User talk:BadCatMan

Hi there. I'm new here though I've been working at the Star Trek wikia Memory Beta for about a year and a half. Now I've returned to my former love of the Forgotten Realms to develop some of my favourite areas, places I DM or have characters hail from. I have quite a lot of notes already made to work off.

I started off with Uzurr. Please let me know how I go, any errors I make and so on. I know the ropes, checked the Help and policies, though the templates, policies and practical issues are certainly different here.

Thanks! -- BadCatMan 11:35, February 18, 2012 (UTC)

Moonlit Tower
BadCat, I just like pages to be organized... there are a lot of hardworking editors on this wiki and they ALL have their own crazy obsessions :) I guess are you asking do you have to add in sections or that those sections do not look right on Moonlit Tower... the Tower of Twilight is one of my favorite edits so far... So overall... I hope the page set up is nice... but if you don't approve, feel free to change... I make it appoint to only edit once and if someone doesn't like... I leave it alone :) Welcome aboard and keep up the great work! Darkwynters 03:30, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, I've seen crazy obsessions... :S No, it's not a problem. I just wondered if it was an organisational rule here. I'm a pretty fussy and neat editor myself, but usually don't make extra sections unless I have a few paragraphs worth of material for each one (if the heading's bigger than the text then the text can look a bit lost). But no, it looks fine. -- BadCatMan 03:53, February 21, 2012 (UTC)

Duplicate image uploaded
Thanks for the addition to my talk page, and welcome to the wiki. I am curious, as here we can take nothing to be true unless the source material says so, as to whether there is something somewhere that says the GHotR image is a depiction of a disguised Storm Silverhand? Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 22:58, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * It's very explicit. On page 127 of Grand History of the Realms, there's an Ed Greenwood piece, "1246: The First Bombards Thunder". There, it says:
 * "I turned in time to see her complete the last flickering gestures of a complicated and unfamiliar casting. The air whirled into silver sparks that hid Storm from me for a breath or two. When they faded, a striking but quite different woman stood before me, mantled in green, with a scabbarded sword at her hip.
 * "Subtle," Elminster said sardonically. "Very subtle."
 * Storm shrugged. "This is what Orparra Lyraven looks like."
 * And on the previous page, the anointed knight image appears, with the caption "Storm Silverhand completes her magical guise for investigating Lantan." She's meant to be a "scantily clad entertainer" rather than a chainmailed warrior, but either Greenwood tried to fit the description to the image, or someone tried to fit the image to the description (unlike GHotR's other art problems). That image was once an anointed knight, is Storm in heavy disguise, and is now a loose depiction of Orparra Lyraven. -- BadCatMan 23:43, February 21, 2012 (UTC)

Thallastam
Nice work on Thallastam and the accompanying articles. It's a great article to read and well referenced! Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 11:18, March 4, 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was very satisfied with it. The Ilbratha page today reminded me of the character and inspired to write him up. I'm especially proud since I suggested a Tome of Battle connection to Thallastam and Swords Pool to Eytan Bernstein on the old WotC forums. :D -- BadCatMan 12:00, March 4, 2012 (UTC)

Years, decades, centuries, millennia
You have an interesting idea about this. The issue is that suppose we have a page for 1370s DR and then also a page for 1370 DR, 1371 DR, 1372 DR, etc. What information would go where?

Also, we tend to use years as "edition markers", so rather than saying "this event happened in 3rd edition D&D", we'd say "this happened around 1372 DR". Often it's not terribly important when an event happened, as long as it's distinguishable from the 1e and 4e timelines (as 2e-3.5e were all pretty close on the timeline).

There's definite scope for improvement on the current system, which was conceived at a time when we had fewer than 1000 articles and nobody was really sure where this wiki was going! Perhaps make a forum topic out of this and invite input from the other editors? Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 12:58, March 4, 2012 (UTC)


 * I suppose something like "1370s DR" would contain links to 1370, 1371, etc, as well as a few key events (a heck of a lot of them, but yeah) and general trends, and regular time-line stuff we can't confidently fit on a year page, due to being unknown or an estimate. For example: "1370s DR: The Nine Swords Company was reformed at Swords Pool circa 1375 DR."
 * Alright, thanks. I'll think about it and see if I need/want to go further on it (making a zillion time-line pages won't be fun). -- BadCatMan 13:09, March 4, 2012 (UTC)

Procampur
Great job on this page BCM! And more footnotes than a bugbear has fleas :) &mdash;Moviesign 14:20, March 17, 2012 (UTC)


 * Ha! I'm not done yet! Thanks, I'm on a quest to bring the Vast to life, and Procampur was the first place I DMed, so it's always been my favourite locale. Hey, good work sorting out all those planes too. -- BadCatMan 00:58, March 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * My first real contributions (before I knew we were supposed to write in past tense) were on Ravens Bluff since I have the old sourcebooks, but got sidetracked with other things. I'll get back to it eventually unless you want to tackle it. Let me know if me or any of my sources (see User:Moviesign) can help.&mdash;Moviesign 04:08, March 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but I've got access to most things myself. Unfortunately, Ravens Bluff is a bit like Waterdeep, with four or so sourcebooks to its name and so massively detailed it would be a major project all by itself. I don't have any plans to tackle it yet. -- BadCatMan 04:36, March 18, 2012 (UTC)

Opara Rendril
BadCat, I have posted the question to FW and hopefully he will respond, because I have seen the names categorized both ways and I think the wiki needs to have one way of doing it :) Just want to get back at you! Darkwynters 15:35, April 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Ta. I'll chime in on FW's page. -- BadCatMan 15:36, April 6, 2012 (UTC)

BadCat, Please do!! If he says to add the names to the categories, I have no problem... it just makes it confusing when organizing :) Darkwynters 15:39, April 6, 2012 (UTC)

Sorting for individuals
Since you contributed on my talk page, I thought it best to move the discussion to Forum:Sort categories for individuals, if you'd like to take a look! Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 17:49, April 26, 2012 (UTC)

Tsurlagol
As you noted, the original version of the Tsurlagol article was plagiarized. Though you've since redone the page, Help:Plagiarism states that the article needs to be deleted ("because altering the article will leave the plagiarized text in the article history and this is not a complete enough removal"), and I've just added deletion to the article. To save your hard work, I've copied the current iteration of the page into your sandbox page. You can easily just copy it over again once one of the administrators gets around to deleting it. Cronje (talk &sdot; contribs) 00:10, June 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I was wondering how to deal with that. In future, I'll try to put deletion tags on any plagiarized articles I find before updating them.
 * I also worked on Procampur, though that was originally copied from a variety of sourcebooks and the Rand's Travelogue series. I'll go deal with that.
 * Thanks. I actually still have my working Word document for later expansion, so I'm not worried it here. --

Infoboxes
BadCat... I just wanted to show you the forum where admin Fw190a8 decided we should put in-text citations in the infoboxes: Forum:Sources in infoboxes... much like the Thoyana Jorgadaul page... Great job on the wiki, BTW :) Darkwynters 06:07, July 10, 2012 (UTC)


 * I know that, and have done it for most of my articles, I think (I'm even trying to promote it on another wikia, having learned it here). But on Swords Pool (village) and Swords Pool (pool), your extra citations in the boxes seemed a little excessive: all the information in them was coming from the same source. There's also the bit in Forgotten Realms Wiki:Infoboxes about "You must provide a citation for each fact presented in an infobox that is subject to being called into question." I assumed that general location, like the name, was one of those facts that could be safely assumed to be self-evident.
 * Eh, potatoes, potatoes, Drizzt, Drizzit. :D I have no problem with it if you want to put them back.
 * Thanks. It was nice working with you. :) -- BadCatMan 08:40, July 10, 2012 (UTC)

Plagiarism
Hey can you please tell me how my leviathan post is plagiarized? and how I can fix it so its not up for deletion? I think its not fair seeing as how the other leviathan post is allowed to stay, they're both linked to the same creature, a real, legitimate creature from D&D. -- User:Nenilai


 * Hi there. Thanks for coming to talk about this. I was working on a response on the Leviathan talk page, but I'll shift here.
 * First, it's plagiarised because you copied it word-for-word from Chapter 5 of Elder Evils. That's illegal, so we can't have that here, obviously.
 * So, you need to rewrite it in your own words. That's harder, but we're all here because we find it enjoyable. To do that, you can summarise the information in a shorter, easier form, use alternative but similar descriptions, and generally paraphrase it. Consider how you would describe this to a friend, or better yet, in-game and in-character, if you didn't have the book available. Take a look at other articles around here to get a good feel for how these things are written in original ways. You should also consider how to depict this with a strong Realms focus, based on the "The Leviathan in Faerun" section.
 * What other post? Do you mean the image File:The True Leviathan.jpg? In most cases, images can be claimed as 'fair use', meaning we need it to show what it looks like and pretty up the page. Fortunately, WotC shows them all in its online art gallery, so it's publicly available anyway. In some cases, pictures are restricted depending on copyright.
 * The True Leviathan page will need to be deleted anyway, because it already contains plagiarised material in its history, even if you do rewrite. However, the administrator who does that will restore any original material you come up with.
 * So, have a go at it and see what you come up with. -- BadCatMan (talk) 10:33, July 12, 2012 (UTC)

So you delete it now?
I added some text about deities dogmas and now YOU delete it and call it plagiarism, it ain’t, you are only deleting this for the sake of deleting it, it is fair use all the way

But your goal is to compete with you friend who can be the biggest sh*t right?

It is because of people like you the world sucks and anyone who tries to improve anything immediately gets beaten down by small dic*ed people like your self.

Just go and die in a fire mmkay. 83.249.4.206 00:15, July 31, 2012 (UTC)


 * Charming. There's no call for this kind of response. We've all been polite and instructive to you.
 * I removed the text because it was copied directly, word-for-word, from the sourcebooks. That's plagiarism, or copyright infringement, or whatever you want to call, and we need to remove it to keep this wiki out of trouble. I felt that the entire dogmas were too big to claim as fair use, so I removed it.
 * If you wish to contribute, please check our policies and rules, and rewrite/rephrase/paraphrase the text in original wording. Be creative, not lazy. And don't insult people trying to help you. -- BadCatMan (talk) 00:26, July 31, 2012 (UTC)

RE: Welcome
Thanks for the welcome and fixing my userbox. Hadn't quite figured that out yet. --Ijkay (talk) 14:37, September 21, 2012 (UTC)

The Butcher
The Butcher is from a not-quite-yet-published short story someone I know is writing. Thanks for being polite about this.


 * Hi, thanks for getting in contact with us.
 * So, do you mean fanfic? Because if WotC are accepting short stories, then I really like to pitch one. :D
 * But I don't think that not-yet-published material can really count for wiki work, as lots of stuff may change prior to publication (editors can change all sorts of details) or not be accepted or not get printed at all for whatever reason. There are a couple of whole novels that have fallen through at a late stage.
 * By the way, you can sign your name and date with four tildes, ~, like so: BadCatMan (talk) 05:48, October 2, 2012 (UTC)


 * User:AlphaPack aka User:108.25.188.122, does this person work for WotC... or have they published any Forgotten Realms materials? Darkwynters (talk) 05:53, October 2, 2012 (UTC)

I don't know. I haven't been in contact with him for a bit.

P.S. Regarding BadCatMan's comment regarding overblown stats- I apologize for that. I wasn't thinking straight; I only remembered that he was meant to be that "arcanamach of arcanamachs" who would fade into legend.

Dragonspine Mountains
As per the talk page for Dragonspire Mountains, this is now a redirect to Dragonspine Mountains. Good spot. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 23:08, October 3, 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! -- BadCatMan (talk) 01:34, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Category hierarchy
Hey BadCat... please read User_Talk:Darkwynters... it was posted on my page by FW... he states while the actual pages like Reptillia Half-elven have all categories... categories like Category:Inhabitants of the Dragonspine Mountains just have the next area up... now, if this zooming out method is not to your liking... I am fine with adding all broader cats, but it has to be admin official, so ask Cronje, Hash, or FW :) Darkwynters (talk) 04:00, October 4, 2012 (UTC)


 * No, that's fine. I normally do it that way, but I copied in a bunch of categories from Reptilia and forgot to cut the higher-order ones. Too early in the morning. :) -- BadCatMan (talk) 04:53, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Totally understandable... I was actually really tired last night when I edited your cat... I kept rereading my post to make sure I didn't sound dominating and rude :) Darkwynters (talk) 14:37, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations
Happy to have you on board :) &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 13:55, October 4, 2012 (UTC)


 * Congrats! Cronje (talk &sdot; contribs) 14:06, October 4, 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, rocken, dude... I would say, "Couldn't have happened to a nicer fellow!" (Taken from the 1977 Hobbit cartoon), but I used that on Cronje's appointment... so I will say... "May the schwartz be with yoooouuuu!!!" Darkwynters (talk) 14:37, October 4, 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'd like to thank Drizzt, and Elminster, and Ed Greenwood, and everyone at Realms of Adventure... This is the happiest day of my life (well, okay, that's because I handed in my completed thesis the same day...). :D

I will endeavour to do a fine job administrating this wiki, fighting off vandals and trolls and pirates, doing what I can to maintain it, and pinching good ideas off other wikis. :)

Now I must learn and practice all my new magical admin powers. -- BadCatMan (talk) 00:52, October 5, 2012 (UTC)

Footnotes and referencing
Hey, I just noticed your work on Tsurlagol. That's some awesome editing! Not to take anything away from the awesomeness, but I wanted to make a suggestion. Throughout the article, you have italicized indented notes to explain to the reader some extra pieces of information, which is great, as this both makes sense and enhances the article. I do think these would be better as their own tags though, to put this information in with the references. This is inline with what Wikipedia usually does.

So, given that the note about Meldath I refers to Dragon #346, this ref would remain in place, but there would be another, immediately following, that simply wraps your italicized text inside a ref tag, which then moves it to the bottom. What do you reckon? Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 23:37, October 5, 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks!
 * It's a habit I picked up from another wikia which has a lot of contradictory sources. I use it to clarify a point, point out a contradiction in the sources, present some speculation, or refer to some related work. I've done it a lot around here. Let me know what you think of the application re: unpublished work in Ouranalathra.
 * Although a footnote would be appropriate, I'm afraid it would be too easily lost amongst the footnote referencing. Say numbers "[14][28]", where 28 leads to the footnote discussion, it would be easily skipped over by a reader who assumes it's another reference (and I have enough of those as it is!). Or the text discussion would be merged with the muddle of references, inappropriately for that section. The indented line, at least, immediately points out a problem and clearly relates to the topic at hand. Is there a problem with this style? I'm wondering if maybe it should be smaller, to be more discreet. -- BadCatMan (talk) 04:04, October 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah I do think it's too prominent at the moment. Basically my suggestion comes down to Wikipedia:WP:EXPLNOTE which is their way of doing things and does make a lot of sense to me.


 * If you're concerned about getting muddled between sourcebook references and footnotes, you can actually split them into two separate sections at the foot of the article, which is explained at Wikipedia:WP:REFGROUP. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 20:25, October 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I've checked them out. I'll try to work out a way of doing it later. -- BadCatMan (talk) 00:41, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * It took me a while to get it working, as I don't think Wikia has quite the same templates as Wikipedia, so I had to adjust the guidelines a bit. Anyway, please compare Machinations of a Red Wizard and User:BadCatMan/Sandbox and let me know what you think. -- BadCatMan (talk) 03:16, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes! Love it! I'd probably try to change refs to make it accept an (optional) "group" parameter so that all the groups are rendered in the smaller text, just for uniformity. I can try and make this change if you're not sure how though, just let me know! Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 15:11, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * I had enough trouble just getting that working, so feel free to have a go. I think it's fine in the larger text, myself. -- BadCatMan (talk) 15:17, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * I would like to vote for the normal-sized text for the Notes section because if you implement this I'm going to be using it for somewhat complex notes. See the Notes section in User:Moviesign/Sandbox.&mdash;Moviesign (talk) 15:42, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * Wow, impressive work! I think for such examples as Moviesign's planar work and other large and complex articles, notes sections will be expanding into full-size appendices, so the regular-sized text would be necessary for easier reading. -- BadCatMan (talk) 01:07, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

Novel editions
Just to let you know that with regard to this edit, I'm afraid referencing a novel isn't going to be sufficient, as it's more than likely there are multiple editions of any given novel and this means that information is on different pages in different editions! There is more at Forum:Novel editions and page numbers which I wrote about more than 4 years ago but unfortunately seems to have been glossed over as there's going to be a huge amount of work involved. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 20:27, October 6, 2012 (UTC)


 * I know, and normally I do try to differentiate between different editions. Unfortunately, I could only get the page numbers from that REALMS-L email I linked to, and couldn't confirm the edition by consulting a copy of the novel or by other means. There was only the one citation template, so I felt it better to just get the citation on the article. At least there's a 50/50 chance of the pages being correct! :) -- BadCatMan (talk) 00:28, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * Out of interest, could you determine the edition by looking at the date of the REALMS-L email? Perhaps it was before one of the editions was published, which would give you a definite edition! Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 00:38, October 7, 2012 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately the earliest email to mention Pursenose and Alamber is dated 2006, several years after both editions of Death of the Dragon. The older January 2001 lists don't mention them at all, so that doesn't help either. -- BadCatMan (talk)

Prismal

 * From Talk:Prismal The Outrageous

Nope, Prismal is one of the most powerful beings in the entire AD&D fantasy universe and calls several crystal spheres home. His levels are correct. I don't copy straight from books so there is no infringement, I paraphrase. I am going along with the No-crunch rule as close as possible, but have added these stats for the ease of the reader since the reference is nearly unobtainable. I have tried to cut down and clean up the article now for about 30 minutes, but you keep adding things to it while I am, so it reverts right back to where I started. If you could just let me do a little more work on it and take a look at it later, that would be great, thanks... -- User:Conanx100


 * Sorry about that, but you seemed to have stopped, so I thought I'd quickly add in some notes and the reference thing you were having trouble with. I find an easier way to create an article is to write it whole in a Word document, or if you want to see how it's looking, try the Preview button rather than Publish all the time. I'll come along later when you're done and make any necessary changes then. Thanks for getting in contact. -- BadCatMan (talk) 04:37, October 9, 2012 (UTC)


 * I can write stort stories, poetry, screenplays and gaming material like a Harvard educated Lit Professor, but the whole Wiki format still has me baffled. Thanks for the edit, It Looks Great! You must be the admin that focuses on characters. I have a couple questions: How do you put something in that is Official Material that was introduced at conventions, but never canonized? and I wrote the Magister page and the last Magister info was deleted as "Speculation". I know they never said anything more about her, but I doubt they ever will. That's why I put that something may have happened during the Spellplague, it adds a mysterious finale. Could I maybe put that back in? I'm just a Hate Loose Ends kind of person, they drive me crazy. Imagine the mental hell I'm going through because of the loose ends with the TV shows "My Name is Earl" and "The 4400"... --66.119.59.110 21:36, October 9, 2012 (UTC)

I'm a technical editor myself, so it's just what I do. :) I hope it wasn't too presumptuous, I just figured you might be having trouble with the more technical aspects of wiki code and local formatting, and thought I should help you along. Thanks for coming in and getting involved.

We've only discussed published material at Forgotten Realms Wiki:Canon, which is what everyone can find, pick up and examine for themselves, somehow. I'm not sure what kind of convention material you're referring to. Things mentioned in discussions may be private or hard/impossible to confirm, or not actually official. You should probably ask in our forum, as others may know more than I.

I did the recent changes on the Magister, I didn't know you'd added that though. I figured it was old stuff. Well, if the history stops, then the history in the article has to stop as well, and there's nothing more to say. Adding in speculation, even to say nothing more is known, suggests that a source has discussed it, when in fact nothing has been stated in an official source. As well, a future novel or sourcebook may cover the post-Spellplague Magisters, which when added could become confused with the speculation.

Still, if you feel something ought to be said, then consider adding a small note separate from the main article. For example:


 * The fate of Talatha Vaerovree or the Magisters after the Spellplague and the death of Mystra in 1385 DR has not yet been discussed in a canon source.

That could also go in an Appendix/Notes discussion section at the end. That way, it's clearly distinguished from the main article, so readers can't get them mixed up. -- BadCatMan (talk) 03:40, October 10, 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguating two things
Hi, thought I'd throw this one in there: when there are only two things to disambiguate, it might be easier to link one directly to the other using the otheruses4 template. This saves an extra click for the user and an extra disambig article. For 3 or more articles named similarly, a disambig page is probably most appropriate there. Fw190a8 (talk &middot; contr) 11:43, October 14, 2012 (UTC)