WikiIndex talk:Community talk

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rel nofollow on links to wikis

I noticed a page on this wiki that points to one of my wikis. I noticed that the page on this wiki is full of my keywords in the text, meta tags, titles, etc.. I support the idea of this wiki wanting to be a central point for a listing of all wikis, and initially I wasn't too upset about your using the name and keywords of my wiki on your site.

But on further examination, I discovered that your link to my wiki is done as rel="nofollow". This tag causes spiders and indexers to ignore the link, so my wiki gets no benefit in return for your use of my information. Is this fair?

Essentially you are profiting by the existence of my wiki, along with having my keywords on your site, without giving my wiki the benefit of a real link from yours.

I understand all the reasons for using rel="nofollow" to prevent wiki spam. But there are creative ways to selectively drop the rel="nofollow" on links that you want. I think with your use of keywords and titles and names of other wikis, the least you can do is make sure they get a real link in return.

Not sure I understand this "But there are creative ways to selectively drop the rel="nofollow" on links that you want." - If we have done this to try and prevent wiki spam, how would we do it otherwise? No disrespect is intentioned, so thanks for bringing this issue up. Best, MarkDilley

I do not know if MediaWiki can support this out of the box, but here's how I've dealt with these issues: My wikis implement a whitelist of sites that can be linked to, and a regular expression black list of sites that can not be linked to. My wiki implements the whitelist as a list of sites that are linked to directly, and sites not on either the white or black lists are linked to through a redirect script. My wiki refuses to render any URL matching a regexp in the blacklist. Users see nothing in that spot on the page, and admins see the page rendered with "BLOCKED URL yyy" at those spots... I know the whole issue of white and black lists is controversial, but I've found it to be relatively painless way of removing the payload for spammers. Combined with IP block list, and a captcha box for non-authenticated users, 99% of wiki spam is rebuffed before it even gets posted... For this wiki, my suggestion is that whitelisting could be linked to the page names, so that the link to a wiki would be without the rel="nofollow" on it's own page. Obviously this would require some custom code unique to this wiki. - Anonymous

We have decided to turn this feature off. 22-May-2006

Renaming categories

How do you rename a category? I don't mean cutting and pasting text to a new page. You should be able to move the page and its edit history to a new location. I can't do it even if I copy the old page title to the move page URL. Can any admin do it?

I prepared to move Category:OddMuse to Category:Oddmuse, since it is Oddmuse accroding to its official website. I opened all the articles with the OddMuse category in new tabs, edited them, and then noticed that I can't move the category. Ouch. Tristram Shandy 18:10, 7 Mar 2006 (EST)

It seems no-one can move categories Tristram Shandy

input requested on categorization (meta)

Category:Browse is nicely becoming smaller. One outstanding issue is that we need a new category for articles related to the whole wiki community that aren't meta to WikiIndex, but sort of meta to all of wikilandia. Books, OptOut, Weblogs, What is a Wiki etc. Any suggestions? TedErnst | talk 18:52, 15 Mar 2006 (EST)

Category:Wiki Language?

Should there be a distinction between wikis that are bilingual (e.g. WikiIndex-English & French), multilingual (e.g. Wikimedia Commons-multiple languages used within the same wiki), and multiple languages (e.g. most Wikimedia Foundation projects, such as the Wikipedia, that have versions in different languages [as subdomains in the case of Wikimedia projects])? User:BlankVerse | talk 00:44, 27 Mar 2006 (EST)

I just created Category:Deutsch as a redirect to Category:German. This works in the sense that if you click on the Deutsch link under the categories at the bottom of the page you will go to Category:German. The problem is that any articles tagged with only Category:Deutsch do not show up under Category:German. After thinking about it, I am now changing Category:Deutsch to be a subcategory under Category:German. I think that is the better to do things. I'll also do the same thing with Category:Español. User:BlankVerse | talk 20:47, 29 Mar 2006 (EST)

Help namespace

There is a "Help:" namespace. Should we start utilizing it? I don't mind moving all the pages in the help category myself. —User:Sean Fennel@ 14:51, 27 Mar 2006 (EST)

Sean, what pages do you think we already have that would go in to the Help: namespace, and by saying "we already have it" - you mean because the search is already set up for Help:? Best, MarkDilley

is mailedto a wiki ?

I'm not even sure this is supposed to be public -- perhaps it's only a temporary experiment. Should we list it anyway? http://mailedto.com/wiki2/

--DavidCary 01:02, 29 Mar 2006 (EST)

David, I looked at it, and it looks cool, but I am not sure I get it. Please list it if you want. Best, MarkDilley

private wiki advice needed

I have a friend that wants a private wiki for his business. I tried to help him set up UseMod and failed. He knows about and has used PBwiki and is worried about his data if they go under. Where should he go to feel secure about both his data not being seen and his data not disappearing at some point. TedErnst | talk 11:28, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

Does your friend want a free service or can they pay? MarkDilley

What he really wants is something at his domain so he doesn't have to pay, but since I can't seem to help him with that, he's looking at other options. Are there free options you can recommend? What about for pay? TedErnst | talk 17:18, 4 May 2006 (EDT)

Friend here. It needs to be secure. Trade secrets, personal info and such. I'd like to host it for more control if possible. Thanks.

In order of who I have known longer:

Socialtext - talk to SunirShah

Confluence Atlassian - http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/ - Mike fron RecentChangesCamp

Wetpaint - Ray has met these folks.

Also http://dreamhost.com maybe able to help, they have a one click install of a media wiki. -- MarkDilley

Thanks. I have no idea what to do once I arrive at these links.

The last option is something you get if you sign up for a paid hosting plan? Howard

Update: Spent some more time. Socialtext links to a blank page. Confluence-- $1200 license-- no go. Wetpaint-- can't find the info I need to understand what I need to do, or how much it would cost. This is going way beyond the amount of time I can invest in this-- thanks for trying.

Howard, can we talk on the phone? I think that would be much better. Best, MarkDilley

check this wiki

Monket Calendar - this seems to be one software application within a larger wiki - help me out seeing what's up here? TedErnst | talk 18:22, 19 May 2006 (EDT)

==Questions go where? ==How do I know if my question goes on Community talk or talk: Community talk? TedErnst 11:44, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

• Community talk is the article descibing the page (and maybe decisions?), talk is where the action happens. Me thinks :-) MarkDilley

I've merged the two pages now, so problem should be solved. --Singkong2005 09:51, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

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Mark, I would like to make the same proposal as the one in WorldWideWiki, but it seems that it is not possible to transclude anything into MediaWiki... (or to include HTML/Iframe). An other question is : Where is the rss feed? of wikiindex. OlivierAuber 10:44, 22 Jan 2006 (EST)

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Can we map the logos to wiki_url field, i.e. the main page? I think that images will draw people and their clicking getting to the image page is less relevant, but if that is the way it is, that would be fine! :-) MarkDilley

Yep. Pipe the external link to the full URL of the image. —User:Sean Fennel@ 14:48, 27 Mar 2006 (EST)

Thanks Sean, so we can hard wire the image to the front page of the wiki being referenced? If so, can you show me documentation? Best, MarkDilley

See what I did on TextMate Wiki. Sorry it took me so long to respond. I thought this page was on my watchlist. It is now. —User:Sean Fennel@ 15:29, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

social-ism

I can't type this word without the dash because the spam filter doesn't like cia-lis (without the dash). This is messed up! This should be it's own category but I can't do it! TedErnst | talk 17:50, 24 May 2006 (EDT)

technical glitch

Hello folks, I don't use watched pages very much. But I do on my user talk page, or did, way back when and I try to unwatch it. that doesn't work, every time I unwatch it, the next login, it is being watched again, any ideas? MarkDilley

I can only guess that that's a mediawiki feature. If you don't use the watchlist, does having something on there impact you somewhere else? TedErnst | talk 14:04, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

No, just annoying! :-) MarkDilley

I'm sorry to hear you're annoyed, my friend. TedErnst | talk 17:11, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

In Special:Preferences there is an option to add every page you edit to your watchlist. You may want to turn that off if it's not already off. --Carlb 22:59, 10 June 2006 (EDT)

It seems that our user talk pages are always in bold, is that true? MarkDilley

Your own user page can't be un-watched. I think it's somehow connected to talk page notification. —User:Sean Fennel@ 00:56, 3 July 2006 (EDT)

OpenG

Is there a wiki for the G programming language? If one exists, I'd like to list it in the WikiIndex. I see what appears to be one using TikiWiki at http://openg.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Whats%20New , but the big red warning at the top makes me suspect that it is going offline soon(?), to be replaced by a phpBB (which is non-wiki, right?). (Or do they plan to keep both running indefinitely, so people can use whichever one they feel comfortable with?). (G is the visual programming language used in Wikipedia:LabVIEW). --DavidCary 11:11, 24 June 2006 (EDT)

can't save edits to Wikis_by_response_time

It looks like all edits are being blocked by the spam filter because the page contains the characters '. h t m l' somewhere., edits to THIS page were blocked because it contained the letters 'x x x', I changed them to 'yyy' -- Versageek 15:37, 30 July 2006 (EDT)

I didn't even know we had a spam filter. —User:Sean Fennel@ 17:49, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

Question

I recently put my wiki up Trendpedia and today I saw an article on my wiki http://trendpedia.elwiki.com/WikiNode and I am trying to figure out what the article is supposed to be. Since it was done by an IP and I'm not sure if they'll check back, I'm asking here. The thing is, it looks like a welcome message. I am not sure how to develop it. Is it supposed to be an article about WikiNode or WikiIndex? Why does it link to my wiki's recent changes and main page? ZealPalace 05:29, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

That was me. Have you had a chance to see anything about the WikiNodes network? WikiNodes are pretty cool, and allow you to show anyone the wikis that are "neighbors" of yours. So that page is just a generic template that I pasted in. It linked back to your page on WikiIndex so you'd know it was us. Feel free to change anything on the page, including the links to your RC and mainpage. Change those to the most important pages on your site and add links to the wikinodes of sites you consider to be your neighbors. Please let me know if you'd like to talk more about this. TedErnst | talk 05:36, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

I still don't quite get it, but I also think all of my wiki is lost. Please see my comment at Talk:ElWiki. ZealPalace 14:10, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

That´s a drag. TedErnst | talk 17:26, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Well it's back up now without explanation. It's really hard to find a good wiki farm, I find, though. Editthis.info has a size limit. Wikia may cause you to lose control of your wiki at any time. The rest either give you a single page or are not mediawiki. ZealPalace 21:29, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Sitemap

I can't tell if WikiIndex already has a sitemap, but if not, I have been using this at Film-Flam with good effect: http://www.thinklemon.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Google_Sitemaps. Worth considering to improve your Google indexing. Dryguy 19:17, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

A sitemap is just a list of pages that are on a website (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemap). Google Sitemaps (http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) is a service that allows you to tell Google where to find your sitemap. Doing so improves Google's ability to index your website, if the sitemap is in the right format. In my case, it has resulted in my site going from not being indexed by Google at all, to actually appearing as a result for certain search terms. The PHP script linked above can be installed by the site administrators to automatically generate a Google-compatible sitemap for a MediaWiki based website. As I understand it, this helps ensure that Google will find and index new pages on your site fairly soon after they are created. I would guess it can also help Google recognize the difference between a temporary connection problem vs. a page on the site that no longer exists. There is also the added benefit that you can use the Google sitemap tools to view statistics about what keywords are generating Google hits for your site. Dryguy 18:24, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Hi. I think the idea sounds good, is it possible for you to start the process, or do we have to have an administrator do it? Cheers, MarkDilley

The php script has to be installed by someone with access to the server directory where the wiki resides, so wiki adminship probably isn't enough, I think you have to have ftp access to the server. Dryguy 18:44, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Ok, I will let John Stanton know about it. Best, MarkDilley

We had a flatfile Google sitemap up until the last upgrade of mediawiki and apparently it did not survive the upgrade :-) I just implemented the automatic xml version suggested above and it seems to work great! We will need to keep an eye on it because 1) it is not qualified for mediawiki 1.6.5 and 2) it takes a bit of time to generate the output (it found 7804 wiki pages on the trial run). You can see the output yourself at http://wikiindex.com/sitemap.xml.php be patient because it takes several seconds to generate the output. John 12:13, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

Hi John, You may want to alter the SQL Statement by limiting the number of pages fetched (SELECT TOP 200 ... or the likes). That way only the last X edits will show up. Google will fetch the sitemap every 12 hours or so, therefore it'll only get the latest batch of updated pages. Of course find some values that'll work for this site. I don't know how many edits per day you're having here. Cheers Caspar/ThinkLemon. (Oh and if the MediaWiki database schema did not change from 1.5 to 1.6 it should work fine. Haven't tried it myself though. ;-))

Hi Casper, I'm going to keep an eye on it to see what the impact is before I change the SQL but thanks for the suggestion. The database schema had a significant change between 1.5 and 1.6 and that's what worried me but I tested it on my personal wiki and it seems to work fine. Thanks! John 14:57, 28 August 2006 (EDT)

search weirdness

When I do a search on "concepts", I see that #11 in the results is the page about the CTM Wiki.

If I type "ctm" or "CTM" into the search box, then bang on the "Search" or "Add" button, I expect to see that page listed somewhere in the results.

Instead, I see a page that claims "No page title matches" and "No page text matches".

Can we fix this bug?

--DavidCary 22:07, 22 August 2006 (EDT)

It´s a MediaWiki thing. Their search is awful and hasn´t been worked on for a long time. I don´t believe we have the expertise among us to handle it. I´d recommend making a redirect from CTM. TedErnst | talk 17:00, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

By default you cant have a search string less than four characgters in length in MySQL. It's possible to change this setting however.

Unhelpful categories

What's the purpose of Category:Collaborative - Aren't all wikis collaborative? Likewise for Category:Information - aren't the majority of wikis for sharing information? I'd suggest that these should be deprecated. --Singkong2005 05:49, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

We're a bottom-up sort of place. We didn't decide on categories in advance. Each wiki is categorized (tagged) in a way that makes sense to the people doing the tagging, without regard to taxonomy (generally). It's only over time that we can start to see patterns, and then we can decide if any larger action needs to happen. In the case of the two examples you cite, I'd suggest that every wiki in those categories would need to be examined to see if those tags still make sense. A wiki about information theory might well belong in category information, but many of the wikis there might not be. Feel free to dig in to do this work! TedErnst | talk 11:05, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

Templates to group related topics

I've made a new template: Template:International development, and have put it on related topic pages. The idea is that when someone looks up one topic, they also see related topics (which only exist because people chose different words to mean the same or similar things).

It could do with a nice box around it. But next priority is to make one for the multiple sustainability/environment topics. --Singkong2005 09:45, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

We have a convention here using this syntax: {{related|RelatedCategory}} that we use to draw links between categories that are related. I bring this up because I can easily imagine wikis about hunger in Chicago or Toronto that have nothing to do with International Development. So while I agree with you that category hunger is related to category international development, to say that hunger is inside international development doesn't seem true to me. TedErnst | talk 11:10, 30 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks - good point about hunger in Chicago etc. Will give it more thought, and probably change those pages to using Template:Tl. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 21:49, 2 September 2006 (EDT)

OpenID

Hi, all. I wanted to point out that there's now an OpenID extension for MediaWiki that lets people log into one MW wiki with an account from another wiki. I think it'd be particularly useful for a meta-community site like WikiIndex. The software is available from http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/OpenID/ in the MediaWiki subversion library, and I'd be happy to help get it installed. --Evan 11:22, 7 September 2006 (EDT)

There's a more useful page at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID . I would love to help someone at WikiIndex install this software, step-by-step if needed. --Evan 14:20, 3 February 2007 (PST)

Would love to implement OpenID, as we discussed at RCC 2007, I've read over the installation page and it doesn't look too hairy. We do have a couple of issues that need to be resolved before we can go live with it, our .htaccess rewrite code quit working when we upgraded to MW 1.8.2 and changed hosts. I'll try to resolve our issues this week and start working on OpenID this weekend or early next week. John 09:25, 13 February 2007 (PST)

How are you doing hotlinking in mediawiki

On my wiki's article here http://wikiindex.com/Trendpedia well it's hotlinking my logo. I can't find how this happens. {{{wiki_logo}}} with three { and } instead of two is the only thing I see and that's in the wiki template, which is full of the three { and } things. Two is templates. So what are the three? I'm more interested in how this is done and what the three { } are above. I would actually prefer to keep the image hotlinked because it lets me test if I have hotlinks blocked, which I think I finally figured out how to do thanks to this site. ZealPalace 05:52, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

Sean Fennel is the one that probably knows the answer to this one. MarkDilley

Hotlinks can on some MediaWikis be made by just writing the URL. The {}'s are parameters in templates that allows the user to customize the template. – Smiddle / T·C·@ 14:01, 15 November 2006 (EST)

One caveat with hotlinking: As of MediaWiki 1.8, this appears to be turned off by default (although it can be re-enabled by system administrators by changing LocalSettings.php). Default in earlier versions was to replace any exposed link to an external image URL with the hotlinked image itself.

Perhaps hotlinks are falling out-of-favour on some sites as they consume bandwidth on the external site to which they link, as well as being prone to abuse as a means to link 'shock images' from wiki pages. --Carlb 14:13, 15 December 2006 (EST)

For those of you who function better in UseMod

The skin "Nostalgia" was designed to mimic UseMod, and does a pretty good job of it. I just found it in my preferences andwas quite impressed. The only major difference is that the page title isn't a link to "What Links Here" a.k.a. BackLinks. — User:Sean Fennel@ 14:35, 9 September 2006 (EDT)

Broader wikis.

I'm very enthusiastic about this wiki - connecting people with the right wiki is a great thing to do. Now, There is something which I think would help WikiIndex be even more useful.

The broader wikis, such as Wikipedia and Wikibooks, have a lot of material on most or all of the topics listed here. To really make the indexing complete, I think we should list:

• Major topics on Wikipedia - this would mean a category which has an article of the same name, and which has a category on WikiIndex.
• Wikipedia Wikiprojects (collaborations to improve groups of articles)
• Bookshelves and books on Wikibooks

On a related topic: Perhaps it's also worth having an article which explains how the different wikis & projects link together. Or we could make a point of explaining that in the individual articles. For example, Appropedia is not for encyclopedic material, but rather is aiming to complement Wikipedia (not compete with it) by developing project pages, how tos, networks & collaborations, and allowing original research. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 07:37, 15 September 2006 (EDT)

This wiki is a community effort, so if you've got a plan and want to set up an project to carry it out, by all means, do so. You are also welcome to join us for a Happening if you'd like to talk things over or present a specific proposal and have a chance to get real-time feedback. Or not. And just get to work! :-) No worries either way. TedErnst | talk 18:02, 15 September 2006 (EDT)

Excellent - will do this. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 00:36, 21 September 2006 (EDT)

So ... you want to list each book on Wikibooks, each major Wikipedia topic, and each Wikipedia Wikiproject, as if it were an independent wiki? That sounds fine. --DavidCary 17:01, 17 April 2007 (PDT)

The Wiki Synergy Project

I've started The Wiki Synergy Project in my userspace. The idea is to encourage greater synergy between related wikis (particularly in sustainability & development, which are my main interest, and which overlap a lot). The idea is that when I contact wikis to talk about these ideas, I can link them to this page, which will explain everything. It will also provide a neutral place for people to talk about these ideas.

I'd appreciate feedback, and if anyone wants to join the effort, that would be great.

As I said, my concern is wikis on sustainability & development, but I'm sure the same issues apply elsewhere, so I'm keeping the project as as broad as possible. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 00:37, 21 September 2006 (EDT)

question from 66.36.243.77 moved from off-topic places

Sorry for your time.... Why i can't see images on this resource? My Browser is: Opera. Thank you.

See also this response to the same question on Appropedia.

Let us know if this helps. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 21:07, 10 October 2006 (EDT)

Feedback

There you have my idea. What do you think about it? Want to add your wiki? --Let's 12:02, 10 November 2006 (EST)

"BuildingControlsWiki"

On page https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InterWiki I see a link to a "BuildingControlsWiki". Apparently, that page (including that link) was copied from http://moinmaster.wikiwikiweb.de/InterWikiMap . Alas, it appears that wiki has gone offline. Or perhaps it moved? does anyone know where? --DavidCary 01:12, 22 November 2006 (EST)

Category images

If it's not too server-painful, we can upload an image for each category, for example a French flag for Category:French, or a image of an iPod at Category:IPod. – Smiddle / T·C·@ 11:23, 7 December 2006 (EST)

If you're looking for flags, openclipart.org has a reasonably full set as public-domain .SVG's. Perhaps you could use those? --66.102.73.18 02:22, 15 December 2006 (EST)

Duplicate categories

We do seem to have many redundant categories, for instance category:game/category:games/category:gaming. These seem to often be being #REDIRECT'ed - not necessarily the best approach, as a redirected page still appears to be a blue link and therefore is prone to keep getting added to articles. Would deleting the duplicates entirely so that they become red links be more likely to discourage their recreation or re-use? The politics is, I presume, just a sideshow and the creation of multiple near-identical categories in most cases merely an accident, but I thought it would be best to ask here instead of trying to find a "votes for speedy deletion" tag for them.

This is a community-created site, without a top-down determination of which categories we ought to be using. If you see duplication, feel free to clean it up. You can also use {{delete}} for an empty category that needs to be removed. TedErnst | talk 14:27, 15 December 2006 (EST)

Research and analysis collaboration?

Is anyone interested in working together to learn what is most effective or critical for wikis, especially attracting contributors? If so, please see the discussion at Wikia. Maurreen 15:06, 10 December 2006 (EST)

Changing username

If I want to change my username, should I just open a new account, or is possible (easy) to change it and keep the edit history, like I did on Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Changing username? Thanks --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 00:41, 19 December 2006 (PST)

I just looked at the wikipedia page and they have a special page for "rename user" which we do not have. Is this some kind of extension? TedErnst | talk 22:35, 19 December 2006 (PST)

Yes it is. They have quite a few pretty nifty extensions there. — User:Sean Fennel@ 15:44, 20 December 2006 (PST)

Spam protection filter blocks normal editing

I just tried to edit the categories of a page (Appropedia) and got this message:

The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to an external site.

The following text is what triggered our spam filter: (shows partial url of Appropedia)

I couldn't even post this message until I removed the url in the message. This is obviously not working the way it should, if it blocks legitimate editing.

Obviously we want to stop spam, but it must be a different way - what about having the box with wavy letters that we have to type in, or a simple arithmetic problem (e.g. "75-2="), or something like that? And even that should only be necessary for anons or new users. --Chris Watkins/Singkong2005 ^talk 15:20, 27 December 2006 (PST)

CAPTCHAs are rather difficult to implement effectively, and really only stop spambots. I think (hope) I've created a whitelist and added that as the first entry. — User:Sean Fennel@ 16:05, 1 January 2007 (PST)

RecentChanges.info

What happened to the RecentChanges.info blog ([1])? I followed the instructions on to add my wiki posting to Template:WikiSpotlight, but RecentChanges.info seems to have had no update since August 21, 2006! --84.155.249.44 10:19, 13 January 2007 (PST)

wikiindex.com

What's up with http://wikiindex.com/ ? --DavidCary 17:01, 17 April 2007 (PDT)

Don't know what happened there but I'll check it out John 10:27, 20 April 2007 (PDT)

Images

Hm, what happened to the (formerly possible) hardlinking of logos? And what happened to some disappeared images like Image:LüneburgWikiLogo.JPG, are they lost? --Rh 23:21, 26 April 2007 (PDT)

As far as I know, it still works. As for that image, I'll look through the deletion logs and see if it's there. — User:Sean Fennel@ 21:15, 1 May 2007 (PDT)

Ah, something's linking to it as a wiki page rather than a file. Ping John on that. — User:Sean Fennel@ 21:18, 1 May 2007 (PDT)

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Seeing Addiction As More Than A Flaw

For some generations, becoming an addict has always been a stigma, a result of spiritual isolation, a manifestation of personality deficiency, and a sign of moral weakness. For the same reasons, addiction treatments then were almost always limited to addressing the antecedent beliefs -- that is, incarceration, spiritual awakening, and asylum placement. However great the amount of efforts put to totally treat addicts and to eradicate from the society the bondage of addiction, these approaches to treatment were never hailed as efficient. This is primarily because they failed to address addicts as chronic disease patients who need to be systematically treated through scientific procedures and behavioral remedies.

Of all the human organs, the brain is the one primarily affected by the addicting substances permeated in the body system. Substances such as alcohol and heroin, in the long run, deliberately change the structure and functions of the brain, thus altering the cognitive skills, behavior, and interpersonal relations of an individual. In effect, these addictive attributes change his life wholly, affecting his family and other relationships, career, and social functions.

Uncovering the Influences

There is never a sole culprit to addiction. This disease is actually the by-product of the influences of an individual's family, peers, community, school, and environment. Apparently, if an individual thrives in a household and a community with strong risks for addiction, he has more chances of turning up into an addict. This is to say that living with an alcoholic family member or going out with a drug addict friend increases an individual's likelihood for experimenting with substances and eventually developing addiction.

Meanwhile, genetics also plays part in a particular person's vulnerability. It is important, however, to emphasize that there can never be a single role-playing gene, for it is the collaboration of different genes that results to addiction vulnerability.

To Save Lives Is Noble

An addict, as he is chronic brain disease-afflicted, has every right to be treated. Various efforts from the government and socio-civic groups have been combined to treat addiction and the simultaneous issues that go with it. Addiction treatment centers nowadays have been strategically reinforced to better cultivate non-addicted lives to every patient. Substance abuse treatment programs include medication, counseling, and therapies that are scientifically modified. This all prove to start losing grips from the old-fashioned treatment strategies.

Like any other chronic disease, addiction, if left untreated, eventually leads to death. Therefore, having an addict to undergo an addiction treatment is the wisest thing to do since the programs contribute a lot to reorganize the addict himself, his family and friends, his career, and his life in general.

Sources: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/issues/treatments.cfm http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/genetics/ http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/addiction/factors/environment.cfm