User talk:Scaletail

Archive 1 (Dec. 2006-Sep. 2007) includes welcomes, as well as discussions about the list of Davion rulers and why there is confusion between Blue Diamond and Menkent.

Archive 2 (Oct. 2007-Feb. 2008) includes responses to welcomes, an explanation of the difference between the Marauder IIC and the Marauder II C, my opinion on linking from manufacturing center articles, becoming a SysOp, a discussion concerning the consensus policy, years & the timeline, usage of .svg files, and the reason that red-linked categories give that weird message at the top.

ROM operative

Hy there, it seem that you a syops and currently active. I'm interested in joining and contributing in this wiki but I have to make two questions first.

I played Battletech a couple of times a long, long time ago. To be honest in the city I live no one that I know of plays Battletech with figures anymore (I might be mistaken). I think that the computers (and the computer games) finished this phase largely off. Honestly I don't remember anything about the game system, rules, mechs, etc. I don't have any of the manuals, house/Clan sourcebooks. I don't have any novel or otherwise, and I only played the "Crescent Hawks Inception" and "Mechwarrior 1" (I said that it was a long time ago). However I'm very fascinated by politics and history. I would focus more upon these subjects (the individual states, factions, and major politicians and military leaders). Are these facts a problem?

I need to know what are the current rules about copying stuff from Wikipedia and the official site "Classic Battletech". Can we simply copy everything word for word (AFAIK Wikipedia doesn't have a problem with that but the official site could be more problematic) or can we base our edits upon these page while we don't copy its texts?

Please answer these two questions "here". Thanks 82.155.92.145 11:57, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

First, thanks for both your interest and for reading enough here to understand the basics about how things work. To answer your questions, many articles here were originally copied from Wikipedia (which subsquently deleted or trimmed many of those articles). Since both WP and BTW are published under the GNU, information can be copied freely between them, however, credit must be given (this is the purpose of our Wikipedia template). To your second question, we cannot copy information from any other website. That does not mean that CBT.com cannot be used as a source and linked to, but copying it word-for-word would be considered plagiarism and would be deleted. Thanks for your interest here and I hope you stick around.

P.S. You may want to check out http://www.commandohq.com and see if there are any registered players or Commandos in your area. --Scaletail 12:06, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

The following happens: an article is copied from Wikipedia, and due credit is given (proper template is used). However the article is later improved. Must the template stay or can it replaced by a normal link? ROM operative 14:02, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

I leave the template there. This is something that I'm not 100% sure of, not being a lawyer, so I just let it be. The template states that the article is "based on" the WP article, implying that they should not be completely the same. --Scaletail 14:24, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

Well, I'm finished for today. I choose to focus myself upon Aleksandr Kerensky (funny I remembered his name as "Alexander", memory fades and all that :). I simply looked around in a couple of articles and gathered all information in a single text, creating a detailed text. I got the figure of "6 million ppl" from the official CBT site. I think that the article is much better and acceptable (but there is always place for further improvements). I plan to follow more or less this trend and schema and to improve some articles (about major figures, factions, realms, etc) from time to time. Please take a look and tell me honestly what you think.

Another thing: some realms/bandit kingdoms of the Periphy don't have a proper article. However I found an article (actually it is a Wolfnet report) which details half a dozen realms. I suppose that I can cut the information and (thereby creating the proper article) place it on its proper place? Or are we supposed to leave all reports as they are (original texts of the sourcebooks) ? ROM operative 19:13, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

If I don't edit your changes, that means I like them ;-). Please, add more! There are a lot of places that BTW needs help, and major people/factions are incredibly important. If I understand the second section correctly, you want to add a new article based on an official source. Please do not copy information directly from sourcebooks. Just like with info on CBT.com, it will be considered plagiarism and deleted. There are some special cases concerning articles that were actually here before this site became a wiki, and we're working out just what place they have here. Please, use those articles as sources to write your own article. I consider the history section up to the end of the Second Succession War of Draconis Combine a good example of a way to write an article (all info came from the original House Kurita sourcebook). --Scaletail 21:52, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

I've failed to explain the issue properly. This wiki has the article Bandit Kingdom which gives some information about several factions/Bandit kingdoms. The article seems to be a Wolfnet report (I don't know if it was simply copied or not). My doubt is if we can copy (or 'cut') the relevant information about a single faction (kingdom) from this article and create the proper page of the particular kingdom in question or not. Much more later (as all the bandit kingdoms get their own page/article) the article Bandit Kingdom could be reformed. Who knows? Perhaps there is a policy of leaving the Wolfnet reports as they are. ROM operative 23:26, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

I understand. Start a discussion on the article's talk page (click the "discussion" tab) suggesting the split. Since that's a pretty big change, it would be better to see what the other members of the community have to say before going forward with it. --Scaletail 09:42, 6 April 2008 (CDT)

I'm largely finished with the article of Aleksandr Kerensky. There is always room for more improvements, but I think that plenty information has been gathered already. There are just three things of which I'm not sure (don't forget that I don't own any books or novels). 1st) the titles of the guy given by the House Lords: one of them seems to be Regent of the Star League but I'm not so sure about the other. I have found several versions. My bet that it was single title "Regent and Protector of the Star League" instead of two separate ones. 2nd) Sometime ago I read that he sent a message to the Inner Sphere during Operation Exodus but now I'm unable to find anything. 3rd) During the mutiny of some ships the general issued a certain order I vaguely recall that it had a certain title and that the order would later used and adopted by the Clans. I'm going to search a little longer but then I'm going to find a new target. ROM operative 12:48, 6 April 2008 (CDT)

Thank you so much for the improvements you've done. Please, check out WikiProject Biographies and consider signing up if you plan on continuing to improve articles on characters. You may also wish to have a look at the template we use to standardize the look of character articles. As far as your questions, 1) the title sounds about right. 2) He did send a message -- it was in one of the List of BattleTech novels#novels written by Thomas Gressman -- probably the second of his in the Twilight of the Clans series. 3) He did, and while the Clans adopted the general principles, they did not adopt the name -- I also cannot remember its title off-hand. --Scaletail 14:03, 6 April 2008 (CDT)

Heeeeeee (how am I gonna say this so that you don't crush me like a bug? :). I've decided to be bold. I hope that you like two two results and forgive me but I think that these steps are simply unavoidable. Major and minor powers and factions would (and should) get their own articles. Plenty of links existed already to the Marian Hegemony and also to the Circinus Federation. The article Bandit Kingdom also seemed to be a report of a sourcebook (a copy of original material, but I may be mistaken) and it is simply better not to strain the copyright laws (NO, this isn't a veiled threat and I'm not a stupid lawyer, I'm just giving you my honest opinion). The article Bandit Kingdom should rather present general statements about all the kingdoms, combined with a average view from the Inner Sphere, and a comprehensive list. I'm planning to migrate the remaining paragraphs of the report towards to the proper articles slowly and carefully. You gotta trust on this one. ROM operative 19:35, 7 April 2008 (CDT)

Images

Hi Scaletail ! I saw you always find images for articles. I wanted to ask you where you can find those, as I sometimes hardly find some (just like the Manteuffel tank). Thanks --FIVE-one 08:27, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

They're actually on Sarna, but in the image archive, not the wiki. Click on "Media" under "Downloads," then "images," followed by "product scans," then "tro scans." From there, select the type of unit. --Scaletail 18:22, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Wow, good source. I did not know it existed, until now. Should pictures be copied from the download section to the wiki in order to use them, or otherwise what is the path to include them in wiki articles? Frabby 04:40, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

I think the way to use those is the same as images contained in wiki articles, as, from my opinion, when you add the |image=image_name.image_format markup, you indicate the wiki to find in the downloads/image directory. Remember this is only an hypothesis. --FIVE-one

I testes my hypothesis : it is false. I watched the Manteuffel article, as it uses one of those images, but it only indicate the file name like other upload. I think you need to download the image, ad upload in the wiki. --FIVE-one

That's exactly correct. I might leave a note for Nic to see if he can manage a mass transfer. I also use chaosmarch.com and sometimes take the images straight from the PDFs I have. --Scaletail 17:55, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

Marian Hegemony

I recently revamped the article on the Marian Hegemony. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at it. --Workerbee 22:09, 20 May 2008 (CDT)

Vandalism

If someone creates a whole new page for the express purpose of vandalism, how do I get rid of the page entirely? I've noticed that if you remove all content, it still stays as an article. --Workerbee 16:52, 31 May 2008 (CDT)

Tag it with {{Deletion}} and an admin will delete the page. --Scaletail 22:31, 31 May 2008 (CDT)

Incorrect system coordinates

You said on Talk:Gotterdammerung that you are collecting a list of corrected coordinates for Nic. Now Workerbee found another misplaced system, Hunan. See details on my talk page. Frabby 06:03, 1 June 2008 (CDT)

New WikiProject

I recently noticed that there is no WikiProject for CBT Factions. Do you feel that one is necessary, and if so, how is one created? --Workerbee 10:15, 4 June 2008 (CDT)

It's something that I've thought about, but I didn't really think was necessary. If you'd like to start one up, please go for it. Projects are meant to be a place to coordinate efforts and the project leader is sort of like the chief coordinator. This means deciding on which articles are included under the auspices of the project, creating a "standard" article and maybe even a template. Eventually, a rating system should be devised so that interested readers and editors can figure which articles are more important and more informative. There are hordes of Projects over on Wikipedia that can provide good examples. Before you create it, the issue that I was contemplating was how broad of a scope you want. Do you only want to cover factions, or do you want to add events, too? There's no wrong answer, it's just food for thought. --Scaletail 20:20, 4 June 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the advice. Personally, I was thinking of an "expanded"-style Project that encompasses both factions and faction events because of the intertwining of the two. When I create the Project, how do I create a template for review of articles (like the Biography template for articles that need to be looked over by a member)? --Workerbee 06:49, 5 June 2008 (CDT)

I just copied the one from BattleMechs and changed around some of the words. I was lucky in that I found a template Xoid had created for a project that nobody ever started that he was going to call Project:Vehicles, so I lucked into that image. I'm not sure how creating an image like that for a template works, so you will probably want to leave that blank unless you can figure it out. If you get that far, I can help. --Scaletail 18:52, 5 June 2008 (CDT)

Thanks again. I'm starting up the new Project very soon. --Workerbee 19:30, 5 June 2008 (CDT)