WikiKnowledge talk:Site Discussion

From WikiKnowledge

[edit] So...

Alright, I figure we need some site discussion, no? I've added this to my bookmarks, and I'll get around to registering at some point, but I was just thinking of something that I saw on another wikipedia-inspired wiki, wikinfo. They have some sort of tool (I vaguely recall that it had something to do with XML, but I know no programming, so don't quote me on that... in fact, not quoting me is a pretty good policy anyway) that imports wikipedia pages if they don't already exist on wikinfo (such that, instead of an red-link, it is blue as long as either wikiknowledge or wikipedia had an article at that name), but they don't run mediawiki software. I don't know if their tool can be run on mediawiki software at all; but it might be a good idea to get in touch with them to see if they can give you a hand with that. It would be a big help. Since Wikipedia is licensed under GFDL, I presume we can simply do the same thing, but I don't know any law either, so don't quote me there either.

The way it works there, you click on a link, and if the page doesn't already exist on wikinfo, the cool widget/tool/XMLish thingy goes to the wikipedia article for that name and automatically displays that, and then allows to to edit that article and work from wikipedia's "baseline."

But good idea,making a new wiki. I could rant about wikipedia editors, but I think we can leave that over on their servers...66.20.189.170 02:23, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

Whoops, I just saw/remembered that this is a PD wiki. I prefer those anyway. But, I guess we can't blatantly plagarize Wikipedia then, since it's GFDL. Hm... or could we? We'll see how SCO vs. IBM turns out. Or, we could go out and declare all information PD pre-emptively. Personally, that's what I think: if it's publicly available, it's PD. Don't want it in the public domain? Keep it to yourself. But, that's just me. Again, I digress. But if we care, and I personally don't, although I realize that I am not we, then copyrights could be a problem with simply importing wikipedia and working forward from there. 66.20.189.170 02:33, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

I can't agree more. Public domain should be a key focal point of the site. I think it already is, thankfully. --Jqiz 02:48, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

Oh, and how about an IRC channel? God, please, no mailing list. 66.20.189.170 02:34, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

I made this site Public Domain because of a comment on Wikibooks. A book was listed for deletion and it was suggested that WikiTravel would be a good place for it, however that was not possible because the licenses were incompatible. To me it looks like the information in not as free as you first think. I won’t be setting up any IRC channel or mailing list because all discussion about the site should take place on the site where it is easier for people to find. At least that’s what I think. Gerard Foley 15:16, 8 April 2006 (GMT)

I'm glad to hear that there will be no alternate communications channels. I think that the IRC and email discussions are one of the problems with Wikibooks, etc., too much going on out of sight. --Kwhitefoot 22:26, 2 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Upgrade to 1.6

I tried to upgrade this Wiki to MediaWiki 1.6, but it failed. Luckily everything's working again from the backups I made before hand. I think it might be easier to learn PHP and update it myself as needed. Anyone know PHP? Gerard Foley 19:30, 10 April 2006 (GMT)

I tried it again today and got it working! Gerard Foley 16:34, 28 April 2006 (GMT)

[edit] First anon article edit

This is WikiKnowledge's first article edit from a non logged in user. (The others were just me and User:Impega forgetting to log in. It's not much but it's a start. Gerard Foley 11:46, 18 April 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Down time

The site was down for about 5 hours today. Sorry for any inconvenience to anyone. I have got to move from Geocities to somewhere else. Gerard Foley 23:56, 18 April 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Dragontamer here, donating a tiny essay :-p

Sure, its more than 200 words, but I don't care bout the $10 reward. I'll "create" the page link here, and then copy/paste it from my site. It is the Inaccurate guide for Beginner Programmers

[edit] Why?

I'm curious: what is the goal for this wiki or what is its focus? I'm a bit confused -- is this a wiki repository for anything and everything or mainly a videogame wiki? --69.2.168.184 18:10, 24 May 2006 (GMT)

Anything and everything. Gerard Foley 19:36, 24 May 2006 (GMT)

I'm confused too. What makes this site different from Wikpedia? 65.96.209.236 02:03, 30 May 2006 (GMT)

You can try the About page! Gerard Foley 02:14, 30 May 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Quality Control

Are there any tools built in to the server to find broken links? I've copied a load of modules from Wikibooks (just those I was solely responsible for so I can make the PD) and now, of course I have loads of broken links. Also is there a shorthand way of linking to articles on Wikibooks, Wikipedia, etc. --Kwhitefoot 22:29, 2 June 2006 (BST)

If you are taking about Broken links as in the red links, then they will be listed on Special:Wantedpages. Unfortunately the list is saturated with Pokémon pages (also from Wikibooks). When I was moving the database I did notice a table with a list of external websites in it. I guess that it's just a feature that is not turned on by default; I look into it if people want these shorter links. Gerard Foley 22:42, 2 June 2006 (BST)

Special:Wantedpages is just what I was looking for. --Kwhitefoot 16:58, 3 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Delete image

How can I delete an image? I uploaded one and gave it the wrong name and I have already created one with the correct name. --Kwhitefoot 16:56, 3 June 2006 (BST)

Only admins can delete images. If you want admin access just say the word and it will be done! Gerard Foley 21:00, 3 June 2006 (BST)

Oh alright then, you've convinced me :-)) --Kwhitefoot 18:18, 4 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Case sensitivity in module names

One of the things that I really dislike about Wikimedia, C, C#, etc. is case sensitivity. I'm sure that a lot of non-programmers are put off by it. It simply causes unnecessary problems. Rant over. Is it possible to make the Wiki case insensitive? --Kwhitefoot 18:18, 4 June 2006 (BST)

As far as I know, no. The only thing that can be done is to allow lowercase letters at the start of titles. Or you could program the feature into MediaWiki. Gerard Foley 22:31, 4 June 2006 (BST)

Oh well, I;ll get on with other things then. Not sure I want to learn PHP, too many other things to do (i.e. too lazy). --Kwhitefoot 07:27, 5 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Spelling bot

I thought I would write a little bot to do some simple spelling corrections. In particular I wanted to put all the Pokémon pages in the Pokémon category instead of Pokémon. But when I looked at a few sample pages they all seemed to have the correct spelling for the category after all. --Kwhitefoot 07:27, 5 June 2006 (BST)

Now I see,it's the page name that is wrong. Need a Move Bot not a Spelling Bot. --Kwhitefoot 07:32, 5 June 2006 (BST)

No, it's the category links table that's wrong. Whatever zapped the article titles when the database was moved got that table also. To fix it, you need to edit the page and save it again. It doesn’t mater what is changed. The database downloads work a lot better on the new host, you wouldn't believe the amount of trouble I had trying to get the database from GeoCities. Gerard Foley 18:43, 5 June 2006 (BST)

Oops! I think I might have committed a sin. I created a page for an annotated version of of Iaroslav Vassiliev's DotNetWikiBot Framework v1.0 but it is not public domain (MIT license, Copyright © Iaroslav Vassiliev (2006) codedriller@gmail.com). What should I do? Eventually it will probably be rewritten to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as Vassiliev's but until then it violates the PD only rule. --137.133.163.230 07:52, 6 June 2006 (BST)

There was never a "PD only" rule, most images on the site are under copyright. Also, source texts are welcome here, even if they are not Public Domain. The DotNetWikiBot page has a copyright notice at the end, so it should be OK. The only other option is to delete the page. Gerard Foley 10:41, 6 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] More on Bots

Finally got one to do something useful. All the Star Trek pages are now in the Science Fiction category thanks to AddCategoryToPrefixBot. Now that I know it does work I'll start annotating it properly and upload it. --Kwhitefoot 22:53, 7 June 2006 (BST)

P.s. Sorry about the stupid edit comment. --Kwhitefoot 22:55, 7 June 2006 (BST)

Looks good. I am also interested in the WikiBots page. I hope it will have more info soon. ;) Gerard Foley 23:00, 7 June 2006 (BST)

I think that all the examples are functional now. So if you have a C# compiler you should be able to try them out. I have only tried using the Microsoft libraries and Microsoft compiler so far. I don't know if Mono has generics yet. I could upload the binaries too if you think that would be a good idea. --Kwhitefoot 18:55, 14 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Database download

A copy of the Database is available at http://www.wikiknowledge.net/Download/. It does not include the user, user_groups or user_newtalk tables. Gerard Foley 23:44, 7 June 2006 (BST)

This link seems to be restricted now. What's the best way to download a portion of the wiki, for example the CSS reference, for offline viewing? Matt 08:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Database downloads are not available at this time because I no longer make the backups of the database, they are now made by the hosting company. If you want to look at the CSS reference offline I'm afraid you will have to do it the hard way and download each page one by one. Gerard Foley 08:54, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it OK to wget those pages? (It'll download a whole lot of extra pages, like the edit pages. Matt 14:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

As long as you don't cause a denial of service attack or make poor edits to the pages then you are free to download them using whatever method you wish. Gerard Foley 15:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pokémon more popular then the Main Page

From Special:Popularpages

1. Pokémon (2,525 views)
2. Main Page (2,516 views)
3. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (308 views)
4. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (291 views)
5. Super Smash Bros. Melee (170 views)
6. Super Monkey Ball (162 views)
7. Cascading Style Sheets (156 views)
8. Pokémon Red and Blue (130 views)
9. Pokémon/Deoxys (128 views)
10. Sonic R (125 views)

Gerard Foley 13:08, 23 June 2006 (BST)

[edit] Ads

I changed the ads back to amazon. A lot of questions are being raised about the AdBrite ones, and is sounds like people are seing sex ads there or somthing. The only thing I ever saw there was:

ads: Buy & Sell Ads AdBrite is the Internet's Ad Marketplace

Your Ad Here

It would be nice if someone explained to me what was going on! Gerard Foley 13:30, 3 July 2006 (BST)

What did I miss? Perhaps one should be able to choose to see sexy ads by a setting in the profile. :-)) Do you get paid by Amazon only when someone buys something or when they click through or just for showing the advertisement? I ask because I have a filtering proxy that filters out ads and click-throughs. If I thought that seeing it contributed to the site I'd change the settings. --Kwhitefoot 19:10, 3 July 2006 (BST)

I changed the ads a few days ago to AdBrite, but it looks like people were seeing sex ads [1]. I don't understand why others would see different ads to me, but that’s what is sounds like was happening. The Amazon ads I get 4% of anything people buy after clicking an ad. This has so far come to $0, so I am still paying for the site own of my own pocket. You can turn them off using your own CSS file, see WikiKnowledge:Ads. Gerard Foley 22:09, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Well, now I read this post--after I post on your talk page. If you're not getting any money off of amazon, then isn't kind of foolish to have the ads?? I think it might work better if you got a sponsor that paid you every time someone clicked on the ad. Then everyone at wikiknowledge would just click on the add often, and all your money problems are solved :=)

--Primate^#101 06:01, 10 July 2006 (BST)

Don't know if google Adsense will work, but here's the link

--Primate^#101 06:07, 10 July 2006 (BST)

The sex ads problem is over now that the ads are back to Amazon. I will get money off of Amazon as soon as someone buys something from them. Google ads won't work because they closed my account due to "invalid clicks". Gerard Foley 12:43, 10 July 2006 (BST)

Bring back the sex ads :-)) Must be more amusing than ads for Norwegian poker games! --Kwhitefoot 22:26, 8 October 2006 (BST)

At least people don't complain about the poker ads like they did when the sex ads were there. If they are annoying you, you can use your css page to turn them off if you want. Gerard Foley 23:52, 8 October 2006 (BST)

No they don't bother me. But I do find the attitude strange (not yours, the complainers). For me encouraging gambling is a greater moral problem than sex. It was a sad day for me when the British government finally caved in and set up the national lottery. It's just a heavily regressive tax on the poor. Poker is not so bad because it is at least possible to influence the outcome by being a better player than the rest. --Kwhitefoot 10:09, 11 October 2006 (BST)

If you think that's bad you should look at http://www.wikitruth.info/index.php?title=The_Sausage_Factory_and_the_Sausage_Fest . Some girl uploaded sexy pictures of herself to Wikipedia (for use in relevant articles) and what thanks did she get? An indef ban from Jimbo himself! And what looks like a threat to block the people who defended her! Gerard Foley 16:57, 11 October 2006 (BST)

Sounds like the fuss that was made when Alex Comfort's Joy of Sex came out. A manual of sex that actually shows you how was a worrying thing for some in those far off days but I've spent the last three decades hoping that we would collectively grow out of those attitudes. So now we have articles in a supposed encyclopaedia that cannot be illustrated with appropriate pictures. And to make it worse Jimmy Wales sticks his oar in again making it clear that consensus only works when it doesn't offend against the ruling power. Damn, just when I thought I was getting my paranoia under control. Plus I've just read (on Wired I think) that Wikipedia is going to be forked into an invitation only version. --Kwhitefoot 22:53, 17 October 2006 (BST)

[edit] New Namespaces

3 new namespaces have been added. The WK namespace is for shortcuts, in the same way as they use WP on Wikipedia or WB on Wikibooks. News is for any news stories people want to write, just as you would at Wikinews. And the last one TransWiki is for moving content you think is useful from another wiki where it is about to be deleted. Comments about the new namespaces good or bad are welcome. Gerard Foley 12:57, 10 July 2006 (BST)

[edit] Wikipedia Content

I noticed that RuneScape (Mining) on wikipedia was being considered for deletion, so I backed it up onto my hard drive. It is now deleted, so I was wondering if it was OK for me to copy it to WikiKnowledge and then make some major changes to it. Is that's OK to do or if I should just completely rewrite the article?

--Primate^#101 21:35, 10 July 2006 (BST)

Wikipedia content is copyrighted and licensed under the GNU FDL, however this site is in the Public Domain, so the answer is the it needs to be rewritten. You can upload it to the TransWiki namespace with a note of where it came from and what license it is under. It can stay there until the rewrite is finished. This type of thing is exactly why I made the TransWiki namespace for :). In future if you notice something which is about to be deleted from Wikipedia (or any other wiki) you think might be useful you could try voting "TransWiki to WikiKnowledge" with a link to Help:TransWiki. Gerard Foley 22:14, 10 July 2006 (BST)

There is already somthing about mining at RuneScape/Mining. Gerard Foley 23:47, 10 July 2006 (BST)

Cool! I think I'll do that, except use the one from strategy wiki, 'cause the Wikipedia one wasn't very good to begin with. And the stuff I wrote at Runescape/Mining is CRAP!!--24.24.56.223 03:08, 11 July 2006 (BST)

[edit] Hey

If this site is not a more inclusive version of Wikipedia then what is the point?

I'm GONNA JIZZ!!! UHHH!!!! *spurt*

Did you even read the main page!? WikiKnowledge is not just an encyclopedia, so can contain stuff Wikipedia does not. Gerard Foley 22:09, 11 July 2006 (BST)

[edit] Pokemon

Hey, I've started my own Pokedex for a pair of fangames over at http://wikidex.ptreasures.net/index.php/Main_Page and I was wondering if I could have the templates you use for the Pokemon (As well as possibly the articles for the Pokemon since they're included in the games as well), though of course they'd be changed slightly to conform to the new sets of attacks, TMs and etc.

If you mean that you want to copy the Pokémon articles to wikidex, then sure work away. I do ask that you say where you got the info from, by putting the URL in the edit summary for example, however you are not legally required to do so. Remember: "Most content at WikiKnowledge is in the Public Domain and may used as you wish"! Gerard Foley 22:13, 28 July 2006 (BST)

[edit] 1000 pages!

Page 1000 was Fighting Game Moves/Capcom/SF33S, part of the Fighting Game Moves book that I am coping over from Wikibooks. Gerard Foley 05:39, 4 August 2006 (BST)

[edit] Move this page to WikiKnowledge talk:Site Discussion

Does anyone else think that it would be a good idea to move this page to WikiKnowledge talk:Site Discussion? One advantage is that MediaWiki:Talkpagetext will be displayed to the user. Gerard Foley 22:29, 4 August 2006 (BST)

I went ahead and did it anyway, if there are objections you can list them here. It can always be undone again :) Gerard Foley 15:47, 5 August 2006 (BST)

[edit] Dedicated Server

WikiKnowledge will be moving to a Dedicated Server this week so you can expect some problems for the week. Make sure that you back-up any major edits you make just in case (I have a backup of the database up to this edit on my hard drive so don't worry). After the upgrade I hope to upgrade to MediaWiki 1.7, PHP5 and fix the crappy URL's. (No more "?title=" crap). This should also help Google index the site better. Gerard Foley 17:44, 29 August 2006 (BST)

WikiKnowledge is back at last. Funny story, all the database backups I have are missing the text table. That's the one that holds the actual text of the pages and is therefore the only table I care about. Oh wait, it's not funny, I spent the whole weekend in terror. Anyway everything is back working. Nice URL's, MediaWiki 1.7, PHP 5. Gerard Foley 16:59, 4 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] MediaWiki 1.7

Hey, nice job. I upgraded to a "new" version of internet explorer and POOOF!, I couldn't edit the pages anymore, and I couldn't contact you. But anyway, it works now!

I was just wondering how you fixed the URL's. It's like Wikipedia now, each page doesn't have "index.php?title=blah". Anyway, the site looks great and it's ever growing!!!

--Primate^#101 09:22, 5 September 2006 (BST)

1. First I moved the site to wikiknowledge.net/w
2. Then I updated LocalSetting.php with $wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1"
3. Finally I added this .htaccess file:

# close the php security hole... 
#  not actually needed but probably a good idea anyway
php_flag register_globals off

# first, enable the processing - Unless your ISP has it enabled
# already.  That might cause weird errors.
RewriteEngine on

# uncomment this rule if you want Apache to redirect from www.mysite.com/ to
#  www.mysite.com/wiki/Main_Page
# RewriteRule ^/$ /wiki/Main_Page [R] 

# do the rewrite
RewriteRule ^wiki/?(.*)$ /w/index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]

So the wiki folder that you use to access the site (wikiknowledge.net/wiki/Main_Page) doesn’t actually exist!

If you had problems editing the site you should have e-mailed me. I would have looked into the problem. I downloaded IE7 before and while it is a big improvement over IE6 with some very good features, I still prefer firefox myself and would strongly recommend you download it! Remember you can use both IE and firefox at the same time. Gerard Foley 12:11, 5 September 2006 (BST)

See also: MediaWiki#Using short URL's Gerard Foley 12:26, 5 September 2006 (BST)

I see (almost). Well, it doesn't matter because i won't be on this week, school's starting.

--72.226.200.76 03:59, 6 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Promoting my own Wiki

Gmcfoley suggested that when promoting my own Wiki, I find out how you all got here. So please tell me how you found out about WikiKnowledge, cheers Minun 20:10, 6 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] ParserFunctions

Parser Functions have been installed and appear to be working. Gerard Foley 15:07, 7 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Payback/ Do be or not Doobie Brother

The time has arrived to put an end to the blatant plagiarism of the name Doobie Brothers. The name came to being aboard the Uss Independence in the late 1960's. It was authored to describe a situation which took place in the midship radioroom. One of those present(who would later become a drummer in the band) had asked the author to use the name. The two entered an agreement stating the author would allow the use with the terms being that any monetary success made with the name the author would recieve his share. At no time did he give permission to trademark the name as belonging to anyone other than his own (intellectual property). The name was plagiarized and trademarked without his knowledge and to this day he has not recieved a dime. Those who would have you believe differently are now still making money with his name.

71.121.89.52 18:54, 7 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Stubs

I notice that the stub category is starting to get large. The question I have is do we need it? Also do we need the {{stub}} template. I have never understood what a note at the end of a short article stating that fact actually achieves. I'm going to start removing them if there are no objections. Gerard Foley 22:14, 8 September 2006 (BST)

The Stub remark means that an article is much shorter than it could be and therefore more information could be present than actually is, correct? So, perhaps this distinction is fine to leave in existence, but maybe another remark would be better to have...In other words, we could have a remark like Work In Progress which denotes that the reason an article is incomplete is because it is currently in the development phase (if this comment does not exist). Additionally, I think that if an article is a stub, and does not contain information that is extremely relevant, perhaps it is a candidate for deletion. --Brahman 23:49, 8 September 2006 (BST)

Why not just post something on the talk page? It wouldn't look so stupid to a reader. "This article needs help! (Well, duh, says the reader)." --Primate^#101 04:14, 9 September 2006 (BST)

My point exactly! The example I would use is http://www.wikiknowledge.net/w/index.php?title=Tobey_Maguire&oldid=9934. It has two sentences, a few empty headings and a note explaining that the article is a stub. "Really? I thought it was a book!". As for a note stating that this is a Work In Progress, this could be done at MediaWiki:Sitenotice as it applies to every article we have. There will always be someone who thinks an article can be improved. The stub category is only useful if someone if going to go through it and start to expand the articles.

The talk page would be a better place for this sort of thing (if it is needed) as Primate says "It wouldn't look so stupid to a reader.". This would be true of most clean-up templates if they ever appear here. These sorts of things are quick and easy to add, however they are difficult to remove.Gerard Foley 20:25, 9 September 2006 (BST)

I'm going to start removing the category and template now. Gerard Foley 17:25, 15 September 2006 (BST)

all done —Minun 20:14, 16 September 2006 (BST)

The reason I put stub on some of the VB Classic pages was to encourage others to add. Couldn't think of a better way to do it. The talk page is fine for discussions between those who already contribute but how can we encourage other readers to contribute? --Kwhitefoot 10:57, 18 September 2006 (BST)

That's a great question! Even on WikiBooks books can go years without seeing any real content added. I guess you will just need to find people who would be interested in VB6 and tell them about the project. I've seen one wiki project use Digg but I don't know how successful that was. It might be worth a try.

When people choose a wiki to contribute to most stick to just that wiki and won't contribute to other wiki's (even if that wiki is a sister project). I used to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Wiktionary and I noticed most choose their project and stick to it.

If anyone has any ideas for advertising the site I would love to hear them. Gerard Foley 12:52, 18 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Awards

Im getting thoughts from others

Should we start the awards thing on this wiki (it would be similiar to the barnstars on Wikipedia) cheers —Minun 20:26, 12 September 2006 (BST)

I've continued creating the page, though theres only one available, if you would like to help get more, please discuss on the talk page —Minun 20:41, 12 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Pokémon Box: Ruby & Sapphire

I've found a link to a non-existing page. I don't really know what happenned to the original page. Just thought I would get comments, cheers —Minun 20:51, 13 September 2006 (BST)

Im confused, the link won't work —Minun 20:55, 13 September 2006 (BST)

It's the "&" in the title. For some reason ever since I fixed the URL's to get rid of the &title= crap from it, you can't use the "&" character for the title of a page. It's only a redirect page anyway so I wouldn't worry about it. Gerard Foley 22:25, 13 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] MediaWiki:MainPagePortal

Admins can now edit the main page (the one at http://www.wikiknowledge.net) Just edit MediaWiki:MainPagePortal. Gerard Foley 23:22, 15 September 2006 (BST)

Thats great, I made it validate through W3C, see http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikiknowledge.net, cheers —Minun 19:38, 16 September 2006 (BST)

I forgot about the css file when I set this up. You can't edit the file however here it is:

* {
    margin:0px;
    padding:0px; }

body{
    font-family:sans-serif;}

div.box{
    padding:10px;
    top:10px;
    bottom:10px;
    left:10px;
    right: 10px;
    position:absolute;}

div#wikiknowledge{
    background-color:#ccffcc;
    border: solid 1px #33ff33;}

img{
    float:right;
    border:0px;}

p{
    margin-left:10px;}

a{
    text-decoration:none;}

a:hover{
    text-decoration:underline;}

As the file is used for only one page, so it would make sense to simply add it into MediaWiki:MainPagePortal. Gerard Foley 20:01, 16 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] 1,500 pages!

The 1,500th page was Star Trek XI. Gerard Foley 03:04, 16 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Howdy!

I'm Joe Sewell, Wikipedian and FAQ Farmer. I just found out about this site. I'm glad to see other sites boldly going where Wikipedia chooses to ignore. --Joe Sewell 21:58, 20 September 2006 (BST)

I think you mean to boldly go where no Wikipedia has gone before. (Public Domains--the final frontier)

72.226.200.127 20:43, 6 October 2006 (BST)

[edit] File undeletion

Files (images) can now be undeleted. Gerard Foley 22:42, 20 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] StrategyWiki

A member of StrategyWiki just attacked WikiKnowledge, and yes, attacked is the corect word. They said that WikiKnowledge is not an appropriate place for the content, but I think that WikiKnowledge is a prefectly fine place, and I haven't found a single thing wrong with it —Minun 20:33, 30 September 2006 (BST)

And they even suggested renaming the site to GmcfoleyStolenKnowledge. If you need evidence of this attack, i'd be happy to give you it here —Minun 20:53, 30 September 2006 (BST)

Oh please, give me a break. What are you, 12 years old? It's right here on Minun's StrategyWiki talk page. Thank you for setting up an account with StrategyWiki Minun. Procyon 22:19, 30 September 2006 (BST)

(Edit conflict)

This isn't something we need to worry about. All that has happened is that Procyon Started a Fighting game moves guide back on Wikibooks, which I TransWikied here. Now he wants’ to continue the work he started on StrategyWiki (so far so good). But for some reason he seems to think that because he started the book he somehow "owns" it or something and he gets to decide which wiki the book goes to. He's really just acting like a child over this very silly issue (I find it very hard to believe that he is 30).

Before anyone brings up the GFDL licence stuff: The fighting game moves book only ever contained Character Name - Attack name - Button combo. This is not something you can copyright, so the GFDL does not apply. This is the same logic I used when I moved the Wikibooks Pokédex and no-one (not even Angela) ever challenged this.

If Procyon (or someone else) wants to take content from WikiKnowledge for use on another site there is nothing we can do to stop them. If fact my very first post to StrategyWiki was actually an invitation to take some images for their Mario Kart DS guide. A sort of "Let's help each other out" show of good faith.

The best way to deal with this situation is to simply ignore them as I have been doing. They will eventually tire and move on to something else. Gerard Foley 23:03, 30 September 2006 (BST)

[edit] Just out of curiosity . . .

Sorry I haven't been on in (let's see 1 ... 256 ... 3078 ... ) a while, but I was wondering, would you get more ad requests on adbrite if everyone on WikiKnowledge clicked on them once in a while? I'd be happy to click on them once or twice a day, but I don't know if adbrite would take fondly to this idea (this was never posted, ok!). And while I was gone, this site really has grown!

72.226.200.127 00:58, 17 October 2006 (BST)

P.S. This^^^^ is Primate, who forgot to sign in and is too lazy to copy/paste, sign in, and re post this.

Yeah, I would probably get more requests if there were more clicks, however the good people at adbrite would very likely frown on it. If they see 2 clicks a day from the same IP range they will probably put 2 and 2 together. You could always buy something from Special:Store though! Gerard Foley 01:47, 17 October 2006 (BST)

[edit] MediaWiki:MainPagePortal

Ummm . . . is it just me, or does http://www.wikiknowledge.net redirect to http://www.wikiknowledge.net/wiki/Main_Page? So is there any point to MediaWiki:MainPagePortal?

Primate^#101 01:22, 17 October 2006 (BST)

If you look at MediaWiki:MainPagePortal you'll see <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; http://www.wikiknowledge.net/wiki">. That's the line that causes the redirect. The point to the page is that admins can change the main page without needing me to do it. It's a redirect now, but if you want to put something else there you can. Gerard Foley 01:40, 17 October 2006 (BST)

[edit] Cool, Cool Mountain

I can only find 7 of the red coins. Where is the eighth one?

- See Super Mario 64/Cool, Cool Mountain Gerard Foley 12:47, 3 November 2006 (GMT)

[edit] How to delete image

Sorry Guys, I am new to this.

I have uploaded a couple of test images. How do I get them deleted.

Read an earlier post about only admins can do this. if so , how to bring it to their attention.

The help files have lots of info about uploading but little on removal.

Thanks in advance

Just list the images here and someone will probably get round to deleting them at some stage. Gerard Foley 12:49, 3 November 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Refugee from WP

I have come to this wiki as a refugee from WP. WP is a great place for making diddly contributions; the breadth of coverage is breathtaking. But the more you care, the more of a problem WP is; the rules and politics are just so damn weird.

I am looking for good places to contribute a significant article about FAT, VFAT, LFNs, shortnames, and Linux. Materials that no one anywhere on the Internet has ever pulled together (I know, I've spent days learning these details, and I want to share what I have learned).

I love the feel of this wiki. But it gets very little traffic (my few little edits yesterday were the only ones), and contains very little similar material. So it is very hard to decide whether to get involved.

I understand that this is a chicken-and-egg problem: people will not contribute until others have.

But it does seem like a great place to learn more about wiki infrastructure, in a mini-wiki that is fully open and inclusive, functioning, but not overwhelming, not too big to understand. My thought at the moment is to contribute to here, LinuxQuestions wiki, and maybe wikinfo, see how things go. (And maybe pick up that $10 reward, if it is still on offer.)

I am very puzzled that this wiki is so open and seems to get so little vandalism, of all kinds. It is a big problem for WP, and the root cause of so much WP weirdness. This site seems even more open; I guess it is so minor that the vandals are not motivated to bother? Still, it is a serious matter to consider -- if this site became big and successful, one hundred times say it's current size, what is the right balance between openness and control? How to make things work?

I have yet to find anywhere any good guide to all the wikis, how to choose which ones to use for what. Checking out the main ones, there is currently a very weird situation with "what do I do with this book that I have written?" WP does not want it. Wikisource does not want it. Wikibooks does not want it. Wikiversity does not want it. Each of them suggests that one of the others might want it, but they don't. Someone needs to try to sort this out for us all. It seems to me that OurMedia might be a good place, but I don't see it mentioned much, don't know if it gets indexed by the search engines. And if you want to not only give away your book, but also invite contributors to improve it, I'm not sure that would be a very good place.

I do already have some suggestions about improving this wiki. The Statistics page should have more information. Like pageviews and edits per day, for the last month/year -- something that gives a feel for the time element, how much life there is in this wiki.

Because one of the main uses for this wiki is for us all to learn about running them, it would be good if on the statistics page or somewhere else we could all follow the economic history of running it -- cost in money and time per month etc to operate, and income if any, what has been tried, what did or did not work. Personally, I love the whole Public Domain orientation, and don't begrudge the little text ads; they seem very easy to ignore. Just stay away from all singing-and-dancing animations, don't eat up my dialup bandwidth, and I'll be content.

I am puzzled that I have not seen anywhere here a discussion of downloading the Whole Thing, like WP has. I see a Special page for Uplaod, but nothing for Download. The subject should at least be mentioned anywhere you have detailed discussions of copyright issues. And I'm also very interested in knowing whether this site is getting extensively archived by archive.org. Some of us may be motivated by some assurance that our efforts will live forever, as long as this tech phase of our civilization has continuity.

I've also noticed that the format of the edit pages is a problem. I use Firefox default at 1024x768. On WP, the key elements, from the formatting buttons above the main edit area, to the big Save buttons at the bottom, just barely fit on the screen if I scroll to just the right spot. Here, the larger Copyright notice makes that impossible. Please consider moving the whole Copyright box to the bottom. Or split it somehow -- leave just a line or two at that location, and put the rest of it below the Savepage buttons.

One thing that has always puzzled me about WP is that it is hard to edit the intro section of a long article -- you are forced to edit the whole article, slow on dialup. Can you modify the software for this wiki to offer an easy button for editing the intro section?

The habit on WP of linking from dates is weird enough. Here, it is much less appropriate. I'm going to do some delinking if I run across such (e.g. "August 23"); hope that would be the right thing. I found a page with dozens of ridiculous red date links in a list, but I don't have a good tool for de-linking them all wholesale. You should have an admin tool for perusing the "links to nowhere" list and just be able to click on check-boxes of all the ones that you would like to have automatically completely de-linked, without even having to look at the article pages!

In general, if this wiki has articles with lots of links, they will always mostly lead nowhere, unless this becomes a very enclosed world that only covers very limited subjects. So it seems like either general links should be discouraged, until the articles exist... Or maybe it would be a good thing to somehow layer on WP? When you click on a link to an article that is not here, offer both and edit page and a link to WP? Or go even further, and offer all that plus some auto-mini-extract from WP, so more clicking and delay is not required?

It seems like if we are wanting to enlarge this site, we could keep inviting users here from the WP discussion pages -- all the endless places where people want to add information and they keep getting stomped down, like Lost-TV and DayBreakTV.

Another thought, as I gaily contribute tech snippets here and there (I need to get out of here and on with life!) is what a great invitation this would be for any school class, of almost any age -- the best way to learn about anything is to write about it! I don't know why every university class does not have its students reading and contributing to wikis about the class subject.

I see a lot of places where there should be convenient links to imdb or such, for Movies etc.

On the whole, this wiki seems to be quite responsive to edit changes etc, working quite well!

(I know this is awful long, but this seems like the right place for it, here... But it does seem like some kind of Forum might be better for this kind of discussion...) 69.87.194.100 08:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

That is an awful lot to go though but here I go:

The copyright notice. I edit WikiKnowledge the most and I have never noticed a problem with the copyright notice. I simply type what I want into the edit box and then scroll down to the save buttons when I'm finished. If you create an account an WikiKnowledge I will be able to turn off the copyright notice for you if you want.

Statistics page. The information on that page is generated by the software. I can't add extra statistics too it and even if I did, those changes would be lost the next time the software is updated.

Download and archive. I don't know what if any sites archive WikiKnowledge. On the issue of downloads, a download of the database is not possible as I do not make any backups of it. Backups are done weekly by the hosting company (namesco), who are likely to simply mirror the entire server's hard drive. If there was demand I could definitely start offering downloads in the future.

Into section edit. I have seen this requested on Wikipedia also. The fact that if has not been done would suggest that it is harder to do then you would imagine. You can get it to work by adding &action=edit&section=0 to the end of the page address and pressing go.

Date linking. I don't like this either and I do de-link them when I run across them.

Importing WP content. This is something that http://www.wikinfo.org does and to be honest I don't like it. In any case it can't be done here because of the license incompatibilities (WP and wikinfo use the same license).

Inviting users from WP. You have to be careful with this or you will be seen as spamming. However that is how User:Yahweh divine found this site.

Convenient links to imdb or such. You are free to add such links if you want. (It is a wiki :).

Ads. I'm glad you don't find the ads too annoying. I myself see nothing wrong with them. You can turn the ads off if you register an account on WikiKnowledge. Again I can do it for you if you wish.

If you still have questions about anything feel free to ask. (I know I have probably missed a lot of the questions you asked here). Gerard Foley 15:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

As a visitor I was quite put off by the adverts and the store, and have continued to use the site reluctantly. Perhaps there could be a link to a "Donate" or "Help WikiKnowledge" page instead, where people can donate, use a store and turn on the adverts? Matt 07:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well the ads are needed to help pay for the site so they will not be going anywhere soon. The ads shouldn't cause any trouble, they don't flash or jump across the page and sing and dance lake the ads on some other websites do. If you want to hide them all you need to do is add

#n-Amazon-store, #p-ads{
    display:none;
}

to you css page which for you would be at User:Matt/monobook.css Gerard Foley 11:29, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm still loathe to contribute while visitors are subjected to advertising. Matt 16:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hey friends..

Hey guys, there's another English person about, :) I'm a new on www.wikiknowledge.net looking forward to speaking to you guys soon