StrategyWiki talk:Community Portal/2007/December

Mass Effect spoilers
People need to be careful, there are some ENORMOUS plot spoilers appearing on various pages of the Mass Effect guide, such as the Characters section (wherein they should not exist). --LeftHandedGuitarist 15:09, 1 December 2007 (CST)
 * Be bold and


 * -- 15:24, 1 December 2007 (CST)
 * Skizzerz, the spoiler template isn't working here because you've indented it. If you remove the indentation, it works fine. :-) (Goodness knows why.) --DrBob (talk) 12:33, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Promising Guide of the Month
None of the guides there are in the positive. Please nominate some promising guides (strong team of writers or nearing completion) and vote on them. Votes on the Collaboration of the Month would also be helpful. -- Prod (Talk) 11:29, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * Guys, Gals, assorted hermaphrodites, we're going to need to have a new 'most promising' up soon - we're a week into January already and still no most promising on the main page. So, speak now and forever hold your peace, else either Drift City or Golden Sun: The Lost Age will be 'most promising guide of the month'.--Froglet 22:00, 6 January 2008 (CST)
 * This type of site activity requires a level of community participation. We've discussed it at the staff meeting, so I won't rehash the arguments about anonymous edits, but continuing to support anonymous edits takes away from the community aspect of the site that helps promote this type of activity.  Lately, site support as been more autonomous and individual, so I'm not surprised that guides haven't been voted on.  Hopefully some of the server improvements will see the return of more community based behavior.  Procyon (Talk) 08:57, 7 January 2008 (CST)
 * Golden Sun: The Lost Age is PGotM; Drift City is CotM. Someone please write up the pages for these as I do not have the time this week or next.  Next months CotM is Super Mario Galaxy, so that can be written up as well (PGotM isn't voted on enough yet). -- Prod (Talk) 10:15, 11 January 2008 (CST)

ABXY Forums
I've added a link to the abxy forums in the sidebar (replaced the donate link). Thoughts? -- Prod (Talk) 11:58, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * Seems OK, but can we get rid of the donate button that's randomly under the help link.-- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 12:23, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * The donate button is there to stay, however we can discuss a better layout. -- Prod (Talk) 12:35, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Oh and to note, if you do sign up for abxy, please use the same username and email address as when you signed up here. -- Prod (Talk) 12:35, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * Bit late for the username part, but I have the same email there, so it shouldn't be a problem, right? -- 14:51, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * I think you'll be okay. From what we've talked about over at abxy, it seems that matching emails will be enough--though it will make it a tad harder if you have different names. Then again, maybe not--I'm just a moderator, not a developer. But I'm getting my name changed to match this one, so if it's any real problem I am sure you could get your name changed too. -- towers  http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a8/Towers_trex.gif 15:59, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * I don't think we should link to abxy's forums at the moment. There's no StrategyWiki-specific forums there yet (so it's a bit confusing to link to somewhere seemingly unrelated), and having people create duplicate accounts just further complicates matters. Also note that the URL should be http://forums.strategywiki.org because, in the future, this address will be used so that cookies can be shared between the forum and the wiki. GarrettTalk 16:22, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * I agree with it not being the time yet, however the infrastructure is in place once we need it. I've also changed the url, however it might be a bit weird to have the whole abxy theme for a site supposedly under strategywiki. -- Prod (Talk) 18:08, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * Teddy is supposed to be making a skin for it (like how http://forums.dsmeet.com connects to abxy's forums using DSmeet's old skin). GarrettTalk 19:12, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * Cool! Will that cookie be able to carry over to http://abxy.org though (so that we can browse all three seamlessly)?  Or is that impossible? -- Prod (Talk) 19:31, 2 December 2007 (CST)
 * It will, yes. Otherwise doing this whole "awesome skin thing" would be pointless and irritating to people switching between them. -- towers  http://media.strategywiki.org/images/a/a8/Towers_trex.gif 11:59, 3 December 2007 (CST)

Main Page changes
The DPL stuff is killing the caching of the page and most likely causing some performance issues. It would be nice if we could add the Announcements page back to replace it. Another change that I've heard suggested was to replace the What is SW with something more dynamic and move that information off to About. The featured guide hasn't been updated in months, though we are (possibly) getting a new one soon. However, I don't expect it to change for another few months. Finally, the promising guide section looks good and keeps changing every month and I don't believe it needs to be changed. Any thoughts or suggestions? -- Prod (Talk) 01:50, 23 December 2007 (CST)
 * Agree with everything stated, except that it's Guide/About ;). As for VFG -- nominate and share your opinion on some :) -- 10:00, 23 December 2007 (CST)

Site news
You may have noticed the site go down Saturday afternoon, and then go really slow for the next few hours. The reason was that we upgraded from MediaWiki 1.9.3 to the latest stable build, 1.11. You can check the newest features from http://mediawiki.org (and there are quite a few). With the new upgrade, we have also been able to update all the extensions to the latest versionss. If there are any issues with pages not looking right, or strange behaviour, leave a message here and we'll try to fix the issue quickly. -- Prod (Talk) 01:59, 23 December 2007 (CST)

Requiring registration
As you can probably tell, anons now appear to be able to edit every page now, whereas before we required them to register before being able to edit with the exception of a few unlocked guides. Now, I'm bringing this up because I'm wondering whether we should go back to the way it was regarding registration or allow anons to edit as well. I'm actually for anons to be able to edit everything. Looking through the Recent Changes, it appears that anons that would've added tons of content may have been turned away by the requirement to edit. Of course, we'll get vandalism from the anons too, but we already got that through registered users. So, what do you all think? -- 10:08, 23 December 2007 (CST)
 * Seems great to me.-- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 10:17, 23 December 2007 (CST)
 * I know that we're going to get a ton more edits by allowing it, and probably more active users too. Luckily we can toggle anonymous edits quite easily.  -- 17:15, 24 December 2007 (CST)
 * Also, I suggest we preemptively block IP's that have a history of vandalism on Wikipedia, such as various public schools in the US. -- 17:27, 24 December 2007 (CST)
 * I'm against that. We should only block an IP when it actually does do something bad. Plus, how many of those vandals are going to come here anyway? -- 18:03, 24 December 2007 (CST)
 * +1 --DrBob (talk) 19:20, 24 December 2007 (CST)
 * So that's why I've been seeing IP addresses in recent changes. Sure, this all sounds good. Baejung92 12:32, 25 December 2007 (CST)
 * I am moved to weigh in on this discussion. I've been trying to stay out of it since I am generally not in favor of this idea, and I appear to be outvoted, so I didn't want to put a damper on the decision.  But I've been looking at the quality of our anonymous edits, and they appear to range anywhere from moderately obvious at best, to ridiculously immature at worst, and the immature contributions are far more common.  I'm against this for two reasons.  One is the obvious issue that sysops are going to have patrolling all of these edits, but if that is something that some of you are prepared to deal with, then so be it, because I don't relish the idea.  The other reason, however is with regards to a difference between SW and, say, WP.  While WP has a well established community, community is not really WP's primary goal.  It's not ours either, but it is a focus.  Allowing anonymous edits sort of provides a method for people to bypass the community aspect of our site (in addition to providing unaccountability).  Some of you may feel that the benefit of the additional edits outweighs the lack of growth to the community, but I would disagree.  Anyway, I'm not suggesting that we change the policy (yet), I just wanted to throw my thoughts out there as food for thought.  Procyon (Talk) 16:45, 25 December 2007 (CST)
 * While I do agree the quality of anonymous edits is not as good as those of our registered users, I do feel that giving them a taste of editing before we push them to create an account might be beneficial as well. Accountability-wise, I feel that anons actually have a tad more accountability than registered users, because they cannot evade bans as easily (of course, 99% of them don't realize that, which is where the vandalism issue comes in with anons). Patrolling-wise, I try to patrol edits as much as I can while I'm online, and I know a few other sysops are as well. Of course, this does divert attention from other necessary tasks as well... although I know of an extension that can automatically assign rights to users, so perhaps letting users at least x days old and with at least y edits become autopatrolled would help alleviate some of that load. As for the community aspect, I do agree with you on that, as having a good, solid community is the only way to collaborate on some tasks. Also, I've revised our EditSubpages extension (the thingy with MediaWiki:Unlockedpages) to work a bit better (still needs more work, though), and I can probably add a toggle to it that allows any sysop to enable/disable the extension (and thus enable/disable anonymous editing) with a simple edit of some MediaWiki page, so if we change our minds a few times, we don't need someone to go edit our LocalSettings.php a hundred times. -- 19:15, 25 December 2007 (CST)
 * This is not working. The quality of these anonymous users is degrading.  We've had our first major spammer, and I just undid some racist's idea of fun.  All that I am seeing is increasingly leading me to conclude that we need to go back to registration.  I don't see the value in allowing anonymous edits if the majority of what we get in return is crap.  This will definitely be on the agenda for the next staff meeting (Jan. 5th).  Procyon (Talk) 10:25, 29 December 2007 (CST)
 * Agreed, I've got the updated EditSubpages extension, so if whoever is able to install it would meet me on IRC, I'd appreciate that. -- 10:44, 29 December 2007 (CST)
 * I feel that we should disable anonymous editing; the bad really outweigh the good right now. -- 21:22, 7 January 2008 (CST)
 * There were two resolutions made at the staff meeting last weekend. One was that Prod and Skizzerz would like more time to implement some more anti-vandalism measures, and they would be given another month to improve the situation.  The other is that ness feels that the site performance has been detering better edits.  Now that the site has been given a nice shot in the arm, we can look to see if that is indeed the case and revisit the matter next month.  Procyon (Talk) 21:34, 7 January 2008 (CST)
 * The reason I haven't been editing or patrolling is because it takes (or did up until a minute ago) 5 minutes for SW to load a page. -- 22:22, 7 January 2008 (CST)
 * I Have to say I am on Procyon's side. From what I've seen, the anonymous users editing the bigger articles are the ones doing the most harm. A few days ago (as you may have seen) we had an orchestrated vandal attack on the MapleStory/Monsters page (from what I've learned, this was a deliberate move led by a known troll from a forum) and I've had to lock that particular page so that only Sysops may edit. I was thinking, why not just Semi-protect entire guides of high traffic? Is there perhaps an easy way to semi the whole guide, or if not, is it something that could potentially be scripted? I know that larger guides might be how to get new users started, since it's more likely they came here to see that, but the amount of vandalism that's occurring is somewhat ridiculous. I'm just thinking this would make it easier, rather than having false information for the 12 hours I'm asleep or at school (which has actually been hurting our credibility :--IsaacGS 19:38, 18 January 2008 (CST)
 * I am currently in the process of writing an extension that can protect all subpages of a page. I should have a working prototype done in a week or two. -- 20:59, 18 January 2008 (CST)

Hmm, the anonymous edits for Flash Flash Revolution/Tokens have been VERY productive... I agree that the only way we can have anonymous edits is to restrict/"secure" them with the various proposed CVN methods. I think the strangest cool thing I've seen come out of anonymous edits is anonymous signing their summaries with an alias - lawl. -- 01:41, 11 January 2008 (CST)

CVN
I've started a page here, so feel free to add suggestions and voice your opinions. Please allow some time for input before actually assigning and enacting the ideas though. -- 17:45, 8 January 2008 (CST)

Vandalism Warning in Edittools
I've made a request to add foo to Edittools on MediaWiki_talk:Edittools because of the recent vandalism. Hopefully this will help in addition to a captcha or whatever is decided on to stop spambots and to encourage acceptance of anon editors. --Tathar (talk | contribs) 16:08, 20 January 2008 (CST)
 * IMO I don't see the point in this. Giving everyone easy access to a template that only should be used in cases of obvious vandalism on the vandal's talk page wouldn't really be very beneficial. The Edittools really should only be used when there are templates and such that actually help with making guides, not with telling other people off. -- 16:16, 20 January 2008 (CST)
 * In that case, do you have any suggestions where it should go instead? --Tathar [[Image:Tathar.jpg|32px]] (talk | contribs) 17:21, 20 January 2008 (CST)

New RfA
has been nominated for adminship. Please voice your opinion here. -- 18:58, 24 December 2007 (CST)

Ad problems
I keep getting this message box:

"Adobe Flash Player 9

"A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive.  Do you want to abort the script?"

If things get too annoying, it might cause me to choose to block ads on SW (I run ad-block, but I only selectively block ads). I'd suggest sending feedback to your advertisement provider and get rid of the offending ads. -Afker 02:14, 26 December 2007 (CST)
 * Do you know which ad is causing it? -- 10:21, 26 December 2007 (CST)
 * My guess would be one of the ones in the right side, since that's the fancy stuff. Oh, and since SW is on ads anyways, can we get more bandwidth?  Things load really slow around here, and I live in California... -Afker 19:39, 26 December 2007 (CST)
 * That's the only reason we have the ads. We're saving up for some better hardware to support the site.  Once we can sustain the levels of traffic we get with decent response time, we are hoping to get rid of the ads.  -- Prod (Talk) 02:18, 27 December 2007 (CST)

WikiNode
Hi, I've started the WikiNode here (looks like some other guy created it before which got deleted). Right now the only other wiki I made SW connect to is the Bulbapedia, since last I stirred up conversation around here it has an official partnership with SW. Currently the AliceSoft Wiki (which SW's Sengoku Rance guides outsources to) has its WikiNode points here, and I'd like to request permission/consensus of the SW community to add the AliceSoft Wiki to the SW WikiNode (WikiNodes don't have to be mutual, so it's up to you guys to decide what to link or not link to).

For examples, see:
 * Wikipedia's WikiNode
 * AliceSoft Wiki's WikiNode.

-Afker 01:28, 26 December 2007 (CST)


 * Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the general attitude towards partnerships and linking is that we only do it to information that is relevant, but outside the scope of SW. Instead, we (should) provide the same information; again, when possible and necessary.  -- 07:20, 6 January 2008 (CST)

Next staff meeting
Hello everyone. The next staff meeting will be held in the usual place on January 5th, 2008, at 2pm EST/7pm GMT. As usual, please add anything that you like to the agenda below in advance of the meeting. Procyon (Talk) 10:36, 29 December 2007 (CST)
 * I added in a proposed third item. I know it's been a point in pretty much every other meeting, and not much ever gets decided in regards to the second sentence, but getting some new ideas in the mix may help. -- 12:13, 29 December 2007 (CST)
 * Sorry, I won't be able to be there- The preceding signed comment was added by Rocky (talk • contribs). 10:55, 2 January 2008 (CST)
 * Sorry I missed it. I didn't see the notice because I've been pretty inactive all of December and January so far - lack of contribution interest and SW loading so slow. -- 07:23, 6 January 2008 (CST)

Agenda

 * 1) Debate the continued allowance of anonymous edits (see section above).
 * 2) Recent caching failure, and efforts to restore it.
 * 3) Evaluate how the ads are performing. Discuss ways to increase revenue.