Talk:Harry Turtledove Wiki

That is a creepy, creepy ass picture of Turtledove. Do we need one? Yeesh. Elefuntboy 05:03, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that creepy to me, and it is the most common by far. Why is it so prominent, though? Why not stick it to the side as an embedded thumb like we do with everyone else's picture? Turtle Fan 16:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


 * To underscore the fact that this is not the main wikipedia. TR 18:27, 12 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it just seems creepier to me because its so damn huge. I'm seriously creeped out.  Can we make it less ginormous? Elefuntboy 01:36, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * What about this one? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Harry_Turtledove_2005.jpg/150px-Harry_Turtledove_2005.jpg

Or this one? http://www.lanecc.edu/library/inklings/images4/althistory11.jpg

Both make me less uncomfortable. Elefuntboy 01:42, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with the picture as such, the other one seems worse than the one up there now. Perhaps if we embedded it and did a wraparound with the text the aesthetic would be better. But do people really think this is Wikipedia? To believe that you'd have to be nigh on stupid enough to think said Wikipedia is worth visiting. Now, why do we have links to the SV and WW categories but no others? That I really don't get. Turtle Fan 02:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

A thought on how to make clearer how "in story" articles should be handled... rather than get into How To Edit right on the main page, what about a para. to the effect of "On this wiki, articles about characters, locations, and events in a particular timeline are written from the perspective of that timeline. For more information on this, see ...". then How To Edit could be broken into multiple sections, one for "in timeline" and one for non-timeline based entries. PonderousMan 23:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, go ahead and rough what you have in mind out. You should be able to edit the main page. That way, everyone will see, comment, and edit if needs be.  TR 23:18, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * will do... but it may need to wait until the weekend.

That's fine. TR 23:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Promoting the Turtledove Wiki
Hello Turtledove aficionados! Thanks for the great work you've been doing here. I've got a couple of things to ask you about. First of all, I would like to feature your wiki in our "Wikia Spotlights", which can be displayed on our other wikis in order to bring more readers and editors here. You definitely meet the minimum article count -- can you please work on meeting the other criteria at Wikia Spotlights?

The first easy thing you can do is to use the "move" tab to rename your main page from Main Page to Harry Turtledove Wiki: our stats show that including your wiki's topic in the title of your main page increases search engine rankings and visitor traffic significantly! You can also customize Template:Welcome and use it to start welcoming new users.

Finally, as we announced in our site-wide talk page notice recently, Wikia needs to change our layout and ad strategy for business reasons, to continue to be able to support our free hosting. I would like to help you make some changes to the layout of the main page, as described at Help:Main page column tags. I have played with some possible layouts on two pages: Main Page/Test1 keeps the main page content exactly the same, aside from moving the photo into the right column, while Main Page/Test2 shows some other ideas that you could use in a potential redesign. Please let me know what you think, and edit the test pages to suit you; we would like to get the design you are most happy with onto the live main page in the next week.

Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation -- I know ads aren't a fun thing for anyone, but we need to adapt to the changing market in order to keep our servers up and running, so that the Turtledove Wiki can continue to thrive and grow with the new visitors we hope to bring in with a Spotlight! I look forward to working with you -- please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any concerns or questions about the changes. — Catherine (talk) 02:30, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Geography Categories
TR's reference got me thinking, I believe it may be best not to put geographical articles (about places on the real map, not fantasy maps) into the categories of the stories in which they're mentioned. They pertain to those stories, but, unlike a place HT made up altogether like, say, the Nekemte Peninsula, they're not really of those stories.


 * That makes some sense. There are still some points on the "real map" that are going to be unique to a given TL, though. Plus, it seems "right" to have a country that plays a very critical role to a given story (Germany in ItPoME being the obvious one) in the story category.  TR 04:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A really important one like the CS in 191, maybe. Especially if it's a geopolitical entity that never existed in OTL.

Also, the story categories are starting to look rather untidy. Turtle Fan 00:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * How so? TR 04:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Seems to me the largest ones are so bloated that they're in need of some subcategories: keep the really major stuff in the category proper, get some subcats for, say, military units, wars, political parties, cities, nations, weapons, technology, to name a few. Turtle Fan 06:11, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So, for example, using wars--put Second Mexican War in Category:Wars in Southern Victory? TR 06:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This ^ Jelay14 06:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I've been thinking dividing the cities category up by country might be a good idea.


 * Also, looking over the main wiki for ideas, Military Personnel of the *Blank* War might be better than the soldiers and sailors.


 * Plus, it might be a good idea to separate out the historical figures from the fictional characters (Historical Character in Southern Victory). TR 15:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As you've suggested in your example and Jelay endorsed.


 * Perhaps "X War Veterans" would be good as a supplemental category within Soldiers and Sailors. I'm not sure they should replace it.  For one thing, that would lead to the creation of many micro-categories: Russian Civil War Veterans in TL-191, for example, would include maybe three.


 * I don't know if categories like SV Characters are worth dividing. For one thing, the fictionals and historicals interacted quite freely on equal terms.  For another--Good luck with that!  That would be damned near as much work as moving everyone in "Historical figure" to "Historical Figures," which I've wanted to do since I got here but which even then was too Herculean for me. Turtle Fan 16:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You know, I could have done that when I was revising links and or adding character templates. Shit, what a wasted opportunity.  TR 21:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I guess we need to start figuring out which categories could use dividing up, then. TR 16:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I just figured out Default Sort
That's going to save some time. TR 16:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

What does it do? Turtle Fan 17:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

You click on it first when editing. It's in the little tool box at the bottom of the page. Then you put in the title of the article after the colon. Then, you don't have put the name of the article after the | in the category names. This will be most useful with characters. We no longer have to put in last names. See Milo Axelrod for an example. TR 17:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

That does sound useful. And timely too, since we'll be changing the way we do categories. Turtle Fan 22:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Spoilers for USA
Should we be calling them Spoilers or Articles? Seems Articles are, well, what they are, while spoilers are merely what they could be used as. And since the book's out now for the general public, the word "spoilers" with all its nasty connotations loses some relevance. Turtle Fan 04:54, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Global Search and Replace?
Is there a Global Search and Replace feature in wikis?

That sure would make spelling corrections easier.

They could all be corrected at one fell swoop (Whatever THAT is:) )

EoGuy99 00:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Not sure. It's never actually come up before. You might ask someone at Live Wiki Help. TR 00:48, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm taking a break
I'm taking a break from the Southern Victory series and will be reading Disunited States and Two Georges next.

See ya all later.

EoGuy99 15:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Peace. Enjoy DSA.  TR 15:51, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Have a happy. Turtle Fan 17:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Enjoy. DSA is a great fun read. Elefuntboy 02:16, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Removing the character template
So I'm curious why someone felt removing that little instruction is a good idea. TR 05:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd be curious myself. It seemed like a good idea to me.  Unless perhaps the remover felt it was inappropriate to put such low-level instructions on a page meant for some grand sweeping section?  I don't know. Turtle Fan 23:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I notice that and thought it peculiar but decided to leave it until you had a chance to take a look at it. ML4E 03:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

4900 articles
Just a bare 100 left to write to bring us up to the magic 5,000.

1,000 of those articles will soon fall into the Americans category.

I was really hoping we'd get Germans over 200. Oh, well, Hitler's War will certainly do it. TR 20:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hot damn!


 * Wow. A fifth of our articles are on Americans. Turtle Fan 23:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Only 2 HT books scheduled in 2009
As of right now, only HW and GMBML! have official release dates this year. The last Gap book, The Golden Shrine, has not been set for release yet.

If HW weren't already announced as a series, I'd wonder if HT might actually be retiring. TR 21:32, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * He's done with X-time, then? And how sure are we that there's more Atlantis to come?


 * Per an email from Silver, No contract for more X-time. Silver says 3rd Atlantis book is the last contracted.  So 99% sure it will come eventually.  TR 23:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Last contracted? As in, last ever?


 * X-time I don't care about. I never read any of them, and DSoA is the only one that ever remotely interested me. Turtle Fan 03:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not last ever per se, just no plans to expand right now. It's not unheard of for an HT series to expand a volume (GW being the obvious one).  Given the issues hinted at in the stories, I really don't see how there won't be another volume.  TR 05:50, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Makes sense. I would be content with a trilogy for Atlantis.  But when you say "last contracted," within the context of a discussion of his slowing production and possible retirement, the thought, however unlikely, had popped into my mind that A3 would be the grand finale of his career.


 * Hmm, I wonder if, whenever he does decide to hang it up, he'll give us a kick-ass, best work yet to go out on, or will he just finish whatever books he's got contracted and call it a night? Turtle Fan 11:42, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't believe he had announced the release of TBoG by this time last year, so no announcement on TGS isn't so bad. I didn't read BtG till the end of April, and I seem to recall checking around that time and finding no announcement of an upcoming sequel, though I knew it was coming down the pike.


 * Minimally he will do TGS. The end of TBoG leaves it absolutely inconceivable that there will be no more of that series.  And I'm not talking about Evidence!, either; I'm talking about pretty much cutting out in mid-battle. Turtle Fan 23:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, I'm sure TGS is coming. Just no idea when.  TR 23:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * BtG was '07 and TBoG was '08. However, BtG was early '07 and TBoG was late '08, very late.  So much so that I don't even know whether it was possible to begin reading it in '08: I never saw a live copy in any bookstore (still haven't, come to think of it) and ordered it the week after Christmas.  Shipping times are slowed at that point, and I didn't get it till--the first Monday after the weekend after New Year's, I believe it was.


 * Anyway, the paperback of BtG came out long before the hardcover TBoG. They happened to be in consecutive calendar years, but had far more than a year between them, so I'm not expecting TGS in '09.


 * Not sure how much I'm looking forward to it. Those glacier dwellers are downright creepy, and reading about them and thinking about them verged on disturbing.  Marcovefa even more so than the rest of 'em, and her role in the story kept growing more and more prominent all the time. Turtle Fan 03:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Category for Business owners
I'd like to create a category for the people who own businesses or are entrepreneurs generally.

Any preference on a category name? TR 22:23, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Businessmen. Jelay14 22:34, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * There will be women in the category. Business Owners is sufficiently gender neutral.  TR 22:35, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If he wants it to include "entrepreneurs generally," wouldn't "Entrepreneurs" be a better choice? Not everyone who--shit, what's the verb form?  Entreprenes?--owns a business. Turtle Fan 22:47, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Eliza Dushku nekkid
While I haven't decided if I'll be watching "Dollhouse", I do like that picture of Eliza that advertises the "Dollhouse" Wiki. TR 22:37, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * down boy Jelay14 23:11, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I was not aware my comments were that salacious. TR 23:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, you dog you. Turtle Fan 02:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Featured Articles
Two questions: How often do these articles rotate, and how do we add articles to the rotation? Turtle Fan 02:46, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The template in place is not automatic. We have to rotate it.  TR 15:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah. So it will change whenever we remember to change it? Turtle Fan 20:35, 6 February 2009 (UTC)