User talk:Hyarion

From Tolkien Gateway

Need Help With Footnotes!

Hyarion, I need help getting the footnotes working on the Chamber of Mazarbul page. Could you help? Thanks so much.

-Old Took

I saw you added that on the talk page but wasn't sure what you meant as the links work fine for me. What doesn't seem to be working for you? When I click them it sends the page down to align the top line with the relevant footnote, and when you click the up arrow it will jump you back up to the in-text citation. Am I missing something? Keep in mind the footnotes aren't very effective as the page can only scroll so much, thus rending it incapable of going all the way down to the correct reference. --Hyarion 22:24, 3 April 2006 (EDT)
Sorry, it was a browser problem of mine. Everything's fine now! -Old Took

Question

Hello, Hyarion!

I hope this is the right place to send messages - if not, please erase this.

Well, I was suprised to see that I was the second person to register in here, but that's even better: there's plenty of room to fill in.

I found these pages - as you might guess - via the Finnish Kontu forum, where the administrator Merri had posted a message informing about possibilities for co-operation. So I hope there will be more Finns to register in. I'll send my contributions when I have time to do that - quite irregularly, I'm afraid, but let's hope the best.

yours, Tik

By the way, how does one start writing a new article to which there exists no previous link? I couldn't figure that out, being quite unaccustomed to Wiki. The only way I could start writing a new article was to edit a previous one and add there a new internal link and continue editing that one.

I have a feeling that will be a common one (because I had to figure that one out myself) so I'll post that on the help page. All you have to do is type in your address bar, something like http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Title of Page (it will even insert the underscores for you) and you will be directed to a page that does not exist and you can edit it that way.
Also, something I broke my own rule on, its a good idea to type a 'signature' when adding a comment to a discussion, otherwise no one knows who wrote it. I wish mediawiki would do it automatically, but until I fix that, a good standard to use is like mine below, just type "&mdash ;" but take the space out between the h and the semicolon...I can't figure out how to show those literally. You can also use -- it's just a matter of preference. And then type 4 ~ in a row. The first one prints out your name, second the time, 3rd the date, and 4th the timezone I believe.
EDIT: Hm...looks like your one step ahead of me, on your pages, you have exactly that.
EDIT: On second thought I'm going to move this to User:Hyarion because I'll probably keep this page to say what the English translation of Hyarion is. -- Hyarion 11:41, 12 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Answer To Your Question

A lot of my stuff is at my LJ, ~~Black Sun~~, and some is at Parma, OF and Elfsheen, but a lot is just on my hard disk. :)

Brighty 6:22, 25 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Bokkie Moans

Hey

Can you try and make a Special:Sandbox for us users to try stuff out in? makes editing family lines and such easier...

I've spotted a difference of opinion... 8-) I've been trying to remove all the Hobbits Category entries from the different hobbits, but I see you add them still... It did make it easier for me to check who had been edited... I guess we want them back?

  • Ah, hehe. That is something I was debating. I wonder if it is possible to have a 'Hobbits' cateogry and in it, list the hobbit family names, but have it also contain a list of all the hobbits since those are sub-categories. I guess when it comes down to it I just want a page that lists all the Hobbits, whatever way works I'm fine with. Sorry I totally forgot you were removing those, heh, I'll look into it to see what way will work. --Hyarion 16:44, 9 Sep 2005 (EDT)
I'll leave the Hobbit category be then. I guess it would be just as useful to have all the hobbits in one big list, as it was. Just add a category for the specific family too, like you did 8-)

I've got my doubts about double pages like Sam Gamgee and Samwise Gamgee. It basically is one and the same person, only a nickname or shortform. I would rather see 1 article with a list of "aliases"... --Bokkie 17:42, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I understand where you're coming from and I'll keep thinking about it, but for the time being I still say that it would be more beneficial to have the names on seperate pages, because each name has a specific meaning. For example Aragorn Elessar and Strider and such, you can go into great detail about the different names and people who called him that, places he used it, and the Elvish translations along with the old english meanings, etc. This would tend to drag down the Aragorn Elessar page to list all the names/information on it. For things like Sam Gamgee there is not going to be as much information to talk about it, but just to keep the same system I think it's best to keep it. In the future we can list when he is referred to as 'Sam' and by whom. Just my opinion though. --Hyarion 00:15, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Sandbox

Good idea, I'll add that to the to-do list while I upgrade the new wiki software, which should greatly improve the left menu, I'm going to be able to add things like links to the letters A-Z or links to races or to whatever we want and in different tables, if you have any suggestions let me know. --Hyarion 16:39, 9 Sep 2005 (EDT)

What Happened to Me?

This is Brighty - what happened to me? I tried to log in and it said I don't exist. Weird.

Were you using "BrightSideoftheDark"? Your still on the userlist, odd. --Hyarion 21:51, 3 November 2005 (EST)

Cirith Gorgor and related bands

Hey Hyarion,

Like Blind Guardian not all songs relate to Tolkien, but the ones that do stick to theme. Do you want bands to stick with just a band page?

Honestly it's up to you, that's the best part, no one person has full control and we as a community can make decisions, but with the Blind Guardian page I just copied that from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Guardian for now and have yet to remove the unnecessary links, which was my fault because you were basing your articles off that. With Blind Guardian, as with Cirith Gorgor it is tricky because the Tolkien theme is greater in some albums and songs than others so there is no easy fine line. In the end more information is always better than less and if in the future we deem the articles as unnecessary it won't take any effort to remove them. --Hyarion 18:05, 28 November 2005 (EST)
Ah ok. I was gonna just throw up a band page but saw all the information on Blind Guardian I figure I better not slack and add some more :P I'll clean it up and keep it that way in the future.

Barrowdowns Mb

Hey Hyarion,

I like your idea about the barrowdowns.com MB, I say lets do it.-Goldfinger


Spam

Hi Hyarion Firstly love this site! Secondly we have a troll adding porn links: Hfskodweyb I have edited and deleted the nonesense twice but it reappears. you may need to block this spammer Unsigned comment by Sancho proudfoot (talk • contribs).

Good morning Sancho! Yes unfortunately we do get bots from time to time. Luckily they are just trying to gain PageRank so they normally try to hide the links. In an upcoming patch we will be forcing unregistered users to type in some random numbers/letters from an image to stop the bots. This one managed to register which makes it a bit more difficult to stop but the best we can do is add an extension that only allows people to edit X amount of pages in X amount of minutes which I'm looking into as well. Thanks for keeping an eye on it.
--Hyarion 10:57, 14 April 2006 (EDT)


Ñoldor vs. Noldor

Hello. You asked about the use of ñ, and the answer's pretty complicated. First let me say the I changed the n to ñ just to be consistent in the text - I really don't care much one way or the other. And here's the long story behind it all...

Ñ is used as a nasal plosive by Tolkien, so it would sound something like "ng" in "song" or "king". This is Quenya in its purist form. The Vanyar in Aman would say "Ñoldor", not "Noldor". Occasionally you will even see "Ñoldor" spelled "Ngoldor". However, in Middle Earth, the mixing of languages changed pronounciations, so by the Third Age an elf would just as likely say "Noldor", as "Ñoldor". Older pronounciations did continue into the Third Age; for example the name "Elrond". Quenya in the Third Age tended to drop the "d" at the end of words, but Elrond was always referred to by his archaic name, rather than by "Elron".

You wanted citations, but I can't name them off the top of my head. Check out this page: http://www.uib.no/people/hnohf/ndnn.htm for more info. He's a linguist that knows his stuff and where I got my knowledge of Quenya.

So there you go, the sordid tale of "ñ". The whole thing comes down to whether the text is referring to ancient "Ñoldor" or the "Noldor" of the Third Age. If a final decision needs to be made, I would use "Noldor" throughout the site and mention in passing that "Ñoldor" is the older spelling and pronounciation of the word.

Hope this helps. --ebakunin

More on Spam

In regards to the spam comment above: since the site uses MediaWiki, it's very easy to disallow anonymous editing. While it will slightly slow down the growth of the site, it adds a layer of protection that a wiki needs to stay relevant to its audience. Few bots can handle the complexity of registering, especially if email confirmation is required. It's a bit of a pain for casual users, but it's worth it in the long run. Just my two cents. --ebakunin

Thanks for your input. While I think at this point in time disallowing anonymous editing goes a bit against the wiki definition, a new version of the engine has been released which forces anonymous editors to type a randomly generated word which would stop the spam bots rather effectively. Email confirmation is something which currently is required but should bots continue to register then we will require it (or force a word verification on register). --Hyarion 19:19, 17 April 2006 (EDT)

Requested articles

If it is possible, it might be good to allow those who have not logged in request a page or request a page’s expansion. Narfil Palùrfalas 16:05, 17 April 2006 (EDT)

That's definitely something I've had in the queue for a while. I'll try and add that today, on second thought I'll just add that right now. Even if they aren't logged in they can still make whatever page they want, and just add the {{stub}} tag to let us know it needs to be worked on. But I still think we need a Request an article and maybe like you said a request a page's expansion. Maybe we can just add the stub tag if we want it to be expanded, and then have a "Expansion of the week" where each week we focus on a stub and work on rewriting it and making it better. Thanks for the input. --Hyarion 16:16, 17 April 2006 (EDT)

Uploading pictures

I Have been trying to add a photo, but I get the message ".jpg]] is not a valid picture format"

What am I doing wrong ( perhaps you can give an 'idiot's guide' on adding photos. (The one I wish to upload is saved in my hard drive) Unsigned comment by Sancho proudfoot (talk • contribs).

Odd, I've never had any problems with uploading images. What is the destination filename you are using? From here it looks like you are maybe typing the destination filename as "[[Blah.jpg]]" when all you really need to say is "Blah.jpg", no need for any brackets. Let me know if that helps. When I upload images I don't even bother altering the destination filename as it will automatically insert whatever your file is called on your computer. --Hyarion 15:52, 17 April 2006 (EDT)
Ok that worked, but haven't any idea of how to link it to the relevant page. Can you move it please? Unsigned comment by Sancho proudfoot (talk • contribs).
Great! I'll go ahead and show you how to link and let you do it, better to teach than to do :) Here is an example of the image at Alan Lee:
[[Image:Alan Lee (Greg Martin Photography).jpg|thumb|200px|Image of ''Alan Lee'' courtesy of [http://www.gregmartinphoto.com/ Greg Martin Photgraphy]]]
The first part "Image:Alan Lee (Greg Martin Photography).jpg" is your image name, make sure to include the .jpg What I usually do is go to the actual image and copy the title. Then if you want it to be a thumbnail, which I usually do, I add |thumb, then if its not the right size you can specify how many pixels you want, |200px to |300px is usually around the average. Then you can specify the caption. After that add your closing brackets and you are good to go. Let me know if you have any questions. --Hyarion 16:11, 17 April 2006 (EDT)

Non-standard Text

Hyarion,

I was hoping the wiki could add a list of non-standard letters at the bottom of the edit page, like the list featured in Wikipedia. It would help with First Age entries, where there are a lot of accents. Thanks for the help. --Ebakunin 02:15, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

Good morning Ebakunin, this is a feature which I've been meaning to implement, thanks for reminding me. If you haven't already noticed I've added the extension and you can now insert special characters :) I don't think we need as many characters as Wikipedia so if you see any unnecessary ones feel free to remove them from MediaWiki talk:Edittools Thanks for your continued contributions --Hyarion 11:47, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

Duplicate Entries

To decrease the number of repetitive entries, I think we should start using the #REDIRECT tag more often. For example, check out the changes I made to the Hill of Tears and related entries via the Recent changes option. Most of the related entries, such as Haudh-en-Ndengin, were just a recap of the main entry. I think using the #REDIRECT will cut down on time, hosting space, and allow editors to focus on quality. What ya think? --Ebakunin 01:33, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

I think this is probably for the best as it gets confusing having so many multiple stub articles and one main article. The tricky part is going to be choosing a primary article to use. Do you use the Quenya name, Sindarin name, Dwarvish name, Westron name, most used name, birth name, etc etc. I'm wondering if we should put the redirect pages in the categories...it might cause confusion because you would have Gaffer Gamgee and Old Gaffer etc but at least if people were searching for a specific term and didn't know its other meanings, they could find it alright. Thanks for all your contributions. --Hyarion 01:38, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

Please delete a page

Talk:Sauron Defeated is spam, so please delete it. - rotemliss (Talk) 04:42, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

Good morning Rotemliss, thanks for the heads up, page is deleted. --Hyarion 08:07, 24 April 2006 (EDT)

Would you please delete Caitimo, it's an incorrect redirect page. Thanks. --Ebakunin 21:24, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

Done. Next time go ahead and add the {{Afd}} template, that way we can work on getting a standard for a deletion process. --Hyarion 21:53, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

User talk:Hyarion vs. Community Forums

I think many of the entries here should rather have been posted in the Community Forums, as they concern Community matters and not User:Hyarion matters. Mb you should transfer them? --Earendilyon 01:27, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Good idea. I'll transfer them right now. --Hyarion 11:12, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Double Check Nasmith Images

Hyarion, you need to go through all the Nasmith images you uploaded, as there are duplicates. For example, The Pillars of the Kings and The Argonath are the same image, as are Illuin, Lamp of the Valar and Illuin - Lamp of the Valar. Thanks. Unsigned comment by Ebakunin (talk • contribs).

There are a couple duplicates and a couple which are relatively similar but different pieces. What I'm hoping to do is go back through them and state the material used to make them, and which calendars/books they appeared in. Thanks for keeping an eye out. In the future if you ever see a duplicate just go ahead and add {{afd}} to the lesser quality image. Thanks for all your help. --Hyarion 18:55, 30 April 2006 (EDT)

Favorite Race pics

Don't worry about cropping those images for the Favorite Race templates - I can do them easily and quickly. I should have them done by the end of the day. --Narfil Palùrfalas 11:20, 7 May 2006 (EDT)

Ah that would be great! Thanks :) Once you upload them that will give me an incentive to finish all the infoboxes for the favorite races as I think we only have a couple done. They will look much better with those cool icons than the boring text that is currently there. Thanks again. --Hyarion 11:24, 7 May 2006 (EDT)
Done!--Narfil Palùrfalas 11:37, 7 May 2006 (EDT)
Awesome, I've made the basic templates, but they need some major color overhauls. --Hyarion 12:10, 7 May 2006 (EDT)
It would also be nice if the text was larger - perhaps in a different font?--Narfil Palùrfalas 12:44, 7 May 2006 (EDT)
That's possible. I want to try and make all the userboxes have a standard such as the Star Wars wiki, lets try changing the background/text color, or maybe even adding another sentence, if its still too small then we can make the font bigger or change the font style, though we have to be careful the font style is standard on a good majority of computers. --Hyarion 12:51, 7 May 2006 (EDT)

Browser Crossover Problems

Hyarion, I do all my browsing on Firefox, but when I recently checked the site on IE I noticed that the _ character does not display in < code > sections. Compare Amrod in FF and IE. Is there anyway to fix the problem? Thanks. --Ebakunin 00:10, 8 May 2006 (EDT)

Uhoh, what has that darn Microsoft broken now, I use FF as well. Looks like your right, we can use dashes for now, which reminds me I need to install the template system that Wikipedia uses so we can use a fancier family tree system; an example at the bottom of this page. --Hyarion 00:21, 8 May 2006 (EDT)
I could just create the family trees and save them as .jpg images, then upload them. I can do that easily, if you wish. --Narfil Palùrfalas 06:52, 8 May 2006 (EDT)
Hm, let's hold off on that for now. I'm afraid if we have them all as .jpgs that would be a lot of work and we wouldn't be able to alter anything. Maybe if we finalized all the trees with the new templates then we could make images for other sites to use or something. Good idea though. --Hyarion 08:38, 8 May 2006 (EDT)


Family trees

I tried out the familytree template and couldn't get it to work. Has anyone else had any luck with it? Thanks. --Ebakunin 14:48, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Heh ya, I only halfway got it working so its not just you, there's a few more templates I have to make as its fairly complex. I'll see if I can get it working tonight, I'll let you know when its up and operational. --Hyarion 19:45, 15 May 2006 (EDT)

Tim Hildebrandt

Hyarion, would you please make the featured image one of Tim Hildebrandt? He's one of the most important artists for Tolkien's work and his passing should be featured. Thanks. --Ebakunin 11:15, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

Great idea, doing so now. I'll make him the featured artist on our Gallery page, just in case anyone knows about it, heh. --Hyarion 13:44, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
Is there any way to make the gallery page better known? As well, is there any way for you to enable one or two of us to change the featured picture each day? Some pictures last for weeks on the Main Page. --Narfil Palùrfalas 20:47, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
The goal is to start putting links on the left side to main pages, such as the Gallery, but it still needs a lot of work before we do that. Thanks for reminding me about the Featured Image, what I'm going to do is separate the main page into sections and probably allow anyone to edit the Image section. Though eventually what I'd like to do is have the Featured Image and Featured Article be on the same subject, and we would vote on the Featured Article. The entire main page could use a redesign if you ask me. --Hyarion 21:44, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

Quote Template

The quote template doesn't work properly when the quote contains a hard return; I had to leave the hard return out of the quote in the Talk:Serpent Lord discussion (before Then Théoden was aware of him). It also doesn't react on the indentation by the use of colons. --Earendilyon 08:32, 25 June 2006 (EDT)

Heyo, just got back from a small vacation hence my lack of edits lately. The quote template is kind of a hack, hopefully we can have more efficient means later on. Try using <br /> for a new line and maybe <blockquote></blockquote> for a tab. I'll look into an easier solution. --Hyarion 16:42, 25 June 2006 (EDT)


Increase in spam

Hyarion, I am wondering about the number of Spammers at a time. I remember when I first joined you were blocking spammers and vandals daily. Then all of a sudden it stopped. Now it has started up again. Are there like spammer clubs where they all chose to target a certain wiki? Or is it one person with access to many computers? Just curious. --Narfil Palùrfalas 15:24, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

Thanks for bringing this up as I've been meaning to mention the situation. Before we had no spam protection so everyday I was having to revert vandals but then I installed an extension which forces anonymous users who post external links to verify they aren't a bot by solving a simple math problem such as 1+1=?. This had solved 99% of the bot spam to date, but unfortunately as the recent bot was spamming numbers and no links, it became difficult to catch. It looks like the bot has moved on but if it continues I'll look into another extension where we block someone from specifically adding a bunch of numbers. None of the attacks are actual humans against us, they are simple bots that use a proxy server to hide their IP and spam random wikis. Now the funny spam is the stuff where actual humans try to screw with articles, I don't mind those as much :) --Hyarion 21:50, 26 June 2006 (EDT)

"Unfinished" template

Hyarion, could you please create an "unfinished" template? It should say something like this: Unfinished; this article is incomplete. You can help Tolkien Gateway by completing this article. On longer more time-consuming articles (such as the Fall of Gondolin) I noticed the need, and right now would like it as I work on the Lay of Leithian cantos. By the way, which Tilkal image do you prefer (see the forums for User Awards)? --Narfil Palùrfalas 16:24, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

Thanks!

Hey Hyarion. I just want to say thank you for taking me under your wing, so to speak. I greatly appriciate it! Thank you! -Lord Aragorn1414 14:46, 20 July 2006 (EDT)

No worries mate :) Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions and thanks for all your contributions. --Hyarion 15:14, 20 July 2006 (EDT)

cool

the tengwar text is really neat! not sure how to install it though. No problem about the maps. it does feel like that with the wikis. I guess its the same with alot of subjects, not just tolkien Gimli 04:36, 27 July 2006 (EDT)

English or American spellings?

This question came to my mind when you spelled harbors "harbours". Should we generally spell things in the English way, since Tolkien was English? Or the American spellings, such as jail instead of gaol, and center instead of centre? I am an American, but I personally don't care, as long as nobody changes my spelling on the talk and forum pages. . . --Narfil Palùrfalas 11:12, 4 August 2006 (EDT)

Heh, yet another thing I have been debating in my head and have yet to come to a conclusion about. Personally I'm probably more for the American spellings because I'm an American and that is the standard for most wikis though their basis isn't on an English author. I had no clue gaol was a variant of jail so it is certainly going to be a challenge for me if we don't use the American usages. While categories/titles are obviously going to be important decisions I think if we redirect the English spellings we should be okay. There is no sense in altering text in the talk/forum and I suppose we can leave the article content as-is, though we should probably standardize it. --Hyarion 11:38, 4 August 2006 (EDT)