Talk:Main Page

Comprehensive best order of consumption?

Hey guys, it's been eons since I interacted with Bionicle in as much depth as I did pre-2010 (like geez that was almost a third of my life ago). So I was wondering, has someone ever made a list that documents the best order of consumption for all the canon and/or semi-canon media (books, serials, animations, etc.) of the original universe? If not I would think it would be a useful guide to have here on this wiki for both all the newcomers to Bionicle who want to explore the original universe, as well as all of the old(er) people like myself who have started to forget things. Thoughts on this suggestion? -- (Toa Zoxim/IDNK since apparently the image has broken)

There is one on BZP that I totally said I would incorporate somehow and I haven't and I will. -- Dorek _Talk 10:01, 23 February 2015 (CET)

Haha k that sounds good. If I have time I'll see if I can help out --

Sweet. -- Dorek _Talk 01:52, 26 February 2015 (CET)

Feature proposal

Hey guys, so with Bionicle 2015 underway and [hopefully] a new wave of Bionicle fans being brought into the theme, I thought now could be a good time to make BS01 a community with more interaction among its members, both socially and constructively towards the wiki. Since BS01 is officially a registered LEGO Users Group, it feels right to allow its members to communicate more effectively on social and constructive levels on this site. I feel like implementing a new feature, a chatroom, to this wiki could allow for that interaction and socialization among members. The chat extension, which was developed by BS01's affiliates at Brickimedia, has several functions that could allow new fans and senior members of the BS01 community to interact with each other, whether it be talking about Bionicle or about the wiki, which can be easier for new members than talk pages (or just quicker to use for anyone), and is more engaging than any "social" aspects of BS01 such as the community portal. As a LEGO User Group, it's important for members to be in touch with each other and be able to have that method of communication with each other, and a live chat is the easiest way to do that. The chat extension is very lightweight on server resources (so we don't have to worry about the server crashing or anything), is able to be moderated (such as kicking off of chat or blocking a user from accessing chat) by a chat moderator user group or by administrators, supports private messaging, and is easily accessible on the wiki by any member. If you have a Brickimedia account (or create one), you can test out the chat extension at http://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Special:Chat. It's just an idea to allow for some more member-to-member interaction in this community. Feel free to let me know what your thoughts on this wiki feature are, and if you have any questions feel free to ask. --Meiko (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2015 (CET)

Already said that I want it~ -- Dorek _Talk 00:04, 24 February 2015 (CET)

It's implemented. Special:Chat --Meiko (talk) 04:42, 6 November 2015 (CET)

Background

Just so you guys know, the new background makes it impossible to read certain things (such as things in page descriptions).--Kopaka Master of Ice (talk) 13:04, 25 February 2015 (CET)

Yes, it's very pretty, but the color of links should probably be changed -- Tables of Contents are now almost completely illegible (!). Maybe stick with some shade of blue? --Angel Bob (talk) 16:35, 25 February 2015 (CET)

@Kopaka Master of Ice: Were you referring to the link colors as well? That's something we noticed last night. That'll get fixed. Anything else? -- Dorek _Talk 20:53, 25 February 2015 (CET)

Mainly table of contents and categories. There are some others, but I don't know what to call them.--Kopaka Master of Ice (talk) 21:34, 25 February 2015 (CET)

Right, that has to do with the link colors. That seems to be the big one =P. -- Dorek _Talk 22:18, 25 February 2015 (CET)

In my opinion the links should be blue. It is normal and looks good. :P--Kopaka Master of Ice (talk) 22:24, 25 February 2015 (CET)

Blue is the plan for standard things, like the table of contents and the editing boxes, so we're working on fixing that. -- Dorek _Talk 22:33, 25 February 2015 (CET)

Good, there's a lot of stuff I can't see. Don't Ever make the links white again --DL 00:58, 26 February 2015 (CET)

I do what I want! However I did not actually want this, so yeah yeah it'll be fixed. -- Dorek _Talk 01:15, 26 February 2015 (CET)

Glad to know it'll be changed, this is probably the only issue I have with an otherwise great skin (vector <3) »Zapnox«

edit diff highlights

i know this is a super old discussion, but the background we have currently makes it kinda hard to see the blue highlighting on the edit diffs of most pages. Intelligence4 (talk) 21:16, 21 May 2016 (CET)

Tabs on Character Templates

The tab switching on various templates (Toa, Rahi, etc.) seems to be broken for me. I tested with multiple skins and browsers, and it still doesn't work. Any ideas?
And now that I've noticed, the gen-switcher on the top left of various pages also seems to have disappeared... »Zapnox«

It appears to be a mass JS thing, since the twitter feed somehow disappeared too. I'm not really sure why? It was working up until it wasn't. Might be related to using vector (Tomana will be happy =P), so that's something we'll have to figure out. -- Dorek _Talk 19:18, 26 February 2015 (CET)

I'm wondering if this skin change (setting the default skin to a vector variant) required some extra backend changes, because I've been using the default vector skin since like forever, and all the tabs and gen-switches worked totally fine. Can't comment about the twitter feed since I barely visit the MP anyway, haha. »Zapnox«

It's probably related to the two unneeded closing braces at the end of Mediawiki:Common.js causing a syntax error. --maxim21 19:47, 26 February 2015 (CET)

Well HOW ABOUT THAT.

Thanks =P. -- Dorek _Talk 20:26, 26 February 2015 (CET)

The twitter feed's still dead though :( »Zapnox«

Refresh your cache or GET OUT. -- Dorek _Talk 20:34, 26 February 2015 (CET)

...nevermind, I'm just dumb, Adblock and Ghostery were hiding it. Sometimes I just forget they're there. »Zapnox«

Yeah, adblock does that =P. Should be all good now~ -- Dorek _Talk 20:47, 26 February 2015 (CET)

Fishers' Categorical Greg Reference

According to her blog on BZP, the light at the end of the tunnel approacheth. We going to find a way to incorporate it into BS01/use it as reference for Greg F details? ζox• ^Histories

Cite it like we do everything else? -- Dorek _Talk 03:23, 3 August 2015 (CEST)

we need to be sure to actually cite it though... So much content on here isn't cited. Intelligence4 (talk)

Past Featured Page

Hey guys, I've got a weirdly specific question for y'all - just because I've been trying to figure it out myself, and can't quite seem to do it. I remember, a few months ago, that there was a Featured page on here, and it was a really interesting little blurb, but I can't remember which character it was about. It was a character from the 2009 saga, and the blurb talked about how, although the character had been reduced to a few angry lines in "The Legend Reborn," he had been more or less the real bad guy of 2009. It also said that he was actually one of the more interesting villains from Bionicle because he wasn't fighting for power or anything like that, it was really just to save his people. Any ideas? Thanks! - Agenttv (Talk) 08:21 22 August, 2015 (CEST)

Yeah, that'd be Tuma! You can check out a page's previous revisions by clicking "history" towards the top... however, the code for the Main Page is actually on another page, so you can check out its history over there. The description you're thinking of can be found in this revision. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 08:25, 22 August 2015 (CEST)

Whenever I write the FA's I always try and approach things from a new perspective. I know the idea of Tuma being a nuanced character isn't exactly novel, but it was just interesting to see how the contrast of his attitudes based on his various media appearances changed. -- Dorek _Talk 08:39, 22 August 2015 (CEST)

Awesome!! Thank you guys so much - love this community!! - Agenttv (Talk) 17:17 22 August, 2015 (CEST)

Image Sizing

Why are images (ones being treated as external at least) misbehaving suddenly? I thought it was a Main page issue, but Door Wreck's sig is also messed up. ζox• ^Histories

Probably to do with some bugfixes related to external linking. I'll change my sig until it gets fixed. -- Dorek _Talk 06:42, 8 October 2015 (CEST)

Issue should be fixed now, if you still see randomly sized images, re-save the page and they should be fixed. --Metax「Talk Page」 07:17, 9 October 2015 (CEST)

Seems fixed on this end, thanks =) ζox• ^Histories

Skins Broken

The skins on this wiki seem to be broken to me, making it near impossible to do anything. Is this just on my end, or are others experiencing this as well? --Gresh113, Gla"Toa"rian of Air 15:25, 28 October 2015 (CET)

This was a known issue that I've just now fixed. --Meiko (talk) 17:40, 28 October 2015 (CET)

Yay! Thank you!! -Gresh113, Gla"Toa"rian of Air 18:25, 28 October 2015 (CET)

About the top of our pages

I was wondering: would it be reasonable to move the Gen 1/2 buttons we've made for dual-gen characters/items from hovering there at the top to just over the top of the template for that page? When we actually use the site-notice at the top of the page it moves off-position and no longer looks good. We also need to do something about the era-icons, parent-page tabs, and Featured icons at the top-right. I'd almost say that we could do the same thing and orient them around the template: era icons off to the side, like. It just bothers me that they so easily get messed up. ζox• ^Histories

Memoirs of the Dead

Hi all. I posted this on BZPower, since that's where the contest was, but I was advised to post in this talk page too.

I've been away from BZP for a while now, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the results for the Memoirs of the Dead contest were well and truly out. Firstly, I'd like to say a big congratulations to all the winners; I've only read a couple of the winning stories so far but I'm impressed, fitting additions to the canon and definitely worthy of their placings.

However, I was a bit confused when I went to BS01 and couldn't find any of the information from these short stories - or the short stories themselves - anywhere on the site, which is a tad confusing, as I was under the impression that the winning entries were to become canon, and BS01 is basically the de facto repository for BIONICLE canon.

So my question is essentially, why are the stories and their canon not canon, as promised?

I don't want to seem rude about this but it strikes me as highly unfair. Everyone - not just the winners - put a lot of hard work into their entries for this contest. It was, after all, the last chance to be a part of Generation 1, a storyline so special to many people, special enough that a community as larger as BZPower even formed in the first place. People were entering with the understanding that what they would do would be a part of that storyline, and though it may seem trivial, having your work on BS01 is like quantifiable evidence that, even in a small way, you're a part of it.

Before anyone brings up contact with Greg Farshety as having an effect on the canonicity of entries, this is from the contest's actual thread, where he basically allows the contest to act independently of further involvement from him, so needing to run the entries by Greg (who is understandably a very busy man and understandably is unlikely to have time to read and approve the winners) is not an issue. Here is the quote:

bonesiii: Hey, wanted to run [an] S&T contest [idea] by you, for permission for the winning entries to be considered official....Memoirs of the Dead -- along the lines of your serial for Makuta Mutran; members would write SSes telling the past story of any character, as long as that character is currently dead in official story. Any MU [Matoran Universe] character anyways.Of course, [this] will have judges making sure entries fit with official story. What do you think? GregF: Okay by me

If the prize was intended to include being added to BS01, then there's no question that they should be on BS01. That was the prize, so whether Generation 1 is still active or not is irrelevant, the prize must be delivered unless that's physically impossible (which it isn't, it would take one person an afternoon at most to fix up the BS01 pages with this information).

If the prize was never intended to include being added to BS01, then honestly the wording of the contest should have been clearer on that. As it is, it's a little misleading. Again, I'm sorry if any of this sounds rude, I'm doing my best not to come across in that manner. I just feel a little frustrated for the winners, whose hard work and dedication seems to have been either ignored or forgotten.

And let this not be a rant at BS01, because it's not intended as that either. Five years after the Battle of Bara Magna and I still have it bookmarked in my web browser. I've always been amazed by how well-constructed a site it is, from the level of detail in pages' contents to the site's design aesthetics, and there's no doubt in my mind at all as to why it is the de facto source for BIONICLE canon. If anything, the fact that getting your work into a page on a fan-made wiki can be a prize is a credit to the site itself.

I'm hoping that there has just been an error in communication somewhere, one that can be resolved easily enough. If it's an issue of peoplepower (and I understand how time-consuming bringing an entire wiki up to standard can be), I'm more than happy to sit down for a day in the Easter holidays and add the information myself. I just want - and I think a lot of people will agree with me - the winners of the contest to get the recognition that they were led to believe they had earned.

Best wishes to you all (as I wouldn't be making a post like this if this wasn't a community I cared deeply about, no matter how inactive on it I may be),

-Jam Pot

I have no idea how old this is, as it isn't timestamped and I don't really want to go through the entire revision history of this page, but this has gotten buried. I personally would also like the other competition winning fan-stories of incomplete contests to be featured and archived on here or at least given more of a proper mention on the wiki, but this one especially so, given the reasoning from the person above. Firespitter Lhii (talk) 19:30, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

New Featured Quote/Page?

How often do we change those? It looks like it's been a couple months at least since this last set has been up, since the last time the main page was changed was back in February. Intelligence4 (talk) 06:12, 12 April 2016 (CET)

main link tabs

THE main Navigation tabs don't work like they should. Most of the Gen2 tabs link back to the Gen 1 pages (i.e. Creatures, Locations, etc.) This is inconvinient. ToaJuaraevo01 (talk) 12:49, 18 May 2016 (CET)

Many of those pages don't exist yet, either. I do plan to update it to go to Gen 1 and Gen 2 respectively, but again they don't even exist yet. -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)}

Changes?

I see the aesthetic changes to the main page on the page itself, but I don't see any of it in the edit history. Where is/are the change logs?Intelligence4 (talk) 19:03, 19 May 2016 (CET)

Template:MPHome. -- Dorek _Talk 19:34, 19 May 2016 (CET)

aha, thanks. it looks like only admins can edit that page? Intelligence4 (talk) 21:09, 21 May 2016 (CET)

Capitalization?

Currently BS01 articles capitalize everything, but that's not how actual Bionicle media does it. Actually it turns out (in the later media, at least, since that's what I've looked through), the words that are capitalized or not capitalized are pretty consistent. For example, "kraata" and "kolhii" are always lowercase. I think it'd be a good project to change page names and articles so reflect this capitalization. If we want to do this, I've found that Makuta's Guide to the Universe and Mata Nui's Guide to Bara Magna are pretty good at distinguishing between proper and improper nouns. Based on those two books, I've started compiling a list of improper nouns at User talk:Morris the Mata Nui Cow/Sandbox2. I'm confident I've missed some that are in there, and I'm guessing the chapter books also have more improper nouns in them too. What are people's thoughts on this project? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 22:02, 8 June 2016 (CET)

It's come up a few times before. To me, it's always simpler to have everything capitalized if for no other reason that it highlights that this is an encyclopedia, not an in-universe piece of fiction. I'd capitalize The Shadowed One consistently if I could. -- Dorek _Talk 07:34, 9 June 2016 (CET)

Hmm. Maybe it wouldn't require changing page titles or what have you, but do you think we could at least make a note of the proper capitalization in some way? Because I do think there's a benefit to having that information on the site in some form. BS01 is an encyclopedia, but when people look stuff up here they might use the information they find in another context, like a story, where the other capitalization would be more fitting. And maybe we could change the podcast transcriptions as well to reflect the capitalization in other official media. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 21:12, 9 June 2016 (CET)

The Midak Skyblaster is uppercase. See there: [1] -- Surel-Nuva (Talk) 12:19, 9 June 2016 (CET)

Thanks, I've made a note of it. I'll check in the books to see if Skyblaster is capitalized there too, but I'm guessing it is. Also I moved the list to the sandbox's talkpage now so everyone can edit it. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 21:12, 9 June 2016 (CET)

I don't mind a note (we could create some sort of special mention for it being a proper noun), and yeah, stuff like podcasts could probably be changed. I just think a page full of lowercase "kraata" is really unhelpful when you're trying to learn about the subject itself, for instance. -- Dorek _Talk 21:25, 9 June 2016 (CET)

Seems reasonable. Does anyone have ideas on how to integrate such mentions into the page? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 19:07, 10 June 2016 (CET)

In the Trivia sections? -- Surel-Nuva (Talk) 20:22, 10 June 2016 (CET)

Something like that is a possibility, but I think ideally it'd be a bit more prominent on the page. Actually here's an idea, we could do it like Chronist-Wiki does for articles where the title is a German translation of some piece of English media, like on Das Imperium Der Skrall. Then for example, the Kraata page could start with, "Kraata (kraata) are slug-like creatures of darkness created from the essence of a Makuta." Or something to that effect. Or we could stick with lowercase.... :P-- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 22:41, 14 June 2016 (CET)

We wouldn't change any page titles, since all titles are capitalized anyway. Other than that, I think we should just stick to good old classic grammar: when typing a word, if it's a name or title, then it's capitalized, otherwise, it's not. I don't think we need to make any special note on if the noun is proper. If it is, then it is capitalized, if it's not, then it's not. I think people using the wiki for fanfic or whatever are smart enough to figure that out without any special notation anywhere. Intelligence4 (talk) 02:32, 16 June 2016 (CET)

I agree. I for once would love to see the wiki use capitalisations more accurately, the way they are in the official literature. But that includes titles too, except one-word ones where it’s not possible, to my understanding, to not have the word not be capitalized. Maybe that depends on the wiki software or CSS or something. Lukas Exemplar (talk) 18:01, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Unused G2 panels

Since Bionicle is discontinued(again), what will happen to these unused G2 panels? Do you plan to create pages for them or abandon them?

-- 16:45, 1 August 2016 (CET)

Still plan on creating pages for them, although given what we know, there might be some reconfiguring. -- Dorek _Talk 21:53, 4 August 2016 (CET)

Also we have a "Tools" panel without a page, because all the tools are listed on the "Objects" page. -- Surel-Nuva (Talk) 22:05, 17 October 2016 (CET)

The page for the Tools panel still doesn't exist, yet on the main page, there's a panel for it (on mobile, it's under the Rahi panel, and over the Creatures Gen 1 panel. Every tool is listed under the Objects page.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 08:12, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

We'll be redoing the Parent Page system to go with a new front page hopefully soon, to simplify things a bit and make it more mobile friendly. -- Dorek _Talk 21:16, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Gen 1 and 2 tab glitch

There seems to be a glitch right now where the Gen 1 and 2 tabs at the top left of pages covers the article's title. As in if you go to Tahu (Generation 1) or Tahu (Generation 2) the tabs used to switch between the two is covering the title of the article. --Luka1184 (talk) 21:13, 4 August 2016 (CET)

It happens every time we have a site notice (the open letter, in this case), unfortunately. It'll just have to live for a bit until the notice gets taken down. -- Dorek _Talk 21:45, 4 August 2016 (CET)

Couldn't it theoretically get fixed with some code so that it doesn't happen when notices appear? --Luka1184 (talk) 03:23, 5 August 2016 (CET)

If there is a solution (I'm not the coder!) I was under the impression that it was too complicated to really be effective, and that it's a lot easier just to suck it up with a small glitch. I'm not particularly fussed. -- Dorek _Talk 09:03, 5 August 2016 (CET)

In theory it could if we transition to using page status indicators for all the icons, etc. on the top of the page. (In fact that's better than the current solution anyway because page status indicators are a solution that's built-in to MediaWiki.) The problem is that solution only works easily if all the buttons are on one line and on the right of the page. The problem is, on pages like Tahu (Generation 1), not only are there two lines of icons, the gen tabs are on the left of the page. It'll require a fair bit of messing around to figure out how to make our more complicated setup work with page status indicators. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 18:38, 5 August 2016 (CET)

The tab glitch happens for me even if there isn't a site notice. FYI i'm using Chrome on windows 10 to view the site. Intelligence4 (talk) 07:00, 8 August 2016 (CET)

Links on biosector01.com

Hey everyone! What links would you like to see on the splash page (biosector01.com)? The plan so far is:

• User/talk page
• Social media links
• Main Page
• Recent Changes
• Random Page
• Articles for Creation
• Articles for Deletion
• Language links

Anything else? Anything you think should be removed? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 03:50, 6 September 2016 (CET)

(New splash page -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 02:43, 7 September 2016 (CET))

By splash page, do you mean the page first seen when navigating to biosector01.com? If so, i think that should just be the Main Page, which is a pretty good resource as is. I know that's the first thing i always go to when i come to the site. currently, the splash page only has a search tool, which i don't think serves a very good purpose of informing visitors what we have to offer. i always immediately click on the logo to get to the main page, then i read some stuff there, and then log in, and work through my watchlist. some of the other proposed links could make the splash page a little more useful, but i still feel that the idea of having a splash page is a bit redundant.

one more thing about the site: the background image we currently have makes reading edit diffs pretty difficult. the color scheme of the mask of creation and the blue background that go with it are really close to the highlight colors in the edit diffs. what image did we used to have before gen2 was announced?

tl;dr i think we should make the main page what shows up when you type biosector01.com in your browser, and i think we need to change the background image. good discussion! Intelligence4 (talk) 18:56, 6 September 2016 (CET)

Yep that's it. I think the splash page here to stay at least for now, but it's getting an overhaul. Here's the new design currently. (The mask will reflect whether you're logged in/have new messages once the page goes live.) Part of the problem with the current main page is it's not updated very much, so honestly it doesn't do a good job of showing what we have to offer anyway. The new splash page requires less maintenance since it pulls random backgrounds from a list on the wiki. (Currently User:Morris the Mata Nui Cow/Sandbox2.) The content in the boxes at the bottom is pulled from the same wiki page so it can easily be updated to showcase new reviews or what have you. Anyway, redundancy aside, what are your thoughts?

Here's the old background image. Still pretty blue unfortunately. I recommend asking Swert if you want the background to be changed since he (presumably) has the PSD files.

(Also I'll respond to your Faxon message later on, I think there was a discussion on its limits on BZPower a while ago, or maybe it was a Greg quote. Something though.) -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 02:43, 7 September 2016 (CET)

There's nothing worse than BIONICLE click-bait XD.

I am with Intelligence4 regarding the current Splash page--I usually click the logo and head straight for the main page as well. But the new page looks like it has most of the things I use anyway (plus Vezon's head is always a plus). I wouldn't mind seeing a link to the Articles of Creation/Deletion, but that's just me. --777stairs (talk) 02:54, 7 September 2016 (CET)

:P

Cool cool. I replaced the Timeline and Saga Guides links with AfC/AfD links. Any other thoughts? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 04:58, 7 September 2016 (CET)

(Bump) -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 06:16, 12 September 2016 (CET)

Just saw the newest version of the splash page, and i really dig the changing backgrounds thing. maybe we could use that concept for the new background image on the site as a whole - that would be pretty neat. gotta agree with 777, bionicle clickbait is the worst XD. in all seriousness though, i think that section should be removed (i know it's just a placeholder thingie for now, but still... and if you click on it, it links you to making a new page, which we don't want random people doing haha). I think the biggest issue with the splash page is the redundancy, everything else is pretty much fine, especially with the added functionality of logging in and having new messages displayed where that mask is (although i wouldn't have known what that mask does without you telling us - so i think it should be more obvious). I wouldn't be totally opposed to just moving all the features currently on the main page to the splash page and just having the splash page take the place of the main page entirely, as long as everything is there. One thing I miss about the old main page was the featured article, or featured mask, or featured whatever. (when they were actually updated lol.) It was a nice little random bit of nostalgia, so if we had a thingie on the splash page for that that would be cool. Just curious, what started the whole splash page thing anyway? Intelligence4 (talk) 15:49, 12 September 2016 (CET)

Well the content in that box is a placeholder in that it's just there during development, not that it'll show up until the other real content is finished loading. That box will probably be dedicated to year 3 stuff in reality. It could also potentially be a featured article/image, but that's up to Dorek. The box contents are configurable on the wiki so nothing will have to be set in stone.

Thanks for the feedback on the mask. Once the splash page is up and running the mask will turn gold when you're logged in, I'm wondering if that will make it clearer? Maybe we can deploy it as-is and see what others think, then if it's clearly an issue we can send it back to the drawing board.

The point of the splash page is to make the site more accessible to readers who want to search stuff up. My understanding is that the analytics show that's what people do the most on the wiki, so we may as well make it front-and-center. A splash page is also lower maintenance than a full-on main page. That's precisely because it's stripped down, so moving everything over from the main page goes against the purpose. Instead the splash page and main page will complement each other, like on Wikipedia. Swert and Dorek may have more to say on that.

Changing backgrounds on the actual wiki probably isn't feasible I'm afraid. It would be cool though! What the splash page does is load the contents of User:Morris the Mata Nui Cow/Sandbox2, then it loads one of the images listed there. So loading a random background requires loading two extra resources from biosector01.com on every page load. I couldn't say for sure but I imagine the server would not be a fan of two extra pageloads whenever someone loads a page on the wiki. :/

Anyone else want to chime in? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 08:59, 17 September 2016 (CET)

I had completely forgotten that wikipedia even has a main page lol, but what you're saying makes sense. I like the idea of the mask turning color when you're logged in - we could have it be silver when you're logged out, and turn a color when you're logged in, kinda like when a toa puts on a mask! haha, that's a pretty good idea. idk how, but would it be possible for the user to pick that color?

how will the notifications show? will it just be a little flag icon on the mask?

about those images in your sandbox, they all seem to have a different aspect ratio. i've haven't seen an instance of this yet, but i wonder if that'll cause issues when displaying the image as the page background. btw, I really like that image of Gali swimming with the bohrok, it's got a nice touch to it. There might have been something else i was going to say here, but I can't remember it lol. Intelligence4 (talk) 18:47, 19 September 2016 (CET)

The aspect ratio isn't an issue, I'm assuming Morris set the background to "cover" as compared to "contain," which would mean the image fills the screen from left to right, regardless of the top-bottom. If it were set to "contain" it would show visible bars on the sides. What we'd need to do is select images that are high enough resolution to prevent eye gouging insanity when viewed on a HD+ screen :) -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)}

Yep, it's set to cover. As for the mask, it turns gold when you're logged in and infected if you're banned. The color isn't customizable. When there are new messages there is a red alert icon thing in the top right corner of the avatar, and to make it even more noticeable the mask shakes a few times on page load. It also displays the username next to the mask now, so hopefully its function is clearer. Or rather, the code to make it do all those things is written, but it won't work until the site is actually live. The demo still just has the gray mask, but now it says "log in" next to it. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 00:01, 20 September 2016 (CET)

Swert, do you have the ability to change the site background like mtmnc mentioned above after i asked about it (i was talking about edit diffs being hard to read due to color matching with the background)? Intelligence4 (talk) 18:19, 20 September 2016 (CET)

I've noticed lots of new images showing up on the splash page recently - looks good! is there a list we can view that shows all of the images it's pulling from? Intelligence4 (talk) 18:06, 27 February 2017 (CET)

Glad you like it! We actually haven't added new images to the list for a while--I guess you've just been lucky and gotten some different ones recently. The list is at BIONICLEsector01:Splash. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 05:22, 4 March 2017 (CET)

Thanks for the link! :) Intelligence4 (talk) 18:31, 6 March 2017 (CET)

A new approach to gen disambigs (and some future projects)

Recently the staff has been reconsidering how to re-implement gen tabs. The current implementation is pretty dirty, and it does not work across skins or when there is a sitenotice. Swert put a poll up on Facebook and Discord about what to do with the gen tabs, and we got a few responses. One point that came up is that visitors can find it annoying to navigate to a disambig every time they search for a character that appears in both gens. There was a suggestion to change the current setup so that searching for, say, "Tahu" would take users to the gen 1 page, and then users could easily access the gen 2 page with the gen tabs. So disambiguation pages like Tahu will now be redirects to their appropriate gen 1 pages.

To give you an idea of a few other things in the works:

• As was our original intent, in addition to this article name change, we plan to rework the gen tab setup from a code and appearance point of view. We may even replace the gen tabs with Template:Youmay.
• A new era system that mentions the page's current generation and relegates the era icons to a dropdown (see my sandbox)
• Spanish interwiki links (I'd recommend waiting to add these until the new era template is ready so we can do everything in fewer edits)

If you have any thoughts or concerns about this change or the other changes mentioned, please voice them here. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 08:18, 6 May 2017 (CET)

definitely support the new era system - before, it was covered by other content and we couldn't mouse over it. it's not perfect since you still have to click on a dropdown menu to get see it, but it's a huge improvement over what we have now. also mentioned my support for the new gen tabs on your talk page before, i think. Intelligence4 (talk) 22:48, 7 May 2017 (CET)

I like the Vahi/MoC icons at top, with the wider tabs a bit lower; I think I'd rather use those than Youmay. It's also nice that the Era icons won't get covered up by the parent page icons anymore. A small note - in your sandbox, you have to click on the actual arrow (the darker blue section) on the Vahi/MoC Gen icons to get the Era icon dropdown. Currently, clicking on the bigger, lighter blue section of the Gen tab takes you to the tab image's file page; if there's a way to make the whole button open the dropdown menu, that could be nice. Volitak Boxor (talk) 02:52, 8 May 2017 (CET)

Greg on TTV

Just so you all know, Greg's started answering questions on TTV. Keep an eye out. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 05:22, 27 May 2017 (CET)

thanks for the heads up, i wouldn't have see that. a) how'd you find out about it? b) how was that worked out with lego's legal team? was there any talk of how this arrangement was set up? that would be interesting to know, just for knowledge's sake. c) on citations: we've seen, with every single avenue of discussion with greg so far, get shut down, and later we've had to archive stuff for our references. should we preemptively make a copy of everything he says on there so we can have an independent reference system we know won't get discontinued? Intelligence4 (talk) 05:28, 30 May 2017 (CET)

Probably. —Planetperson 05:46, 30 May 2017 (CET)

Exciting stuff! —Planetperson 05:46, 30 May 2017 (CET)

a) I think I saw a post about it on the bioniclelego subreddit.

b) I'm not sure if they've announced how they managed to get this deal through. They must have gotten Lego to acknowledge that they have an age verification system to ensure members are at least 13. IIRC TTV brought up the idea to Greg while he was still answering questions on the LMBs.

c) Definitely, I'd recommend making an archive.org copy whenever you make a citation, then provide the original and archived URLs. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 05:56, 30 May 2017 (CET)

Shouldn't the Maintenance tab on the main pahe be updated since Greg no longer is answering questions on the LMB which is linked, and instead maybe link the TTV MBs forum? "The LEGO Message Boards Chat with GregF is always coming up with some new tidbit of information, and good fact-checkers for this are always welcome!" ~ WOLKsite (talk) 10:59, 13 July 2017 (CET)

yes, it should. i don't think normal users have the ability to edit that page though Intelligence4 (talk) 21:43, 15 July 2017 (CET)

Well, it's been updated to say the TTV Message Boards rather than LMB already, so no issue no more. ~ WOLKsite 01:25, 16 July 2017 (CET)

ha, that's what i get for not checking before commenting :) Intelligence4 (talk) 02:40, 16 July 2017 (CET)

Tools Page

So, on the front page with the 6x5 grid of tabs with Characters, Locations, etc. there is a "Tools" tab. Now, I noticed, this page doesn't exist, nor would it serve any purpose since tools are listed on the Objects page, so. What do? ~ Wolk (talk) 21:13, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Actually; it's supposed to be a link to Gallery:Tools. So would someone with perms fix it? hehe.... ~ Wolk (talk) 21:16, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

EJ01

I won't even ask... --Vartemp ^Talk 14:02, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

The day at its finest. Happy April 1st holiday(s) of your choosing. -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)}

some questions

For lack of better place i'm putting this here. i have a seiries of questions.

1: what happend to the BS01 Youtube channel?

2: what happend to the podcast recordings? i was told that they would be uploaded but it never happend. (yes Swert and Spirit, it's that Srlojohn)

3: on a similar note, what happend to making a page of all the Makutafest videos?

Thanks, --Srlojohn (talk) 17:44, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

THROWBOTSslizer01

Finally!! took ya long enough! --"♫We're driving old smokey! Porkchop's at the wheel! When we hit the junk realm, we'll make the drones squeal!♫" ^{~Prof. Srlojohn} 19:18, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

This skin and logo are a beauty. Great to know this place is still going good! --Vartemp ^Talk 20:03, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Location, Characters etc. Gen1/Gen2 tabs

In the wikinav found at the front page, both of the G1 and G2 Character tabs link to the Characters disambigous page (does that page actually need to exist?). G2 powers link to the G1 Powers oage, as opposed to Elements (Generation_2), similair case with Creatures rather than Okoto#Wildlife and Locations rather than Okoto. These issues only applies to the Main Page, and not to the actual wikinav template itself. ~ Wolk (talk) 20:22, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Those issues should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing them out! -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 04:03, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

lego ideas project (moved from AFC)

I know this isn't really the place to put this, but I'm not sure where else. If a Bionicle Ideas project were to be made, would it be on the site, and in what capacity? (The preceding unsigned comment was made by Srlojohn)

It depends on what the project is. We would definitely make a set article for it and mention it on the the Sets page. We would also mention it in the "Set Information" sections of relevant articles. For example if Sokoda's set makes it through, we'll mention it in the Matoro, GSR, and Bara Magna articles, among others. If a set described new canon events, then we would also update the "History" sections of relevant articles. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 18:20, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

Old discussion, but what would the category look like? Would it be like the other "Sets of 20XX" templates at the bottom of set pages, just with a different year, or would it just be "Ideas Sets" and then organize by year or size in the categories used for size now? 𝙗𝙮 𝙒𝙖𝙙𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙯 05:28, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

TTV Canonization Attempts

It seems that TTV is gauging interest for a new slew of canonization building contests. I am curious whether BS01 would accept the results of such contests, or to what standards they would need to be held before making it onto this site. --Angel Bob (talk) 17:40, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

At the end of the day, I'd say most likely. I've already given my thoughts and I'm vehemently against it, but if it were to happen, we would probably honor it.

One of the things that does concern me is the overall numbers of the poll; if it maintains its current trends, peaks at, say, 1000 voters, with a roughly 2/3rds split; is that enough of a sample representation? If those numbers all point to yes, but then an actual contest receives drastically less votes, can we say the original poll wasn't flawed somehow? This is all speaking quantitatively, of course, when there's some pointed qualitative arguments to consider as well. So it's a dynamic situation that we're keeping an eye on.

(still a haaaaaaard no to the idea from me though!) -- Dorek _Talk 00:46, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Every part of this is deeply disappointing. --Angel Bob (talk) 04:51, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

I'd ask what part, but I'm pretty tired of the whole debate. Some legitimate concerns were raised but nobody really seems to care if the answer isn't "yes". At this point it hasn't happened yet, so I can't give a firm answer because everybody seems more concerned with rushing to the endpoint rather than actually constructing the thing. We've had discussions with TTV, Swert is the person to ask more about that. Right now I don't see why we wouldn't. -- Dorek _Talk 06:21, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Citation system

Currently I plan on changing all the citation templates to use reference tags, like how Template:BookCitation is currently. Reference tags are pretty well suited for long sources like books since we can pack so much info into them (page number, entry name, etc.). However, as people have pointed out, the reference system is not ideal for Greg citations. All the Greg citations look the same, and they can really pile up in the references section.

Personally, I think we should stick with reference tags because they're so well suited for citing long sources. I also think we should only rely on one citation system. So, instead of switching back to the old Greg citation system, let's figure out a better way to cite Greg quotes with reference tags. Here are a few ideas.

• As User:Surel-nuva brought up, we can limit the height of the references section so it scrolls. The reference section already behaves that way on small screens, but I could make that standard across all screen sizes.
• We can group together all the Greg citations as described here. If we want to go even more granular, we could put books, comics, etc. in their own sections, similar to how the appearances section is now.

What do you think? Check out mw:Help:Cite to see what's possible with the citation system. If you have other ideas I'd like to hear them too. Since we use citation templates, we can test ideas out across the whole site and change them back quickly. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 02:37, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

My two cents is that something to the effect of this would go a long way to clean up both the Greg Citations and the book citations. ~ Wolk (talk) 03:13, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd say Wolks idea could work if we limit the height of the reference box on the main site, as it already is on small screens. My biggest complain about the reference lists have always been the unnecessarily long list between the Appearances and See also headlines. It breaks the flow of the page, even if it's small cased. And maybe we should do them by sections as the appearance lists for clearance.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 03:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I guess the ideal would be Wolk's idea too. Then I guess it would not be immediately possible since it's a beta feature. Grouping might help reduce the clutter. The biggest thing would be to have references displaying more than the title of the thread; old-style greg citations (with the date), for example. --maxim21 06:43, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm all for anything that reduces the clutter. I think the "1.1" system could be fine, although I do wonder how much applicability it has on the biography sections, which are somewhat overcited as it is. -- Dorek _Talk 21:00, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm also a fan of Wolk's idea. Unfortunately, we can't use Extension:Cite's book referencing system until we upgrade the wiki to MW 1.35. The pandemic delayed 1.35's release, but supposedly the MW developers will announce a schedule within the next week. If it's not coming out for a while, I'll just upgrade us to a 1.35 alpha. As for grouping citations, let's wait until after we get book referencing running--maybe it'll clean things up enough that grouping won't be needed. In the meantime, I've restricted the height of the reference box and changed GregCitation to display the page/post or timestamp in each reference. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 21:15, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Quick update. MW 1.35 should come out in August. Also, the book referencing system is not complete yet. In particular, it does not have a way to define a reference and subreference at the same time, which is an important feature for BS01's citation template system. The main reason to upgrade to an MW 1.35 alpha was to get book references working, but since book references aren't ready yet, I plan to hold off on upgrading until August. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Another update: BS01 is now running MW 1.35, and book citations are enabled. However, I haven't updated the citation templates to use them because the citation popups (MediaWiki:Gadget-ReferenceTooltips.js, which was originally written for Wikipedia) can't handle them yet. I tried an alternative popup setup, mw:Extension:Popups, but it (1) isn't configurable enough for BS01's purposes and (2) also can't (yet) handle book citations (see [2]). Once one or both of those popup setups can handle book references, I'll re-evaluate. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 03:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

On some pages, there are "citations" between  (like Kirop). I guess we should get rid of them and make proper citations or is there any reason to keep them as is? --maxim21 08:03, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

They are direct links to the old bionicle.com pages, where the information belongs to. We can convert them into normal references, but when I added them, the in-line references seemed to be more common, like the old book/comic citations :) — Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 08:38, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I would definitely like those to be in a proper citation! Also magazine articles, even though I'll be creating pages for some. -- Dorek _Talk 20:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

What would you think about a citation template for one-off links? You'd specify the name of the page, name of the site section, name of the whole site, and a URL. What would we call it? The natural name is OnlineCitation, which of course is already used for other things. (Although I'm not opposed to rethinking OnlineCitation/MediaCitation and using a bot to change existing citations en masse....) -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 03:48, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking about the very same thing. My natural instinct says it's online citation, obviously, but citing from the old websites makes me feel like it's a kind of a media citation. And considering that the 2007 bioniclestory.com doesn't have individual links to the subsections of the site, getting a link to the Toa Chamber is impossible. And tbh the "WebsiteCitation" would be the best way to describe it, yet it sounds a bit off to me. — Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 03:58, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I mean, having the individual links to every archived webpage, where the info came from, just take a look at the Aquatic Power Blade we have 3 different links for 3 different name for the same thing.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 04:04, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

At a stretch we could call it "LegoCitation" or something since they're LEGO distributed sources (I guess shop descriptions could also go there?), but I would say they can fit well enough under MediaCitation. I'm totally okay to have a unified citation system, but I'm also really lazy when it comes to adding them so I might not be the best judge. -- Dorek _Talk 05:14, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Sourcing BSS Stuff

Back in the days, a few canonizations went through the BIONICLE Story Squad. They were announced through their own topic, which isn't available on the wayback archive. There are a few reports or confirmations those existed, like this topic on BZP or an announcement on Der Chronist (beware, german). Since these are apparently the last sources we have, I'm tempted to use them as references. Any thoughts on this? --maxim21 04:25, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

It would be great, I guess so many things that I cannot find in the OGD stuff or in the books originally came from there too, like the Iruini and Hoto Bug thing, Icarax's original mask, and the Sundial thing. — Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 19:16, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Acid Fly maybe? xD The things I've been able to find confirmation on (via Der Chonist blogposts) are: Icarax's mask being the mask of scavenging, Raanu's fire blade details, Sundial 36-hour days, metal bones for SM inhabitants, the Prisoners of the Pit being canon sans names, and the secondary color of Sonics being black. I suspect the electricity resistance for Vo-Matoran is also in there somewhere but I haven't found it. I think using those blog posts work just fine. I saw Dorek mention 'the BSS archives' on BZP, I wonder if those still exist and could be shared? ~ Wolk (talk) 21:59, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

I wish I could find the old BSS forum link (though it's probably dead now), but this was several chat applications and many years ago. I might still have the drive with some archives, but no guarantee. Go with what we have for now. -- Dorek _Talk 02:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Wolk, the Acidfly is in the BL7 xD — Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 05:06, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone knows what was the poll's results? I mean I do remember that Kojol was either confirmed to wear a Mask of Aging or just almost confirmed to wear one somewhere, because that was the reason why the fam project called "The Next Generation" had a Kojol model with a Mask of Aging.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 07:14, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Better scans

So recently, in the Bionicle Community Group Page, Toa Arynn uploaded a bunch of high resolution scans, including clearer versions of the magazine instructions. Could somebody else check it out too, and ask him if he approves, could we use them as updated pictures for the wiki? Here's the direct link — Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 06:18, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Precedence of Greg quotes

So something that's been bothering me for a while is what the actual canon presidency for Greg quotes is. For the LMB and TTV Ask Greg things, it's been said that older answers take presidence, but does this at all apply to pre-LMB quotes?

On one hand, a lot of things changed alongside the story, particularily early 03-05 answers, and things like how the Rode works, but in other cases, such as with the Avalanche Spear, Greg has said questions should not be asked twice.

I suppose this question could also apply to guide books, where some details may have been different in The Official Guide to BIONICLE.

So is the general presidence always the earliest answer, or is it going for later answers up until 2013, and earlier as of 2013? ~ Wolk (talk) 04:13, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

FYI, the word is "precedence." I don't think Greg had one, consistent policy. Whenever he said something that contradicted earlier answers or published material, it was because he either (a) forgot or (b) intended to retcon or correct something. It is hard to distinguish between (a) and (b), and there are only a few cases where he was explicit about (b). IIRC Greg's general policy was that his later answers took precedence, but when someone pointed out that he was contradicting earlier info, he was sometimes willing to walk it back. —Planetperson 10:07, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

I think the current standard for which of Greg’s answers take precedence is not only overly convoluted, but also very inconsistent. What I’ve been told is that the latest answer while the story was still going on takes precedence, and for anything after, the earliest answer takes precedence,1 and published material always supercede any answer he gives.2 Put simply, priority seems to be published materials, latest answer on OGQ, OGDi, and OGD, and earliest answer on CwGF/TTV, all in descending order. This is very reasonable, but BS01 doesn’t even follow this standard at times. For example, Greg’s answer on the Mask of Creation bringing things into existence currently takes precedence over the World guide (see the talkpage). I understand the rule only applies to “forgetcons” and not intended retcons, but many times, the two are hard or near impossible to distinguish.

I recommend a different approach, that being to evaluate things on a case by case basis rather than mainly on a universal rule of later/earlier answers. An example of this in practice is my headcanon on Hordika Venom being a mutation-causing poison rather than a true mutagen. Despite directly saying four times over nine years that Visorak Venom isn’t actually a poison, there are more quotes that would directly or indirectly suggest that it is. Instead of simply ignoring certain answers because they were earlier/later, more vague, or not as repeated as others, I considered every quote in relation to each other and the published story. From what I've noticed, this idea might have been used for several issues in the past here, so all I'm suggesting is make it more common. A lot of these issues, such as the Mahiki’s shapeshifting power and Naho’s mask, have been reduced to “ask Greg again for clarification,” but that’s becoming less and less of an option because 1) Greg has been very unavailable and 2) as he said in the recent Bionifigs interview, these issues are so detailed and were so long ago he doesn’t feel he can answer them accurately. If any resolve is to be reached, most likely it will have to come from the community itself, and several times Greg has suggested just that. Using this standard instead for treating Greg quotes is probably the best (though not perfect) way for that to happen. Dag (talk) 05:30, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

In regards to the last point - can you give any instances of Greg stating this? Additionally, I think this poses problems in itself, as we must then reach a common decision, which is hard enough on its own, and doesn't actually present much of a standard. We could perhaps instead acknowledge inconsistencies and contridictions in the article? ~ Wolk (talk) 16:05, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I admit it would be more subjective to an extent, but I do think it would be more viable than what we currently have. If you're referring to the point about Greg offering the community to come up with solutions, there's been a few hints to that. Again from the Bionifigs interview, referring to the timeline of the serials, Greg said "I am sure a wiser head than mine could (and probably already has) figured out the timeline for all of this," and when asked about a pattern for Kanoka combinations, "That depends on if I have time to worry about patterns -- you may have more free time to worry about those things than I do."1 He also takes arguments from fans into consideration before canonizing something.2 I wouldn't consider this new standard to be mainly based on democracy like the TTV canonization polls, but more on how well it can be argued from all available sources. Again, its not a perfect solution, but what we're using now (taking answers solely based on whether they were said earlier/later) negates the ability to build an argument like the one I did for Hordika Venom. Dag (talk) 16:42, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

I find myself inclined to agree with Dag, though I'd have to see it in practice. As someone who's spent the past few weeks revising the Coming of the Toa and Quest for the MoL timelines, I can say with certainty that calls have to be made when organizing a chronology that may have no basis in canon or a Greg quote simply for the sake of having a cohesive timeline and resolving contradictory statements. See the Trivia section of the latter timeline to enjoy some of the headache I've had to deal with.

However, at the very least as has been said before, notes as to the contradictions and decisions we are making to these effects should definitely be noted under Trivia or something. But no matter what, whatever we're putting on the page requires a level of decision-making--and with Greg increasingly stepping further and further away from the deep lore, these are decisions that he generally won't be able to help us with. --Gonel (talk) 06:01, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Broadly speaking, I'll say the "precedence rule" is more of a rule of thumb, and it's more meant to apply to anything post-BZP; while I'm not saying answers given after 2012-ish weren't valid (wouldn't that be something though...) it's clear that the ability to communicate complex ideas or to work out weightier theories didn't really recover. Thus, the rule is meant to make sure things are airtight, and if the original premise of a suggestion was flawed in some way, it became "fruit of the poisonous tree", and the answer given couldn't be valid.

It's about the absence of clarification, if you want to look at it another way; obviously there's stuff in the text that HAD to be clarified by Greg (I recall Tarduk's bouncing around in the 2009 serials and the main novels/comics being a bit of a head-scratcher until Greg sorted it out) but post-primary story, even if we/Greg believe it to be one way, if the main story contradicts it, it can't be right because there's no recourse for fact checking otherwise. This doesn't preclude Greg's earlier answers from being wrong, obviously, but they have to be weighted accordingly.

But to the idea about "wiser heads"; I'm certainly not opposed to critically evaluating the material when there are inconsistencies, but if we're going to be doing that, we should be utilizing a higher standard of proof than just "well, there's nothing that says it couldn't be this way". This is also a(nother) huge issue I have with those contests; if we're at the stage where we as a fanbase are directly contradicting published material, recording it at all seems depressingly futile.

All this to say that your Hordika venom thing might be right in the end (I need to check it out more!) and that no single source is infallible; neither is the hierarchy of precedence we've come up with! It's a tool, a system, and we can bump it around if necessary. -- Dorek _Talk 07:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

I didn't mean to say the precedence rule is completely bad, just when applied as the sole or main factor when dealing with contradictions. If the precedence rule isn't meant to be as universal as I thought, I apologize for the misunderstanding. I was just going off what I've been told before and how I've seen it applied. As you said, "even if we/Greg believe it to be one way, if the main story contradicts it, it can't be right because there's no recourse for fact checking otherwise," which (if I understand correctly), is just reiterating what Greg said, that published materials take precedence over his answers. I agree, but when I see things that directly contradict that reasoning, like the Mask of Creation situation, its understandably frustrating to see such a loose and contradictive standard. Dag (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah it's definitely not meant to be ironclad! I'm all for parsing out discrepancies, the precedence rule just helps with knowing when to prioritize sources. To me it also helps with understanding when to just accept errors as they are rather than convolutedly re-incorporating them into canon (not that that hasn't also happened! Looking at you, Trigalx/Keetongu).

Take BL9; in it, Gavla transforms into her Shadow Matoran form right away, when we know that there were other steps needed to achieve that. This was acknowledged as "artistic license" (something about a possible visual adaptation? Somebody should find that citation lol). Let's say somebody later asks if Mutran was secretly hiding behind a rock the whole time and mutated her on the spot. Is there anything to contradict that in the canon? Not really. But that's clearly not what happened. So in this case, the text is wrong, and the first Greg answer is right. A second Greg answer could/would make the text "right" again, but to me that diminishes our capability to find and acknowledge these inconsistencies. -- Dorek _Talk 18:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Instructions

I believe that we have every single instructions for every released set on the wiki, can't we have the instructions of each character in the infobox, just like how we have them on the set pages? As we mostly use the instructions from here, not the external ones, I believe it is a bit pointless to call them "external links" when the instructions under them are not externals.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 11:26, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. How would you feel about linking to them next to the set number and inside Template:C? I put a demo on Tahu (Generation 1). Maybe we could also integrate them into Template:SetLink. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 06:14, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I like it, it's a pretty clever way of including them, my idea was just using the same format as the Set pages.— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 07:08, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking, if we choose this, how would we do the same with the combiner models, which doesn't have pdf instructions, and some even has the name of the model in the filename too?— Surel—Nuva _(Talk) 08:29, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Good point. I think we can add combiners to Template:SetLink (unless people object). Then we'd use another switch statement to handle links to different instructions. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 02:19, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Dark Hunter Phantom

Check this out it seems like after 14 years the images of Phantom has been recovered.-- Surel-Nuva (Talk) 16:08, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Discord

Is there a Discord server on here? Should I make one...?? (The preceding unsigned comment was made by ‎Chloe1996)

We are in the process of setting up a Discord for everybody, but it takes time between other commitments. -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)} 05:55, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Is this still a thing on the backburner, or is there a link I can join with? 𝙗𝙮 𝙒𝙖𝙙𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙯 03:47, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

We've had the server for a few months now, I guess I never did properly add it to our sidebar. Link here: https://discord.gg/qncWdJS5f9

Spacer templates

I was looking through some of the templates you guys have on here, and wanted to suggest one that might help clean up some pages. We use them quite often on TFWiki and they work wonders for spacing everything out in the coding and stop section headers from being pushed in by images etc.

Template:- is the template we use and it looks like this: {{-}} when typed into coding. I think pages like Toa Hordika could benefit from it. The "Members" section header is currently being pushed by the image above and makes it look a little messy imo.

I don't know how to do any of the coding to create templates, but I thought I'd bring it up if anyone was interested to look into it.

Here is a link to the TFWiki template to give you an idea what I mean. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 03:24, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

We've done that a few times on the site using HTML, but the idea of putting it in a template hadn't come up before. Feel free to use Template:- now. Thanks for the suggestion! -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 04:26, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Wow, it works like a charm! I'm glad to have helped! -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 07:04, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

What is the purpose of BS01?

For the few months I’ve been editing on the wiki, there have been quite a few frustrating situations, and a lot of them stem from the fact that BS01’s policies are not clear. I’ve brought this up before under canon precedence, but I feel I need to expand upon what I meant. BS01’s Policy and About pages are not clear, and when they are, they get contradicted in practice. BS01’s “mission is to record every known fact and figure about BIONICLE,” and yet information that is canonical but deemed unnecessary by Staff is intentionally left out, like hypotheticals. I agree listing out every single possible hypothetical isn’t necessary, let alone possible (like AUs), but when Greg specifically conforms that a mask of, say, Heat Vision is possible, that should be added. And again, there is no formulated policy on canon precedence when dealing with contradictions. I didn’t know about the rule that Greg quotes closest to 2010-2011 are generally considered to take precedence over his other answers until directly told so by other editors after I had already started editing pages (which is a rule I’m still not sure of myself). This is something that PlanetPerson's TGA wiki has as an advantage over BS01, and it's still in its infancy. Editing BS01 sometimes feels like playing a game of King Mao, a card game where the rules are entirely unspoken and the only way to learn them is as you go along in the game. This is completely ineffective and uncoordinated. Because there is no given policy on canon, it causes confusion and inconsistency. This may also play a part in why a large part of the community feels that what makes something canon is when it’s on BS01 and non-canon when it's not on the site, which is definitely not true. BS01 is a resource, not a source, which should be made absolutely clear (I know that may seem like common sense to more experienced editors, but there are people who do treat it this way). Some people even memorize entries like it’s holy scripture and become upset when changes are made, even when they’re for the better. I would seriously suggest that Staff take time to reevaluate and make clear what the purpose of BS01 is and what they expect out of its editors. Credit where credit is due, the new Behind the Scenes sections for pages is certainly a step in the right direction, but more needs to be done. As frustrated and disappointed as I have been at times with the site, I want to see BS01 be better, and the only way that can happen is if we communicate. Dag (talk) 16:12, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

These are some important issues. Thanks for bringing them up because yeah we are all after the same thing here, which is improving the site. There is definitely a "learn by doing" aspect to BS01, which makes it hard to start editing here. Seeing lots of edits get undone, debated, etc. can't be fun.

I can't speak to the thinking behind those policies you linked to, because they were in place before I joined the site. But presumably, recording "every known fact and figure" seemed like a useful thing in the 2000s when taking in the lore required reading through and comparing a bunch of sources. These days, I don't think that's the best goal.

My take (which imo we should codify) is that BS01 should strive for accuracy and "usefulness" (which ofc is subjective) over completeness. I've tried to be pretty consistent in my stance that it's worse to leave potentially incorrect, or dubious, info on the site than to leave it out entirely. That makes BS01 more trustworthy if you ask me. And people REALLY trust BS01, probably too much as you pointed out, so I think it's important not to lead people astray with dubious info. (Actually, maybe it'd be good to have another, more explicit "dubious/disputed" template like CN that would link to the article's talk page....)

Anyway, valuing accuracy over completeness has been my reasoning behind sometimes removing Greg info when it's contradicted later. Like, if you can reasonably challenge it, maybe it's best to just leave it out so that we're not presenting potentially incorrect info. Personally, I'm hesitant to codify a "canon precedence" like on TGA wiki, but that's just me. In my opinion there are so many ambiguous cases that it's better to judge on a case-by-case basis. Codifying some guiding principles wouldn't hurt though. This is an issue other staff and users should weigh in on.

I get the sense that your frustration stems largely from you having a different attitude towards ambiguous info than me and some other members. When you see ambiguity, you want to hammer out a firm conclusion, and a precedence order would help with that. I'm often on the same page. But when it gets too fuzzy, I'm more inclined to just leave off the ambiguous info, or present both sides as a trivia point, etc. while you're driven to establish rules that would present a firm conclusion. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, but as you said, it's important to communicate to make the site better, so I'm trying to articulate where you're coming from to see if I understand your viewpoint correctly. Once we get a clear sense of people's opinions, maybe we can nail down how we should change policies (or at least codify unspoken rules). -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 19:14, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I think Morris hit the nail on the head with the idea of valuing accuracy over completion. I guess, to me, that actually supports the idea of being a "resource" over a "source". Taking the Mask of Rahkshi powers as an example; that concept as it's being presented doesn't appear anywhere in the canon, and is only nominally supported as being an IDEA (not a fact, but an idea) by tenuous evidence. Greg's "anything's possible" notwithstanding, the only way somebody would even know about it is by reading this wiki. At that point, have we not transitioned from being a resource to being a source? You're right in that we're not supposed to be the latter, but the only way we can be the former is by synthesizing the information available and not just regurgitating verbatim everything that appears.

More broadly speaking though, I'm sure our policies could use some language updating, but I also really love the ability to find nuance in dialogue, and not be beholden to any particular ironclad rule. Obviously I personally lean towards being more conservative in the amount of info that finds its way here, but I like to think I'm pretty open-minded when good factual evidence is presented. However, I will put that onus on the person with the idea to make their case.

For what it's worth, I love Planetperson's stratification model, and I would totally be up for (and have actually proposed) "readability" modes for BS01 to incorporate this; the problem is that would be a massive undertaking that, realistically, nobody has time to do. Not to bring up the "we don't get paid to do this" card, but we don't; this is for fun on our free time. -- Dorek _Talk 20:36, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

On a sidenote, when was the First Greg Quote takes the precedence rule overwritten/retconned? I saw some people used the close to 2011/end of G1 rule, but as much as I can recall, here, we used the first quote rule, unless it was an intentional retcon, not a forgetcon. Otherwise I wouldn't be a part of the bigger debate, I'm just a casual editor atm.--Surel (Talk) 21:00, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

If it interests BS01, we recently codified a "BIONICLE Tiers of Canonicity" on the Great Archives blog: https://thegreatarchives.com/blog/2021/04/25/the-bionicle-tiers-of-canonicity . You're welcome to use it as well, and I'd be interested to hear your feedback! —Planetperson 01:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for this! Can't dig into it right now, but I'll pass it along to other staff members. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 06:36, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Categories on Redirect pages

So, https://biosector01.com/w/index.php?title=Mask_of_Reconstitution&oldid=149768 made me think of this. General rule of thumb as far as I know, redirect pages shouldn't have categories, or really anything more than the redirect, however some pages do, for instance https://biosector01.com/w/index.php?title=Mask_of_Undeath&redirect=no Should this be the case - should these redirects have categories, and if so, what kind of redirects in general should have that? ~ Wolk (talk) 21:13, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I know they normally have the G1 and G2 indexes, but other than that, I'm kind of unsure. Most of the G2 redirects have the categories what the actual pages would have.--Surel (Talk) 21:54, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I say keep categories and EraTab templates on redirects that talk about individual tools or objects and such, and locations, even if they’re redirect to a general page about objects or the planet of Spherus Magna in case it’s a location or something else that’s technically its own thing. That way, the categories don’t look super empty and anyone on them whos interested to know just what, say, Lein’s Drift is, can click on it from a category page it appears in. Howvever, I’ve been removing categories from redirect pages where they didn’t make sense, for instance if it was just another name for a character or something like that. Lukas Exemplar (talk) 03:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Changing images in the infoboxes

BioMediaProject has the images used in the boxes for the sets but with transparent backgrounds. I think having these images be the ones used in the infoboxes on their respective pages would look better. The only thing is that I noticed that, for some reason, images from the comics are preferred over their set forms. To me, this doesn't make much sense from a canon perspective, since the sets are their most canon depictions. If I were to take the time to upload these images to BS01, would having them in the infoboxes be an improvement? Dag (talk) 23:01, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I tried uploading a transparent version of the Fire Shield, since it's the exact same image already used, just no background, but when I did, the wiki automatically formatted it to have a white background, I'm not sure why. I double checked the file on my end. Dag (talk) 00:14, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Nevermind, just had to clear my cache. Dag (talk) 03:46, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I think it's be good to use transparent versions for mask, weapon, etc. pages when possible. Thanks for uploading those. I can't weigh in about images for entire sets as Dorek worked that system out. Also, in general, I think Swert prefers comic images for character, event, etc. pages for a couple reasons: first, those images show characters in environments, so those images are more grounded in the story so to speak, and second they're often cooler. :P But if set images are much clearer, we go with those. For weapons or masks, set images like the ones you're talking about tend to be much clearer than comic or other CGI images, so we can use them. This policy is one of the few that actually is codified! (BIONICLEsector01:Image Use Policy) It could use some revision though (for example, by grouping weapons with Kanohi). -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 06:36, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

(Sorry, late to weighing in)

I gotta say I've never been a huge fan of making images transparent, especially now that we use colored background on the templates; having the white helps with that layer of consistency that's now lacking, and there are some backgrounds/skins where it just looks terrible or is otherwise visually indistinct. If we could work out a way to way to have white backgrounds for the templates I don't mind the image files themselves being transparent, but for presentation, I think white backgrounds are the most effective.

As far as comic images go, it comes up from time to time. I'm open to moving to sets, but honestly I've always loved using comic images because it gives us this really unique visual identity from other sites. And as Morris mentioned, since the wiki (ostensibly) is focused on story, comic images are one of those main story contexts where there aren't necessarily any visual compromises (2006-07 notwithstanding lol) and is the most "real" sense we have of the characters in those environments. That said, yeah, stuff like tools and masks and whatnot should probably be CGI/set images where possible. -- Dorek _Talk 03:15, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

When it comes to simpler, less elaborate images like Krana, Kraata, Kanohi, weapons, etc, I think having no background is by far the cleanest and most professional looking. However, I can see why a background of a solid color would be better for fuller sets, whose small details could get muddled among the BS01 background, especially as thumbnails. --Gonel (talk) 03:34, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Sokoda's set

If this project get eventually released as a set, will we count it as the official "playset" for the Great Spirit and Prototype robots? --Surel (Talk) 16:11, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

I think we should document the set if it ends up going through, yes. I don't think it should be regarded as a playset, or "official," however, but as what it is - a BrickLink Designer Program set. Should it go under the set info sections of the relevant pages? Sure. One interesting thing here, imo, is locations, as this would be the first and only set to deal with locations. ~ Wolk (talk) 18:52, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the Tower of Toa, Battle of Metru Nui (Gate of the Coliseum), the Lava Chamber Gate, and the Piraka Stronghold are playsets and all the four deals with locations, I don't think it will be different. For me, it'll be a playset, seeing that the scale would probably be a monument in a minifig scale bionicle diorama.--Surel (Talk) 21:36, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh yeah, you're right about the locations, whoops. As for Playsets, in an official capacity it wouldn't be one, as that was a category attached to them by LEGO. ~ Wolk (talk) 23:01, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Even if it makes it, I'm gonna say it doesn't really need the documentation. A mention on the BIONICLE page might be appropriate, but aside from the fact that LEGO now owns Bricklink, anything otherwise marking an "official" product is pretty nonexistent. -- Dorek _Talk 03:05, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, these are factory produced by LEGO. ~ Wolk (talk) 12:16, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

My official stance is we'd best likely mentioning it on the BIONICLE page, as Dorek mentioned. Even if Lego does own BrickLink, it'd be like saying we'd need to add the Lego Seinfeld set as a page to a Seinfeld wiki; Sure, it might be "officially licensed" but it's hardly worth mentioning on its own. -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)} 20:18, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Application of the Nickname Template

Got a question on some Policy. Was talking a little with Morris about this, but at his recommendation, I've brought it here for discussion.

Lately I and some others have been stumbling on some fascinating capitalization trivia - over the past few months we've realized that in-text, capitalization differs from wiki usage. Below, you can find our current findings. [I'll add to or subtract from these lists as examples are found or disproven.]

Words with no known uppercase instance (though the possibility exists that an exception may be found, transferring it to the other list below)

• "Matoran universe" and not "Matoran Universe"
• "Makuta stone" and not "Makuta Stone"
• "Mata Nui stone" and not "Mata Nui Stone"
• "Destiny war" instead of "Destiny War"
• "southern islands" (or "southern lands" or "southern regions") instead of "Southern Islands"
• "red star" instead of "Red Star." This one is only ever capitalized in Riddle of the Great Beings (which was an audio transcript) and the MNOG walkthrough (which was fan-written)
• Angel Bob has brought this list to my attention: Morris' List of Improper Nouns

My question is this: Would the Nickname template be applicable in these instances, since officially they presumably aren't proper nouns? One could argue that there is a precedent with "Destral fortress" which has the Nickname template and appears once as such in-story as "Destral fortress" in TMC - however, that's the only precedent I can find, as most of the time the nickname template is used, it's with a title that's altogether made-up, never appearing as proper or improper nouns in-story.

On one hand, these are the best descriptors we have for them, and there's a good possibility they were intended as proper names. On the other, "Makuta" and "Matoran" in these cases are just as likely adjectives modifying the improper nouns "stone" and "universe" respectively.

Words with only one known uppercase instance

• "northern continent"/"southern continent" only appear in the lowercase in-story or even guides... except for one uppercase instance on the map in MGttU (even though there is also a fully lowercase instance on the same page).
• the phrase "Toa stone" appears almost thirty times in-text, always ever as "Toa stone." The only exception to this is also found in Makuta Guide to the Universe.

In these instances, there's an argument to be made for capitalizing them per these exceptions, but would the capital version be the primary form used all across the wiki even though it's almost never used in the texts?

Either way, I wanted to open a discussion about this and clarify the Nickname Template usage (or find some way to denote this information on the wiki). Given how many of these we've discovered even within the past few months, I fully expect to find more down the line.

EDIT: Added Morris' list and streamlined the appearance --Gonel (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and drafted a tentative alternative template we could use for this, if we'd rather leave the Nickname template as-is. It can be found on my Sandbox. --Gonel (talk) 05:00, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm in favor of lowercasing nouns in article text and in article titles to match the book capitalization convention. In that case, the nickname template wouldn't be necessary. It's worth noting that Greg consistently used the books' capitalization convention even in "out of universe" sources like BZP, so that convention seems the most correct. Searching through BZP quotes might be the quickest way to figure out those "correct" capitalizations. I don't want to speak on behalf of other staff members, but I got the sense there's more support for switching article text and links than for switching article titles. I might be misrepresenting things though. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 04:37, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Been a minute, but I've been thinking about this again.

You're right that Greg is often extremely consistent, and it would make a lot of sense to bring the wiki in line with official convention. There are a lot of cases where we absolutely should go ahead with this imo. The complication would arise with things like "krana" vs "Krana Vu" where capitalization can be confusing for a casual editor who isn't well-versed in capitalization convention--or Bara Magna animal names which are lowercase, vs Matoran universe ones which are often uppercase (I think). Though a page specifically explaining this would go a long way, as I've just proposed in AfC. --Gonel (talk) 21:55, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Returning to this, I would like to get some broader input on this. TuragaHordika has already gone forth with changing Hydruka, Airweed, Klakk, Krana, and Krana-Kal. However, this presents an issue in linking to krana-kal, and for instance Toa stone and Matoran universe as well. This can be solved quite simply by moving Krana-Kal to Krana-kal (keeping the first letter capitalized works fine, and I think would be appropriate). We should probably keep the old capitalization as redirects. Is this something we want to do? Also, we'll need to write up the AfC. ~ Wolk (talk) 23:48, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

I've already started on a very rough draft based on Morris' original talk page in my Sandbox. I could actually go either way on changing the BS01 capitalizations--on one hand it would help people get a much better understanding of Bionicle syntax and what words actually were intended as proper nouns and which weren't, but on the other it would be a pretty big undertaking, and something we'd have to keep monitoring with each edit. It would be something we'd have to standardize and thoroughly detail in the Manual of Style, and it wouldn't make sense to most editors (or the community for that matter) who are used to the traditional forms.

My own preference actually would be to wait until Meta:Capitalization Conventions is done, then decide which categories of nouns make sense to change and which ones don't. That said, the capitalization page will take some time, unless we all start working on it. --Gonel (talk) 19:37, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Combination Models On Pages

Hello! I'm Waddlez (but some of you may already know me.) Recently it came to my attention that some pages (unfortunately I don't exactly recall which?) were missing the information about combination models or alternate models they were part of, and for consistency's sake I began adding this section to every set page. More recently, I was advised to make a talk page here rather than do this without the go-ahead. My apologies and thanks to Surel-nuva, who seems to have cleared out most of the articles I got to before much time had passed.

To my understanding, Surel and Morris the Mata Nui Cow would like me to place this community page here so the other users of the community can give their opinions on whether to make these lists of alternate/combo models into a heading under 'Set Info' or to just include it in 'Set Info' in a more "raw" form, if you will. Waddlez (talk) 20:44, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

First of all, I'm kinda sorry about that, because I didn't mean to be mean about that, I just didn't get the point of listing them twice on the page, as they were already mention in the text. The set information on these pages would be lacking without mentioning the combiners and alternate models in text form, which gives context to the others components of the said combiners.--Surel (Talk) 13:34, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, no problem. I didn't get any "mean"-ness from it. In retrospect, I should have asked before I did it to begin with, so there's nothing I see for you to apologize for. Anyway, yeah, I think the other combination models deserve some mention as well, and however that may be, I'm glad that, if nothing else, they'll be placed on the pages in the future. Shall I return the Rahkshi (specifically Turahk, Vorahk, and I think Kurahk) to how they were before, and just mention the other alt models in the Set Description text like normal? <- by Waddlez D. (talk) 06:14, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds good! -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 08:09, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

TTV Contest Additional Images

How exactly does BS01 handle the canonicity of additional artwork done by winners of the TTV contests? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the additional images, for example, for the masks of Psychometry and Creation were sent to Greg along with Helryx and Artakha, respectively, and yet they are used as the main images on their respective pages. So by this precedence, does BS01 consider these canon as well? Dag (talk) 23:56, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think this should be a big deal. They were included on the original topic post alongside the main artwork so I wouldn’t worry about it. In fact, it actually helps in some cases because with the Mask of Creation, it provided more angles of it, which altogether helped 3D-modelers model it. It would be different if the images were posted on another thread, but since they also came from the original source being the same thread, I don’t see a problem with it. Additionally, there is three other images of artwork made by other users on the Certavus page, so I’m surprised you haven’t complained about that yet either. FirespitterVakama (talk) 05:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not complaining about anything. I just asked a question for the sake of clarification (and on the behalf of others from an off site discussion, to be clear). Second, I don't know the context of the Certavus contest well enough to speak on it. If the additional three images on the page were not canonized, then sure, they should be called into question as well, but at least they're not used in the infobox. That is the case with Creation and Psychometry, however. Would it be more accurate to just replace them with crops of Helryx and Artakha? Dag (talk) 06:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

I've integrated them into the text because they were already on the page as a separate gallery. But I'm sure they were canonized, if not, they shouldn't have been on the page ever since like 2009 or 2010.--Surel (Talk) 09:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Correction on my part, the art contest itself is the reason why those 3 images are on the page. But the current layout is still better than a random gallery which breaks the page imo.--Surel (Talk) 10:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The question here is not whether the layout looks good with the Mask of Creation/Psychometry, but whether these secondary images are considered "canon" and appropriate to put on the Wiki. Obviously the artworks depict the correct shape, and they was made by the artists who won the contest, but were the secondary images of masks also approved by Greg as directly canon? And if not, is BS01's official position that they will be considered canon? The argument can be made that if the secondary images weren't approved by Greg alongside the main image of Artakha/Helryx, then the standalone drawings of their masks are about as canon as fan art of a Pakari, and using those images on the Mask of Creation/Psychometry articles would be like using my drawing of a Pakari on the Pakari article. Do you follow? -- Keplers (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

You completely misunderstood my answer. I answered about the Certavus images, and why they are integrated into the page, not on any of the two masks, because the Certavus page was brought into the conversation, as the three artwork of Certavus are on the page. They were originally in a random gallery on the page, which felt out of place, as both the contest has its own galler, and Certavus has his own segment in the Gallery:Glatorian, which would have made 3 galleries dedicated to him, one of which was on the page. FirespitterVakama mentioned these three images on the Certavus page, that's why I said and researched what I did. Do you follow?--Surel (Talk) 17:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I want to be more clear on what I brought up earlier, this is not about Certavus but rather about the images also made by the winners of the TTV contests. When people make a thread post to submit their entries, some users may provide additional artwork for more angles of the masks and other such things. Now, when the polls are set up, TTV’s staff takes one image from that thread to be included for display on the polls. Additionally, it is also believed that this is the only image they send to Greg instead of sending all images of other concept artwork featured in the original thread. Which is where Dag’s question comes into point. Should these other artwork be included on the pages for the mask, or should we just use the same canonized image and crop that out instead? There are two points to this case, which is 1.) these other images were not sent to Greg for canonization, therefore they should be omitted from BIONICLESector01. The other side is 2.) they were posted on the same original thread by the same user as part of the contest entry alongside the main artwork so it would be fine, and that it would be different if other users made artwork in or outside The TTV Message Boards based on the concept(s) or if the same user posted other concept art on another thread via The TTV Message Boards or on an external website. If 1.) is chosen as the preference, then the additional images provided on the Mask of Psychometry and Mask of Creation will be removed and replaced with cropped images of the main artwork that had been featured on the polls and sent to Greg Farshtey. I’ll probably message Swert to let him know so that way he and other BIONICLESector01 staff such as Morris can make a final decision on the matter. FirespitterVakama (talk) 21:41, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for not writing sooner. I've seen this but didn't respond since since I don't really have firm answers.

First, for the TTV contests, I'm not sure if TTV shared the additional mask images with Greg. Until now I assumed they did. I recommend asking them on the boards for clarification. If they didn't, I think it's reasonable to avoid using them as the main images in infoboxes or what have you. That said, I see no problem with keeping them on articles so long as we provide context (the winner drew this art as part of their entry but technically Greg didn't approve it).

Second, for the Surel contest, I also don't know if Greg approved those images. If not, we should come up with some other way to display the images to make it clear that they aren't official.

(Also, for what it's worth, on talk pages I like to reset the indentation level once it passes 4 levels deep. Hopefully that way the discussions are easier to read on narrow screens like phones. I've adjusted the indentation here.) -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 01:50, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry if I seem to be butting in or anything, but personally I think we should ask whoever is in charge of sending the images to Greg how many/which images they use. If they say multiple, leave things how they are now and don't ask further unless it's felt to be safe to do so. If they decline a response or say just one, then to be safe, just use the one image cropped as necessary. Heck, why not just ask Greg directly via the TTV Boards which images he canonized and which ones technically aren't canon? <- by Waddlez D. (talk) 04:31, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

The issue with that is that I think Greg hasn’t been active on the message boards in a while to answer that. Additionally, I’m assuming that either way even if we were to ask Greg about the artwork for Surel, he would likely forget which ones had been sent to him for canonization. What also makes things harder is that I think that contest was through KanohiJournal if I’m not mistaken, which was shut down many years back, so this could make things even harder when trying to find archives of the discussions he had with those that ran the site, although they probably communicated through Email, although again, I wouldn’t know. FirespitterVakama (talk) 19:36, 27 December 2021 (UTC

Well, I don't imagine it'd be hard for Greg to sift through his emails and find them? Strenuous, perhaps, but not impossible. I don't use my email much, but if I'm not mistaken there are ways to search by date, topic, etc., which could prove useful for the newer contests. I agree though, for several of the older contests we're/you're kinda screwed. 𝙗𝙮 𝙒𝙖𝙙𝙙𝙡𝙚𝙯 06:53, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Morris mixed the names though, the subtopic of this was the Certavus art contest originally hosted here on BS01, not the Surel contest which was through the KanohiJournal.--Surel (Talk) 12:17, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Reversed Dark Hunter images

Hey all, on the topic of reversed Dark Hunter images from the original book, I went ahead and flipped the respective images on the wiki that were corrected in the BEU, but only the ones that were corrected. My thought process here was that these corrected versions of the images in the BEU are the most accurate and "canon" representations to date. Obviously the images we are using are still just the ones from the DH book, because the ones in the encyclopedia are tiny and wouldn't be suitable for wiki documentation.

However, as there are still a few images that were never corrected between both publications I figured I better ask if people would be alright with me flipping/"correcting" the remaining mirrored images? Since no subsequent publication corrected them, I'm a little hesitant to flip them for the sake of inconsistency with the official material, however wrong they may be portrayed.

I know that to a lot of people this would likely seem like a rather trivial thing to obsess over, but it's bugging my OCD knowing that there are Rhotuka Launchers and asymmetric limbs/armour/weapons that are depicted backwards in a lot of these images lol.

Also, just to note: LEGO flipped the entire images (backgrounds and all) for the BEU, so we don't have to worry about the models being on backwards backgrounds or anything like that.

Known images that are still mirrored and the evidence:

• Conjurer - reversed Rhotuka Launcher
• Firedracax - reversed Rhotuka Launcher
• Gatherer - reversed Kanoka Launcher
• Hordika Dragons - reversed Rhotuka Launcher
• Kraata-Kal - original creator's photos (arms reversed)
• Minion - original creator's instruction photos (colour layout reversed)

Let me know your thoughts. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 10:14, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking about doing the same thing a while ago, even if it means that a lot of fan-made instructions should be corrected because of this. I don't know if the Rahi Beasts images could be mirrored as well, but I'd do for those as well.--Surel (Talk) 10:50, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Did all the mirroring changes in BEU serve to correct inaccurate flips? If so I think it's reasonable to assume LEGO had the images correctly oriented and the publisher flipped them to them look nicer in the DH book - paging through it now I'm observing that the characters are generally oriented towards the inside of the book so it seems like a stylistic choice and I would be in favor of interpreting it as such. Would also note that Firedracax's creator provided images which provide additional evidence of the reversal. MDean (talk) 20:41, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd be happy with getting these (and the Rahi ones) flipped. --Gonel (talk) 20:53, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I know some were fixed but maybe not all of them? I am in favor of having as any identified be flipped. I wonder, is the background a tell? ~ Wolk (talk) 23:40, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Missing Exact Dates

Hey y'all! Happy 24th anniversary!

I am in the process of trying to find the exact release dates of certain Bionicle media, since I think it can be interesting to examine which versions of certain storylines were released first.

I've been detective-ing across the internet and found most of the dates, but some of them still elude me, including;

1. The exact release dates of the 2004 promotional comic books. 2. The exact release dates of the Quest for the Mask of Light animations in 2005. 3. The exact release dates for each chapter of the Serials 2007-2011. The dates for the Takanuva blog are on the wiki but nothing else. 4. Decadence. What day did this come out??? 5. The release dates of the late 2008 CGI Animations (Mistika, Toa Ignika, Mata Nui Rising, etc.) The video compilation has a release date but I cannot find the individual segments. 6. The exact release dates for "The Crossing" Chapters 1-6. They were released in AMEET books but I cannot find the release dates for the books. 7. Finally, the release dates for the Mata Nui Saga 2010 (the ones narrated by Michael Dorne). The wiki says they were updated every Monday and Thursday but doesn't say when the first one was posted on Bionicle.com.

If you know the dates I am searching for, or come up with a way for me to find them, please let me know! After I have found them, I will of course add them to the wiki (release dates page and maybe individual pages if I'm permitted). (The preceding unsigned comment was made by Chronoarch04)

If you find them, please do add them! These are tricky to track down. ~ Wolk (talk) 03:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed! These would be immensely useful to feature--both on the release dates page and on individual pages.

I brought this up with Emily from MOD who suggested digging through the BZP news updates for any missing materials, such as this. Honestly the BZP news is an untapped treasure trove that should get a proper excavation one of these days. --Gonel (talk) 05:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Enable MultimediaViewer by default?

Per User:VectorVoyager's suggestion, I recently installed the MultimediaViewer extension. When enabled, MultimediaViewer changes how files appear on articles: clicking an image thumbnail opens a full-window preview of the image, a la Wikipedia, instead of opening a dedicated file page. Currently MultimediaViewer is disabled by default, but logged-in users can enable it under Special:Preferences -> Appearance. Would you all prefer the extension to be enabled by default (and enabled for logged-out users)? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally I don't like mediaviewer, but I guess I will have the option to disable it regardless. ~ Wolk (talk) 21:17, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I think it should be enabled by default primarily for guests. I guess many readers are used to them from Wikipedia already. It makes wiki experience a lot smoother along with popups. Like let's say you read a page and want to see the image without leaving the page to see its details. You just click to it and its viewed within the same page and then if you wish to see the details you click the button. Its quite convenient.--VectorVoyager (talk) 12:13, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Also, with the Wikipedia thing, as silly as it may seem, as think we should also try to be more like Wikipedia, albiet that is not our top priority. I feel we are an incredibly hard working fansite and hold ourselves to a similarly high standard to Wikipedia, and I think that especially since MediaViewer is an improvement to the user (and honestly even editor) experience, it is fair to also want to be more like Wikipedia, so we can better set ourselves apart from other fan-wikis(I am not dissing other wikis here, as I understand that many other communities may be smaller and may not have the kind of treasure-trove of info we got from Greg for over a decade of giving online answers and discussions, and many others mostly suffer because the Fandom website and the people who run it actively and consistently make terrible decisions that harm creators and viewers). The fact that it doesn't reload the page means it takes a lot less load time, which is especially important for lower-end devices, like older phones, older computers, and Chromebooks. Firespitter Lhii (talk) 15:19, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Extension suggestions

I have several extension suggestions that I think are necessary/would be cool to see.

The extentions that I think are necessary:

• Extension:Popups: Popup in Wikipedia that comes when you hover over a hyperlink. Its very useful for the readers that would like to get a quick info about stuff that they don't know without leaving the article they are currently reading.
• Extension:Cite: Makes citing a lot easier with a gui tool. I think its very necessary.

The extensions that would be cool to see:

• Extension:PDFBook: Allows exporting pages as pdf in reader-friendly format. Can create books by selecting multiple articles.
• Extension:3D: Renders 3D files in STL format. Can be used to upload and preview 3D stl versions of Kanohi and other objects, whole sets etc.
• Lingo: A tool to define abbrevations. For example the abbrevation "GSR" can be defined as Great Spirit Robot to pop up when the reader hovers over "GSR".

I hope the community likes those extension suggestions.--VectorVoyager (talk) 22:03, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

• Cite: The Cite extension is installed already, but it only adds the ability to cite, not a GUI. Could you provide screenshots of the interface you're referring to? If it's available on Wikipedia, it might be part of the VisualEditor extension (WYSIWYG editing interface).
• Popups: Now installed.
• PdfBook: Tried installing it, but unfortunately, all the PDFs it produced were empty, so uninstalled.

Do others have opinions on the 3D and Lingo extensions? -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

No harm in having them for the option I suppose, though I am wary of what use we'd have for 3D models. Stud.io models are hardly accurate winged fan-recreations, LDD models are a very lacking source for our cases. How would we use it? Also curious if file size would become an issue. ~ Wolk (talk) 23:48, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

I think preserving Bionicle as a toy is as important as preserving its lore. As time goes the plastic will decay so I think we need to preserve Bionicle pieces. If necessary, we as fans can initiate a wide campaign of precise 3D scanning or professional commissioned recreation of all Bionicle parts. Still, even the most Stud.io models as they are now are more accurate than funded 3D recreations of lost heritage on Wikimedia Commons such as Asad Al-Lat.--VectorVoyager (talk) 09:51, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Speaking as the guy who has to manage the backend of things, I do not feel comfortable hosting any STL files on BS01, especially of files that can technically be referred to as patented items such as BIONICLE parts. Yes, LEGO no longer produces them, and yes other sources host files related to them, but I just know the moment I try and host those files here, I will get a dozen cease & desist emails from all the lawyers at LEGO. Thanks, but no thanks. -- ^{Owner (talk|contribs)} 17:33, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the popups! I learned that the Cite option in the edit bar is called Wikipedia:RefToolbar.--VectorVoyager (talk) 10:23, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for finding the info about RefToolbar. I've set it up on BS01, although fair warning, it's a little janky. -- Morris the Mata Nui Cow (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2024 (UTC)