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)

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)

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)

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. --[[User:Singkong2005|Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Singkong2005) <small><sup>[[User talk:Singkong2005|talk]]</sup></small>]] 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)

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

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)