Talk:Main Page

Previous discussions are archived at:

• Talk:Main Page/Archive 1 (January 18, 2011–February 27, 2011)
• Talk:Main Page/Archive 2 (February 28, 2011-April 25, 2011)

Countdown

Now that the broadcast is over, the countdown should probably be removed. However, simply removing it looks pretty weird, the page looks empty without its red box at the top. SO what do we do, color the "Contents" box in red? Leave everything as-is and just remove the countdown boxes? --Homerun-chan 09:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

For now, I made the box you see now. However, it'd be strange to leave it like that forever. Personally, I don't think the page looks weird without the red box. It's probably just a matter of habit. --KFYatek 11:07, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Could always have a countdown of the BD and manga releases. --Holycrap 17:43, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but eventual times are vague. DVD/BD vol.1 launch date is April 27th. When we should countdown to? Midnight JST of 26th/27th? Opening of first DVD/BD store in Japan on 27th? ;) When we had concrete times, we could countdown, now it's a bit too fuzzy in my opinion. --KFYatek 17:54, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, seeing the page with its big red boxes just looked more familiar since it's been like that for months; it's probably just a matter of habit indeed. I also considered using the countdown for manga/BD/OST/other stuff, but indeed it's a bit fuzzy. Maybe make the countdown look fuzzy too; something like the Ubuntu countdown? (basically, it only counts the number of days left, then on release date it shows "it's almost there!", and "it's out!" when relevant). Another option is to not make countdowns at all, but use the red box to put notices when something gets released (i.e. on the 27th and for one day or so, it should state that the first BD is out, then disappear until the 25th of May, and so on) --Homerun-chan 18:58, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking about a day-only countdown, too, but for some reason I thought that it's not possible on MediaWiki. I think the existence of <countdown /> tag made me think that, but it's probably just a matter of a little JavaScript-enabled template. The variant with announcements is also quite plausible. --KFYatek 19:12, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Changing the menus

As I said on the Media talkpage, I think we'll have to refactor this page's menus a bit. I think we should somehow:

• Separate the pages about paid material (Products and Merchandise) from pages that talk about the content, and give them their own section (Manga for instance, isn't about buying the manga, but about the story)
• Create a new section Media where we'd stuff Media (renamed and split in two pages for the occasion, see its talkpage), Opening, Ending, OST and Character Songs
• Maybe move Manga into the "Setting" section too?
• I don't know what we do about Translated Official Documents. It doesn't really belong to the paid material, but it doesn't really belong to the new Media section either

In other words, having a hierarchy that looks more like the sidebar in a way --Homerun-chan 21:24, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The appearance of a new "Novel" section made me think of a new menu structure again. I propose the following:

Left column: About the Puella Magi universe

• Setting
  • Characters
  • Locations
  • Glossary
• Series
  • Anime series (link to the "Episodes" page)
  • Madoka manga
  • Kazumi Magica
  • Oriko Magica
  • Novel (if the page grows enough)
• Products
  • Blu-rays, DVD, manga, ... (link to the "Products" page)
  • Merchandise
  • Opening/Ending/OST/Character Songs

Right column: Derived content

• Articles and community Content
  • Runes
  • Notes
  • Articles & analyses
  • Theories and speculah
  • Facts & observations
• Media
  • Translated Official Documents/Twitter
  • Teasers & CMs
  • Fanworks
  • Events and venues
• Communication
  • Threads
  • Speculah pad (do we need it anymore?)
  • IRC

Your thoughts? --Homerun-chan 17:54, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Right column? AS in, a side bar on the right? Hmm... I'm not sold, I'd need to see how it looks first. But yeah, I mostly agree, aside from two two pages, Glossary and Locations. I'm gonna be honest, I don't really like either.
The first one... I don't get it.I understand those terms are the basics of the show, but then again, precisely because of that, shouldn't we have more detailed pages on them?
As for Locations, as of now it's just a list of list of stuff in Mitakihara and random witch barriers. Even if someone (well... me) added things from Asunaro (Kazumi's city), it'd still feel a bit empty and pointless. --BrickBreak 18:33, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I was talking about the menu on the Main Page, not the sidebar...
Also, I just rearranged the links that are already there. I see no need to delete either of the links you cite: as you say, Glossary is the basics, so it should stay in the menu (if you come to this site from a Google search, that probably means your primary goal is to find information about the series; the speculah and stuff only comes afterwards). As for the Locations page, besides its emptiness, it's retweeted frequently so it's probably pretty popular (too bad I do not have access to more detailed/reliable statistics though) --Homerun-chan 18:39, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Do'h. Second time I've pulled a fail like that.
In that case, I completely support your rearrangement.
Either way, I wasn't suggesting a deletion for either page. For the glossary, I was suggesting detailed pages on Soul Gems, Grief Seeds and the such. It's nothing but a suggestion, though.
As for the Locations page, it needs a overhaul, but this time I'm out of ideas. Had no idea it was tweeted that often (or any page, for that matter. People tweet the weirdest stuff, no offense to ourselves :P), that's a lovely fact. --BrickBreak 18:55, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Dear wikibros, now is your chance to tell me if you don't like the new menus, as I am thinking of changing it one of these days, now that the Documents redesign is on its way. --Homerun-chan 20:57, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Copyright guidelines?

It just hit me recently, when I saw the Drama CD's translation on the talk page, and BD's yonkoma's scanlation uploaded. In terms of legality, we're technically in the grey zone, as eg. hi-res screenshots don't qualify as fair use, but I don't know of anyone ever making a big deal out of it. But shouldn't we make some kind of copyright guidelines, just to be sure nobody crosses the line between gray and black? We all (at least I hope so) instinctively know that links to fansubs and full chapter scanlations are a no-no, but things like the aforementioned Drama CD translations and official yonkoma scans are somewhat more vague. Maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but none of us wants getting a C&D one day, and when they may actually send one, they might want us to delete everything they'll find infringing, even though there'd be only one thing actually concerning them.
What do you think? Should we actually make some guidelines or am I just being paranoid? --KFYatek 20:51, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how old is this Guidelines#Scanlations.2C_fansubs_and_copyrighted_material. I personally would remove this section all together, just to be sure - Ume_Aoki#Doujin_Gallery. - Prima 04:31, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Since this is doujin material I think we are ok. Technically this isnt official material, since it was produced outside the official industry. I am sure the law treats doujin differently. --Mutopis 04:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I hear your concern and that's one reason I replaced the official pages with English translated ones, leaving only a few pages that are actual scans of her original work. Remember, Ume's doujin is only sold in Japanese in Japan, and having the pages altered into English essentially devalues everything we've posted to any potential Japanese buyers. If her work gets translated and sold outside Japan, we can re-evaluate that. -randomanon 05:34, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Site Maintenance

General maintenance question, is there a way we can delete uploaded files or a procedure to request them to be deleted? Looks like from mediawiki, this requires sysop permissions [1]. --randomanon 08:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

That probably needs administrative rights indeed. You can still add the files to the Category:Deletion requests, and we'll do it when we feel like it. Just out of curiousity, what do you want to be deleted? --Homerun-chan 13:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I think he may be talking about the first 5 pages of Oriko he uploaded yesterday, before the guidelines have been established. I've added them to deletion requests, too. --KFYatek 14:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

KFY got most of them. It took me a few minutes to figure out to go to the file, edit, and paste in Category:Deletion requests. But managed to do that with another upload file and now I'm set. Thanks. --randomanon 14:38, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Scans

Version 1 zip for the editors of the documents pages. http://www.mediafire.com/?2dpopbaa7flo8y3 File won't be up too long. Please do not distribute. -randomanon 00:12, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Added a password protect to the file. Please post if you still need the scans and I'll release it. --randomanon 23:35, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

If you really wanna share this file in stealth mode, wouldn't it be easier to rendezvous with the contributors on the IRC and sending them by XDCC or something? (or even send them the link by PM) --Homerun-chan 06:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh well, I'm use to being anonymous so I don't even think to ask people for IRC or PM info. I figure if anyone wants access, I can leave it up for a bit. I've unlocked the file for now. --randomanon 06:52, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Sidebar glicthing out

KFY had already noticed this, and so had I, but I caught it again and captured it. The items in the toolbox change, but only it and the Navigation links appear. It has lasted for at least the last 10 minutes, on every page. It eventually disappears, though. --BrickBreak 22:29, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Just saw the bug, probably something related to caching. Not sure if it's my setup or MediaWiki's bug though. --0x99 21:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Puella Magi Imageboard

A user suggested to me in IRC few days ago that we should have our own image board (or text board, whatever) setup here, probably as board.puella-magi.net or as a separate domain. There's no extra burden to the server if I were to setup one. What's a general opinion on this? --0x99 19:18, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Whatever is easiest to house and manage the influx of scans and art we're planning on getting. I have no opinions, otherwise. One question, if we went with a different medium, would the decision be made soon? Just useful to know on how much effort to put in on uploading scans etc. now on the wiki. --randomanon 19:22, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll probably need to write up a custom board engine if we are going to create an image board (since I don't like how Wakaba handle file uploads) but since the wiki and the board would not share file uploads, I think uploading like always should be OK. (Probably don't upload work-in-process images for the time being.) --0x99 19:53, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like a lot of work. Would it be worth the benefits of having an image board? --randomanon 19:59, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Nothing is worthless for Madoka Magica! We could also use it as illust. dump, and such anyways. --0x99 20:03, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

OK, sounds good to me. Modified version off what I posted earlier today, "Sometimes I wish there was a real Madoka fansite somewhere and I could have my own personal corner to just post random stuff I have that I like." I don't feel I can do that on the wiki, partly because it's a formal site and I don't want to detract from the informativeness of it with a clutter of random things and partly because I'd like the freedom to delete and rotate things off/on. So I'm excited if I can have something like that. --randomanon 20:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll probably have some free time for the next few weeks, so I'll gladly give a hand with the coding if you want (although I'm not sure we need to write our own engine. There must be more than one engine available out there, right?). --Homerun-chan 20:13, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

If you know anything other than Wakaba (that could upload to a remote server), please feel free to suggest it. --0x99 20:17, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Link also points out Danbooru type board. I don't know if that's better since I don't know how it compares with Wakaba, but that's an option. --randomanon 21:01, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally I prefer 2chan-style boards, since it allows for both discussion and image dump. Boorus have too much emphasis on images, and not enough on messages. Just my opinion though --Homerun-chan 21:09, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm really fine with anything, just the sound of "coding an engine" sounds difficult and time-consuming so I was concerned. But I don't know jack about it so I'll stay out of the technical stuff and stick with my usual routine that I do know. --randomanon 21:24, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Actually I do not, I just figured out there could've been more than one. In fact, the other wiki only references three, two of which have stopped their development... Guess it's time to code Madokachan then --Homerun-chan 20:42, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Having our own imageboard may be a more convenient way to dump images than the current wiki system (I mean, for images that don't really belong anywhere in particular). Might also make the whole magazine translation process easier to do, as randomanon said. On the other hand, I don't think there'd be much Madoka-related discussion (aside from news and magazine scans), so I'd rather go with an image board rather than a text board. --Homerun-chan 19:37, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

And for silly stuff too ;) --0x99 19:53, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course, that went without saying :) --Homerun-chan 20:00, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Feeling Slow

• Is it me or does the wiki feels... slow... --Mutopis 22:07, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Happy Halloween 2011

Happy Halloween, everyone. Don't eat too much candy and beware of Witches! --Mutopis 17:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

ANIME NEWS: 'Madoka Magica' nominated for SF award

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/anime_news/AJ201111180131

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan announced Oct. 31 that the anime TV series "Puella Magi Madoka Magica" was among five works nominated for the 32th Nihon SF Taisho Award.

The awards cover a wide range of genres, including novels, criticism, manga, visual works, illustrations, music and nonfiction, and are restricted to works released over the year to Aug. 31.

The other four nominees are Koji Mishima's "Dynamic Figure" from Hayakawa Publishing Corp.; Sayuri Ueda's "The Ocean Chronicles" from Hayakawa; Hideaki Sena's "Kibo" (hope) from Hayakawa; and Junya Yokota's "Kindai Nihon Kiso Shosetsu-shi: Meiji-hen" (A history of Japanese modern fantasy novels: Meiji Period) from Pilar Press Corp.

The first three are novels. The last is a work of nonfiction.

"Puella Magi Madoka Magica" was directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, who has worked on many popular anime titles. Gen Urobuchi, who works for Nitroplus Co. and has created many hit anime, wrote the script.

It is in the "magical girl" genre, featuring cute female characters in a dark fantasy environment and has a complicated, multi-layered storyline.

This is the first time in three years that an anime title has been nominated for the award. "Coil a Circle of Children" won the grand prize in 2008, while the "Neon Genesis Evangelion" anime series and "Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2" film also won in previous years.

For more information, visit the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan official website at (http://www.sfwj.or.jp/list.html). --Mutopis 18:09, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2RS4pnnF40 Everyday until you like it - Prima 20:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

favicon

Hey! Didn't we use to have some favicon for the wiki? Because it seems to be unavailable right now. But maybe I remember wrong ... --Homerun-chan 06:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Not that I would remember, but I could be wrong. CuleX 09:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Well I somehow remember a purple soul gem from my blurry memories of the RSS feed ... --Homerun-chan 12:04, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

I've always had a witch kiss... --BrickBreak 16:33, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The same as what I see. Yorkwoo 17:18, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Err yeah right, it was a witch kiss. Anyway, I did my investigation and apparently it only disappeared on Firefox (8.0) for some reason. Works fine on Chrome. --Homerun-chan 19:25, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not showing up in chrome, new firefox, old firefox, or safari for me, but the saved entry in bookmarks does have it. Can you guys confirm you're getting the favicon fresh instead of using a cached copy? KM 09:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

For some reason Chrome (16.0.912.75m) still shows it even after I cleared the cache. No other browser does though, I even tried with IE and my cellphone. EDIT: looks like the file (favicon.ico) is not available, I unsuccessfully tried accessing it through Firefox's source code browser. Now to make sure and/or fix it we'll probably need User:0x99 --Homerun-chan 14:26, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Related Sites

About the recent edit, that link looks like it would fit in Fanworks. Unless the admins have another idea, I assumed the main page's related sites meant sites related to the wiki or other main page items, and general lists of Madoka-related sites would be in the fanworks page. KM 09:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently that issue has been taken care of already, but it made me wonder: is there a need to have two links to Walpurgischan? (one in the "communication" section of the right menu, and one at the very bottom). --Homerun-chan 14:36, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Fandom

I swear, sometimes I wonder how the other fans look at Madokafans when they see these pages. We have math pages, yuri pages, fanwork pages, contents that deals with history, mythology, religion, symbolism, etc. We have bits and pieces about translations, interviews, merchandise, speculations and not to mention scientific (from architecture to weapons) articles (not to mention the Faust pages). Hell, I just added little bits of quantum mechanics in Amy's page, a page about a cat! Sometimes I wonder if they think we are losing our minds... --Mutopis 10:21, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Not that I am complaining, but I get the feeling they look at us as if we are not your average fans. --Mutopis 10:40, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, aside from being a Madoka fan, I'm a Haruhi fan, too. And lurking on the Haruhi wiki... well, I can't decide, it's kind of a mix of disappointment and respect. It's true that the Haruhi wiki looks more polished and professional than ours, the information is more properly organized and formatted there - even though we strive to be organized, we still look a bit like "oh, a new bit of info... LOL, let's just put that anywhere" compared to them. But... that wiki is just plain facts and official info, there are no speculations, no fan interpretations, it's just a condensed database of official facts. Well, that's one way to do a wiki... but I still prefer our way of doing things, I guess.

At least their forums are better (compared to their wiki, I mean), and it's actually a pretty nice place for speculah. --kFYatek 16:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, the difficulty here is that our wiki was meant for the speculah to begin with, and just grew with other "official" information later on. So it's only natural that ours is more messy since we had to move from one model (speculah-centric, and also mainly meant for /a/nons) to another (more general, meant for all). Oh and by the way, happy birthday PMWiki! --Homerun-chan 16:38, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Homerun-chan, we've got your IP, we're going to hunt your house down and force you to make contract with kyubey (LOL).

But seriously, it's wiki's birthday? Great! May it grow and prosper and become the most awesome place in the Internet! --kFYatek 18:34, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

It's funny, today's the wiki's birthday, tomorrow's mine, lol. Anyway, happy birthday wiki, and thanks to everyone who helped you grow! --BrickBreak 20:54, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

The Haruhi wiki looks a bit sparse to me. The wiki style I've been accustomed to is factually informative and very well organized, with clear, concise summaries. Sailor Moon's is superlative. With hundreds of eps, manga chapters, live action, etc. aired in many different country versions, it's still remarkably easy to navigate and find information without getting confused. They properly separate out the source categories, give excellent summaries which drill down into more detail and then you can see the level of information for an episode is very informative without being just a list of official bullet points. Due to the length and complexity of information, they separate out pages but in a logical fashion like the magical girl Sailor Moon from her civilian Usagi identity. Notice with those pages, how there's many cross-links provided in easy to find categories, so it makes it easy to locate the section you want. There's a great deal of depth to the wiki, with more content than the Madoka wiki, yet you don't feel overwhelmed by it because of how it's organized. They also make it easy for new users to get started with an excellent set of clearly defined rules, policies and style guidelines to maintain the integrity and consistency of the content. --randomanon 18:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Elaborating a bit here: The Madoka wiki has content that you normally don't see in a wiki and so it's not going to resemble a Sailor Moon wiki. Still, there are many elements that you can borrow from it to improve this wiki to make it more user-friendly as the Madoka Magica franchise grows. Let me give an example. Under Kyouko's profile, I might create a subcategory of powers or attacks like you see on Sailor Moon. In that subcategory, I'd put in a description of her special attack like this:
Rosso Fantasma is Kyoko's special attack associated with her wish, that she lost after her family died. It was first referenced in an interview as a "charming or hallucination" power, then subsequently introduced in the drama CD "Farewell Story" as an illusionary power that allows her to fight with duplicates of herself. She is shown with this power in the PSP game.
As I write the entry, I think of the information that a user would want to know, with cross-links to find out more info on that ability in a specific context (e.g. when was it first mentioned? where was introduced? how does it appear in the game? etc). Notice how "wish" and "family died" is in red...as I write it, I note there are certain elements someone would want to read about, e.g. Kyouko's wish and her background story. Rather than simply direct someone to her character page where they'd have to read a wall of text to find it, it'd be useful to have subsections on "Wish" and "Family Background" to direct to, and it's a format that could apply to all the magical girl characters. This makes it easy for a reader to get the necessary info clearly and concisely, while encouraging them to visit different parts of the site. It is of course a lot more work to use this approach, but for contributors who have been wanting to do something for the wiki, this kind of re-organization is probably the most useful thing someone can do. tl;dr version: Surf around on Sailor Moon and try to picture what a first time visitor would think of that vs. the Madoka wiki. --randomanon 19:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it seems pretty obvious what would greatly improve the wiki at the moment - refactoring the main character pages. We have guidelines for those since May, and they've been followed pretty well for new characters since then, eg. Kazumi/Oriko original ones (although I don't like that the exact same text seems to be copypasted over different pages like chapter summaries and pages of all the characters involved), but they've never been actually implemented for the core cast. The core cast pages are certainly one of the most important places of the wiki, yet they are one of the worse done ones. Well, I may start refactoring those one day... Momoism started a refactor of Madoka's page in his private namespace, but he's gone ever since not long after that. Well, I may continue that job one day, but not yet just now, so anyone else feel free to do it if you feel like it ;) --kFYatek 22:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, what's really unique about our wiki is that it seems it's one of the very few wikis that allow and even pretty much encourages documenting fan-based speculation, analyses, linking fanworks etc. Pretty much every other wiki (TVTropes being the most notable exception; in fact, I feel we're quite similar to them in many ways), regardless of its popularity and size, makes big emphasis on maintaining unbiased and objective factual accuracy, leaving theories and speculah for just forums and the like.

As for organization of content, I guess us editors and regular lurkers are quite biased. We already know most of the information on the wiki, so on the one hand, we know where to look when we need something specific, and on the other, are aware of all the quirks and inconsistencies, because we experienced them first-hand. To really know how well or badly organized is this wiki, I'd like to read an opinion of someone who watched Madoka recently and started to read the wiki just, say, this week. --kFYatek 19:32, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Start a discussion post on the sites wiki people visit and ask them what they think of the wiki. I've already seen people give some unsolicited opinions from lurking, but a more direct approach would work better. I would offer to do more myself but I have to be realistic about time constraints. The amount you see me posting on the wiki is a tiny fraction of what I do that's Madoka-related. I look through 10+ sites on average in 3+ different languages (some I'm far from proficient in) every day to find new info, with 2ch alone averaging 7000 posts to skim through. It's a role I can't ask just anyone to do but finding ways to improv the organization of the wiki is realistically something any contributor who has a good grasp of English, organizational skills and the patience to read through everything and take notes. And of course, willing to put in the time and effort. --randomanon 19:37, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's amazing how much are you doing on this wiki ever since you appeared here. Sometimes I feel like you are not doing anything not Madoka-related ;) But you have to have school or work... and I guess Madoka is not your only hobby, right? --kFYatek 22:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Not that I want to tax the site too much, but has anyone ever thought of creating a "page/article of the week" (assigned randomly) so newcomers or those who arent aware of the existence of other pages get a chance to at least look at it... --Mutopis 01:18, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

That's not too bad idea, but it can't be assigned totally randomly. There are pages which simply don't have enough content to be featured in any way, for example Animedia 2012-01 - it's just one image, at least for now. I don't know whether some automatic verification scheme is feasible (both in terms of the algorithm - though I think that's possible - and implementability on the MediaWiki platform), or the article would need to invariably picked (or at least verified) by a human. --kFYatek 02:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)