User talk:kine

From Gineipaedia, the Legend of Galactic Heroes wiki

Revision as of 21:53, 10 December 2011

Licensed sources restructuring

I like the idea of keeping all the FFC stuff together in its own section, however more and more I'm thinking the "Apocrypha" sub-heading just serves no purpose. We see this in how some ship articles don't use the title at all. Did a test edit of Airget lamh on that basis to show what I mean. Vympel 15:44, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hm. From your edit it doesn't seem like you're arguing that the heading serves no purpose, more that you want the heading there, but don't like the name 'Apocrypha'. Is that accurate?

If so, that's a discussion we've had a few times back and forth in several talk pages, and although i can understand that the term 'apocrypha' might be confusing or carry bad connotations for some people, my concern is that the alternatives don't fully apply to all of the things that 'apocrypha' does.

For example, you've got 'Licensed sources' there, and that fits right now, but then what happens when that article gets novel and manga sections? I don't think 'licensed sources' applies to those. So then you might say, OK, what about 'Other media'? That would fit for all of the above, but then what about instances like Asgrimm and Pergamonn where there are differences within the animation (either between OVA and films or between LD and DVD)? Those aren't 'other' media, they're the same.

'Apocrypha' covers all of those scenarios quite succinctly, which i think is the great thing about it and the main reason i'm attached to it. Is there another term you can think of that would satisfy all of those concerns? (Or am i misconstruing you entirely?)  ♥ kine @ 16:10, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The tricky part is what happens when the background for a ship has integrated information from both the FFC and the Data Book encyclopaedia as some ships already do. Iracundus 20:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It is pretty tricky, i still am not 100% positive what the best way of doing that is. We could keep doing it the way it is, or we could do the same but just put it under 'Apocrypha', and those are i guess sufficient at the very least for readability. We could prohibit combining apocryphal data at all, but that's too drastic. We could also do a structure like this:

Appendices
・・・Apocrypha
・・・・・・Manga (or whatever)
・・・・・・(text)
・・・・・・Licensed sources
・・・・・・(combined text)
・・・・・・・・・Data Book
・・・・・・・・・(source-specific text)
・・・・・・・・・Fleet File Collection
・・・・・・・・・(source-specific text)

That last option seems to me like the most logical in terms of structure, but (a) i'm not sure how it would work out if we ever needed to do something similar with manga/novel stuff and (b) it adds yet another level of depth to the Appendices section, which is already pretty deep hierarchy-wise. For now i guess just keep doing what we're doing though :/\/\  ♥ kine @ 21:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The danger is simply listing everything out by source risks creating an incoherent narrative, given how background information is broken up and scattered everywhere. For example, take the Leda II entry, the FFC gives some information about the frontal cannons but does not name them as neutron beam cannons, which is done by the Data Book. The Data Book gives information about the secondary guns near the bridge as electron beam cannons but it is the FFC that says they are low calibre rapid fire versions. Both sources end up often filling in each other's holes. If we just listed everything, we end up with an article that is just a long listing of one line facts instead of something readable. I admit I am for integration where possible of these two sources (with citation), simply because ultimately it was Wright Staff that was involved in both. Iracundus 21:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Right, i agree for the most part  ♥ kine @ 21:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

FFCV10

Photocopied it then scanned it through:-

http://www.fileserve.com/file/e6Pknga/FFCV10.pdfVympel 23:09, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Images

Something I've been meaning to ask--is there a way to access all of the uploaded images at Gineipaedia? An image database, for lack of a better term? Something brows-able? I'm trying to find some good pictures for the Galactic Empire page, but would just as soon use stuff that's already been uploaded. Might also be a cool thing to stick on the sidebar or somewhere for visitors who are just dinking about. Canary 15:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep, there are two ways to go about it:

The ideal method is to browse through the Images category. However, some of the images we have are not categorised properly (including a few of my own), either because we don't yet have a good category created for them or because it wasn't a priority, so they won't all be there. (Most of the screenshots that i personally had uploaded are there, though)

The other way is through Special:ListFiles, which contains every file on the site. However, it is less intuitive than the Images category (and doesn't show thumb-nails).  ♥ kine @ 15:24, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Citations

Either the template isn't working fully for citing Spiral Labyrinth episodes, or I don't know how to cite them. Since they appear to be working halfway, I'm assuming there's something with the template that needs to be tweaked since, until today, we didn't have pages for the individual episodes. I don't know how to do that...so I'll leave it to you. Canary 08:02, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, i'm sorry, i've only created the title templates for the first three episodes. They'll start working as soon as i create them (which i will try to do in a bit). Just keep doing like you've been doing in the mean time, they'll eventually look right  ♥ kine @ 08:05, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed a number of "Name Variations" have "Japanese Fan Sources" listed as a source... and then that name being the one used on the page. This strikes me as incorrect for two reasons: first, fan sources should be the last place we take the official name for. If a character doesn't have a Japanese version of his or her name, there's no reason to include the parenthetical at all. Secondly, "Fan Sources" is too nebulous a term for a source. I'd say... either be specific to the source, or not at all. Example: Wikipedia (Japan), _____.net (Fansite), etc., etc. Canary 23:56, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Hm, which are you referring to? I know the cat is like that, but that's only because i don't know where his name really comes from (and it's not mentioned in Wikipedia, it's just mentioned in one-off Japanese fan sites). What others are like that?

(Generally speaking though, i obviously agree that fan sources should be the last place we look. If there are any situations where i've used a fan name over a DVD/LD one, it's probably by mistake. Unless you're only referring to the 'Japanese:' thing at the top...)  ♥ kine @ 00:52, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I've simply been putting 'Japanese fan sources' in ship name variations for the proper English name, when applicable. I get them from that website with the side-view .gifs of the ships (another one before that). That's probably what Canary's referring to? I didn't start that trend, though. Vympel 01:15, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Hm, i saw one or two like that but i can't think of how they were used specifically. My position on that is this: If a vessel or character has no name in the anime, but a name exists within the manga, the novels, a licensed work (book/model/game), or even in some cases fan sites, then i think we should use it to name our article. (That will prevent having heaps of unnamed articles.)

However, we do NOT need to use a fan source's English name (except for in 'name variations'). For example, you mentioned that the Fleet File books name some of the unnamed ships in the series, but they don't use English names. If that's the case, we should be translating the names. If a Japanese fan source includes an English name, that's fine, but if their translation does not match ours i would say ours wins.

I don't know, maybe you're already doing that, or maybe the Japanese fan translations have always been correct so it never came up, but that's my thinking. If the fan translations aren't correct, there's no need to be limited to them, because they have no official status  ♥ kine @ 01:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah the Japanese fan translations of ship names, like Langenberg, Watzmann, Grendel and Morholt are all IMO pretty clearly correct, so it hasn't come up. Of course ... how does one define correct? Putting the original Japanese into google translate for *some* of these gives us nonsense phoentics - I'd much rather follow the fan names that make sense and actually have clear applicability than putting for example RANGENBERGERU! into the wiki :) Vympel 01:47, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, to elaborate - in the case of Langenberg, I translated it myself on SDN with help of others who pointed me in the right direction. On google translate it comes out as a mess, but realising the whole letter L / letter R thing with Japanese, it was pretty easy to figure out it was Langenberg. Then I found the fan site which confirmed it. Same with Morholt - it comes out as a mess, but then I grabbed that mess and did a google search, and found it was talking about the character in Tristan & Isolde. By contrast, Grendel IIRC translates through google perfect. But I've never ever seen that .gif page to be wrong on names.Vympel 01:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd say if they're not wrong then we're pretty good, no worries. As far as finding what's correct, if you ever have any issues with that, here's the easiest thing you can do:

1. Go to Google and search for: "<JAPANESE SHIT>" site:ja.wikipedia.org

2. Find a result that has that Japanese term in its title, and click on it

3. In the side-bar on the left, find the link that says 'English', and click it if it has one

4. Boom, English translation

(Otherwise you can always ask me or Canary, if your other sources fail you)  ♥ kine @ 02:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

The page I had in mind, specifically, was E.J. Mackenzie. The big problem I had less about using the "Japanese Fan Source" version for the name, and more about the fact that something so vague and nebulous as "Japanese Fan Sources" (or "English Fan Sources" for that matter are being used at all. When it comes to citations, specificity is necessary. Canary 04:18, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, this 'system' has sort of evolved in my mind over the course of time, and i guess these were my thoughts during that process:

1. These are provided for two reasons: (1) to help search engines index our pages better, and (2) to provide an aid to the reader in case they are confused about names or in case they want to do further research. In that sense, these are not facts, in my mind, in the same way that the official names are facts. They don't do anything for our articles except for those two things, they have no bearing on anything else.

2. In the specific case of E.J. Mackenzie you could put 'Wikipedia' as a source, but suppose it's a situation like kitty, where there is no significant source, it's just found in random places. How do you decide who gets the credit for it? And once you do decide, then what? Are you going to list the name of a Web site that 95% of our readers won't understand, and therefore won't be useful to them? Or are we going to have to provide external links on every single page to prove that these terms are being used somewhere in the world?

I guess those were my two biggest thoughts on the subject. I felt like since the information is not used anywhere else in our articles, you could sort of consider them 'analyses' in the same way we have dozens of unsourced analyses in 'Background information' sections all over the site, and leave it to the reader to copy and paste the term into Google and find their sources. But... if you feel strongly about it, let me know what you think would be a consistent and equitable system, and i can address it  ♥ kine @ 04:50, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Image mashups

I like what you did with the Asgrimm DVD/laserdisc discrepancy- I can think of other times when I might want to use that, how do you make them? Vympel 01:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh, ty. It's nothing fancy, i just set them side-by-side in Photoshop. (Image > Canvas size, click the left or right side, set width to 1280) You could do the same in Paint or GIMP or whatever  ♥ kine @ 02:08, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah k. I don't have photoshop - paint sort of ruins images though, doesn't it? I'll give it a go. If it doesn't work, I'll ask you for help :) Vympel 02:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Paint does ruin JPEGs, yes. Or at least it did on XP — i've never tried on Windows 7 (the only Windows PC i have is a netbook, which i obv don't do much graphics work on). If you like, you can do one of two things:

1. Download Paint.NET, which takes a little getting used to, but is free and i think does a better job with JPEGs.

2. Just save them in Paint as PNGs instead of JPEGs, and then upload them here — someone (probably me) will convert them to JPEG. (To make them the right size on XP you would go to like Image > Image Attributes; not sure where they've moved that on W7)

Edit: Oh, or of course you could just upload the two separate images and ask me or someone else to combine them for you  ♥ kine @ 02:54, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks mate, I'll do that. Vympel 09:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Fleet File booklets

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/6577/page04i.jpg

That's from the booklet for Vol.1R. I wanted to be absolutely sure about something - the figure 1,171 is for crew, right? What do the symbols mean, exactly? Especially the symbol after the number?Vympel 09:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It is. '乗員' means crew, and '数' means number or amount. The '名' at the end is a symbol used when giving a count of people (you could translate it as '### people', or just leave it out, depending on context)  ♥ kine @ 09:30, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks dude. I wonder if those crew figures include ground troops and what not. Because the casualty figures for most battles support an average crew size of ~120 men or so per ship (e.g. Black Lancers at the Corridor had 15,900 ships, and 1,908,000 men = 120 men per ship on average . Of course, fleets also include lots of destroyers (Eihendorf's fleet in Ep 27 was 50% destroyers), which are much smaller than the other ships and would have a much smaller crew. Wish we knew the crew figures for destroyers. Vympel 09:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Not sure. I've just checked the two books i have, and the Japanese Wikipedia, but none of them list numbers for FPA or Imperial destroyers. :/  ♥ kine @ 09:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey mate, need your translation skills again:-

https://rapidshare.com/files/730759165/Nurnburg.pdf (the office scanner does things in .pdf)

Note the crew section for the Nurnburg doesn't have a number. What do those characters mean? Thanks mate. Vympel 00:05, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

'不明' means, rather unhelpfully, 'unknown'. :/  ♥ kine @ 00:14, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow. That is weird, isn't it? "What do you mean, unknown?!" I guess that sort of implies that whoever's writing the booklets for Wright Staff is working from info from elsewhere, and none was ever given for Nurnburg, so they decided to be honest and just say they didn't know. Better that than just making shit up I suppose. Vympel 00:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems like the logical choice. It would bizarre if that weren't the case, and they just decided arbitrarily to exclude it...  ♥ kine @ 00:21, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Given the sketches/concept art that appears in the booklets, I wonder if they're working from the original Artland files. (that was the outfit that did LOGH, IIRC). Oh well. Will find out one day when I get them fully translated! Thanks mate. I can do Nurnburg now. Vympel 00:26, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Images - Gallery?

Just wondering - is there code to put a gallery box, like used in MA? In terms of the ships, I think it'd be highly useful - we can have pictures of as many different angles as needed (for example, get a look at the rear end, or the ship in total profile, or from above, etc). This is especially so when I tried to grab a good picture of the Kücrain to do an entry on it - no one picture does the ship justice - its either close and detailed, but cut off, or too far away, or not taking up enough of the screen. Same with the Nürnberg, actually. Vympel 14:19, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

There is, and i think that's a good idea! You can see an example on Neue Sanssouci, i'd probably borrow the same format (widths and things) from there  ♥ kine @ 14:43, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Great, I'll proceed! Vympel 00:16, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Featured article broken

May day, may day. :) Vympel 05:54, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I felt weird about picking all of the featured articles myself, so i figured i'd leave some for you guys. I didn't consider that you wouldn't know how to do it. :x

I'll just clone the previous one since this month is almost over (well, i guess it already is over for you by now) and then pick a new one for September. If you guys don't really care then i'm happy to just keep doing them, but definitely let me know if you'd like to discuss improving the process!  ♥ kine @ 21:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Deploy Rudolf von Goldenbot! (re: Marr-Adetta)

For some reason, the spelling of Marr-Adetta is wrong in a lot of places. Its spelt "Mar-Adetta" but according to both LD and DVD, its Marr-Adetta. I'm guilty of a lot of this myself. Vympel 11:15, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, i've noticed that too. I'll add this to my ever-growing to-do list; currently things are pretty wild right now and i have no access to the machine i run the bot from :x  ♥ kine @ 07:59, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

FYI, got this done now. Corrected /ma[lr]+.?a[d]+e[t]+a/i to Marr-Adetta. Fixed most of the article titles also, plus the name templates. Let me know if you find any others.

PS: We still need articles for Marr-Adetta Starzone and Marr-Adetta (star)

PPS: I noticed that the LD/DVD subtitles call it '"Marr-Adetta" system' but the episode title calls it 'Marr-Adetta Starzone'. Another point to add to our system/starzone mystery...  ♥ kine @ 07:24, 25 September 2011 (UTC)