From LOST

Contents 1 Mutual "Bob" Problem 2 Need help? 3 Scott and Steve 4 show most recent 5 Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro 6 Not going to do you wrong 7 Blocking 8 Sidebar Change 9 Translation 10 Changes 11 Cynthia charles 12 Vandal 13 Helping Hand 14 New header 15 Flashes 16 New user 17 Any Tips? 18 Signature Help Please 19 Thank You 20 Spotlight Request

[edit] Mutual "Bob" Problem

Hi, myself and GodEmperorOfHell are both sysops at another LOST Wiki. I suggest you look do a few things to help combat "bob".

• Implement the Espionage extension for wiki [1]
  • This will allow sysops to view the IPs used by a specific user.
• Allow Sysops to ban IP Subnets
  • Put "$wgSysopRangeBans = true;" in your LocalSettings.php file.
  • More details here
• Check out the Ipblocklist for current blocked subnets associated with "bob"

-- «« Jabrwocky7 »» - 17:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Need help?

Hi, I'm also a SysOp over at LostPedia, under the same name. I was wondering if you needed any help with this wiki. I noticed that it is a lot more complete and thorough than LostPedia. -- Novajoe23 02:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scott and Steve

Scott and Steve, I have not been able to sleep this one off. We have the transcripts and an interview with Carlton Cuse and Adam Horowitz that confirms Scott is dead and Steve is alive. Apparently we will have this contradiction in terms. Our entry on Scott and Steve is the opposite of yours. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. As you see we are linking to your side of the discussion. Good thing is, one of our common users wanted to copy and paste your article into our wiki and I emphatically refused and wrote a new one from scratch, thus creating this difference. Is this difference good or bad? --GodEmperorOfHell 04:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] show most recent

Hi, Jimmy requested that I change a few of the most user "unfriendly" messages that are defaults in MediaWiki. The "... penultimate..." message in particular was singled out as the first one to change. I'm still in the process of learning the database, so I didn't change it across all wikia... just the few that Jimmy was reading that night. But now we've gone ahead and updated that change across all wikia... just so you'll know what happened when you see the "show most recent" message again. :) Johnq 08:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro

I understand that the policy is to not post anything on the site until the episode airs. However, I would like to point out that Sanchez and Santoro's status as cast members has already shown up in the series. They were listed in the main cast during the opening credits for A Tale of Two Cities.Joser Kyind 01:21, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not going to do you wrong

Hi JackAttack - Oh no...you blocked me!! :) No worries. Looking at the recent changes log, I can understand how the confusion happened. I should have reverted and not deleted. Sorry about that. Just so you know, I am staff at Wikia and I really try not to harm any wikis. The pictures the vandal was uploading were definitely NOT characters from Lost. I happened to be watching recent changes when he did it, so I blocked him and deleted the pics. Regards, -- BillK (talk) 04:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: I asked Angela to block the IP address of the vandal. -- BillK (talk) 18:19, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking

Hi Jack. I just wanted to give all of the admins here some advice on blocking. Please don't block IP numbers indefinitely. It is unlikely a vandal would still be using the same IP in a few months time, so 3 months is usually the maximum needed, and it prevents genuine users from being affected by the block for so long, especially if they're using an ISP like AOL which shares it's IPs between many different users. Secondly, a few people seem to have been blocked without warning for minor offences. Unless someone is doing very serious vandalism, it's a good idea to give them a warning, especially since they might just be trying out editing and not meaning to be malicious. There is a {{test}} template you can use on their talk page for this. Thanks. Angela ^talk 03:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sidebar Change

Hey Brian, hope you and Christian don't mind but I've altered the sidebar a bit (to the left, where "Recent Changes" and "Random Page" appear). I've added links to "Theories" and "Gallery of Images". Basically what will happen, is that when a user clicks on this link, they will be prompted to create a new page, which will be specific to that article (eg. Jack Shephard/Theories). I'm thinking it would be a good idea to have all the images organized so that they can be easily accessed. I'm still working on a template that will link the articles back to the main page, but I should have that completed in the next little while. Let me know what, you think.

Thanks Brian, and come around more often, we miss you. :p

--Scott?steve? 10:28, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Translation

Excellent pun, in your message title, BTW. Yeah, I've notice that some of the articles don't fully translate, too. It's either because Google's translation is a POS and craps out, like you said. Or, even more shockingly, that the words appearing in English are actually the German equivalent! --ChristianShephard 13:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Quite a few changes have been made. Seems like we've got a colour coding system down now. I believe it's:

Blue - Canon Information, Yellow - Cast and Crew, Purple - Non Canon/Deleted Scenes, Grey - Lost Wikia Information, Green - Fan Sites/Parodies

Don't know if that's accurate, but I think it's right. We've also got the galleries, which Christian has been working on. It seems like he's been tagging every image starting from the very beginning of the site and working his way up. What I really think this site needs is a "To Do List" or a "Needed Articles" page, or something like that, maybe I'll whip something up. I've also been adding articles such as "The Final Episode", so if you know of any good parodies, feel free to create an article about it. Also, as a show of good faith, we also have a page on Lostpedia (our page on them, is better than their page on us :p)

Good to have you back. --Scott?steve? 21:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cynthia charles

Hey GentleBen,

instead of blocking Cynthia charles just like that, you should rather talk to a person before banning. Btw: did you read the text on her user talk? I guess this could be interesting for you as well, to have an user here, who is a part of the background cast in the TV series, this Wikia is all about.

--DerAndre 21:03, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Cynthia sent me a couple of pictures of her. On one image you can see her with Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, the actor who displayed Eko during the first three seasons. So there are already two people who can prove her identity. (I won't send you those pictures, if you want to see them, please ask her by yourself.) But instead of being proud to have one of the actors as an authour in your Wikia, you want her to contact you, to prove her identity? In addition, you want a new user, who has obviously no experience with a Wiki to find one of the SysOps? At the latest, when you saw the unformatted text about herself in the article, you – as an ADMIN – were supposed to help and assist her in writing a good and formatted article and not to block her without one word.

Anyway, Cynthia now created an account on Lostpedia. I guess, you missed your chance. --DerAndre 22:28, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Please do not act like someone who knows me. By the way: I am an admin on Lostpedia, that's why I can tell you how to react on such a problem. I don't want you to lose any sleep over anything, I just wanted to give you a little push to think about how to handle new users. But I guess it's useless. --DerAndre 22:43, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

See? That's exactly what you could have told her. Then everything would be fine. --DerAndre 22:54, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

You have to see the difference between a vandal and a newbie. But as you said, I don't have to instruct you and I don't wanna do this anymore. Now I know your point, and I think it is really funny, that you gave me the hint to lighten up. Maybe you should try your tips yourself once, before advise someone else. --DerAndre 23:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Over at LP we just got threw a prob with a fake profile about the chick named Rebbeca Mader. This user was in fact a fake and went to other sites claiming to be that little girl that ben was friends with in the flashback. While this could be two completely different people, the typing styles are almost the exact same (without the constant e-mail "give-a-ways"). One thing I have learned in my time is that actors don't mind answering questions for us, but they don't spend there time editing or creating profile's on our wiki's, they may be on here viewing but they don't want to get 1,000 messages from fans so if they are even on here they may use an alter ego. NEVER get your hopes up!--User_talk:JamesTFord1987

I'm not completely up to date with your policies yet but even if she was the Real person, that looks like a vandals work to me "borrow a billion dollars" stuck out a little if you ask me and the article had no releated content to her (plus the horrible grammer you pointed out). Just to let you know, the sysops at Lp recently also banned Eliosetherabbit, charlottestapleslewis and the previously mentioned Rebecca Mader so keep an eye out. You guys have a good site here, I really should have been reading some of these articles instead of just focusing on LP. Good Work to you and your fellow Admins.--User_talk:JamesTFord1987

[edit] Vandal

Hey thanks for the update, I assure you in every way, shape and form that I am not a vandal. I do however wonder, the only user page I remember editing was a link that went to the old LP site on our Admin Kevin's user page over here at LOST.wikia, is he the Vandal you were talking about?--{{SUBST:User:JamesTFord1987/autosig}} 15:49, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, I read the page on him and saw your post. I should have checked that before posting! I agree, that doesn't sound like something an Admin of a good wiki. Well thanks though.--{{SUBST:User:JamesTFord1987/autosig}} 15:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I get e-mail updates and this one was worth popping online! I agree with you, that doesn't even seem like something a positive editor on either sites would do, it's prob that Bob guy again everyone has trouble with. Thanks for telling me and not just thinking that I was the vandal !lol! Sorry about my sig, I'll get it taken care of.--{{SUBST:User:JamesTFord1987/autosig}} 15:59, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Helping Hand

Thanks I think I will, however for the next week or so I'm just going to travel around the site to get a feel for your article structure style and policies. Thanks!--User_talk:JamesTFord1987

Thanks for the tips! I don't do anything regaurding spoilers so that shouldn't be a problem, is everything based on the US air dates and language? I got to take off for the playoffs so I may not be able to respond but thanks for your help.--User_talk:JamesTFord1987

[edit] New header

Hi Ben!

I was visiting today, and I noticed the new header that you added to the site. I really like the idea! It really makes the site look different from all of the other Wikia wikis. The only thing is, the banner is really really big. Whenever I visit a page, the actual content on the page is pushed so far down that I have to scroll down to see the information that I'm actually looking for. I think that we can trim down the header a little bit to allow the actual content to appear higher on the page while maintaining the original idea. Would it be ok if I helped out with that a little bit? Do you have the file (Photoshop PSD, etc.) that you used to generate the header graphic handy? --KyleH (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Let me know if you need any help, or need someone to bounce ideas off of. By the way, instead of splitting the header in to two separate images, you can simplify things by setting the body background then making the wikia_header and background_strip backgrounds transparent. For example:

#background_strip {
  background-color: transparent;
  border-style: none;
}

#wikia_header {
  background-color: transparent;
  border-style: none;
}

body {
  background: #f9f9f9 url("http://images.wikia.com/lost/images/image.jpg") 0px 0px no-repeat !important;
}

--KyleH (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Flashes

Where's the appropriate page for discussing the flashback designations? It seems really obvious to me the each episode this season starts with a flash (episode one Daniel flashforward at Orchid, ep 2 Hurley flashback to Searcher, ep 3 Desmond flashback to Penny childbirth) and that the rest of the action just follow either the on or off island action from where it left off last season. Has this already been discussed somewhere? --Jackdavinci 04:38, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New user

Hello,

As stated, I'm a newbie to the site. I've thoroughly enjoyed the information provided and been able to navigate between characters and episodes and items. Is there a discussion board for your site? I would really enjoy chatting with others that watch Lost. We've got a discussion board over at Lost on Paganspace and I've pulled knowledge from Wikia and mentioned your website repeatedly as a great site for information. Any assistance?

--This unsigned message was left by Kaleann

---

Hey Ben. I can't find a link to the "Island" page from anywhere on the main page of the wiki. The only way I was able to get to it was from the link you put in the message you left for me. Am I missing something? Dmussman 14:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Any Tips?

Hey, Gentle Ben. Thanks for the info on my talk page. Can you give me any tips on LOST wikia, with me being an actress from Lost? Should I edit things differently, or anything like that? Thank you for the warm welcome to the wikia again, --Alexandra Krosney 21:57, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Signature Help Please

Hey, Gentle Ben. I'm terribly sorry for bothering you again, but I was wondering how I could jazz up my signature a little. Thank you so much for helping me get settled on this wikia. I added some stuff to the Jughead and the Alexandra Krosney page, so you might want to check and make sure I didn't mess those up. Namaste, --Alexandra Krosney 01:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Thank You

Hey Gentle Ben. Thanks for your info with my signature, it was very helpful! I'm looking forward to improving some pages on the wikia. Namaste, --AlexandraKrosney 19:44, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spotlight Request

Hi. Lost wikia looks like it is in generally good shape, and there are just a few tweaks to meet the spotlight criteria. There are about 20 uncategorized pages - could you categorize them?

Also I notice that your main page is sysop level protected and has been since 2006/2007; the last time it was unprotected there was no vandalism at all. Could you please drop the edit protection level to at least block only anonymous users and new accounts? If you find the page being vandalized frequently you can reprotect.

And finally, while you are doing a great job with welcomes, for the spotlight we'd like you to use the automated welcome tool; you can set it to use your custom welcome templates with the instrutions on that page.

Let me know when you've taken care of these things and I'll be happy to add you guys to the spotlight list.

On a side note, have you ever considered renaming this to just "Lost Wiki"?? In general that's what people search for with google.... not "Lost Wikia". It might really help people out there find the wiki if it had the more conventional name. -- Wendy (talk) 02:04, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I'ts great that you categorized the images and dropped the protection level. Unfortunately one of the Spotlight Criteria is to use the automated welcome tool, and I can't change that.

The main reason for this is speed; they studied the tool pretty thoroughly when it was developed. Even on wikis that were really good with welcomes, it typically took a couple of hours or longer before somebody came along and welcomed a new user. In that time people had moved on, and, in the case of IPs, they may never have seen the welcome at all. The tool does the welcome immediately and there's actually a measurable rise in number of users who make a login when it's turned on, because they get the welcome while they're still on the site.

In terms of welcoming vandals, that's certainly a side effect, but in general not a harmful one. You still just block them when you see them and revert what they've done. But it's better to treat everyone as a potential new contributor and welcome them, rather than treating everyone as a potential vandal and losing the people you'd like to have stick around while you are at it.

Ultimately it's up to you, but to get a spotlight you have to have it on. -- Wendy (talk) 20:53, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Great - I'm glad you decided to turn it on. I've added you to the spotlight list. -- Wendy (talk) 23:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)