User talk:MarkDilley

Notification on users talk page only

People's "talk" pages alert them to messages. Their user pages don't. Best wishes! robinp 00:46, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Thank you for the tip Robin! - Need to write something up about that function. TalkPagesForWikiPeople - best, mark

Testing Notification for Message on Talk Page

Does it work? did you get the notification? Tedernst 16:35, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

When I first signed up for wikipedia, I was TedErnst, but then somehow couldn't get signed in again using that name so became Tedernst and started editing without realizing what was up. Now I'm attached to it. Then, since this is also mediawiki, I stuck with the strange name. I'll fix it out. Thanks!

And you can welcome Tristan by editing the talk page (not the user page directly), which is considered fine etiquete at mediawikis, as far as I know. Tedernst 16:49, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Mark, I'm okay with whatever is going to happen here and don't need it to look any way, so please know that I love you very much and all my suggestions are just that, suggestions. I'm here to help. :-)

That said, Mediawiki has some really cool features that I think will be useful to use. Notice how MarkDilley and User: MarkDilley are two different pages? One is an article and the other is a user. I believe it'll be cleaner to not have any people in the article namespace, the space that you want to be full of wikis. When you make a comment that you'd like signed, you don't have to link to anything, you can just type 4 tildes, and it'll expand out with the datestamp and a link to your user page. Tedernst 16:34, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

• Ted I do not know how to redirect my page MarkDilley to user:MarkDilley, please do that if you can. I want the simplicity of wiking my name.

Oh, and I just remembered, media wiki also has a talk page connected with every other page, in every namespace. So if I want to leave a comment for you, I don't leave it on your user page, but on your talk page: User talk: MarkDilley and you'll get a notification (I'm pretty sure) that you have a new message. Tedernst 16:34, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

An admin can do it. First, an admin has to delete the page "User:MarkDilley" because it was nothing but a redirect. Then any registered user can move "MarkDilley" page to "User:MarkDilley". Tristram Shandy 17:48, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

So Tristam, I just MarkDilley and it goes to my user name or my article name?

On wikipedia it's really important to preserve edit histories because of the GPL licence. We don't have that issue here with the CC license, correct? So a cut and paste move isn't a problem here the way it is there? TedErnst

The purpose of moving pages with the move function is to keep the edit history for attributing the page authors. The licence of WikiIndex also requires to attribute the author properly, so the move function is still important. Tristram Shandy

Link to yourself automatically using tildas

Just sign your contributions with 4 tildes "~~~~" and you won't need to remember how to link to yourself. TedErnst 17:13, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

Yea, I just don't like the time date stamp, so I don't do that. It is not in my wiki nature :-)

If you don't like the time stamp, you can use three tildes instead. Tristram Shandy

Okay, well, we're going to have to decide the namespace issue. I just noticed that John Stanton has his page in the article space as well. Where can we have that conversation? TedErnst 17:22, 18 Jan 2006 (EST)

It is cleaner to have the name of Wiki People have article pages. Thanks for the tild example Tristram! MarkDilley

Mark, you're sounding very dogmatic. Things should be this way because they should be this way. I'm not so sure things are so cut and dried automatically better one way over the other. And if you're not interested in using the features of media wiki, perhaps another engine would be a better choice? TedErnst 00:59, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

Actualy Ted, it sounds to me as you are the one being dogmatic. We must do this because that is what the wiki software is capable of. I think that individual choice works for me here. I am not forcing anyone else to do it any other way. :-) Hugs back - MarkDilley

I like the namespaces because of what they give you. They are unique in my experience to media wiki. I like them not because they exist here, but because they are useful. You seem to not like them only because you haven't used them. Or maybe there's some other reason? I don't know because your answers feel so absolutist to me. I'm not trying to run your project. I'm here to help. Believe me, I'll do my best to help this project succeed, however you set it up. I'm just hoping to do it in the way that makes the most sense for those doing most of the work. That might not be me and thus I shouldn't have all that much say. It's just that you might not have experienced some of the features you're poo pooing. No worries. I'll get down to work presently. TedErnst 01:12, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

I don't think I am poo pooing any ideas. MarkDilley

Category Sorting

[[Category:Wiki People|Tristram Shandy]]

The purpose of this code is not to show up and differently on Tristram's page, it's to sort the name properly on the category page. Otherwise, we'd all end up in the U section, if we're using namespaces. If we're not using namespaces, then we could use that code to sort by last name, if we wanted to.

[[Category:Wiki People|Dilley, Mark]]

Categories at the top?

Why? TedErnst

It is a standard that ICANN wiki used, that we all liked, and the added bonus is that the categories sort before the template categories, giving the first ones more relevance with a folksonomy.

Okay, Hopefully I won't hate it too much. TedErnst

You wrote: "also, the standard we are trying to set is categories at the top of the page." They recommend the opposite in Wikipedia because the newbies may get confused when they see odd-looking category descriptions instead of normal text, when they start to edit a page. There used to be problems with search engines, they showed categories before the normal text in their page summaries. However, I don't know if the search engine problem is occuring any more. Tristram Shandy

Personally, I think that is not a problem with this wiki for three reasons:

• The wiki is for other wikis, so one assumes that other contributors are not newbies.
• If we do get a newbie checking out the inside, the data is structured and I think they would be able to figure it out quickly.
• I think categorys in wiki are pretty valuable and exciting things to start to be able to understand, so it is kinda cool to have them smack dab in the front. My 2 cents. :-) MarkDilley

Why do you want the extra added categories to be listed before the ones in teh box? Shouldn't the ones in the box be the most important? TedErnst 00:58, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

The categories at the bottom are already redundant once, some may say twice because of the sidebar links. So adding the Folksonomy Categories in the front helps the richness of the site. I like that they are redundant at the bottom, but I think they are less valuable because they are the highlighted ones in the templete. Also, while this is a MediaWiki, it is not Wikipedia. Best, MarkDilley :-)

I don't understand anything of what you're saying here. Redundant once how? Redundant twice how? What's a Folksonomy Category? How do the sidebar links come into play? And does the wikipedia comment come from my other comment? Of course it's not wikipedia. That's why I wonder why we're using wikimedia engine if it's clear that its features are not what you're looking for in building this project. TedErnst 01:09, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

Look at the categories in the template box, now look at the categories at the bottom of the page, they are the same. A folksonomy is when people come along and say, hey this is a category art wiki, so they add it into the non structured data area of the wiki page. Test for yourself, add the non structured category data at the top, save, see what is looks like, now move it to the bottom and see how it changes to the back. I think those categorys are good to be redundant from the template in the page, but not really necessary to be in the front.

table of contents

Any time there are 3 or more (I think) headings on a page, the TOC pops up just before the first of them. Often there is introductory text before the first heading, so that ends up before the TOC. You can force NOTOC somehow, and you can also force TOCright, where the text will then wrap around. We'll have to figure those out. TedErnst 01:01, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

testing talk message

very cool :-)

category thing

John thinks it gets lost on the bottom, so he likes to see it there also. So I only say that if you're going to put extra categories in the "body" area, then put both commands in the same place so people can see what's been done and copy that if they like it that way.

Ok, I think that is fine, I think as a standard, people will get used to it being next to the category tag at the bottom. MarkDilley

Work in Progress

what exactly is the 'check name' field for? --Ray 23:11, 19 Jan 2006 (EST)

Is the name of the wiki page the same as the name of the wiki, I have found several that aren't

altorgwiki

mostly bad porn, but worse it's riddled with spam links and the like. i didn't think it added any value and thougth it might offend some. feel free to put it back in if you think otherwise.

yea i found it, altorgphpwiki. spam porn links... should we remove others that are porn spam links?

redirects for alternate names

Mark,

When someone comes here, they don't know if their intended wiki is already here. So they type the name in the box and if they don't have it exactly the same, it'll say "not found, would you like to start it?" For this reason, I believe we should not delete any redirects from alternative names, because these increase the liklihood that a person will find the wiki they're looking for and therefore not create a new page for it when one already exists. So save yourself some work and stop deleting redirects! :-) Just an opinion, not a decree.

hugs, TedErnst

I think that people will type in their wiki name exactly as it is, if it is not there, then they should add it. I am not so sure that alternate names are important. By the way, I added most of these wiki to SwitchWiki and I think I added the wiki to many of them. So I am comfortable deleting the wrong name. :-) MarkDilley

Will they type Meatball or MeatBall or MeatBallWiki or meetballwiki? I just don't see the benefit of deleting a harmless redirect. It's more work for you to delete, and possibly more work later when someone creates an article that alrready exists. This may be just a huge big in mediawiki that won't let you find a page without having the name exactly right, but it causes amazing problems at wikipedia. I've done it myself, created articles that already existed. The redirects left over once all this is fixed each time means the next person to make the same mistake won't make the same mistake! TedErnst

The problem I see is that this solution, not eliminating redirects, causes redundancy in the alphabetical listing. MarkDilley