Heroes Wiki talk:Community Portal

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Nov 2006 - Aug 2007

Red Link • Theories Tab • Theories Tab (Cont.) • Character Summary and Character History • Full episodes at NBC • Web Episodes — Nice, clear credits at last! • Real community portal • Number of Examples on Powers Pages • Theories • Standardizing External Links • NBC's New HeroesWiki • Recent lack of commenting in the Summary • Hana and Ted, sittin' in a tree... • Newbie Guide? • Heroes Wiki takes off its training wheels • Digg Heroes Wiki • Copyright • Non wiki related show discussion? • Car (disambig) • 1000th user • .07% • Order of Examples • NBC.com Heroes Wiki • Statistics • Frequent Misconceptions • Origins • How to submit 3D models? • Comic-Con • A Global "To Do List" Page • Wikis about Heroes are popular! • "Create Your Own Comic Book" winner • NBC videos • Deleted Scenes • Credit on Fan Creations • Heroeswiki Forum • Interview images • Micah Gunnell

Google translations

• How would people feel if I just took Google Translations out of the sidebar completely? We've got a number of localized wikis already even though only a few of them are being actively updated. The quality of the Google translations is pretty poor and might even be distracting people from wanting to work on the localized wikis. People would naturally still be able to go directly to Google and translate the site from there, but I'm thinking we may be better off not making the Google translations so prominant. Plus it'll help unclutter the sidebar a little. Any thoughts? (Admin 21:12, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
• At the same time, I can move the "in other languages" portlet up right below the sidebar in its place so that on pages where we have localized versions it will display those links. (Admin 21:16, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
  • Right, instead of just removing it maybe you can consider adding it to Heroes Wiki:Languages and adding a 'Translations' link to the sidebar as was done at Bionic Wiki.--MiamiVolts (talk) 21:20, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
    • To be honest, the Google translations are so poor that I'm happy to just get rid of them entirely. If people use Google or Altavista or something built into their browser, then great. If not then I don't think offering them Google translations is really helping out that much considering just how unreadable the translated text is. MiamiVolts, have you tried translating the site into Spanish using Google and seeing how accurate it is by any chance? Is it understandable or just aweful? (Admin 21:24, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
      • So it's better to have nothing at all for the languages we don't have wiki's for? It's not perfect, but it's not so terrible either that it doesn't help. I think it helps more than you realize. For those that don't understand english, it's probably better than nothing. It also helps vice versa, and I've been using it on occasion to translate to/from Spanish words I don't know or have forgotten. If it's a very long page, I might translate it first to get a gist of it. You might also check with the users on the French, Spanish and Portugese wikis as they are doing a lot of translating and it might be helping them to do their translations.--MiamiVolts (talk) 21:34, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
        • People are still able to use Google translations by going directly to Google, I just don't know if having the links so prominently on the site is helping or hurting. People may see them and assume that the issue of translating the articles is solved already. It could be discouraging people from contributing on the other wikis. At the same time, you could be right and it might be helping people. All the feedback I've gotten so far about the Google translations has been negative so far so I'm not sure if they're very valuable as a sidebar item anymore. Of course, I'm interested in hearing opinions. I can always change it back if we want. (Admin 21:44, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
          • I think you misunderstood me, then. I'm fine with them not being a sidebar item, and in fact I didn't like them there. However, I do think they should remain "in" the site. So that's why I'm suggesting to add a link to 'Heroes Wiki:Languages' in the sidebar and re-add the autotranslator links there so people can know that both the autotranslator and the alternate language sites exist.--MiamiVolts (talk) 21:52, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
            • That sounds good to me. (Admin 22:14, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
  • I have no problem getting rid of the Google translations. (Though while we're on the subject of the sidebar, we should probably capitalize "Heroes merchandise", and make it italicized, if at all possible.) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 22:21, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
    • Actually, MediaWiki automatically converts the labels to lowercase and it's probably not worth the trouble to modify the code. (Admin 22:29, 21 September 2007 (EDT))
      • That's kinda what I figured. When I tried to fiddle with it awhile ago, nothing worked. I just wasn't sure if it was my lack of knowledge or MediaWiki's lack of flexibility. :) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 22:31, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
        • Calling the link 'Translations' makes more sense to me than Languages. Languages could just be a list of the languages spoken in Heroes the series. Can you change it?--MiamiVolts (talk) 22:46, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
          • That makes sense to me. I'll change it. If there's some reason I'm overlooking, Admin, please change it back. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 22:56, 21 September 2007 (EDT)

Google Translations Bug?

• Thanx, Ryan. BTW: Did I port something wrong with the links? There's a couple bugs I'm trying to figure out. The accented characters are printing correctly for me for Google translations on Bionic Wiki but here they show as gibberish. Also, the "Automatically translated" frame at the top keeps being removed.--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:53, 21 September 2007 (EDT)
  • No problem. I have no idea why those things are happening. I'm heading to bed in a few minutes, though, so I don't really have time to look at it now. Plus, I'm kind of ignorant when it comes to those questions. :) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 00:00, 22 September 2007 (EDT)
    • I just double-checked by entering both site's addresses manually at Google translate, and I get the same results, so it's not a template problem, it's a server option problem.--MiamiVolts (talk) 00:03, 22 September 2007 (EDT)
      • The "automatically translated" frame disappearing at the top is expected. Can you give me an example of where the foreign characters aren't being displayed properly? Using Google Translate there shouldn't really be anything specific to the site that would affect the display of foreign characters. If you can give me a link that doesn't appear to be working for you that'd be helpful. Also perhaps a screenshot of what you're seeing specifically. (Admin 01:18, 22 September 2007 (EDT))
• Ok, screenshots have been sent by e-mail. It is a weird bug, imho. It works with the frame, but not without.--MiamiVolts (talk) 02:07, 22 September 2007 (EDT)
  • This only appears to be a problem in Internet Explorer and isn't limited to just this site. If you use Google Translate to translate http://cnn.com for instance it looks fine in IE until you remove the frame at the top, then the characters get all messed up. In Firefox it comes up fine. It looks like a problem with Google's tool. The Heroes Wiki automatically breaks out of any frames which is why the characters look strange by default. We're just going to have to wait for Google to fix their tool or switch the translations so they use Altavista Babel Fish instead. (Admin 10:23, 22 September 2007 (EDT))
    • So I changed us over to Altavista Babelfish. Yahoo has a Babel Fish translator too, but they use an ip instead of a name address. The font is a little bigger than with Google translations, but I'd rather have bigger font than gibberish text.--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:08, 22 September 2007 (EDT)

2.01 Four Months Later

This just aired, where is everyone?! --SacValleyDweller 01:20, 25 September 2007 (EDT)

• Out on the west coast, perhaps. :) It finished on the east coast 3 hours ago. (Admin 01:22, 25 September 2007 (EDT))
  • I'm on the east coast, too, but after watching JourneyMan now I got to come back and watch a YamagatoFellowship video and a new Hana video. Heroes 360 galore!--MiamiVolts (talk) 01:45, 25 September 2007 (EDT)
    • I slapped something together on that new Hana post, but the video in it needs massively better translation services than my 2-years-and-counting rusty 3 years of Spanish can render on speach.--SacValleyDweller 02:05, 25 September 2007 (EDT)

Character Histories

How are we going to put Season One and Season Two into the sections in Character Histories? The issue is trying to work around the fact that we can't squeeze an H2 or H3 "Season #" heading between an H2 "Character History" and an H3 episode title. I'm certainly not in favor of changing every character page (and item and event and place page, for that matter) to fix the headings. :) So here are a few choices:

Leave the seasons and the episodes both as H3:

==Character History==
===[[Season One]]===
<summary>
===[[Season Two]]===
===[[Four Months Later]]===
<summary>

Put seasons and Character History as H2:

==Character History==
==[[Season One]]==
<summary>
==[[Season Two]]==
===[[Four Months Later]]===
<summary>

Put summarized seasons as H3 and current season as H3:

==Character History==
===[[Season One]]===
<summary>
==[[Season Two]]==
===[[Four Months Later]]===
<summary>

Leave off current season, and keep summarized season as H2:

==Character History==
===[[Season One]]===
<summary>
===[[Four Months Later]]===
<summary>

Personally, I'd go with the last choice. I'd leave the everything as it is, and just not include the "Season Two" heading until after it's summarized. Not only is it the easiest choice (fewest changes to articles), I also think it's the most aesthetic choice. Then the History (H2) is broken down into a summary for Season One (H3) and a summary for each each episode (also H3). When we're in the middle of Season Three, it would carry through, and would still be easy and good-looking. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 17:38, 25 September 2007 (EDT)

Advertising Slogans

So, I was thinking we might come up with a slogan for our Wiki to put in mine and other's sigs for when we post on other forums as an ad. Here's some I've come up with. I'm not sure which is best. Feel free to add on, correct, or let me know it's just plain too corny... ;)

• BionicWiki.com and HeroesWiki.com--making the Wiki world a little larger
• Bionic Wiki and Heroes Wiki--building a fan-run community together
• Bionic Wiki and Heroes Wiki--fan run and fan built community sites
• Bionic Wiki and Heroes Wiki--theories, spoilers, synopsis & other Wiki magic
• Bionic Wiki and Heroes Wiki--not forums, they're a Wiki phenomenon--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:50, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Chronological Order

I think that most pages should be written in chronological order rather than an episode-by-episode guide. For example, it would be better to say in the right beginning of the Claire Bennet page that her mother is Meredith Gordon and her father is Nathan Petrelli, how she was saved from the fire and given to Noah Bennet rather than breaking down the whole information, saying that in Genesis her foster parents are Mr. Bennet and Sandra Bennet, then in The Fix her mother was revealed to be Meredith Gordon, then in the episode Distractions her father is revealed to be Nathan Petrelli, then in Company Man she was revealed to be given to Noah Bennet. Readers can scan through unwanted information through the chronological biography. The episode-by-episode guide can still be kept for readers who want no spoilers or information from an episode.

For other pages that the chronological order cannot be applied, it should be changed into other formats. For example, for the article Suicide, it should be done character-by-character, as Peter's "suicide attempt" arcs through at least 3 episodes (Genesis - One Giant Leap). Again, readers will be more comfortable reading the whole incident under one topic rather than finding different fragments of the same incident through different episodes subtopic. Chrisyu357 11:19, 13 October 2007 (EDT)

• Well, that would only mean major format changes to over 1,000 pages. :) Less glibly, we run into a problem if we can't figure out chronology. For instance, if another GN comes out about the Haitian's childhood, we're stuck since we don't know the exact year, or where in the chronology it fits with the It Takes a Village series. Same goes for Betty's backstory. We also have the issue of multiple futures on Heroes. Suppose another episode is produced which takes place five years in the future, but it's, of course, a different future than the one shown in Five Years Gone--how exactly would this fit into a chronology? -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 06:41, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

• If we are not sure about which incident goes first, we could begin with "Another notable incident that happened in the Haitian's childhood is...", and I'm sure we can dealt with the multiple timeline issues since we have articles for both characters from the current timeline and future characters. However, in some case, say Claire, have at least 3 possible timeline ("current" timeline, 5YG timeline, "Killed-at-Homeciming" timeline) - we can add the "real" timeline into Claire Bennet, and the other two in Future Claire Bennet, under two subtopics. I have to admit, however, that rewriting over 1000 articles is a extremely harsh job. :) Chrisyu357 05:01, 16 October 2007 (EDT)

Fixed bug breaking section editing when transcluding templates with sections

• Well, the title pretty much says it all even if it's a mouth full. If you've ever tried transcluding a template that has sections in it you may have noticed that when you subsequently tried to edit a section in the article you'd either get an error that the section didn't exist or it'd have you editing the wrong section. Unbeknownst to me until I figured it out today this was being caused by a modification I made a long time ago to automatically convert two dashes automatically into —. Now that this is fixed you'll find that section editing now works properly again even when templates define their own sections. In addition if you edit a section that has been transcluded it will take you to the section in the template itself so you can edit the appropriate content. (Admin 17:19, 13 October 2007 (EDT))
  • So two dashes don't automatically convert to the mdash anymore?--Bob 17:25, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
    • It will still automatically convert. I just fixed the bug that was a side-effect of that initial enhancement. (Admin 17:28, 13 October 2007 (EDT))
  • This is really cool. However, the link to the transcluded template is going to &section=1, which is usually the Usage section of the template (since the body of the template is usually not in a section). Can this be adjusted so the links edit the template without a &section=? Alternately, you could make it &section=0.--Hardvice (talk) 18:07, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
    • It's because we're using includeonly in the templates for the first section. For it to work properly I think we're going to have to allow the first section to be defined whether it's during transclusion or not. I'm not sure how easily I could change it to display the first section and I'm not really a fan of the idea since it seems like more of a hack that could have unintended consequences. I think we're better off just making sure the section is defined in the template whether transcluded or not. By the way, do you know of an example page where it's an issue? (Admin 18:19, 13 October 2007 (EDT))
      • Try Takezo Kensei. Anything with Fan Theories or Spoilers will work, but he had both.--Hardvice (talk) 18:48, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
        • Ok, that's what I thought you were referring to. So is there any big disadvantage to getting rid of the includeonly tags around the first section in the templates? (Admin 18:54, 13 October 2007 (EDT))
          • Not really. They need to be adjusted to not create redlinks on the template page. I did this for template:theories and the edit link now works fine.--Hardvice (talk) 18:56, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
          • Fixed template:spoiler, too. I made it so it creates a red link when included but not on the template page. Works fine now. Are they any other templates which create section headings? The appearance templates do, but they're a special case since they need to create different section headings on different articles. Otherwise, I'm drawing a blank.--Hardvice (talk) 19:08, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
          • I went ahead and changed the appearance templates, too, so that section edit links would work on Appearances. Incidentally, I discovered that the template needs a non-conditional section to work with the edit link from the page on which it's transcluded, even if either case of the conditional would result in a section being added (in other words, the == need to be OUTSIDE the {{#if:}} statement for it to count as a section on the template.) Good to know. I haven't done the GN appearances because there are a ton of them and I'm a lazy bastard.--Hardvice (talk) 19:56, 13 October 2007 (EDT)
• Does this mean that Template:Welcome will no longer have to be substituted? -Lөvөl 03:33, 15 October 2007 (EDT)
  • It probably should be anyway. Section edit bug aside, transclusion is a resource hog (though, of course, user talk pages tend to be fairly low traffic), and substituting it gives people the option to keep or delete as much or as little as they want (and to see how some Wiki markup works).--Hardvice (talk) 03:38, 15 October 2007 (EDT)
    • Template:MQ is used in section headings, but I made it so it just becomes the name, not the section. I think it's best that way. Template:GN could create a section heading if one so desired, but it would mean 54 unnecessary edits, and it would lose the ability to add an additional external link on the GN pages, if we so desired. I think it's also fine as is. (Thanks for finding the bug, Admin!) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 06:36, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

Something wrong with the server?

I can't seem to make any changes, I'm getting a 400 Bad Request and another's not loading at all.--Bob 10:32, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

• Must have cleared up, seems to be working.--Bob 10:39, 15 October 2007 (EDT)
  • Checked the logs and it looks like either your browser was sending some malformed requests to the server or some intermediate firewall was mangling your requests. It only seemed to be affecting you. Aren't you lucky? :) (Admin 10:54, 15 October 2007 (EDT))

G4 Post Show

Well, I am officially the first host on the G4 Heroes Post Show. Man, it's going to be cool! They have a lot of really great things planned, some of which I'm not allowed to say quite yet. All I'll say is that I think we're going to be talking about the Post Show quite a bit on this site. From what I'm gathering, we will be referencing the Post Show about as much as we reference the CBR Behind the Eclipse interviews.

For those of you who don't know about the Post Show or G4 yet, Season One will air in a marathon on G4 on Saturday and Sunday, October 27th & 28th at 12 pm EST. Then, there will be a mini-marathon on Saturday, November 3rd, where G4 will air all episodes of Season Two thus far (episodes 201 through 206). Finally, at 11 pm EST, the Post Show will air. (See here for more information.) This is cool--it's a live and interactive segment that will feature exclusive interviews with members of the cast and crew, live viewer commentary, interactive polls, behind-the-scenes footage and a whole bunch of other stuff which I can't divulge. Even better, the episodes which air on Mondays will be repeated on Saturdays on G4 (at 10 pm EST) for those who missed it the first time around, or who just want to relive the experience. The Post Show will also air weekly, with new content, new interviews, new cast and crew members, and plenty more for us to discuss on those late Saturday nights.

So how can you be involved? Well, if you're in the Southern California area, you can be in the studio audience--just contact me and I'll make sure you get in. Not near LA? Then two other options exist for you. I believe you can go to Stickam, where you can be selected to do live videos that will air. If that doesn't work for you, then G4 is also accepting viewer mail through Stickam, where you can gush about the show, drool over Peter's pecs, salivate over Niki's assets, tell all the minutiae you noticed, and send all your wildest theories. I'm pretty psyched about being part of this, and about a new resource to give us depth into Heroes. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 21:40, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

• That's cool. I was contacted by an owner of another cool HEROES fansite about the fun opportunities of this HEROES Post Show. It seems like it'll be fun! 'ROESian
  • Fun, and a great place for us to get some good inside info. I don't know how many shows I will be doing, but I kind of plan to use my time, if possible, to ask some of those nagging questions about Heroes and just to glean some good trivia heretofore unrevealed. I'm pretty psyched about the whole deal. :) -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 21:13, 19 October 2007 (EDT)

"Wrestler" page needs deleted.

This page needs to be deleted since there is already a page about the wrestler in question. --Avenger 05:22, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

• No, actually. Wrestler is the page for the character. Oscar Gutierrez is the page for the actor. It seems odd, since he was playing himself, but it's the same as having two articles for Hiro and Masi Oka.--Hardvice (talk) 05:23, 22 October 2007 (EDT)
• Incidentally, since it's bound to come up: the reason the character is "wrestler" and not Rey Mysterio is that he's not explicitly identified as Rey Mysterio in the episode. Yes, it's obviously him. Yes, it's just stock footage. But we can't assume that the character that footage represents in the world of Heroes is called Rey Mysterio just because the wrestler in the real world is called Rey Mysterio. This is similar to how in Heroes it's the Las Vegas Police Department but in the real world it's the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Another analogy would be the pictures of Peter that Nathan looks at: in reality, they're real-life pictures from Milo Ventimiglia's childhood, but as far as the show's concerned, they're pictures of Peter--i.e. real-world photos of one person were used to represent a fictional person. The wrestler Micah and Damon watch could be called "Sue" for all we know, even though footage of Rey Mysterio was used. So we have a character called wrestler, who is represented by stock footage of Rey Mysterio, who is portrayed in the real world by Oscar Gutierrez.--Hardvice (talk) 05:40, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

Actually, I remember the announcer at one point saying "Mysterio goes for the 619!" or something to that effect. I'll have to rewatch the episode to make sure, but I'm about 90% sure that he was identified.--Avenger 18:38, 22 October 2007 (EDT)

• No, Damon says "Here comes the 619!"--Bob (talk) 18:42, 22 October 2007 (EDT)