User talk:Craigopher

I have every Legion issue published except for Adventure 247, and I would like to begin systematically scanning and uploading covers for use in other articles and for a cover gallery. To make these several hundred images the most useful and usable, I would like to establish image conventions and uniformity in size, resolution etc. I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts on the subject, particularly if its already been discussed and decisions have been made.

Off-site image linking

Do NOT link directly to off-site images - it steals their bandwidth (NB - LegionPics is not off-site, falling under the same URL, but even there you should link to the image page rather than the image.) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 09:48, 11 July 2006 (PDT)

legionoutpost.com is my own website, so there will be no one complaining about stolen bandwidth there. Since there is currently no interface to speak of for these images, I thought it would be better to link directly to the image. My intention is to contribute these images to LegionPics when Lightning Lad returns. In the meantime, if you would prefer links to to an interface, I can throw something very simple together. I dont have time to build anything of lasting value, particularly if they will be transtioned elsewhere.

Ah, right :). Sorry about the misunderstanding. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:26, 11 July 2006 (PDT)

Categories

Category:Timmverse images, not C:Tv & C:I - Reboot (SoM) talk page 11:59, 13 July 2006 (PDT)

Saw your sandbox, couple fo things...

Since you made the same mistake on Garth Ranzz, the current crapboot has a "Lightning Lad", no "Live Wire".

Oh, and the current disambig for the LSH cartoon is "LSH cartoon", since "cartoon" doesn't really disambig, since S:TAS and JLU are still cartoons, y'know. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 13:56, 14 July 2006 (PDT)

At the moment I'm just writing off the top of my head, not really paying attention to whether or not the links are correct. What do you think of the concept? I am envisioning one table for each era, sorted by that era's naming convention and with that era's column shaded. The column headers will link to each of the tables, and the name appropriate for that character can be listed as appropriate. I'll have a working version with the three founders built realtively soon. Please let me know your thoughts. (I'll make sure I put the correct links in, thanks for red flag!) -- Gopher 14:07, 14 July 2006 (PDT)

Take a look at the sample table now. I built both Pre-Crisis and Post-Infinite Crisis versions to demonstrate what I am envisioning. I included Shrinking Violet so that the two different versions would sort differently. That way, you can adjust the table to whatever era your are most familiar with. I will be building the Pre-Crisis version first, making it as complete as I can to included all the characters that need disambiguation (at least for those that have been created so far). Once the first is created, its a simple matter to copy and adapt for the other eras. -- Gopher 16:18, 14 July 2006 (PDT)

Web-safe colour palette?

Just saw this on your to-do list and was confused - that mattered in the days of 256-colour displays, but nowadays, it's not really a concern since the number of displays not using 16+-bit colour now is tiny. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 10:24, 26 July 2006 (PDT)

I'd like to have a color palette display set up in wiki markup, really more for my own usage than anything else. Although the number of people who have the older 256 displays is greatly diminished, they are still out there, and there are some people who have newer computers but dont know how to change their display or even that they can. I happened to notice in my local public library a few months ago that they had a whole room full of computers configured for 256. They were fairly recent vintage, but set to the lower color option either by choice or through ignorance. On one of my own websites, out of 70,000 visitors, 97.9% use True Color or High Color, with the other 2.1% being something lower, so not even all of those are 256.

My personal preference is to use the 216 color palette in designing for that small percentage that are still out there. The only relevance to Legion Wiki is that if I create a future page using color, I will use one of the 216. Call me old-fashioned or whatever - old habits die hard. For the very minor ways in which we use currently use color, there's no reason why we need more than 216 colors. However, I realize that no one will really care about this other than me.

Once I have created a color palette to my liking, I will probably copy the text to jump drive for use in other wikis. Legion Wiki has been my first real exposure to using the Mediawiki software, and I am already envisioning converting one of my websites to a wiki format. However, my intention is to retain the color palette in my own sandbox area for future reference here.

On a completely unrelated question, I notice your usage of the spelling "colour". You are in the UK? Elsewhere in Europe? Just curious.

Also, what the heck happened with the site over the last day or so? --Gopher 14:00, 27 July 2006 (PDT)

I have no real idea what happened with the site whatsoever - I couldn't even ping it or get a WHOIS reading for it until it came back up, so I can only guess that either the DNS changed or the server was completely disconnected/turned off for whatever reason.

And Scotland :) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:54, 27 July 2006 (PDT)

Re: SLSHv2

Re: [[:Category:Superboy_and_the_Legion_of_Super-Heroes_v2_covers]] - why v2? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 02:03, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

OK, duh. Superboy & LSH has no v2, etc. Dont know where my brain was.

However, there is a related issue that we need to solve before we get too many more cover images posted. According to current structure, Adventure and Action are sub-categories of Pre-Crisis images. LSH v2 should also be a sub-category of Pre-Crisis, but v3 would be both Pre and Post, v4 and v5 would also be split between eras. Rather than make the individual Series categories subs of the Era categories, perhaps they should each just be placed in multiple categories? Only drawback is that Pre-Crisis images will be quite large. The same question would also apply to Superboy v1 and v2, Superman v1 and v2. Any suggestions? --Gopher 03:54, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

I've already (implicitly, since only one half is down so far) split the LSHv4 and Legionnaires covers cats (Putting the actual images in Category:Legion of Super-Heroes v4 (Post-Zero Hour) covers and Category:Legionnaires (Post-Zero Hour) covers, rather than Cat:LSHv4 covers, etc). Something like that, perhaps?

Oh, by the way, starting 8/8, I will be out of the country for a couple of weeks, so no updates from me for a while (cruise on the Baltic Sea - should be great). Hopefully I can get to a clean stopping place on some pages. --Gopher 03:54, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

Good luck, and enjoy yerself :) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:22, 7 August 2006 (PDT)

Hey folks! I'm back from the Scandinavian realms, and although it may take me a few days to get settled, I will be contributing once more. It looks like it been relatively quiet, but I'm glad to see we have a new contributor (Welcome Duke!) I look forward to getting back in the saddle again. --Gopher 12:48, 23 August 2006 (PDT)

Thanks

Thanks for cleaning up my little messes. =) I'm taking a look at some of the edits you've made to learn how to wiki and, hopefully, not make the same mistakes in the future.

BTW, any idea how to add an Elseworlds link to the eras box at left? - Duke 15:06, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

Me or Scott would have to do it. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:15, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

Por favor

Just noticed you created a couple of blank categories (no text on the category page). Please don't, huh? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:41, 26 August 2006 (PDT)

Secret Origins v1/v2

Image talk:SecretOrigins-v2-6.jpg ??? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 01:51, 27 September 2006 (PDT)Se

Re: spambot

Thanks for letting me know.

Please note that the user User:Flynmonkeysattac has added hidden casino-related links to the bottom of the Disambiguation table page, and then marked the edit as minor. I have left them intact for your reference. I assume that we can ban this user?

Yeah, and I've permabanned it & reverted. That's not the problem though - it's a case of "if it happens once, it WILL happen again, and probably more heavily," and I can only firefight (by reverting & banning after the event - which isn't much use against spam since spammers probably wouldn't use the same account twice). I'll need to have a word with Lightning Lad about enabling the anti-spam protections before we get deluged. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 21:06, 20 October 2006 (PDT)

Can I just ask....

Where'd you get TL10, 11 & 14 "clean" covers from? I checked three seperate sites with solicits and none of them had a cover (indeed, the number of Coipel covers actually released with the solicits is tiny post-LSH125, amounting to TL2, 3, 9 (B&W only) and 12 (B&W only), although TL1 was solicited with a Coipel-drawn splash page rather than nothing). All the others I've found come from interviews and the like.) - Reboot (SoM) talk page 12:20, 8 November 2006 (PST)

Its been a while since I downloaded these (I have clean versions for almost every issue in the series) but I do remember at the time that occassionally I had to search for a while to find them. Generally speaking its was on DC's own site or CBR, although I seem to recall that sometimes I found them on various retailer sites. I recall that the Adam Hughes cover from #35 I could only find in a line art version on a yahoo group devoted to his art. Not sure how kosher it would be to use that one, although the purpose of the site is to make his work available. (And its not available on Hughes's own website)

For the others, specifically the standard color covers without logo, do you see a problem with using them if we cant identify the original source? They are obviously released for marketing purposes, which I take to be fair game. What are your thoughts? -- Gopher 13:34, 8 November 2006 (PST)

Git :)

The ones I can't find in any form are 5, 10, 11, 13, 14 and 35, although you've now posted three of them, so do you have #5 or #13? I know #35 wasn't shown in any form publically - certainly not in colour - until a week or two before the issue was out, and then only with the trade dress already in place, so that lineart version would be helpful (and I'll get to that in a moment). On top of that, I've got #1 only as a small version, #4 only as pencils, #15-18 only as inked B&W and #21 only cropped/stretched sans Universo (although that was deliberately not released, and was only shown cropped/stretched even on the accompanying ad with vertical slices from all five Dream Crime covers, so that's irrelevant). I'm sure I saw at least one of the #15-18 group in colour at one point though...

As for the Hughes cover and the others, I'd say "go for it", basically. Like you say, they're made public for marketing purposes, basically, and [see Category:LSHv4 (Post-ZH) cover images without logos, Category:Legionnaires (Post-ZH) cover images without logos and Category:The Legion cover images without logos :)] with the proviso that if there's a non-Wayback Machine source on the web (see their T&Cs...), I'd rather give a link to as well, just in case. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 16:36, 8 November 2006 (PST)

I've got #5 in color, but nothing for #13. I dont have anything for #4. My #1 is 525 x 341 pixels at 72 dpi and weighs in at 54K. The others you mention sound like the same versions I have. As for #35, it looks like its a slightly different pose, so it might be a prelim or something that Hughes did at a convention. I'll be uploading #5 and #35 within the next few minutes, and perhaps a good portion of the others this evening. I worked with the images the other day to shrink a few that were too big, so pretty much everything is ready to upload. -- Gopher 17:45, 8 November 2006 (PST)

Honestly, when you're working with JPEGs rather than scans... it's not worth it to resize (or resave in any way) unless the original image is waaay undercompressed for its' size, or you're dropping it to quarter-size (half-dimensions) or less. You're not going to gain much by way of file-size, but the double-JPEG's going to go badly.

And that's the same TL1 I had, but I'm going to delete and reupload as Image:TheLegion01Promo.jpg rather than Image:TheLegion01Solicit.jpg because it's not the solicit image, but a promo image. THIS was the solicit image (the splash page I mentioned). Why the upload as vertical (for the published cover) BTW? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 17:58, 8 November 2006 (PST)

Point well taken on the double JPEG. Double-check anything I upload to see if you have a better image. I also had downloaded several images of black and white interior art, and even a couple in color. Do you have those? Not sure where to put them or categorize, but they're available.

As for the horizontal/vertical, I would prefer to have a vertical image for display in the LPH, as using the horizontal will either be too small or push all the other images in the table out too far. It just helps to keep things uniform on the page. For any double page covers (like the one you uploaded for v4 #100), I plan to upload a single page version for the same reason. Not sure what those will look on a regular issue page either, but it might be better to have a smaller size available. We can always include a gallery with all the different versions wherever it appears.

Promo/Solicit - I dont remember which were solicits and which not. Would you prefer I let you upload them, rather than create extra work? I'm uploading #35 now. I plan to call it TheLegion35LineArt.jpg -- Gopher 18:17, 8 November 2006 (PST)

I've got various bits'n'pieces, but I don't know if I've got everything you've got re:B&W interiors.

Point, but I'd rather make the horizontal/wraparound/gatefold the "real" cover and qualify the alternate cropped/"rotated against the art" version. And, given how huge the listing for #100 is on the LPH (one of the main reasons I'm insisting on the story titles instead of series name/issue number being bolded - the series stands out already since it's not bulletted and is coloured by being a link. In long issue listings, the titles get "lost") it won't hurt to have both versions there.

And, looking at it now, I'm 90%+ convinced that IS the linework for the real TL35 cover, it's just less cropped and scanned straight instead of at an angle. And just upload right now so the stuff is there, which is the important thing. Tidying is simpler than originating :). And I've replaced a couple of the B&W images with GIFs (toonzone uploaded the B&W solicit covers as GIFs without an intermediatory JPEG stage, so there's no artifacts, the file sizes are smaller, and they don't lose colour from it since they never had it :)).

And I'm wondering how to treat this (images are clickable for bigger versions and a note in each case). Obviously, nicking them all is out of the question, but the page is "dead" - left on the server by mistake after they went to a Flash (*spit*) site, and even if the Flash (*spit*) version is still there, it's unlinkable and the images are cropped'n'crap. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 18:46, 8 November 2006 (PST)

Wepwying

Like the move to make all of the individual series pages LPH/Series/XXX. Makes a lot of sense. I was kind of thinking in the same direction for the index pages, and was wondering what you thought of a series of pages for individual characters, such as LPH/Index/Saturn Girl, in which we could list all appearances across eras. Maybe more appropriate to name pages LPH/Index/Imra Ardeen? Overkill? Alternately, we could list the same information on the disambiguation pages, which might make a more useful page anyway.

Not sure - I'd have to think about it.

On an entirely different note, I noticed that you started changing the format for LPH issue "entries" over to that used on the 1994-2004 page. I know this is the format you prefer, and I've been avoiding it in the pages I have been working on. I find it very difficult to look at, to the point that I get a headache if I stare at it for too long. There's something visually confusing about the story title being more prominent than the issue title. Having the issue title in bold is more like a dictionary entry, with the bold text providing a very simple way for the eye to scan the page for an entry. Do what you like, but if that's the path we're going down, I'm going to have to focus on other areas of the Wiki. I hope you'll reconsider, because I use those pages constantly, and I would hate to give up that tool.

This falls under "If you don't tell me, I don't ^&**ing know". Seriously. Vandals/spambots aside, I don't want to drive anyone off.

If I bolded the issue titles and left the story titles bold, would that be okay?

For what it's worth, I prefer the format used on the 1950-64 LPH instead, with the series title bold and the story title italic. -- Omnicom 23:33, 11 November 2006 (PST)

In general, I think we should conform to standards used by the publishing industry and in scholarly writing, such as APA or MLA style:

• books, periodicals, films, television series and entire websites emphasized with either italic or boldface
• articles, stories, episodes, and individual webpages, all of which are part of a larger body of work, listed in quotes with no italic or boldface font.

For the most part, we have applied these rules fairly consistently throughout the Wiki. In certain instances, such as our infoboxes, the story title is specifically labelled as such (Story Title: Prisoner of the Super-Heroes), so using the quotes would be redundant.

I see no reason to veer from these rules except to increase site useability. In the case of the LPH, I think it is more user-friendly to use boldface as an indication that a new entry has begun. There are plenty of examples of such departure used in print, such as in dictionaries or as in articles with details about a number of books, magazines, etc. Often this is done by using bold instead of italics, rather than than bold and italics. Emboldening any other text within that entry confuses the issue. Placing the story title in italics and also in quotes, as on the 1950-1964 page, does not harm useability, but it is an unnecessary departure from the international standard.

If we were to create a Chronology page on which entries were listed by story title, then it would be appropriate for the story titles to be in boldface for the same useability reason, although they should also be in quotes. Issues or series names listed within the text of an entry on that hypothetical Chronology page should remain in their regular italicized form.

In my opinion, the LPH format that would be the most "correct" as well as user-friendly would include issue titles in bold with no italic, and story titles in quotes with no italic. Issue titles in bold italic would be OK if we prefer it for aesthetic reasons, and would require less effort to convert (perhaps making it the most useful solution?). As an added plus, either of these formats would also tend to reduce whining about headaches by any gophers or gopher-like animals that frequent the site.

-- Gopher 19:46, 13 November 2006 (PST)

Thing is though, you're fundamentally referring to standards for use in prose, to wit:

Jason Armstrong debuted as the ongoing Legion of Super-Heroes penciller with the backup story "All Together Now" in Legion of Super-Heroes #100, before taking over fully with the lead story in Legion of Super-Heroes #101, "Jump." Most of his stories were inked by Ron Boyd, and he continued as penciller until "Dark Circle Rising", where he left with the last issue of that story, Legion of Super-Heroes #108, aptly called "The End". In total, he would draw ten stories, including his earlier fill-in on Legion of Super-Heroes #70, as well as pinups in Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #6 and Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files #1, and two pages in Legion of Super-Heroes #94, "22 pages about the Legion of Super-Heroes", as one of "The Legion of Substitute Artists."

There, it works, as random boldfaces would be intrusive. In lists, however, you need visual cues. It's a bit long for this page, but when you've got multiple stories in an issue in cases like this, it all mushes together for me if the story titles aren't bolded. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 10:46, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Your test page was exactly what we needed for this discussion. I've taken the liberty of duplicating a few of the issues to create alternate versions for comparison. In playing around with it, I realized that the bullets are creating a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise, and all other formatting issues aside, I think we should remove them.

As for the previous debate, upon seeing both the issue and the story title in bold, I dont find it quite so bad as I imagined it. I made non-bold versions of Secret Files #1 (with and without bullets), and I agree with you that its kind of hard grasp visually without the second level of bolding. However, out of something like 1200 issues in the overall list, there aren't more than a handful that have this many stories. The majority of the LPH is much more like the Inferno and Legionnaires issues near the top of the page (also with bullet and non-bullet version). To me, the bold on Legionnaires seems a little too much, but with the bullets removed, I can live with it and I'm sure I wont notice after using it for a while. Incidentally, I still wanted to push to keep the bold story titles in quotes, but after looking at it, it looks too noisy.

Bottom line, the formats I would recommend given all of our discussion would be like Legionnaires #56B or LSH v4 #100C. We could also go with "half-bullet" versions (56C or 100D) should we feel the need to pinpoint the bottom level items.

-- Gopher 16:12, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Punctuation

One final note - I made all of the individual page links for L.E.G.I.O.N issues with the periods omitted, simply because its a pain in the ass to type it out that way all the time. ( L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 #1 rather than L.E.G.I.O.N. '89 #1 ). Would you prefer those page names have the periods included? In general, I've tried to reduce punctuation in page names if possible.

Well, some punctuation has to go - you literally can't have a # in a page title, and 's can cause smaller problems. .s don't really do anything though, and even though they're a pain to type, I just copy "L.E.G.I.O.N." to the clipboard and Ctrl-V it in when I need it. So, yeah, probably better to have the dots in. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 18:53, 11 November 2006 (PST)

OK, I'll add the dots back in. How bad are the 's problems? We currently have quite a few references to Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane, as well as a couple of Superboy's Legion. I'm happy to take those out if it will reduce conflicts.

Not too serious, just leave it. It's the #s which are serious. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 10:32, 14 November 2006 (PST)

v2

Can I just point out that if LSHv2 has a different title - i.e. The LosH v2, it stops being v2 and becomes "The LoSH v1", bumping LSHv3 back to v2, etc. Even if it's not strictly accurate to have it as just "Legion of..", I'd rather keep the consistancy... - Reboot (SoM) talk page 06:56, 26 December 2006 (PST)

OK, we can simply revert the pages, except for the Chrono index page, to which I added the 95-96 data. I'm can take care of it tomorrow if you dont want to bother. --Gopher 07:27, 26 December 2006 (PST)

1MM?

Uh... why coding the One Million cover as Image:Legionnaires1MM.jpg & Image:LSHv4-1MM.jpg?

And I have the 1M issues as Elseworlds - the future history given in Superman - Man of Tomorrow One Million says that the Legion was early 29th century, rather than late 30th/early 31st, and that there was "always a Superman". Neither of which fits with PostZH Legion history. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 05:26, 11 January 2007 (PST)