WikiIndex talk:Community portal/Archive 1

=— * 2006 * —=

Sidebar auto-inclusion
Because the Community portal has a ready-made link on the sidebar, it should contain substantial content, acting as a portal (which, as all Latin scholars and many web designers know, is a set of doorways leading to various good destinations). robinp 00:49, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Namespaces
Tristam, what function does having 'WikiIndex' in the title of this page serve? -- MarkDilley 15:35, 18 January 2006
 * It is Community portal in the sidebar. I did not notice that it is Community portal in some other bar until I moved the page. WikiIndex prefix tells that the page is related to the community itself, it is not an ordinary article. You can read more about . Special namespaces are very common in MediaWikis. Tristram Shandy 11:34, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)
 * Namespaces are quite an interesting concept. I've gotten quite used to them though my editing at Wikipedia.  What they do, in essence, is separate content meant for readers (the main article namespace) from everything else (talk pages for each article, user pages, user talk pages, project pages, project talk pages, templates, template talk pages, categories, category talk pages, etc).  Of course all of that is overkill here, but whatever if it is used, if effectively hidden from the casual reader. TedErnst 13:15, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)
 * It is a good question what namespaces we really need. Article namespace is the basic namespace without any prefix. We are going to use categories, images and templates, and their namespaces make them work, so they are not overkill. WikiIndex isn't as critical namespace, I don't have strong opinions about it. But if we put there also the Help pages (and get rid of the Help namespace), it has distinctive, important content. When you look at the All pages function, you can view pages from a certain namespace. Or you can choose to search from certain namespaces. WikiIndex namespace would make easier to find all kinds of guides and community pages. I have a gut feeling that it is difficult to get rid of talk page namespaces. Each page (except the Special pages) has a link to its talk pages. And only very clueless wiki citizens would write comments to templates. The comments would show in all pages that use the template, unless you marked the comments specially. Tristram Shandy 14:09, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)
 * I forgot the user pages. The wiki software immediately shows you, if you have any new messages in your user talk page. So the user talk namespace is a must. And you must have an user namespace to also have an user talk namespace. Again, keeping your user page in the user namespace helps searching information from wiki. And Special:ListUsers links to pages in user namespace, not to the article namespace. So the user pages should be like User:JohnSmith, not JohnSmith. When people write messages in Talk:JohnSmith, the software doesn't tell the user about them, unless the user has configured a watchlist. But you don't view your watchlist all the time. Tristram Shandy 17:12, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

A comment from Category:Wiki People: ... I don't think I like the user:MarkDilley stuff, I think Ray and Johns looks cleaner. MarkDilley


 * I don't know how to have the useful namespace functionality without having the prefixes. Mark linked his user talk page from the MarkDilley page, and Talk:MarkDilley redirects to User talk:MarkDilley. I think it isn't clean, but the User namespace is. Or then I am too accustomed to MediaWiki.


 * Still one more thing: according to, Special:Random selects some ...random page from the main namespace, which is the article namespace. People use Random page to go to a random article, but they may land in a user page, if it is kept in the article namespace. Special pages are a namespace as well, for some tools in MediaWiki. Tristram Shandy 17:39, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

It feels ok for me to have people show up in the random pages, I am interested in the community aspects that helps to reinforce. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.40.200.170 (talk) 19:22, 19 January 2006

Added from frontpage

 * LogoOptions
 * Make sure all real Category:Inactive wikis don't have active category tags, thus muddling other categories, via Wiki status
 * Logos - PNG vs. JPG. I have found that JPG files work better if you want to resize the image (see AccraWiki as an example).  Have others had the same experience? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.40.200.170 (talk) 19:22, 19 January 2006

Namespace conventions
Namespace conventions (link added by User:TedErnst, 19:39, 19 January 2006)

Nesting tables
The about us and news cells currently are at the top of a table nested inside the larger table (ie on win2000). Is that what was intended? I don't think that nesting is necessary, and in fact, that the page would look better without it. TedErnst 12:08, 23 Jan 2006 (EST)


 * Ted, feel free to change it. I personally do like the look, nested boxes, but don't know what they look like on non mac/mozilla products. But please feel free to make it look better. Best, MarkDilley (21:36, 23 January 2006)


 * I would have, but didn't know how (still don't). I really dislike wiki tables because they're hard to edit. They look really nice, however, so I value that part. I find it really looks better now. TedErnst 13:20, 24 Jan 2006 (EST)

barnraising picture is sweet! MarkDilley | talk (18:19, 31 January 2006)

Talk:Categories
Talk:Categories (link added by User:MarkDilley, 06:06, 13 February 2006)

Upgrade
John, your upgrade plan looks fantastic! peace, TedErnst | talk 14:44, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

Wow, pulling in another page is fab!
I love that code on NewPerson and NewWiki (might move to WikiIndex namespace), I was just thinking about something like that today!! Great work John!!! MarkDilley


 * Need now to review the front page and the existing add and edit links for conflicting instructions. You guys may also want to look at the template:New person page and the template:NewWiki boilerplate page to standardize what is pulled into each new page. I did the best I could but I was just winging it. May want to have a new template to suck into each new page. John Stanton 18:47, 10 May 2006 (EDT)


 * The French version needs updating also, my French is very poor :-) John Stanton 18:50, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
 * The template:NewWiki boilerplate seems to be old now, it's miscategorized, we should delete it. --Peu | talk 15:51, 9 November 2006 (EST)

I think that's actually the "New Wiki" boilerplate. New wikis are added all the time. I've puzzled over the fact that we have two boilerplates that seem the same, but can't make the no-includes and include-onlys work out to combine them. TedErnst | talk 02:49, 10 November 2006 (EST)
 * I disagree. You have to use subst: or copy the contents of template:Wiki boilerplate --Peu | talk 07:54, 10 November 2006 (EST)

I don't understand what you're disagreeing with. If you can make the add wiki button function work properly without an additional copy of the boilderplate, please go ahead and do so. This is not a philosophical debate. There simply is a practical reason why we're using it now because we don't know any better. If you know a better way, please help! TedErnst | talk 10:58, 10 November 2006 (EST)
 * Aha now I see the "Add Wiki"-Button. I used only this two ways to add a Wikis or Wiki-Data

--Peu | talk 11:17, 12 November 2006 (EST)
 * Search for it, if no found, use the red link and place URL and
 * Search for it, if no found, use the red Link and paste a Wiki boilerplate copy and type in data

The Community portal page include the “Hosting a Wiki? – Add it to WikiIndex!” section. That section in turn includes the “Create a New Wiki Page” feature/button, which creates an article skeleton that includes But the second field of template:Size has been changed from size to pages. I'm hoping someone knows how to update the “Create a New Wiki Page” function so it does 'pages' instead of 'size'. --EarthFurst 13:45, 26 July 2007 (EDT)


 * Thank you to whoever updated the “Create a New Wiki Page” feature, it does 'pages' field now. --EarthFurst 16:21, 26 July 2007 (EDT)