User talk:Dani Banani/Archive/2007/08

August 2007
← July	Archive 2007	→ September

userpage

Mainly, it's because I cut my teeth on MediaWiki/Wikipedia, where userpages are strictly separated from "articles". But I also think it makes sense.
And, you may have noticed, but you get a screaming orange bar when someone leaves you a message at [[user_talk:LyingBrian]]. Not so much for LyingBrian. I like your italic hack for this, but ideally I'd like to see people move their userpages to the user namespace. I don't expect this to happen anytime before JEEP implements a unified login, though... :/
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 10:05, 08.13.2007 (MDT)}

Heh, no problem. Yeah, what I mean is that userpages should ideally be at User:Whatever, with a redirect/link from Whatever. For the old wiki, there were no namespaces to worry about, so everybody got into the habit of making their page at their name, and that's how they got moved over. The terminology I'm using is far from precise, it's not your fault. (I'm trying to use "userpage" for User:Whatever and "username page" for Whatever).
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 15:22, 08.13.2007 (MDT)}

So, what you're saying is that UserPages should actually be in the User namespace, rather than in the Main namespace where the majority of them are? This is going to take a while to fix!

   ^{– somestrangeflea (talk • contribs) 15:45, 08.13.2007 (MDT)}

It's okay, once you're logged in it's fairly straightforward with the Move command, and even the page history gets saved, and the old name (somestrangeflea in your case) becomes an automatic redirect. It's not as bad as it sounds...

   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 16:11, 08.14.2007 (MDT)}

Oh I know, I meant it'll be hard on the large scale. (ie. everyone on MS to move!)

   ^{– somestrangeflea (talk • contribs) 17:24, 08.14.2007 (MDT)}

They don't really have to do it themselves. Any account with Move privs could do it in a matter of hours, and then JEEP just has to add "User:" to the tag in profiles/signatures...

   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 17:26, 08.14.2007 (MDT)}

categories conversation

Check it out when you get a chance: Category talk:Games.
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 21:26, 08.14.2007 (MDT)}

sysop?

Hey, since you do so much on the wiki and have obviously proven yourself trustworthy, is there any reason not to grant you the sysop tools? It'd help with spam, you could delete pages if you have to move over them, etc... if you're not comfortable with it yet, I can give you the crash course tutorial, but it's hard to permanently eff anything up, even with the extra tools. Let me know..
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 07:08, 08.16.2007 (MDT)}

signature

In preferences (at the top of the page), click 'Raw Signature' and enter something like this:

— [[User:LyingBrian|Lying]][[User_talk:LyingBrian|Brian]]

That's it! (it'll of course only affect signatures you make from here on out, unlike the forums)
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 07:04, 08.17.2007 (MDT)}

Not to butt in or anything, but I noticed your follow-up question on Flay's page ;). The preferences aren't the most intuitive thing, but you want to put your desired signature in the 'Nickname' field. Checking the raw signature box just changes how it interprets it, when you add your signature (no check, you get a wikilink pointing to your userpage, with the text as a piped label; check, it just outputs whatever you happen to put in there).

   ^{– YYCguy (talk • contribs) 08:20, 08.17.2007 (MDT)}

deleting pages

Don't worry about deleting redirects from misspelled/miscapitalized names - they still can help sometimes with searches, and redirects are *extremely* cheap, CPU-wise. Deletion probably actually costs 10-100x more. :) Also, remember that redirects aren't just for links within the wiki, but anybody misspelling something in the [wiki] tags in the forums...
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 07:34, 08.17.2007 (MDT)}

changing page names

To preserve the edit history where you might expect it, try using the Move function instead of redirecting the old title - the copy-n-paste thing obscures where some of the old syntax/edits were if you ever need to go back and revert something.
   ^{– Mr. Flay (talk • contribs) 01:44, 08.18.2007 (MDT)}

New template

I've created new {{Player}} template to be used on the game pages. I tested it out on Newbie 438. I'm still a little unsure what to do about "roles" as the role link on may pages seem to like right back to that same section. IMO, this should be used to describe the role directly rather than link to a spot on the same page (or often on the same screen). I'm not familiar enough with the game to know if/how roles change, so could you offer advice on how to deal with this?
   ^{– SigmaEpsilon (talk • contribs) 12:41, 08.18.2007 (MDT)}

Vote counts

Actually I don't entirely understand how the voting in Mafia works in the first place. I was going to ask for clarification on these sections of the page anyway, as they seem kind of confusing to someone who has never played. I'm going to be busy for next few hours. so it might be a while before I can respond. SigmaEpsilon (talk)

As far as the requested template is concerned, can you tell me what kinds input the template would have? (e.g. a list of player, followed by a list of votes?) SigmaEpsilon (talk) 17:56, 19 August 2007 (MDT)

Templates within template is fine. I'll experiment with some stuff and check back shortly. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:04, 19 August 2007 (MDT)

Do you want the template to automatically count the votes and determine the lynchee given only a seris of (voter, vote) pairs? SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:09, 19 August 2007 (MDT)

I made a table (by hand, no templates) at Day 1 of Mini 280. Please tell me what you think. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2007 (MDT)

Watchlist

FYI, you can click the "watch" tab of any page to add it your actual watchlist, which can be check by clicking "my watchlist" at the top of your screen. This would probably be easier to maintain than a "Watch list" subpage. SigmaEpsilon (talk)

External editor

If you want to find a good, free text editor, I reccomend Notepad++. I tried using external editors a while back. I found found the process to be a massive pain. Currently, I use wikEd, which transforms the existing edit box into something much more powerful. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 08:46, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

RGB colors

I was specifically using those 'weird' colors because they're what the forum uses for those color names; it wasn't just at random. -- Mr. Flay 18:28, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Templates in tables

You could have something like:

{| class = "wikitable"
... table formatting here ...
|-
|
{{ nchoice | ... rest of nchoice template ... }}
|-
|
{{ nchoice | ... rest of nchoice template ... }}
... more templates ...
|}

Similar things are common on Wikipedia user pages. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:20, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

So you want something that actually parses the "input" templates to re-arrange those parameters... That one I'd have to do some serious thinking about... Parsing templates from with other templates would require some serous coding. I'll see what I can come up with... SigmaEpsilon (talk)

I've got some promising experiments on Wikipedia... but I've got some issues with extra newlines showing up everywhere... SigmaEpsilon (talk) 18:59, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

I've got "inserting stuff into cells" working. The next obstacle is cramming everything into one mega-template. The problem is the number of parameters. The number of votees may not always be constant SigmaEpsilon (talk) 20:15, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

It's done! BEHOLD: THE MIGHTY VTABLE! {{vtable}}

For now it's limited to four "lynch targets", but only because I had to pick a finite number to start with. I can easily expand it to add more. Enjoy! SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:45, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

Just FYI, this thing doesn't parse templates... I dumped that idea in favor of one template with many (potentially very many) parameters. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:50, 22 August 2007 (MDT)

HTML

4 questions...

1. &nbsp and &#124, what are these types of codes called? HTML?
2. do you know off the top of your head where i can get a list of them?
3. is there a similar code for the 'Return' key? basically i'm looking for something will do the same thing as <br/> w/o having to use <br/>...
4. is there a tag that displays everything exactly like you type it including 'special characters' like &nbsp?..
   -- LyingBrian 21:26, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

1. They're called entities. (Or HTML entities, if you like.)
2. Wikipedia has a list of them on this page.
3. The only other code I can think that would be similar is <p>.
4. As far as I know, no. There's an experimental new feature at Wikipedia that I stumbled across, but it doesn't seem to work here. I'll keep trying things. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:46, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

Quick update on #4: At trick you can use is to type  , which shows up as  . SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:49, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

IM

I use Trillian. I can set up an IRC channel if you wish. I had AIM and others but I haven't used them in years and don't remember any of the uname/passwords. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 17:02, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

Connect to irc.freenode.net and join #mafia SigmaEpsilon (talk) 17:10, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

I remembered my AIM username: SigmaEpsi1on. Try that? SigmaEpsilon (talk) 17:11, 23 August 2007 (MDT)

Just FYI: I'm starting a new job, which will significantly limit the amount of time I can devote to this project. I'll still contribute when I can, but I can't spend all night playing with templates or chatting in IRC. Nothing against you or the site, but I do have a real life off the Internet. SigmaEpsilon (talk) 21:19, 27 August 2007 (MDT)

Spammo

I think what'll help more than protecting individual pages is to get the spamfilter/blacklist in place, but that requires jeep to have some free time, since it takes server access.... however I think autoconfirmed (semi-protected, in Wikipedia lingo) is a good compromise for some of those pages for now. -- Mr. Flay 09:48, 28 August 2007 (MDT)

Sorry

Sorry, I didn't know it...

That's OK, I guess.

Moved User:Undo

I appreciate you have moved my page for me, but I'd rather have a white background like I had before... Undo 04:47, 31 August 2007 (MDT)