Infosphere:Conference Table/Old format

The Conference Table is for discussion of the Infosphere, and proposals for new ideas. For information about upcoming changes to the Infosphere, see Current events. __NEWSECTIONLINK__ Click here to start a new discussion.

If you feel a discussion needs to be archived, tag it with
 *   (see template for more information)

Got nothing to do? You can check out our To Do list to see if there is anything that need being done.

Background Jokes
I was thinking, both the simpsons and Futurama are known for their background jokes. Should there be a list for the background jokes on every episode? I think if we're to be a collective hub of Futurama info it would be important to do so.Anarchy Balsac 18:35, 7 January 2008 (PST)

do you mean a master list or for each episode dr zoidberg 14

Yeah, something like a trivia list except it says "background jokes" as its title.Anarchy Balsac 07:01, 11 January 2008 (PST)

great idea i say yes dr zoidberg 14


 * Would they need time-indices? --Buddy 18:36, 3 February 2008 (PST)
 * Wouldn't hurt, though it would make the task more tedious.Anarchy Balsac 21:21, 15 February 2008 (PST)

You could also make an article containing all the jokes from season 1, one for season 2, one for season 3, one for season 4 and one for the upcoming movies.It would be easier than going through all the episodes and adding a new section. Fryandgarfield
 * Hmm... *searches* reminds me of this group of articles List of computer science references, which aren't linked from anything except each other and are far from complete. - Quolnok 18:26, 25 March 2008 (PDT)
 * I see your point. Maybe we should merge this idea with that one (since most of the computer science references are background jokes anyway) and put it in the sidebar to draw more attention(hence more editing) to it.Anarchy Balsac 12:38, 27 March 2008 (PDT)

Background Jokes: break
Okay, I think we need to start this topic again. As I am watching Futurama now and then (often a lot), I am not paying much attention to the actual plot, but noticing parts of the screen I am supposed to stare at. As a consequence, I have begun noticing a lot of background jokes. Now here is how I think we can do this. Make a huge article (list of background jokes), and get rid of the lists I created when I first joined this place. In addition to that article, we can have noticeable mentions on each episode's page. And then of course a link to the list article. My rule for a background joke to be a background joke: Something that is in the picture but unreferenced by characters and/or unimportant to plot. --SvipTalk 18:53, 20 May 2008 (PDT)
 * Yep there should be an article. Just so long as we know the other, abandoned, ones are disappearing. Bits and pieces of these are already spread through trivia sections and commentary articles, and can be copied over. - Quolnok 06:44, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * Maybe in a similar format as list of deleted scenes? Well... almost similar, I was thinking listing the background jokes by appearance in a big table.  And also make a list of alien language appearances (this one deserves its own list in my opinion). --SvipTalk 07:03, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * There had been an attempt at an AL sightings section in episode articles... Yeah they should have a page too. Format should definitely sort by season/episode. Perhaps as subsections of episode have "Physics" "Computing" "Literature" "Television" sort of thing, if the background joke is just a fart joke or something, "other" is still an option. - Quolnok 07:15, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * The subsections seems a bit overkill if you ask me. Maybe keep it a list for each episode in the list, then have a bold type in brackets, e.g. (Physics).  e.g.:
 * Behind Fry at Mr. Mbutu's apartment reads the text "10 Sweet 20 Home 30 Goto Home" in a frame behind him. This is a reference to the programming language BASIC.  (Computing)
 * For episode I, Roommate, however, I still wondering how we should do this right. A list or a table?  With a table we can apply an image, but not always will an image be necessary.  Hm. :S --SvipTalk 08:22, 21 May 2008 (PDT)
 * I was thinking something similar, but make it a page like the Miscellanies sections. Both the Simpsons and Futurama have loads of freeze frames per episode. We should probably take a vote on the list or table thing.Anarchy Balsac 06:29, 22 July 2008 (CEST)

So I take it opinion is generally in favor, but there just isn't agreement over the exact implementation. I think as long as the criteria for a background joke is established, the rest can be worked out through the editing. I'm all for the criteria Svip proposed, so if we can agree to that, I think we can probably start this and get the ball rolling at least.Anarchy Balsac 05:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Article introductions
Several articles, especially episode articles, commentary, comics and the game articles don't have an introduction to what the article is about. It would be nice if we could have some introductions, even if it would just a bit of a repeat of what was in the infobox, e.g.;
 * Space Pilot 3000 is the first episode of season 1 and was aired 28 March, 1999.

Some articles may have longer introductions, if there is something special to mention, e.g. Futurama Returns was read aloud at Comic-Con. Indeed, that whole article only hints at it was read aloud, not really mentioned anywhere in the article. --SvipTalk 13:43, 5 July 2008 (CEST)
 * Yup, that sounds fair enough. Especially for the longer ones. - Quolnok 13:55, 5 July 2008 (CEST)

Referencing other episodes.
Should we place a "References to Other Episodes" section into an episode article if it is not present (I've seen a few with "Inside References")? There are a bunch that I think would link together many episode but aren't there and I was wondering if there is a reason for it or if it's just that there were more important things to complete at the time. -Mini-Me 00:34, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * I'd prefer "Continuity", sounds more sophisticated. And I think the reason if they are not there, is because we are slackers. --SvipTalk 01:05, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Sounds good, but I noticed shortly after posting this that there are a couple of notes under Trivia that should be in Continuity. Should that all be filtered around or new/unadded stuff in Continuity only? -Mini-Me 03:47, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Those are probably items left astray from our old standards. Something we should have fixed months ago.  But we have a lot to see to, and we are few contributors. --SvipTalk 11:27, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * Wasn't somebody just saying that there wasn't much left to do? That's crazy talk! --Buddy 20:11, 23 August 2008 (BST)
 * I could start sorting through those, starting at 101 and working up (while doing the remaining commentaries, of course). Not particularly busy this year and that back up I did will help out a ton. -Mini-Me 01:13, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * What of the prerequisite sections that a few (four) articles have? That's another section that fits this grouping. It also has those fancy hidden text whosits Svip came up with, see here. One of those still has the fast forward section too... - Quolnok 03:27, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * Found that discussion: Talk:Bender's Big Score - Quolnok 03:31, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * I'd like to stop you there, let us not use those systems until they are more or less perfected. As of right now, I am not entirely pleased with them.  And there may be too much rework to do if we began splattering all over the place.  So let's leave them where they are now, and call it that. --SvipTalk 03:53, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * Stop me where? I was simply noting that they existed. - Quolnok 05:06, 24 August 2008 (BST)
 * No, what I meant, is that someone might pick it up and believe it needs addition, so I am just stopping them in doing it right now. Seemed like the appropriate time to mention it. --SvipTalk 12:36, 24 August 2008 (BST)

After thinking about it for a while now, I'm not very content with just having the major ones listed, especially when the show has a vast amount of little call backs and foreshadows. Perhaps a page can be put together with all episodes listing out how they link to others. I wonder how long that would be. Or something else entirely. Just an idea. -Mini-Me 17:05, 5 September 2008 (BST)
 * Foreshadowing can easily fit into a section on the relevant article for the concept or character (as well as its appearances section). Episode articles shouldn't have pages of stuff in these sections. Unless I'm mistaken, these sections were based on the ones used at hrwiki.org (considerably shorter animations) they tend to include the most relevant stuff in the article then create an extra article for pretty much any recurring concept, we don't have it quite to that extent yet. On a related note, anyone want to do a Nicknames article? - Quolnok 02:03, 6 September 2008 (BST)

Image standards and choices
I have been dealing with a lot of thoughts regarding the images on our wiki, both legally, picking and standards.

First of all, licencing. I think we need a standard box on every image page (could use one of those MediaWiki: messages to add it), stating the usage, the licence and whatnot about the image. I know we have our disclaimer page, but it would be neater for legal reasons to have it on the image page. Now I know, we have not yet have any legal issues regarding our images yet, but it is better to beat the competition before they reaches us.

Then is picking. A good example of what I am worried about is the Dr. John A. Zoidberg article. I don't like the choice of picture for this article, especially because Zoidberg is only drawn with teeth in 3 episodes, making the picture giving a misrepresentation of him. Another example is Kif Kroker, no where else do we use the design sketch for characters in their infobox, however, speaking of design sketches, I think they should be supplied in every article they are available (so, at least all main characters and major secondary characters). Then comes a third example, a bit different, as to supply my thoughts, the Zapp Brannigan article. While the picture is not extremely bad, I think we can actually provide a better picture. I am speaking of the picture where he says "I am the man with no name", cause the facial expression and line sums the Zapp Brannigan character up quite well. And it omits having Kif in the picture.

Standards is basically a relying on the picking, plus some more technical issues. I propose that for every character article, where an image can be provided, it must have been taken from the show or film (depending on where the character is). If a design sketch is available for a character, it must be provided in the article, but only as an image within the article, to give air to the article, and avoid give the reader the feeling that it is not just text. While content is good, images helps. And lastly, this is not a standard, but rather an encouragement, if you see an image for a character, and think it can be done better, don't hesitate, don't go silent, provide arguments in its talk page, be either the image's talk page or the character article's talk page.

There was probably more I wanted to add, but I forget now. But I guess this is enough to get some discussion started. --SvipTalk 22:36, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A lot of those early pics were uploaded by myself (at the time, there were no other users who could get screenshots of DVD's...) and I tried to use the following standards:


 * A full-screen image (I think the first Zapp pic was a cropped close-up)
 * As soon after the character first appeared as possible (keeping the first criterion in mind)
 * The Character depicted should, if possible, be the only character on screen
 * Fairly representative of the character (keeping the first two criteria in mind)
 * So that's where we get a lot of the primary and secondary character pics. But I'm all for updating them. Especially if it'll look better in the long run. Especially, as you note, the teeth thing. Zoidberg shouldn't have teeth (I didn't even notice them in the pic, so good observation), so it should really be updated. And Zapp's should have Kiff removed. I think I picked that image because it was so boastful that it was perfect, but it does have another character in the image, so it's not ideal. And now that nearly all of our members can provide screenshots, there's no reason they can't be updated. As for the character design sketches, they actually used to be on several pages, but they were deemed unsuitable for the main image, and they just went away. I'm sure they're still in the database, and they'd be fine lower down the page, but they just weren't good main images (as you pointed out for Kif). --Buddy 23:18, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Levelling system
I have been thinking of copying a system that Wikipedia uses to decide what are good articles and what are... not so good articles. I am not directly copying the system, but only the idea. I propose our own system to more fit our needs.

The levelling system will consist of 5 levels, indicating the quality of an article, along with 3 focus levels (plus a null-level), indicating the focus and the attention the article needs.

The proposed quality levels are as follows:


 * Stub
 * The article have just begun, and have only has 1 or 2 sentences, and indicates very little.


 * Start
 * The article have described the content of the topic at hand, but fails to evaluate it or give a thorough description of the subject.


 * Developed
 * The article gives its readers a fair overlook of the subject at hand, but the article is still lacking touch.


 * Good
 * The article conforms to all standards set, and its description is thorough and broad.


 * Brilliant
 * The article meets all the requirements of a good article, and in addition has an extra touch that just makes it nice to read.

The first 3 levels can be picked by a bot (which will be the intend in the end, I will add some code to my bot which will decide whether an article is a stub, start or developed), the two latter levels will be picked by users, and the last level, Brilliant must be picked by a vote.

Featured (or previously featured) articles will be mentioned, but will not fall into the levelling system, but the levelling system will be a good indicator when to pick a featured article.

The proposed focus levels are as follows:


 * Null
 * A focus for this article has not been set (default)


 * C
 * Little or no focus


 * B
 * Medium focus


 * A
 * High focus

Each talk page for an article, will include a template on top indicating the levels and whether or not it has been featured before. The template have not yet been created. The first discussion is on whether this system works. --SvipTalk 14:52, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I like it. It'll let the users know which articles we can focus on, and it may draw attention to articles that are very stubby, so they can be expanded. --Buddy 17:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I have further developed it, you can see Talk:List of title captions as well as Talk:The Time Bender Trilogy: Part 1 for articles currently using it. As you can see, it will possibly replace the  template.  In addition to that, I have written up an article explaining it here; Levelling system. --SvipTalk 18:49, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Tenth Anniversary?
It is soon getting the 28th of March. And while we can all start debating when Futurama really started, 28 March is a safe bet, cause that would mark the airing of the first episode of Futurama on air. In such an occasion, and our ca. 1% way to the year 3000 since then, I think we should celebrate it with a Main Page redrawing and keep it on for a week, specifically the one in which the 28th of March falls.

Exactly how remains sketchy, but we still have a month's planning. --SvipTalk 10:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * At the very least we can change the tags to something. - Quolnok 11:00, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Like "My God, a percentage of a million years!" ? --SvipTalk 11:15, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I would also like to add, that the new CSS design is planned to be released upon the anniversary. --SvipTalk 17:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

New Futurama shirt!
Thinkgeek.com has just released a new shirt for all the nerdlingers of the world! --Buddy 00:49, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

New CSS!
It has crossed my mind occasionally in the past since we got the new skin that it could be even better. And finally I have taken steps in that direction. You can see the new code at User:Svip/monobook.css, which - if you want to use it - can "transclude" to your own  User:/monobook.css  page with using, that way, when I update it, yours will be updated as well. However, it will also mean you may spot oddities at time.

I present to you my first screenshot of the progress. Oh and, don't mind all my tabs. It's the design that is in focus. A note, if you will, when you select the search field, its background lights up (to indicate focus, obviously). --SvipTalk 13:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not sure I like the orangey colour, but it probably looks better in practice. We could also use maybe a semi-tranparent PNG for the BG of the search field, and then an opaque or less-transparent one when it's got focus. There's a similar thing in some elements of Vista which I like. Just a suggestion... And since alpha-channel PNG's default to grey in older browsers, it would degrade nicely (i.e., text would still be readable) --Buddy 19:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is a new screenshot. Still working on it. --SvipTalk 22:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And yet another! I think we're getting there.  Opinions? --SvipTalk 01:02, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The colours don't have quite enough contrast, particularly the links in the left box and the visited links in the sidebar. - Quolnok 02:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The front page was a quick fix. And the sidebar is still an issue I am having some trouble getting around.  But browsing articles (I just went through random ones), I am very pleased with my new scheme.  I will not say it's done, but it's certainly getting there. --SvipTalk 02:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

There's parts about the CSS I like and parts I don't like. For example. I like the way the overall colour scheme is going. I like the little orange bits at the top of the active tab. It reminds me of... well, I forget. Windows or Firefox or someone has orange bits on the active tabs. Kind of a nice visual cue. I really like the semi-transparency and rounded corners of the left menus. Still not sure if the colour of the search box fits in, but I could get used to it. As for what I don't like: The hues seem to be a bit off. There's straight blue and then shades of cyan, they don't really match. And after seeing the page in its darker form, hitting "edit" and being hit with a bright white text box is a little off-putting. And a suggestion: the menu headers on the left sort of blend into the background. I suggest giving them their own bg image. I have an idea for it but I'm not sure I can articulate it: A rectangle of a different shade from the menus below, square on all corners except the upper-right, which would be rounded to the same radius as the menu boxes. The colour should be just enough to bump up the contrast between header and background to make it a bit more legible. Otherwise, as I said, I really like the direction this is going. Maybe we should change the background into the full-screen light rays from the end of ItWGY. The flat colour below the fold is boring, design-wise. Tiling backgrounds can be annoying, but maybe we can come up with something... --Buddy 15:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So... to summarise:
 * Backgrounds behind menu-headers, change its font colour or alternative changing the entire background of the site all together.
 * Do something about the issue of the text edit field.
 * On the latter, here, I will have to say, I kept myself off it, because of the fact that most people like to edit black on white. White on black is not good for editing in my book, perhaps a similar colour scheme as to the rest of the site?
 * Anyway, I have been thinking about changing the background image all together. I originally thought the opening thingie was cool, but changing it to that "round one from ItWGY may provide more difficulties than what is good.  Alternatively, we could come up with a simple background like Wikipedia and keep it a blue shade (preferable darker than the current one).  Maybe a miniature version of the current one. --SvipTalk 16:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I have listened to your prayers and updated a few things.
 * First of all, the textarea have now been given a dark blue background and white text. It works nice on the eyes, and it remains obvious that it is a textarea editing field.
 * Then I reduced the size of the body background, lowered its contrast and made it "blur" over into a darker blue, which I then changed the background colour to.
 * As a result of this, the transparent menus have been removed as well. As the menus, links and text, are easy to make out on the new blue background.
 * There are of course minor tweaks remaining to be done. Oh yeah, and I finally updated the footer.  In order to see this again, simply replace your monobook.css with    again. --SvipTalk 18:02, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking nicer, some of the minor tweaks include the donation box on the main page and the green on red of the comparison pages.. I'll create a new infosphere image for the lower sidebar. - Quolnok 10:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the new textbox colours. They're perfect. I'm still not sure about this orangey colour that seems to be spreading, but it might be my crappy monitor. The black on the left might be a bit too dark, but I like it. Because I like black. Hey, mabe use the centered light rays from ItWGY, and see if they can center directly behind the Infosphere logo. That might be interesting. --Buddy 22:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, my issue with the rays were that they would be unconvincing continuing down the page... though, I like the idea of the centred rays behind the sphere. --SvipTalk 23:39, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

New CSS!: break
Check out FringePedia. I really like their layout. Not suggesting we rip it off or anything, but check out how they got a bluish background pic faded into a black background. Looks nice. Also, we should totally rip off their design. --Buddy 03:53, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, I see what you mean, we could totally rid it off, let the rays fade to the background's colour, and BAM. We gots ourselves a design.  Also, it looks like those Wikia people are not going to let it go, I mean, if they are really supporting the Futurama community, why do what's best for the community? --SvipTalk 11:52, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I twisted the background, upgrade your CSS and do a cache refresh. I think it looks marvellous! --SvipTalk 17:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

so how exactly does everyone get this?--My leg feels funny! 20:51, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Right now you have to edit your monobook.css page (in your case, that would be User:Scruffy/monobook.css), to obtain the current CSS, write   and save. --SvipTalk 21:41, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * on large pages it has this random picture of the infosphere, which isn't the same colour as the background. other than that the wiki looks epic now. nice work! also are affliates supposed to link to the sites?--My leg feels funny! 05:17, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The background image have been fixed, but it is performed by JavaScript rather than CSS, so we are first going to upgrade the JS when we've actually converted to the new design. The affiliates is a technically issue, that I am going to work one once the design is done. --SvipTalk 10:31, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Now that the background is flat black, I think you should bring back the semi-transparent boxes around the menus. I liked those. --Buddy 12:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I may be crazy, but I think it works better without, oh and it is not flat black, it is a dark blue colour. Very sophisticated.  I really like the rays behind the Infosphere coming below the navigation menu, looks AWESOME.  AWESOME TO THE MAX. --SvipTalk 12:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Did I mention I have a crappy monitor? --Buddy 23:50, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

New redirect rule
If you are linking to an article that do not exist, but its content exists in another article as a subsection, don't fix your link, instead, create the page as a redirect instead.

e.g. The Monks of Shubah only exists within the Religion article, but instead of changing a link to them from The Monks of Shubah to The Monks of Shubah, simply created the The Monks of Shubah as a redirect to this subsection.

Reason? There are plenty of cases where we would like to get certain parts of a group article or similar out of it, e.g. like we got Donbot out of the Robot Mafia article. But if pages link to the Robot Mafia article, rather than the Donbot article, when they mean him, it becomes a pickle fixing all these links, that would be required to be fixed. There will be exceptions to this rule, but right now I cannot think of any. --SvipTalk 16:19, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So, to clarify: You're saying, while a character or item may have little information about them and thus is part of another article, they should all still get their own pages which redirect to their subsection. This way, if more information is created and they are moved to their own page, the links will already point there (the links won't have to be changed at all!). Sounds like a good idea to me. --Buddy 16:00, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Precisely, and when the Neutral war machine lies in ruins, I will be a hero again! --SvipTalk 20:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Types of characters; splitting secondary characters into 3
I know I am bringing this up again, but a concern have been raising in my mind, as have been pointed out by the last time we ran this around here. The issue was that with my new specification of naming Steve Castle a secondary character, because of his importance in "Future Stock", despite only appearing once, this may spark a lot of subjective opinions on who is secondary and who is tertiary.

Therefore I am suggestion splitting secondary characters up in 3:
 * Major secondary characters
 * Major secondary characters are characters that are pretty close to actually being primary characters, but for a specific number of reasons aren't. Examples of these characters include Zapp Brannigan, Kif Kroker and Mom.


 * One-time secondary characters
 * One-time secondary characters are characters playing a major importance in one single episode/film/comic, but either unknown later or not appearing at all (possibly because of death). Examples these characters include Steve Castle, The Zookeeper and Nudar.


 * Secondary characters
 * The ungrouped mass.

Discuss. --SvipTalk 16:56, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sarcastic laughter...
Yes, I searched the transcripts this time. I can't find it. I'm looking for the episode where Fry laughs sarcastically. And I can't remember what it was about, or I'd know the episode. Something is funny, but not, and Fry does that sarcastic "Hahahaha". Anyone know that one? --Buddy 15:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Safety dance conversation with That Guy in Future Stock? Can't think of any other options right now. - Quolnok 17:12, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wait, I think I remembered... It was The Farnsworth Parabox, when Leela 1 and Fry 1 were talking about their relationship. Leela 1 said something about one of here excuses and said it was funny... then Fry A said something like "Yeah, funny. Right Leela? HAHAHAHA!" ... At least, I think that's the one. Anyone know where I can view this ep (or at least the clip) online? --Buddy 17:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe it was "I, Roommate", where Fry "laughs" along with Bender when Leela have convinced him to move out. --SvipTalk 20:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it was definitely the Parabox. I don't know how to link to specific lines like you guys do, or I'd show you. Just go to the transcript and Ctrl+F for "Funny"... I think there's a couple uses of the word, but you'll find it. Now I just need a clip. Is Futurama on Hulu? --Buddy 22:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, seems to be quite a few clips there, but not the one I want. Anyone tell me how to make my own clips? Everyone else seems to be able to do it... --Buddy 22:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Avidemux is a brilliant application to cut out specific clips of video streams. It is pretty simple and straight forward. --SvipTalk 22:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)