Talk:Main Page

Halopedia dot org
You guys have no idea how awesome it is to see the site back in Halopedia.org where it all started. Great job, everyone. - AgentSeeethroo


 * Hey man, I think so too! Although it technically started on the Black Box Republic heyoo. -- 17:30, 18 July 2012 (EDT)


 * Yeah. Black Box Republic, then GamerFocus, now FREEEEE! Seriously, you guys are awesome. Let me know how I can help. --Seethroorrrrr


 * Another entry for the site's history. :) — subtank   12:18, 19 July 2012 (EDT)

Halopedia Podcast
Once again, my brilliance is showing. I think a really good way to gain traction in the middle of the Halo 4 hype would be to start doing a podcast. We could talk about exciting news that's constantly popping up in all the trailers and interviews and whatnot; have a featured article on the podcast just like we do on the page; give shout-outs to editors that are truly rocking the house. You know...stuff like that. If anyone wants to consider this, hit me up on my userpage thanger. I'd really like all your input. --Mutha Effin Seethroo


 * I'd love to listen to such a podcast, but it doesn't look like there are a lot of volunteers to host. -- 17:44, 1 August 2012 (EDT)


 * I don't know all that much about the technical side of things (editing, publishing, uploading, etc.), but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't even slightly interested in hosting or, at the very least, regularly participating in discussions.
 * I think it would be interesting to do, considering that we've done it in the past.-- Spartacus  ('''Talk 17:53, 1 August 2012 (EDT)


 * That's cool, I did a podcast several years ago too for my old Porplemontage Studios site. -- 18:02, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

(reset indent) A few requirement to make sure the podcast is successful for a long run (at least a year?): (1) a dedicated team of at least three, (2) a podcast for every week, if not for every fortnight, and (3) a length of at least 7 to 10 minutes.— subtank   06:53, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Bulletin-Specialization
The latest bulletin (here) has a whole trove of new info and armor and stuff. But I'm not sure how to organize it. For example, are the names of the armor the same as the specializations? Bioniclepluslotr 10:22, 16 August 2012 (EDT)
 * I asked the same question. Just like you I don't know how to go about adding any of this information. I think the most I can think of doing is adding a new article called "Specializations" and adding all the information there. However specializations to me come off as the same as tactical packages & support upgrades so it's even more confusing. -- Killamint  [Comm |Files ] 12:23, 16 August 2012 (EDT)
 * Okay I've read the bulletin more thoroughly. You do not have to wear that specific armor for the mod which means that the specific armor is in fact a new variant which means 8 new armor variants to add to the Halo 4 page & Halopedia altogether. That's what I believe. Also I went ahead and created the page so that we can go ahead and start adding more info. -- Killamint  [Comm |Files ] 18:12, 16 August 2012 (EDT)
 * Do we know the names of the armors? Are they the same as the armor mod? Bioniclepluslotr  10:52, 18 August 2012 (EDT)
 * Like I said before, the armor is synonymous with the specialization, so the pathfinder specialization includes the pathfinder armor, the operator specialization includes the operator armor, and so on. However you do not have to wear that specific armor to use that specific specialization/armor mod. -- Killamint  [Comm |Files ] 12:02, 18 August 2012 (EDT)

Notable Real World Figures
Before we start creating articles for every 343 Industries employee we see, can we discuss the notability of real world figures? I know we did the same (as in creating articles) with the Bungie staffs, but I'm thinking about deleting most of them, and leaving the notable guys. I mean, Marcus Lehto, Marty, Jason Jones, these are the guys who made prominent appearances in ViDocs, some were made into easter eggs in the series. But how about people like Steve Abeyta or Jason Major? Are they important and notable ? Do we even remember how did Stanley Stephen Huntsman contribute to the Halo series? Samuel Jones has a stub label on it. How much can we expand on him? "Graham Bartlett is a production engineering lead and worked on Halo 3." Is it necessary to include such information? "Mark Bernal is more widely known for his work on Marathon 2: Durandal, where he managed to insert one of the most difficult Easter Eggs to discover his initials." Doesn't that belong in Pfhorpedia and not here? These people worked hard, I know, but they deserve to be in Bungiepedia, not here.

tl:dr, can we delete articles about the ordinary Bungie staffs and leave the notable ones, so we can set a new policy for notable real world figures? — S331 (COM • Mission Log • Profile) 11:00, 4 September 2012 (EDT)
 * I completely agree with you. I don't know who these people you mentioned above even are, their articles belong on Bungiepedia and not necessarily here. The standard for real world notability should be along the lines of "if they did not appear in a ViDoc and their notability to the Halo series is only a trivial mention, then they aren't notable enough to have an article".-- Spartacus,   Halopedia Administrator  Talk 11:13, 4 September 2012 (EDT)

Also, before this goes on any further, I think we also need to talk about voice actors for Halo: Reach. Steve Downes, Pete Stacker, and Jen Taylor are fine, but I doubt Jamie Hector, Freddy Bosche or Alona Tal would voice someone in the Halo series again. The Elder Scrolls Wiki has a good system. — S331 (COM • Mission Log • Profile) 11:24, 4 September 2012 (EDT)
 * On the subject of voice actors, I've been thinking that we need to make it clearer as to who voices who. Other Wikis often include voice actors in a character's infobox but that may not work due to the in-universe nature of the ones on Halopedia. I do think though that we need a consistent, and clear format for voice actors (and prominent mo-cap actors) on the characters' pages.--Soul reaper 11:33, 4 September 2012 (EDT)


 * Having hub pages for the voice cast (like in the TES wiki example) is something that I was actually planning to do a while ago and had already forgotten. Instead of having separate cast lists for each game (which are included in credits pages anyway), however, maybe we could have a single hub page for all characters throughout the series. Characters who have appeared in multiple pieces of media (e.g. John-117) would have a neat table which would list the voice actor(s) (or in some cases, actual actors) who have portrayed that character in each piece of media they've appeared in. If you're looking for information like that it's a lot easier to find when it's all in one place. On the downside, a page like that could get pretty massive, especially if it has pictures. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 13:52, 4 September 2012 (EDT)

The notability policy provides a general guidelines on determining notability. Based on the current examples given in this discussion, most would fail the second criteria (e.g. subject has foreseeable growth, thus should be awarded its own article) but fit within the first (e.g. subject mentioned in a List as it does not have any foreseeable growth). So, I don't think we really need a new policy for real world figures. As for voice actor mention in character article, we've already done that by putting it in the trivia. Voice actors should be in the first bulletpoint in the trivia section; take Miranda Keyes's trivia section as an example. And it is a better practice to keep separating in-universe info from real-world. — subtank   13:41, 4 September 2012 (EDT)
 * We don't need a completely new policy. We just need to set an example for the notability of real world figures. I am also aware most of the characters articles have the voice actor included in the trivia section. My point is, these articles about individual Bungie employees can't be expanded and should be considered for deletion. — S331 Bubbleshieldhud.svg(COM • Mission Log • Profile) 06:46, 5 September 2012 (EDT)
 * Every case should be judged individually and there are always exceptions, but I imagine that a basic precedent would go something like this:
 * If the person hasn't appeared prominently outside credits (e.g. in conventions, ViDocs, etc) or isn't otherwise noteworthy for some specific thing, then it's usually safe to say they don't deserve an article.
 * If the page only contains one or two paragraphs with the name of the person, their job, an ultimately irrelevant trivial fact or two, and possibly a list of games they may have worked on, and there is no real potential for expansion, then it's probably not noteworthy (this is true for many less-known Bungie employees, e.g. Ryan Hylland, Deena Lawrence)
 * If our credits pages contains as much information as the article on that person, then it's certainly not noteworthy (e.g. Tim Williams, Roberta Browne, Matthew Burns)
 * You can go ahead and delete-tag any articles that don't fill any of those criteria. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 01:49, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

Recent Changes Error
I'm getting some sort of error on the recent changes page. Next to every word, there is "â€Ž". This is what I am seeing. Is this something on my computer I need checked, or is it a coding error on the website?-- Spartacus,   Halopedia Administrator  Talk 09:55, 5 September 2012 (EDT)
 * I don't have this problem, so it is probably your computer or your web browser. — S331 Bubbleshieldhud.svg(COM • Mission Log • Profile) 10:36, 5 September 2012 (EDT)
 * Well, whatever it was, resetting my preferences seems to have fixed it.-- Spartacus,   Halopedia Administrator  Talk 13:48, 5 September 2012 (EDT)

Halo 4 script page in BTS video
This has been all over the internet for the past few days, but in case anyone's missed it, in the recently released Making Halo 4: A Hero Awakens video, in the part where they start discussing the use of motion capture in Halo 4's cinematics, we see a page of the game script for a split second. The page contains some pretty spoiler-ish material, though nothing that would come as a surprise to those of us who have been paying attention to the hints they've been dropping for the past year.

Nevertheless, I'm opening this for discussion, because as the material itself could be considered a spoiler to some people, it's open to question whether we should incorporate the information in our articles. I know some sources are calling this a leak, but I don't believe it qualifies as one when it's in a video released by 343i themselves. Would they unintentionally record a close-up of the script and put it in their video, knowing that the more observant fans would pick the video apart and find details like this a few hours after they released it? It's more likely that they want to stir speculation, or simply confirm what they have already been hinting for some time now. Going by our spoilers policy, everything released directly by official channels (like this video is) is acceptable, but given the talks about a "leak" and the indirect nature of the reveal itself (i.e. they didn't announce it outright in a press release, trailer or anything), I suppose this is a borderline case. --<font color="MidnightBlue">Jugus (<font color="Gray">Talk  | <font color="Gray">Contribs ) 02:03, 6 September 2012 (EDT)


 * While it is indeed a spoiler, it will not (and should not) be considered as a leak since it was released in an official capacity (unless they claim the media was an unauthorised release). Who knows, it might be an early script... — subtank   02:19, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

"Upload multiple files" special page
This wiki used to have this wonderful special page which let you upload many files at once - much easier than having to upload them separately when needing to upload multiple images. It's been gone for a while now, though, or at least it doesn't show up in the special pages list anymore. Was there a specific reason for removing it, such as server issues as a result of uploading too many files at the same time? In that case, I understand completely. If not, however, any chance of seeing it brought back? --<font color="MidnightBlue">Jugus (<font color="Gray">Talk  | <font color="Gray">Contribs ) 02:03, 6 September 2012 (EDT)


 * The extension is not installed in the wiki due to an incompatibility with MediaWiki v1.19. Then again, Wikia has it enabled in their wikis... but I guess it's because they've modified it to work with their Oasis skin (presumably circumventing the incompatibility issue).— subtank   02:28, 6 September 2012 (EDT)


 * Yeah, that extension is a pain because it's unsupported and with every new version of MediaWiki, there's a new issue with it. -- 02:59, 6 September 2012 (EDT)


 * The best way to upload multiple files, for now, is by opening special:upload in multiple tabs. This is probably better since it will make sure every uploaded images have some licensing information.— subtank   03:23, 6 September 2012 (EDT)

"Grunt" --> "Unggoy"?
So, as far as I can tell, the only reason a certain series of Easter eggs are called "Cowardly Grunt", "Final Grunt", etc. is that there was a "Food-Nipple Grunt" (currently "Thirsty Grunt") before the word "Unggoy" was known with the release of Halo 2. Now that we have accepted the standard of referring to them as "Unggoy", is there any good reason not to move these articles to "Cowardly Unggoy", etc.? --<font color="#800080">Dragon<font color="#DE397E">c laws (<font color="#6600D8">talk ) 14:50, 6 September 2012 (EDT)
 * There was a discussion or two about this a while ago and I think it was decided that in-universe terminology should only be used in articles written from an in-universe perspective. It's even included in the Manual of Style. This is mostly because first, the common names are more accessible to general audiences (i.e. not fiction buffs) who might look up information on Easter eggs and the like. Second, there is a point to be made that using formal in-universe terms in inherently silly and absurd topics like the various Grunt easter eggs creates an awkward juxtaposition between the subject matter and the language, and may at worst come across as a tad pretentious. --<font color="MidnightBlue">Jugus (<font color="Gray">Talk  | <font color="Gray">Contribs ) 15:08, 6 September 2012 (EDT)
 * Okay, that makes sense. --<font color="#800080">Dragon<font color="#DE397E">c laws (<font color="#6600D8">talk ) 19:33, 6 September 2012 (EDT)
 * What about in the infoboxes? Should that read "Unggoy" or "Grunt"? --<font color="#800080">Dragon<font color="#DE397E">c laws (<font color="#6600D8">talk ) 04:14, 12 September 2012 (EDT)

Easter Egg Cleanup
I've been going through Category:Easter Eggs, and I'm seeing a lot of issues. It seems like the eggs receive a lot of neglect. A lot of them have terrible titles, are badly sourced, and read like they haven't been edited for about ten years (yes, before Halopedia, probably because they were ripped off from HBO). Not to mention the difficulty people have in identifying Easter eggs vs. things Bungie adds to flesh out the Halo universe (like writing on weapons cases). It all could use a big overhaul. --<font color="#800080">Dragon<font color="#DE397E">c laws (<font color="#6600D8">talk ) 04:14, 12 September 2012 (EDT)

I just wanna say this site is so much nicer than the other halo.wikia.com rendition. I always come here for halo facts.

Transcripts
With the release of Halo 4 approaching, we are going to have to transcribe campaign and Spartan Ops lines. However, before those, we still need to finish Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 as well as Making Halo 4: Infinity Multiplayer. Each of us don't need to finish the whole thing, but just contribute perhaps 3-5 minutes of the video. For the documentary, we don't even need to include a description of what's happening on screen. I will try to squeeze out some of my own time to transcribe the videos, but I'm still adapting to my new and busier school curriculum. So please, you can just work on around 4 minutes of the video, and click "Save page". If each of us can do a small part, the transcripts will be done in no time! Thanks! —  SPARTAN 331  05:47, 29 October 2012 (EDT)

Navigation sidebar
I'm sure everyone's spending all their time playing Halo 4 right now, so I'll cut right to the chase. We need to make a change to Halopedia's navigation sidebar. Specifically, I think it's time we removed the "Cancelled Projects" tab from the main navigation bar. I can't think of any other wiki that features its franchise's failures so prominently. This wasn't such an issue when we listed each game in the Games tab, with an additional sub-tab at the bottom for cancelled games. But now when you scroll over Games it pops up four options "Bungie games", "Reclaimer Trilogy", "Other games", and "Cancelled Projects". I'm not saying these pages don't have their place - it's important that we recognize the projects that never quite made it. And we'll still keep them listed in the Games template, and in the Games category, which means they're still easily visible to anyone who's interested in them. I'm just saying that it does a disservice to the (dare I say "real"?) games to have the failed projects listed so prominently right beside them. They have their place, and it's not in the main nav bar.

In the same vein, and possibly more important, I think it's time we remove the "Halo movie" tab from the Books & Media --> Live Action subtab. Select "Live Action" and we see the following list: Landfall, The Life, Birth of a Spartan, Remember Reach, Forward Unto Dawn, and Halo movie. Does one of those seem like the odd one out? Hint: five of them actually got made. I know we're all Halo experts here, but imagine how that looks to a more casual fan checking out our wiki for the first time. They scroll through the list of released media, and suddenly they spy "Hey! There's a Halo movie!?" Then they click the link and find a page with too few citations and improper grammar that states that the film was placed on "indefinite hold" (studio-talk for "dead") more than 6 years ago, and the last time anyone said anything was more than 2 years ago when Frankie basically said "We'll do it when the time is right." I'm not saying the project is dead, I'm saying it's like Linda at the end Fall of Reach: flatlined and placed in stasis until they choose to thaw it out and resurrect it. When (if) they ever do make a Hollywood film, they'll be basically be starting from scratch. Listing this article right next to Forward Unto Dawn is confusing at best, insulting at worst. Once again, it'll stay in the category and template. It just has no business being in the main nav bar.--  Rusty  -  112  00:41, 6 November 2012 (EST)


 * It's four canceled projects versus 8 games, 13 books, and tons more comics and media. Hardly disillusioning. And when I first came to the wiki and perused the sidebar, I sure wasn't disillusioned by reading about those cancelled projects at all. I was fascinated by them and the information they contained. They can keep their place there, based of the wealth of information that they have. Tuckerscreator (<font color="#008000">stalk ) 04:07, 6 November 2012 (EST)


 * If the Halo Movie page has too few citations and poor grammar, then let's clean it up.  UNSC_MIC.jpg Captain  MIC  23:53, 6 November 2012 (EST)


 * I completely agree on the Halo Movie, but I believe that Halo DS needs to be removed from the side bar more than Canceled Projects in general. At least Chronicles and the MMO were at one point in time KNOWN projects. "Casamassina claimed it 'wasn't created by a garage developer, it was actually done by a major studio, a major publisher, AAA publisher,'  but he did not reveal the source of the demo ". And, "but there has never been an officially funded or sanctioned development of any sort of DS Halo game." And once again, "The game was rumored throughout 2007,  but was never acknowledged or developed by Bungie or Microsoft ." In the sole source is a video in which the host talks about "Once upon a time" and "Cancelled for reasons we cant discuss". Putting all of this together it sounds like a Fan-Made Mod as a pitch (which the article states). It seems to me as if it doesnt have enough reliable sources to be in the sidebar as its all up to you to blindly trust the host of the video.-- SpaceCowboy  Chatter <font color="Green">Contribs 04:20, 11 November 2012 (EST)

Site Activity
I have a special site activity thing on my userpage. I seem to remember having it on Wikia, on the sidebar, below the 'Did You Know' feature (Yes I lurked as an anon for quite a while). Would anyone have any objections to putting it back on the sidebar? Or is it not even possible to put it on the sidebar?-- 11:06, 17 December 2012 (EST)


 * I can put it on the sidebar for logged-in users only because I don't want it to constantly invalidate the page cache for guests. Do you want to do that? -- 15:43, 17 December 2012 (EST)
 * Yeah, that be good.-- 15:45, 17 December 2012 (EST)