Monday, November 20, 2006

What a difference a year makes

As most of you know, last September 22nd, we celebrated 1 year online. Since the launch we've become the biggest Lost wiki online, a great accomplishment which all of you should be proud of.

But today, I thought I wonder how far we've come in exactly one year. So I decided to have a look around the site, and see if I could find an article that was one year old exactly.
I started on the Kate article, and just my luck... First time lucky!

So, take a look how far we've come in one year

This is the very first Kate page

and this is the page exactly one year later.

See, how far we've come?
Well done to everyone involved in making the site what is it today. A fantastic resource for Lost. Without the Lost fans, and wiki obsessives like you reading this today, we wouldn't be as far as we are today. So from me, thank you!

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Font size mayhem

I know lots of users have been flagging up problems when viewing pages, mainly cause I too have had this problem. Right now, the best we can make of it is that:

1) It only affects Internet Explorer, so Firefox and Mozilla (or however you spell it hehe) should be fine.

2) Its possibly the result of Microsoft's new Windows Update patch. Whilst the problem is only on Lostpedia, it is possibly due to our MediaWiki not being the most current. With a small upgrade, the problem should hopefully go away.

3) The new theory tabs we think have nothing to do with the problem, as the issue occurred about 2 days after it was introduced.


Luckily this is happening off-season rather than in the middle of Lost episodes, and hopefully the problem will be gone by next week. In the meantime, try using Crtl+the mouse scroller to change your on-screen font size if necessary. We're on the case!

Friday, November 10, 2006

Episode Blog - I Do

Greetings Lostpedians - insightful Lostpedians, diligent Lostpedians, sometimes scaryingly knowledgeable Lostpedians - hope you all enjoyed the mini-cliffhanger ep. I think you'll all agree that it served its purpose i.e. making sure we'll still be watching in February after all the events.

Anywayz lets get the ball rolling with an opening to a Kate flashback (yes we had this "unverified" for weeks even though we all knew it would be her's). As usual we start out seeing the back of Kate's head with a different hair style - seems to happen in all her flashback eps - and then we hear a cop outside her room. And low and behold, its Nathan Fillion! I'm sure you all, as drama buffs, know who he is so I won't go into over-depth about him, but as a Firefly fan I will just say that man is awesome, and leave it at that. I guess it would have been better if I didn't know from Lostpedia that he'd be on the show but still always nice to know the guest actors and go "oh look its him!".

Moving away from the flashback, we're back to the cages, and I had to laugh at Sawyer's "I know how to get a damned fish biscuit!". Then to Jack, who seems to be more evil each time I see him (its that damned stubble beard!), saying he'll let Ben die. Liked the couple of eye contact shots between Jack and Juliet - but my suspicions that maybe she is the bad one of the two Others after all certainly have grown by the end of this ep, more on that story later as the news people say.

Then to the burial of Mr. Eko, his "Hello John"s shall certainly be missed. As always, Nikki and Paulo's presence in this scene are about as integral to the plot as Sayid's bicep (Lostpedia insider joke there).

Back to Kate and Sawyer hauling their rocks, and the appearance of Alex with her trusty slingshot?! The interesting thing I picked up on here is she wants to see Ben, but he's later told she didn't ask after him. Does Danny and co not want them seeing each other? Does she bring out Ben's good side? Did Ben raise Alex after she was taken, so he is like a father to her? So many questions on this one that I'd really like to see resolved (Alex was always one of the most intriguing Others mysteries to me).

Then Juliet taking Kate away, why did she not slap her lol, I saw that she wanted to (or maybe thats just the actresses.... nah I just wanted to throw that out to see if it then became a press rumour). Anyway transition to Jack and Kate reunited - what a.... er arkward moment. And why does Jack have to be such a jerk about it all shouting at Kate, though I guess its part of his plan.

Back to Kate, who's phoning Edward! Always nice, those characters work so well together. Obviously this connects to Mars' words in I think the Season 1 finale that Kate used to phone him at work and at his house. Nice bit of continuity. Moving on, we're back with John and Sayid. I didn't see much of a point of these scenes. I guess they needed them after Eko's death, but not much really happened other than they're presumably "looking North". Though I must admit I think they're heading for the Flame station instead - Locke did remember where it was around abouts from the Blast Door Map didn't he? On his doodle. Hopefully we'll thus see Patchy!

Ah Skate shippers rejoice, your weird fantasies have come to fruition, as Sawyer and Kate finally get together. Hey, maybe this time Kate will be pregnant (now won't that be a storyline...). But seriously, was I the only one who thought "they're doing this in front of the camera". As I watched with my sis, she added "you reckon Ben is sat watching this?". Gross thought of the day for y'all.

Now to Jack in his cell, with some mysterious help from Alex. Did she do it psychically? I'd prefer not but, as someone who hates the supernatural side to Lost, I don't mind psychic power as much cause I guess it is a little bit more pseudo-sciencey plausible. Anyway I digress. I think Ben must have possibly seen Alex though, cause he doesn't seem a bit surprised that he's suddenly out of his cell.

Back to the flashbacks, and Kate and some very interesting themes. First the Oceanic tickets, quite a nice touch, though I thought it was an Australian company, and don't get why an Aussie airline would go Miami to Costa Rica? However, I'm probably wrong and Oceanic could be a worldwide company, I just always thought by "Oceanic" it meant it was based in Oceana. Anywho, then there's the pregnancy test, answering the question of when Kate did this (she admitted to Sun in Season 2 I believe that she'd once taken one). And then to the next big reference I thought was very cool. Props to all you Lostpedians who noticed what I also picked up on - Kevin saying "Fugitive reports from Tampa". Remember the Sawyer flashback, Hibbs tells him where "the real Sawyer" (well its a lie but) is as pay back for what happened "during the Tampa Job". Sawyer says "what could possibly make us even for the Tampa Job". Maybe Kate's Kevin was involved in this. Actually, not maybe, pretty likely I'd say. But hey, just means Fillion might be back later this Season!

The last thing I'm gonna mention has to be Danny's words "Shephard wasn't even on Jacob's list". I thought "does that mean there's another spy?", but that can't be right as we never saw him in the Others' flashback. Unless they sent him after Ethan's death?! This just confuses you even more! Must say though, it was the first page I checked on the 'pedia after the episode, and I did enjoy one of the theories, dunno who posted it, about maybe Ethan and Goodwin made actual lists of just everyone's full names, then "Jacob" googled them or whatever in the real world to assess if they're "good or not". Both funny and plausible!!! Makes sense though to me, I mean we heard they did "lists" but only assumed they were the same kind of "lists" that Ana and Michael obtained.

Alright, major rant over with. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to see y'all on Lostpedia Chat to discuss some of the goings on this Season so far. Lost is back in Feb so until then we're gonna have to amuse ourselves with potentially overhauling the Lostpedia site. By next year, believe me, the site will certainly be a little different....

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Early Observations

Just watched 3x06 - and all I can say is "Noooooooooo" what a point to end at. How are they going to get off that mini island without nicking Desmond's sailboat (and which of them can sail anyway?!). I'll do a full blog analysis tomorrow as I have the day off :-) so watch out for that. But seriously, there were many oohhs are ahhs this week, like "Jacob's list", "Did Alex ask after me", and Nathan Fillion from the also brilliant TV show Firefly - bloody hell!

More tomorrow...

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The Trouble with Theories

For a while now, we've been having a few issues with the hugely popular theory sections of the website. And during the Season 3 hiatus, we are proposing we do something about it.

Whilst we all love the Lost theories, and realise its what keeps Lost interesting and fresh, a lot of the content has been rather speculative, without any real evidence to back it up. We ask for evidence to back the theories from all of you, but some people don't seem to either listen, or understand what we are asking. We end up with a lot of theories that sound bold, but seemingly are plucked out of thin air without any evidence to back them. (I am using the names Bob and Bobette just for clarity of reading, they aren't new characters that I'm privvy to!):
  • *Insert name of tricky situation* is a mind-game by the Others to trick the Flight 815 survivors.
  • Bob is lying when he says *claim a Flight 815 survivor has made*.
  • Bob is really Bobette.
  • Bob is "Him"

Because of these, Lostpedia has at times been criticised, sometimes fairly and sometimes not, of promoting what certain websites like to call "fancruft". We realise the show Lost thrives off of the fan theories and speculation and we are never, ever going to remove it from the site. Its far too worthwhile, but we need to have some way of controlling this and making it manageable for everyone. We've tried asking for any speculation to be placed on the Talk page, and while we move any that makes it to the front page, its a job that cannot be kept up with.

So we're considering moving the theories onto their own subpages, and are thinking of leaving speculation and theories mixed in together. Each character or group would then have its own theory subpage. However we need your suggestions and votes on this. Please visit the theory policy talk page and have a read of the discussion, and take part in the straw poll. We'll then take your suggestions to the SysOp Forum, where it will be decided what path of action to take from there. Let us know what you think.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Community Portal launched


As you might be aware, we've just launched the Community Portal on Lostpedia. This might just seem a fancy way of saying "Front Page - Page 2" but its so much more than that.
The portal is designed to help you as part of the community, and Lostpedia in targeting the articles that are in need of most attention, the stubs, rewrites and cleanups that have been highlighted, as well key articles that could do with focused work, in something we like to call Article Attack. Each week, the best contributor to the article being highlighted in the Article Attack will be awared the Triple AAA, and no we don't mean a life-sized cut out of Adewale, we mean the Article Attack Award. This award will only be given to one person a week, so if you really work hard on the attack articles, by this time next year, we might only have 5 or maybe 6 people, with these awards littering their user page!
Of course, the Community Portal isn't just for Lostpedia to get better, its for the users to be able to communicate with each other and the SysOps, this is why we've launched this blog so we can communicate with yourselves, and you can feedback on what we're thinking. It is also the new home of the forums and the (until recently) quiet chat room on Gamesurge.net. This lets you not only chat with each other and discuss theories to your hearts content, but allows you to talk to the SysOps, who normally loiter around the IRC room most days. It has got a lot busier recently, with the user count doubling since we introduced a link to it from the front page. This link is now to the new Community Portal, so current chatters, don't fret, we're still there, just part of a larger network of community tools!
Last, but not least we have the help section. We've realised that many of you were asking for a place you could find easily that will help you with the etiquette on the site. Especially the big "What constitutes a theory?" question. Well, the help section of the Community Portal should go someway to helping you understand the difference between theories and speculation and where each of these belong.
If you have any comments about the Community Portal, you can leave them here on the blog, or on the Portal's talk page.

Of course, we haven't finished with the improvements to the site yet, not by a long stretch! We're working hard on finishing something really, really special off for you, codenamed "Lostbook". Whilst I am not at liberty to say exactly what we are doing just yet, as I'd like users to be surprised when you see it, what I can say is that it has taken myself and Jabrwocky weeks to get this ready, and I'm very excited about launching it. We have a sneak peek of the work in progress on the right hand side of the page. Hopefully, you'll be seeing it a few weeks after I Do has aired, just in time for the UK launch of Season 3. I haven't told you anything, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks for yourselves!
Have fun!

Friday, November 03, 2006

Episode Blog - The Cost of Living

Hey everyone, hope you all enjoyed the episode. I did an analysis for my own userpage blog not knowing that it'd end up on here, but I hope y'all like my extensive level of analysis:

I saw the episode last night and let me tell you, what a nice way to end an otherwise horrible day. Not that the day was bad, merely cause I did college, work and sport and had no proper food all day and so by the time I got home at like 11pm I felt like throwing up (nice imagery there). So anyway, I got myself some hot chocolate and had some grapes (not a good combo I might add) and sat down to watch the show. And what an episode it was! Fantastic minus more weird supernatural dream scenes - though even them now are making a little more sense which made me feel a lot better about my anxieties that the thin supernatural ice Lost is shaking was starting to crack. Anyway after such a good ep I skimmed through it again doing my blog notes, before retiring from exhaustion. So here I am on this Friday afternoon ready for an epic rant...I mean review.

As so much happened this week I'm just gonna skip Eko's flashbacks, which again I feel is secondary narrative this Season and is hardly that necessary to the character arcs anymore - but hey not to put a downer on an episode which featured great Monster time. Anyway, first point of call is Colleen's funeral where Jack and the Others are wearing their new agey robes. This got me thinking, new agey, DHARMA is new agey! You know it makes sense peeps... Anyway I found the scene very enjoyable as we actually see Ben crack for once, I know he's a clever guy who deceived everyone when he was captured, but I defy you to suggest his fear at Jack's words was him acting again. That man was genuinely scared without a doubt. It definitely showed though why they took Jack, but again just made me think "huh, this still doesn't explain why they didn't take him, Kate and Sawyer when they went after Michael and got cornered". I brushed this off with "maybe Ben didn't know til later", but as I'll mention in a few, this rationale would also be shattered.

Now to Eko wandering off, when I heard that New York cab printer noise I jumped for joy - the Monster!!! Always cool to see it, one of my more favourite mysteries along with the Rousseau saga and DHARMA stations. I'll discuss this further in a few. So back at the camp, Nikki and Paulo are conveniently invited along on John's mission. I found the staging of this quite funny as John proclaims "no, anyone is welcome" but the only new people he actually says this to is those two, uncanny. Also in this scene it became pretty obvious that Nikki and Paulo are "mixin' it" (as someone at college called it today). Side note, how convenient Desmond suddenly says "oh the computer can also communicate with other ones, even though the guy in the Orientation film said do nothing other than number pressing". I think this whole scene was just a poor string tier...

Now back to Eko again, and I'm trying to understand by note here where I wrote simply "Harry Potter moment". What do I mean? Ah yes, the monster's reflection in the water, very Basilisk (god I'm sad). Anyway next is Juliet and the cheeseburger, always handy to find a girl who can make you it from scratch by killing a cow (I thought that line was a nice touch...). God I'm craving a cheeseburger now. Anyway, to the bit I mentioned before! I figured they didn't take Jack earlier when they had the chance cause they didn't know Ben was dying, but then he said he found out two days before Flight 815 crashed, so that flew out my theory. Why didn't they take him before then, eh? Well the only thing I have left now might be that they didn't get Jack's "This is Your Life" file until much later, so Ben and the Others didn't actually know he was a surgeon until like just after they took Michael - which is the only solution right now I can muster that makes sense let me tell you! Still doesn't explain Kate or Sawyer though apart from possible leverage.

Again to Eko, who now meets up with Yemi, or is it... *twilight zone music*. But, I liked that its not Yemi, meaning Lost might explain the island visions! Meaning they might come up with a plausible explanation!!!! Hoorah! Just realised now though, minus the horse, those visions seem to want to kill people. I mean didn't Jack almost fall off a cliff chasing Christian, or am I conflicting episodes? And didn't Dave try to get Hurley to kill himself? And didn't Yemi look a bit peeved that Eko wouldn't like offer his life before him, not to mention possibly set the tent at the beginning of the episode on fire? Evil spirits... But, is he the Monster? His eyes to me looked black, much darker than Eko's but of course doesn't mean they aren't just very dark brown - but they did seem a really off colour. Maybe thats just me... Anyway, we then see Eko get wasted by the Monster (props to the Lostpedia editor who added it throws him about in a Cross direction - I didn't notice that one). At any rate, I'm assuming thats how the Pilot dided huh.

Now have to mention the Pearl action. Loved that they went back there!!! DHARMA stations are always so much fun to the storyline. And I have to say I felt like Locke when Nikki points out that he says "stationS" as in plural - as I remember arguing with someone that they monitored only the Swan and they said "no it'll look at other ones too". So yeah, me ashamed... But how cool was that feed. I'm gonna take the educated guess and say its the Flame station, as I know we might see it this Season from what I've been hearing. It looked a lot like the Swan though didn't it. And who is that guy? Radzinsky? At any rate he didn't look too happy. A few points I must raise here though. One is that I enjoyed reading a Lostpedia argument about how did Nikki know there are six DHARMA stations. Whilst its interesting to think Nikki might be DHARMA, lets note that at the start of the Pearl video it says "5 of 6" lol. Second, people are saying how did patch man know about the camera being on. Err maybe because it panned? Or maybe a red light came on? Third, he was wearing a DHARMA suit and probably owns the glass eye Libby found in the Arrow. This guy probably knows all the stations, and so I'm sure will reveal some huge revelations toward the end of the Season. Fourth, when Kate read notes from the capsule dump, maybe it wasn't from observations of the Swan, if so then the Flame has a ping pong table :-)

OK last bit now (thank god, I had hoped for this blog to be brief), Juliet and her video! Now I'm one to at times take things on Lost at face value contray to everyone else and just say "hey just stop questioning if someone is lying or not for once" (you know who you are LHorse and your P is not RB hehe), and this instance is one of these times. Juliet is good in my opinion, cause I really can't trust Ben and his evil schemes. Juliet wants Ben gone so she can turn the Others away from whatever path Ben has put them on (the facade and kidnapping I'd assume). While it could be another lie, I think on weighing it up Juliet is better than Ben, though crazier too in fairness. Now, lastly, to mention Eko again. He died! Damn and here I was hoping we'd never have to deal with another tedious Charlie flashback ever again! Oh well, I'm gonna miss his cool "Hello John" voice. I leave you with the final thought: As one plucky Lostpedian noted, when John recites "we're next", does he mean the proverbial we, or did Eko mean "YOU'RE next". Consider this until next time...
 

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