User:MuppetArchives/Current Events 30 (Oct-Dec 2008)

Archive of Current events.

The Muppet Experiment

I've been trying to play the "Muppet Experiment" game that's hosted on Go.com, but I'm having a hard time with it -- it won't play the voices for me. I can hear the sound effects, but not the voices, so I can't hear the instructions for the games. It might be because I'm on a Mac?

Anyway, I'm trying to play it so we can document it here on the wiki... but I can't seem to get it to work. Has anyone else had any luck with it? -- Danny (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that they are Beta testing it. It was possible for me to sign up to the site and after answering a few questions I got this message "My assistant, Beaker, has put you on our Vulenteer list. We will let you know by E-mail the moment that you are selected to join us here at Muppet Labs!". This message is written in small print a bit longer down "REGISTRATION FOR THIS IS LIMITED. We cannot guarantee that everyone will be accepted as a first-time test subject" Henrik (talk) 19:04, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Yup... you should hear from them again very soon. :) -- Danny (talk) 19:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

PvP

Scott Kurtz likes the Muppets! Powers 12:41, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

More ways Google's helping research

A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out the Life magazine image collection on Google. Now, Google Book Search has added magazines. They already had begun to scan old newspapers, but this mag collection includes tidbits of info in articles that Alice Snuffleupagus' screen test was the same day Jay Leno taped his segment on Sesame Street, or that Northern Calloway did a 10th anniversary of Sesame Street show at Macy's. Even stuff like "Sesame Street: A Linguistic Detour for Black Language Speakers". Pretty neat, I hope more publishers sign on. Just go to the Advanced Search section of books.google.com, and choose "magazines". (A lot of the results are TV listings, so you have to ignore those, but otherwise it's quite good.) -- Zanimum 18:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow! This is fantastic. The selection of magazines is pretty limited right now -- it looks like mostly New York Magazine, Jet, Ebony and Popular Mechanics so far. But if they keep growing their inventory, then this would be huge. Just testing it out with "miss piggy" for a few minutes pulled up a couple things that we could add to articles. I'm gonna have to play with this........ -- Danny (talk) 20:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I can think of some uses for the TV listings, too! -- Ken (talk) 02:39, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Monsters

Hello ! I would have a question about the "Monsters" category. What are the criteria when deciding if a Muppet is a "monster" or a "creature" ? For example, it seems to me that Shakey Sanchez or the Screaming Thing could be considered as Muppet Monsters. Bat-Power 13:09, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

"Quality Articles" on main page

On lesser importance than the discussion below, the admins just hand input new Quality Articles into the main page, when they are approved as featured? The code obviously doesn't show the newest ones to achieve that status, unlike what the Wikia people claimed. Snuffy's Parents Get a Divorce was featured in March 2007... 15 others were approved after that. -- Zanimum 13:57, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean about the Wikia claims... There's no code there, it's just regular wiki text. You're right -- we've been updating those by hand, and obviously we haven't been updating them very often. :) -- Danny (talk) 19:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't check the edit page for the main page, thought it was still the Wikia-provided code. -- Zanimum 19:05, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Main page picture

We've done a lot to develop the new main page, which I absolutely love now. It's such a treat to come to the wiki and find out the latest news! So now that we've put so much love into the left side of the page, the right side feels empty. :) Do we have any interest in putting another picture or two underneath the Current events box on the right? I hesitate to open up the voting again... -- Danny (talk) 18:59, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

More pictures sound fine to me, but will people know to scroll down past the calendar to see them? The reason I'm asking is since the old news gets pushed down, after a while, I only look at the first couple of news items, since I've read what's below them already. Also, in a related question, how long do you want to keep the news items on the main page? Are we going to archive them somewhere like we did for "Today on", or will they just be incorporated into their future articles? -- Ken (talk) 03:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

The news blurbs (and some aren't always the most relevant or duplicate earlier blurbs) don't really need to be saved. Some aren't especially well-written and they generally just point the reader to what's happening or to the article. Personally, I think we have a few too many pictures on the right side now. Especially for things like The Today Show appearance, tiny versions of two images which were already on that page, for an event that had already happened, and which just don't look so hot in that space at that size (longer images, like the NY Big Bird and Elmo, work better. The Christmas tree picture isn't Muppet relevant, just there to have an image that links to the Rockefeller Center article. So more images on the left is a good idea (possibly sandwiching current events; a shorter one on top, swap out Kermit peeping, and another below) but it might not hurt, now that we've had the format awhile, to rough out possible guidelines or suggestions on handling the news blurbs and images. Particularly since mostly admins monitored "Today on" or near the ened just let it go to seed. But various users have edited the news section, and this has resulted in repitition, problems with specific dates once the event has passed, and so on. And the code isn't always easy to understand either. I'd say one image per news item/event makes sense (Piggy and Pepe's books), and there's no real point in uploading a non-Muppet image to anchor a seasonal event. It may be necessary to set up a Help page on Muppet Wiki to explain how to add a news item without a picture in cases like that (or just cover it in the calendar, which seems a better way to deal with Christmas in Rockefeller Center, where we won't have relevant images until after the special has aired, and where the blurb just repeats what's in the article). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 05:40, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree about the Christmas tree picture -- I'm gonna take that out. I guess we're sort of building a policy on this new format as we go along.

I agree that the pictures on the left should be Muppet-relevant, and we don't need a picture for every news item. I like that the Christmas tree item was added to the news section -- I think just adding things to the Upcoming Events box means that people won't see them. When we find out about a new appearance, it should be in the news, but it doesn't necessarily need a picture unless we have a good one.

We should also start promoting the Christmas special -- it's only 16 days away! -- Danny (talk) 19:04, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and about the pictures on the right -- I'm just thinking of those as something to fill the space that we have now that there's lots of stuff on the left. Not necessarily something that people would scroll down just to look at, so I don't think it's worth voting or anything. Really just something so that when newer readers scroll down the page, there's something nice on the right. -- Danny (talk) 19:06, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Life magazine images

Google has uploaded the complete LIFE magazine photo collection. Considering there's a couple million images in the LIFE magazine collection, I hoped for more Muppet ones, but what's there isn't bad. And the fact the images are BIG and clear is really a "bonus". Often there's multiple images from the same shoot, but multiple takes. -- Zanimum 20:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, that's lovely, Nick. Thanks for posting that! This picture is unbelievably great. -- Danny (talk) 22:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that was a neat photo. I just wish they had uploaded some more notes about the images, provide context into what the photo stories were about. Was this 1983 an event for the premiere of the show? A charity gala? Was it just a pose for the magazine? But it's nice none the less. And they don't have the Miss Piggy cover at all, or any of the inner contents. -- Zanimum 17:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Recent events

There are a couple events that recently took place that we don't have pages for on the wiki yet. I don't have a whole lot of time right now to add them, but I wanted to park them here in case someone felt so inclined.

• Sesame Street: Made in NY [1] [2] [3]
• Muppet Performers Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire at the Atlanta History Center November 16th, 2008 [4]

I'll try to add them later unless someone beats me to it. —Scott (talk) 18:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Kami is set to appear at a UNICEF event. -- Zanimum 16:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Halloween Songs and Characters

Hello ! I’ve added "Comedy Tonight" (from the Episode 103 of the Muppet Show) to the Halloween Songs Category (monsters, spooky house, upsetting characters and crime attempts; it seemed rather Halloweenian to me). I’ve also added Sammy the Snake and the Alligators and Crocodiles to the Halloween Characters, because these kinds of reptiles appear often in spooky cartoon places. Moreover, as far as I can remember, Sammy the Snake was rather bewitching, like Kaa in Disney’s Jungle Book. Do you think these additions are relevant ? Happy Halloween !!! Bat-Power 18:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Leon! Actually, I'm afraid we'll have to undo those. You weren't around at the time, but take a look at this discussion. The Halloween category was becoming too subjective, and that applies to adding characters who "appear often in spooky cartoon places" or because you remember Sammy the Snake's song as bewitching. Basically, Halloween Characters is for characters who either appeared in a specific Halloween/spooky/horror context within a Muppet production (not just one that could be seen as spooky) and for monsters and other icons associated with the holiday (i.e. ghosts, witches, Dracula, and so on which are hard to dispute; Uncle Deadly because he's the Phantom of the Muppet Theatre, and so on). Looking at the category as it stands, the other article which might not fit is spiders, which while pretty Halloweeny, are more questionable based on what the page contains (in contrast to bats, who are also widely associated with the holiday and have specifically been used in Muppet Halloween books and specials). I'm not so sure about "Comedy Tonight" either, but it is a better fit and less subjective. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your precise reply, Andrew. So I've removed Sammy the Snake and Alligators and Crocodiles from this category. For "Comedy Tonight", maybe we'll wait for other advices. And what about Alice Cooper's songs You and Me and School's Out ? Bat-Power 21:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

On further consideration, I would say "Comedy Tonight" is half spooky, and half crime thriller styled, so maybe not clearly Halloweeny. What do you think about it ? Should you (or I) remove it ? Bat-Power 22:03, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Image Upload Problems

I've been having trouble lately trying to upload pictures. After assigning a name and uploading the source filename, when I click on "Upload File", the filename is erased. This has happened on several computers. Anybody know what I can do? -- MuppetDude 15:21, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

This is an old issue, actually (one I've had for ages, though a test just now went through without the problem). It only happens when you assign a different name than the original file. The easiest fix of course is to save images under the name you want to upload them under, but I've found, for renames, simply locating the file again on your hard drive does the trick. Assuming that's the source of your issue, anyway, try it and see. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 15:56, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

It's happened on both occasions; I tried uploading a new pic for "Goin' for a Ride" and a new one for the song "Three Sides Now", and niether was able to upload. -- MuppetDude 16:01, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Huh. I see what you're talking about, since now I'm having the same problem. How odd and frustrating. Let me try another browser (it could be another "IE Hates Wikia" or vice versa issue), but it's sounding like a bug. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 16:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

And now it's gone again. Seems to be working normally, outside of some images not showing up at first, just as an X (an off and on issue which has surfaced again). This is looking more like a general problem, though. Screengrabs won't really show anything, but I'll see about either asking Scott or getting this to the general Wikia people. Chances are this is happening on other Wikis as well, but it seems like it's kind of a random occurrence, which can be tricky to pin down. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 16:38, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I haven't had problems with the image name blanking itself, but I've gotten an "Internal Error" when it tries to move the upload from the temp area to the permanent name a few times over the last couple of days. However, it always resolves if I go back to the upload page and try again. Going back to the "yes I'm sure I want to replace the image" page doesn't resolve it. -- Wendy (talk) 16:56, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been having a similar problem of my own. Twice now, when I've tried to add something to a characters miscellaneous page, the picture and earliest known episodes come out just fine, but when I wrote in the description, all that came out on the page was the indication that it was available for viewing on Sesamestreet.org. The description of what happened in the sketch didn't show up at all. And yet, when I went back to reinsert it, I found that it was still typed in. What is up with that? Garrettk41 15:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Audio Ads

I've loaded the main page several times today to be bombarded with audio from a talking ad (I've gotten 3 different ones now, including the ever annoying "congratulations you've been selected to win a free..." which I've gotten 7 times now). Without warning the ads simply blast loudly from the page upon loading. It's very annoying (good think I wasn't surfing the wiki from work). I just want to say I'm disapointed with these annoying and intrusive ads and would think that they would at least control it so the volume on talking ads is muted or doesn't play automatically. Very annoying! -- Brad D. (talk)

Oh, that's terrible -- thank you for bringing it up! I haven't seen those. I just clicked around and looked at ads, but I didn't get any audio. You're absolutely right - we shouldn't have audio ads on the site unless it's user-initiated.

We get ads from a bunch of different ad networks, and many of them are "remnants" -- picked from a pool of ads that aren't specifically targeted for any site in particular. Most of the time, we have pretty good control over what gets put on the site, and we've told all the ad networks not to give us audio ads. But once in a while, they try to slip something through anyway, and we don't know about it until somebody complains. Once we get a complaint, and we know what ad they're talking about, we can block it from the site.

So -- the best way to report a bad ad is to check out the Bad advertisements page on the Help wiki. That asks for you to do a little clicking to help us see where the ad comes from, which is kind of a pain on your end -- but it really helps the folks who can turn the ads off if they know exactly which ad they should look at. I'm not seeing (or hearing!) any audio ads right now, so hopefully somebody already reported those, and they're gone. -- Danny (talk) 18:06, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Various Questions

Sorry if I seem to be constantly taking over Current Events, but I keep thinking of policy and organizational questions:

1) There are some News Flash transcripts that link to episodes, but not to the big News Flash page. Can we link them to it, and if so, how should it look? I'm asking because we already have the sketch release box for audio and video, and I didn't know if we wanted to have transcript links look the same.

2) A couple of the things on the front page are getting kind of old. How long should we leave them up there?

3) I noticed that Scott changed a heading for an online Sesame clip from "Online release" to "Video release". I think we should keep video releases you can buy separate from online content. How do other people feel?

Thanks, and it's great to see everybody working hard in their favorite areas. I love this place! -- Ken (talk) 02:09, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Concerning the "Video release" header, we're providing a list of places where the Video has been released, not where the Online has been released. We don't need a header for every format it's been released in, or we'll end up with headers for DVD, VHS, Blu-ray, cassette, vinyl, CD, 8-track, mobile phone downloads, website, telegraph, smoke signals, etc. —Scott (talk) 02:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

No, I know we're not breaking lists into every audio format, and that's why we just have the "audio releases" section. But I only started calling things an "online release" because other people were doing it before me, so I was just copying what they did. But if you want to put video titles and the SS.org link together under "video releases", I'm okay with that. So we should probably have Audio, Video and Songbook headings on song pages (although some pages say "Publications"), and that should cover everything. -- Ken (talk) 03:06, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Quotes template

Just so everyone knows, the template we use for quotes has been on the fritz. Those containing html such as paargraph and break tags aren't working properly. The Wikia tech team is aware of the problem and are working on it. I'll post an update here when I know the problem's been resolved. —Scott (talk) 18:59, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

M.W.com in Canada's largest distribution paper

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/516159 -- Zanimum 14:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

“• Wednesday is National Grouch Day. "A Grouch's mission in life is to be as miserable and grouchy as possible, and pass that feeling on to everyone else. Only then will a Grouch feel in touch with his or her world and be happy." (muppet.wikia.com/wiki/National_Grouch_Day)”

They used my words. I couldn't be more proud. --MuppetVJ 14:35, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Yay, that's awesome! -- Danny (talk) 16:00, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Way to go, Guillermo! -- Ken (talk) 03:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Great job, G-Man! -- MuppetDude 15:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Jim Henson on the main page

I wrote some stuff about Jim Henson on the main page earlier tonight... As you guys know, I've been doing a lot of work on raising our Google ranking (not just for us, but for all of Wikia). It's a complicated thing, and I've been learning a lot. Right now, I'm looking at the crawl rate, and trying out some new back-end ways to make Google crawl the site faster. I'm tracking how long it takes Google to index new pages, and how long it takes to get changes to old pages to show up.

As part of the experiment, I want to see if I can get Google to crawl some of our pages faster by linking them on the main page. So I wrote that little piece, basically as an excuse to make a bunch of links to our core pages.

A while ago, I was talking about removing links from the main page, because Monaco had added a whole bunch of extra links that didn't exist in Monobook. That's less of a concern now, because now everything in the skin and the flyout menus are tagged as "nofollow". That removed all of the excess links, so it's okay to have some more up there. I still wouldn't want to link random stuff like dates, but adding some links to core content will (probably) help us.

Anyway, if this works, it might end up being a model for other wikis, and I think it ended up being kind of nice. But obviously, it's not the most polished piece of writing in the world, so feel free to make edits. -- Danny (talk) 04:59, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Panwapa crossover Sesame Street

Just to let you all know that on Sesamestreet.org this week for Wild Animal Day (Oct 14-21), Koko the Penguin from Panwapa makes a cameo appearance since Abby Cadabby is the host this week and both characters are played by Leslie Carrara. Its real short, but just to let you all know. - Rocket Stevo (talk) 02:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see the appearance in the website intro or in the Wild Animal Day playlist, but maybe I missed it. Can you be more specific? —Scott (talk) 03:20, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

It should be at the website intro on the homepage, but it plays when you first arrived at the website. You have to wait after Abby says the good thing about her wand and she should talk about Wild Animal Day and when she introduce us to a tiger, Koko the Penguin would appeared instead. If it doesn't work,you have to restart the computer and enter the website again. Here's a picture in case you wanted to know which part it is. - Rocket Stevo (talk) 03:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I kept seeing the intro with Abby's pet mouse. After I emptied my cache, I got the version you were seeing. Thanks! —Scott (talk) 03:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. I thought my directions were hard to follow, but I'm glad you were able to see it. - Rocket Stevo (talk) 04:11, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Cite tags and summaries

Just a friendly reminder to everyone, when adding a cite tag, please try to mention it in the edit summary (or if more complex, as a talk page question). Looking around, a few are just the result of time passing (i.e. info added directly by a puppeteer who registered two years ago, but someone doesn't notice it in the history, or as the result of talk pages from long ago but not directly attached to that page). Sometimes these can be cleared up pretty quickly, but often we're not even aware the tag is there (especially for pages that aren't as heavily visited or revised) until someone checks the category. Thanks! (And of course, the same can often applu to removing a cite tag). -- Andrew Leal (talk)

Oops, I'm probably the worst offender in this area... I've done some drive-by cite tags. I think my fantasy is that people look at the Citations category, but that only happens once in a while. (Which is only natural; I don't ever check it myself.) Anyway, I'll be more mindful with my taggin'. -- Danny (talk) 22:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Hulu

Check it out. Sesame's got an official channel on Hulu. hulu.com/sesame-street What's interesting is that they're providing episode information for sketches. —Scott (talk) 21:40, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks for pointing this out. The episode info is great. I kind of hope, since Hulu allows for longer chunks than the Sesame site, that they might eventually put up a few whole, not-on-DVD episodes as well. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Looking a bit closer, the episode information seems a bit out of whack. The Andrea Boccelli clip says that it's from Season 28, episode 333. I have no idea how Hulu or the Sesame folks could have arrived at that number. The first 3 may be a production prefix and it's actually the 33rd episode of that season, but at least we know what year it was. —Scott (talk) 21:50, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, that year's wrong, too. The clip uses the rebuilt Baby Bear puppet, who was redesigned for Season 30, and Elmo was redesigned in Season 29, so the clip couldn't be that old. -- MuppetDude 18:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)