref>

The asterisks are for the page number. And don't forget the ref tags. —Scott (talk) 00:46, October 27, 2009 (UTC)

12/05	01/06	02/06a	02/06b	02/06c	03/06a
03/06b	04/06	05/06	06/06	07/06	08/06
09-10/06	11/06	12/06	01/07	02/07	03/07
04/07	05-06/07	07-09/07	10-11/07	12/07	01-02/08
03-04/08	05-06/08	06/08	06/08a	07-09/08	10-12/08
01-06/09	07-12/09