User blog:Tullis/September News!

September! Which around here apparently translates as "instead of being scorching hot all of the time, it's just scorching hot most of the time."

Overhaul and Wanted Pages
The mass combat pages overhaul is done (thanks to Silverstrike) as part of the ongoing wiki overhaul in preparation for Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect: Redemption. We've deleted, redirected or merged about sixty or seventy superfluous pages; there are still more to be done, but the bulk of short pages is being cleared out. Hopefully I can tick off all the pages listed on my Talk page before the end of October.

I also recently took an axe to the Wanted Pages by removing links from the autowelcome script on new users' pages. Thanks to the deletion of high-edit pages like Complaints and Bugs, there are now a lot of defunct welcome links out there. These are being removed but it's going to take a while. In the meantime I'd ask people to please check their spelling when creating links, especially on Talk pages, as spelling errors account for a chunk of Wanted Pages right now.

This clearout is mostly to cut unnecessary pages and ensure information isn't just being repeated over and over, particularly information from planets which has spiralled slightly out of control. This should make things easier for new users to find while keeping the wiki more streamlined.

Speaking of finding things...

Categories
Along with Wanted Pages, I also took a look at Wanted Categories; some of those were easily fixed (like the ones for the sample wiki page, which have been bugging me for ages) but there were a few categories on user pages. User pages should not have a category: if they do, it's because your first edit was to a category or because it's been accidentally typed into our helpful Add Category widget. Please please please check your spelling before you save a category.

Lastly, one final request regarding categories: ''' the single most helpful thing editors can do is categorise the images they upload. ''' I can't stress this enough. If you're categorising one or two images you've just uploaded, it takes hardly any time at all; the category widget even auto fills in the category for you. But categorising dozens of images takes a long time.

Tali's page
Tali's article is currently protected due to an editing... well, skirmish. The reason for this is as follows.

Tali has been confirmed as "a returning character" in a dev post on the official forums, which some interpreted to mean "returning squad member" and edited the page accordingly. The edits continued despite requests, reverts and an embedded warning in the page code until it was finally protected.

The moral of the story is: if you cite a link to support your edit, please ensure the link actually supports it. : )

Finally...
Here's some cool new screenshots you may have missed.

Happy editing,

Tullis.

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