Battlestar Wiki:Chiefs' noticeboard/Archive5

Review extension[edit]

We may want to add a Review extension in the near future to gain feedback from our readers. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 11:41, 27 December 2007 (CST)

It may be a good way to grade a quality article. --Spencerian 19:46, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Not that fond of it. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:23, 28 December 2007 (CST)

The only big reservation I have is that anonymous users are also allowed to vote. I'd rather restrict voting to logged-in users. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:50, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Good point. @ Shane: Any particular reason why you're not fond of it? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 10:44, 29 December 2007 (CST)

I feel that we be rating users contributions and that could leave a mark if we said it was bad, they feel discouraged to contribute more. If we do find a bad revision we just go ahead and fix it and talk it out on talk pages, even if the information was legit. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:39, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Good point. I was thinking, though, that the results could be published privately so that only administrators can see them. Theoretically, this would give us the feedback we need to see what people actually like or dislike, without demoralizing any contributors. Also, the person voting won't be swayed by voting for or against any visible "grain", as it were, since they won't be able to see the results of the votes either. Without a doubt, it would require modifications to whatever extension we'd end up using, but it'd be another way we can get feedback from people who are otherwise too apathetic or disinterested in sending us a message. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:58, 29 December 2007 (CST)

SVG broken at HB[edit]

SVG rendering seems to be broken at the Hangar Bay, which is kind of ironic as its purpose is to play around with new designs :) --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:52, 3 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, at this point, I think it's best if we start the Hangar Bay's MW install on that from scratch. (It has a separate MW installation than the rest of the Wikis, so this is easy to do.) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:28, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Incorrect interwiki binding[edit]

The rc: interwiki prefix is currently bound to "http://www.robotchicken.org/$1", but that should be "http://www.robotchicken.org/index.php?title=$1". --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:53, 5 January 2008 (CST)

It's now fixed. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:27, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Vandal[edit]

At 3:19 (CST) User:Syshiran joined the wiki. At 3:20-3:24 (CST) the user posted three ads on new pages in the site found at RF Coaxial Connector, Chinese antique furniture and Web site building. I found the edits an hour later and blanked the content, posted deletion tags. I choose not to write anything on the user's talk page, as it had been over an hour since the edits, and I did not want to alert the user to the changes.--OrionFour 05:14, 7 January 2008 (CST)

That's cool, OF. Thanks for the help. Serenity's already sent the user away...far away. --Spencerian 17:24, 7 January 2008 (CST)

No problem, just happy to help get rid of these guys.--OrionFour 18:34, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Wasn't there a previous spammer who advertised coax connectors? Might be a repeat offender, but there is nothing much we can do. Doesn't happen that often anyways. --Serenity 17:45, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, there was actually. Less than six months ago, if I recall correctly. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 17:46, 7 January 2008 (CST)

User:Centurion, User:Centurian (and User:Chicken)[edit]

After running a check user on User:Centurion and User:Centurian, I've discovered that they were created at the same IP address, which is in the checkuser log. The only reason I ran the checkuser is because the two names were created within six minutes of one another.

Upon running the check user, I've discovered that someone at the IP address also created User:Chicken on January 17th.

Anyway, I've contacted the users in question and notified them of the possible sockpuppet issue. (They may be on a shared IP for all I know.) Still, keep an eye out for anything. Just FYI. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:22, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Copy. Very little difference on those names. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:55, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Problem resolved. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:19, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Excellent. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 14:11, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Extension updates[edit]

We may want to go through and update the MediaWiki extensions soon. In the meantime, I was thinking of seeing what other extensions people thought might be useful... -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 21:54, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Upgrading extensions is a good idea. You should probably hold off on it for another week or so, though, as lots of extensions are currently being fixed to load messages only when necessary, which is anticipated to cause a noticeable performance gain. An extensive list of extensions can be found here. Extensions that are used on Wikimedia wikis are listed here. I'm listing a bunch of extensions in the next section, replies about specific extensions should go there. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 05:40, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Good to hear! I wasn't planning on undertaking the task immediately anyway, but I'll definitely hold off now, more than likely until the BSP.com beta on the 18th... and speaking of, it would benefit from the updates as well.

A bit off topic, any idea when MW 1.12 will be released? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:56, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Brion said he'd do his usual code review party (him reviewing all recent revisions and fixing or reverting those he doesn't like) next week. This probably means 1.12-rc1 will be released around the end of next week, and 1.12.0 a couple of days later. Disclaimer: these dates are estimates, provided not by Brion but by me. The only thing I know is that Brion said he'd start reviewing stuff next week. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:32, 19 January 2008 (CST)

Cool. On that same issue, anything new regarding the new bot API? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:32, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Lots of new stuff. The API can now move, (un)delete, protect and rollback pages, and (un)block users, and pretty much all of that is my code. These features are disabled by default, but will need to be enabled in order for my move-revert bot to work. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Nice. Will these be functional in 1.12? Also, any word on that whole extension optimization project? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 11:40, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Pretty much everything the UI can do will also be possible though the API as of 1.12, with the exceptions of editing/creating pages and uploading images. The extension optimization project is pretty much complete, but I don't know whether it depends on code new to 1.12. To be sure (and for efficiency reasons), you might wanna hold off on upgrading extensions until you upgrade to 1.12. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:56, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Proposed extensions[edit]

CheckUser allows privileged users to get a list of all IPs a user has used, and the other way around. This makes it easy to check for sockpuppetry (multiple users on one IP). We could adopt a protocol similar to Wikipedia's in which only a few users (Senior Chiefs in our case) can perform CheckUser checks, and others can request them through BW:CHECKUSER. Already installed, albeit an ancient version that doesn't list itself.
Oversight allows privileged users to hide old revisions that may contain copyrighted or otherwise illegal content, so they're invisible to everyone save other privileged users. There is a branch implementing this natively, but I don't know whether it will be merged before the 1.12 release (I'm asking around, though).
EasyTimeline can create graphical timelines from wikitext. This could be a nice addition to the timeline articles.
Countdown could replace Template:Countdown's functionality.
AntiSpoof prevents malicious users from registering as, say, "Ƈatrope", and impersonating me.
SpamBlacklist and Username Blacklist could be used for fighting spam, but we don't really have much of a spam problem (yet?).
EditWarning displays a notice on top of the edit page if someone else is also editing that page.
FireStats generates all kinds of statistics information.

We've already got CheckUser. We don't use it much, though. Still, it can stand to be upgraded, no doubt. The others will probably help... and I would really like it if the EditWarning extension would lock out other edits as well, so we can get rid of the need to lock down articles before new episodes air. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 16:00, 11 January 2008 (CST)

EditWarning, Countdown and maybe EasyTimeline would be useful. --Serenity 16:12, 11 January 2008 (CST)

EditWarning doesn't lock out other edits. Imagine someone opening an edit tab and closing it again (dunno if EditWarning detects that, don't think so) and EditWarning blocking the article for another hour or so. Still, there's always the edit conflict detection stuff, so someone stubbornly editing despite a message screaming "SOMEONE ELSE IS EDITING THIS PAGE" isn't screwed immediately. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:21, 13 January 2008 (CST)

I was also thinking of this Select Category extension, which shall permit people to choose categories, so people can easily categorize articles. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 01:11, 12 January 2008 (CST)

Nice ideas, but I don't like to introduce extensions that make modifications to the databases since it would have to be done on every one. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:24, 12 January 2008 (CST)

SelectCategory would also be nice. And why is adding a DB table so bad? You can combine all those CREATE TABLE statements into one .sql file and import them from the command line (or through PHPMyAdmin). Shouldn't take too much time. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:21, 13 January 2008 (CST)

Shane's concern, if I'm reading him correctly, is more to how such extensions would react to our set up, since we're not running one instance per language version, but rather one instance for all the wikis. On the other hand, we can back up everything (which we do anyway) and, should something get screwed up, just uninstall the extension and restore from the backups. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 22:26, 13 January 2008 (CST)

We're running one set of PHP files for all languages, then? Wikipedia does that too. Although screwing up stuff with CREATE TABLE statements is unlikely, you probably wanna do it just to be safe. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:53, 14 January 2008 (CST)

Still different databases. The only wiki that has it's own set of files of the Hanger Bay, but I am about to trash that since we don't do anymore work over there, unless it's a serious change. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 16:53, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, different databases, so that means running seven identical queries on seven different databases. Shouldn't cause too much trouble. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:55, 16 January 2008 (CST)

Maybe we should vote on this matter some time in the near future? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:57, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Absence of Mercifull[edit]

Guys, I've tried to contact Mercifull but have not received a response to my e-mails. In my talks with Shane, he tells that he hasn't talked to him either, so I am going to put him on leave, unless anyone has any objection or new information. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 05:49, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I wondered what's up with him :s -- Serenity 05:51, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Concur. --Spencerian 13:37, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Update. Shane's heard from him. He's been very busy and was recently promoted at his job. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 23:37, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Given how busy I've been while at a lack of work since October, I can understand... --Spencerian 16:20, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Memcached, APC, and performance optimization in general[edit]

We discussed this a while ago, and it was more or less concluded that we should try APC. I also mentioned memcached, which caches various stuff, and is also required for the SpamRegex and RegexBlock extensions, rate limiting and account creation throttling. What's the current status on this? Has anyone tried either of these yet? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:13, 1 February 2008 (CST)

APC can't be used with our current configuration, since we only use one instance of MW and it somehow fraks it up. We haven't tried memcached, though. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:49, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Ok, that was easy... I loaded memcached and configured it. Right now, it only runs locally, with 2GB for virtual memory. Now, my dumb question of the centon is this... is there any way to track the health of memcached, either via MW or another software? I tried finding a piece of software that would integrate into Webmin, or web server management software, but all I found was a four-year-old extension which I'm very leery of trying, simply due to the age and the fact that it's not mentioned on Webmin's site. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 11:45, 1 February 2008 (CST)

I don't really know, I'll ask on IRC. Watch out though that you firewall memcached properly: don't allow the outside world to connect to memcached's port, or they'll have unlimited read+write access to the cache, which is a huge security leak. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:00, 1 February 2008 (CST)

The port is already blocked from the outside world. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:07, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Good. I haven't gotten much response on your question at IRC, maybe you should ask on wikitech-l. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:31, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Will do. Thanks again, Catrope. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:35, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Sheppard in the Miniseries[edit]

I received an e-mail from Kevin Grazier today, noting a few corrections and observations on the Wiki. One of those corrections was regarding Sheppard, particularly noting that he appears (somewhere) in the Miniseries. So if any of you guys get the chance and want to watch the Miniseries again, could you please be on the lookout for any references to Shep? Thanks! -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 14:31, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Interesting. He might be one of the background pilots or mentioned somewhere in the wireless chatter. That will be hard to pinpoint though. -- Serenity 14:58, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Hmm, somehow that seems familiar but I can't place how I know that. What else did he say?-- OrionFour 16:22, 5 February 2008 (CST)

He noted that the name "Stepchild" in Kara's speech was written as "Steptoe" in the script. Other than that, he mentioned to me that he was writing up an article for his tech blog and was using the Wiki to do some research, which is what prompted him to send me corrections and his few notes in the first place. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 16:31, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Coolness. He's noted a few technical errors in some articles that I've yet to correct...gotta get to his tech blog for the specifics. <geekmode> Glee!!! </geekmode> --Spencerian 15:03, 6 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks to the SPACE network[edit]

I just wanted to give thanks to the SPACE network for providing me with a list of all of their airdates for the entire series!-- OrionFour 01:29, 8 February 2008 (CST)

User:Zini and User:Zinistuff[edit]

How do we handle this? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:51, 11 February 2008 (CST)

We've seen this before. It's a low-level item that Joe should be able to intercept. The user has been contacted to choose an account, but there was the matter of ensuring that users couldn't make such accounts. Joe should know. --Spencerian 17:00, 11 February 2008 (CST)

I thought we disabled this option... guess we have to re-take a look at the LocalSettings.php file :P Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 00:36, 12 February 2008 (CST)

Fact is, you can't disable this through the regular $wgGroupPermissions interface: everyone, even logged-in users, are in the implicit * group and will therefore be able to create accounts (because $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = true;). There is this, which requires memcached (which is probably why we didn't use it before; Joe's set up memcached about a week ago). I couldn't find anything in the MediaWiki docs directly disabling account creation by registered users; it should be noted, though, that it would be easy to circumvent such a restriction by simply logging out. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:39, 12 February 2008 (CST)

Last Supper[edit]

On this page http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Season_4_%282008%29 in the last point under GENERAL it reads ....

"In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Ron Moore reveals who is not the fifth Cylon. According to the article, neither William Adama, Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, Kara Thrace, Karl Agathon, nor Gaius Baltar is the fifth Cylon. However, this is discredited by Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol), see The Last Supper for more information."

Could you please reword the above because it makes it sound like Aaron Douglas is disagreeing with Ron that the fifth Cylon is not in the photo. Aaron said no such thing. Aaron was asked if there was any hidden meaning to the photo (because fans were mirroring the image and trying to find clues in the altered image). Aaron discredited the mirroring of the image, not what Ron said. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Meshel73 (talk • contribs).

I've fixed it. Let me know if it's up to snuff. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 15:04, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Magazines[edit]

Since we have an article on Playboy Magazine, February 2007, I was wondering if other magazines with a BSG focus would have any merit? I.e. certain issues of Starlog, Sci Fi Magazine, &c. DrWho42 20:13, 17 February 2008 (CST)

I wouldn't be averse to an article on a list of BSG's magazine appearances, but to do an article on each would be overkill, I think. On the other hand, if there is a serious BSG focus or theme to a magazine, then we can do an article per magazine issue. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 03:47, 18 February 2008 (CST)

Dismissable site notice[edit]

I noticed someone installed the DismissableSitenotice extension recently, which means logged-in users will see a [dismiss] link next to the site notice and you won't see the site notice again until someone changes it. Note that this means anyone editing the site notice must increment the number at MediaWiki:Sitenotice id (empty at the time of writing, should be created and set to 1 after the next edit to the site notice). I thought I should announce this at the Chiefs' noticeboard, since only Chiefs can edit the site notice and should be aware of the new protocol (incrementing the sitenotice ID). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:45, 18 February 2008 (CST)

I plead the fifth. :) It was not me this time. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:50, 18 February 2008 (CST)

Okie-dokie! --Spencerian 15:59, 18 February 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I planned on doing that anyway. :P -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 08:25, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Google Search[edit]

Only one caveat about the Google search. While it may be a more intuitive search experience, you do lose the specify namespace on the search. The only application I really used that for was for searching the podcast namespace, so maybe we shouldn't worry about it, but I thought I'd mention the use-case (oddball though it may be). --Steelviper 17:01, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Good point. Hadn't really thought of that... Of course, you could always searc the namespaces by using syntax such as: Podcast + additional search term -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)

True, though I don't know how much the boolean and other search operators have percolated into the general knowledge. Clicking a checkbox is way easier (although, like I said before, I don't know how often that really ever happened anyway). Ooh... Maybe we could put a special search box on the podcast project home (or someplace like that) that encapsulates that logic so that a user can search the namespace easily. --Steelviper 21:37, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I was thinking of a drop down menu next to the search box with "All", "Talk", "Portal", "Portal talk", "Podcast", and all the other namespaces, which would then be passed on as one string so as to make things easier... It's something that most sites do, so people would know of that, obviously.-- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 22:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Main Page[edit]

I worked on a new layout for the main page on BW:MAIN. Input, comments welcome by all. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:03, 20 February 2008 (CST)

At first glance, the only difference is that the merchandise section is gone. Did you change anything else? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:42, 20 February 2008 (CST)

I have a list of recommendations here. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 07:08, 21 February 2008 (CST)

Blogs are down from the main box. Feature picture and project are moved. to where the blogs used to be. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 16:26, 21 February 2008 (CST)

The audio button for episodes (see 33 and Water for examples) currently sits atop the "Dismiss" link for the site survey. We should adjust things so that site messages and the audio link aren't fighting for space; the audio button should be within the episode article body. --Spencerian 14:33, 22 February 2008 (CST)

Fixed :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:40, 22 February 2008 (CST)

Well, sorta. After I refreshed the cache of Firefox (Mac), the audio button appears slightly lower below the "Dismiss" link, but not by much. Another problem...Featured article and nominated badges also get in the way of that link, too. --Spencerian 18:12, 22 February 2008 (CST)

Done. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:24, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Sidebar[edit]

As everyone might have noticed by now, I've switched up the sidebars a bit.

Basically, each user level has their own sidebar meant to be specifically tailored to their usage: senior chiefs, chiefs, contributors, and visitors.

Also, each namespace will have its own submenu... Currently, this is enabled for the "Portal" namespace only, but will be enabled for other namespaces, including "Battlestar Wiki", "Podcasts", etc. Check out what happens when you visit Portal:Overview or any of the "Portal" stuff.

Furthermore, users can add content to their own sidebars by adding a subpage to their user namespace called "/Sidebar". (i.e. User:Foo/Sidebar). So its customizable that way as well. Although I haven't tried it yet, so let us know how it works for you.

Of course, by no means am I done, but it's at a point where I feel comfortable enough to solicit your feedback. So you can do that here or (more preferrably) at Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/Sidebar Redesign. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 20:07, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Initial survey responses[edit]

So far, I've been amazed at the initial responses to the survey. I've been receiving some excellent feedback, which is what I'm looking for, really. Here are some initial trends I'm seeing:

We have an audience that's focused on the Re-imagined Series. (No surprise there, really, since that is on everyone's minds right now!)
People don't really look to us for merchandise information. There's a definite focus on the episodes, characters, behind-the-scenes, battles, tech, and ships.

Things we need to improve upon...

High importance[edit]

We need to have multiple versions of the current skin. There's no way around it. Some people have talked about the colors being too dark, so lighter colors would work.
Also, there's a need to allow non-contributors to submit corrections as well.
Unregistered (or not logged in) users also want to be able to read the talk pages again, which is an easy fix. But they want that option.
People also want easier navigation, which means we're going to have to retool the sidebar in order to achieve it. Fortunately, I've had this in mind for a while now, and we can probably integrate the portal links into the sidebar for greater effect and usability. (See: Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/Sidebar Redesign for the proposed changes.)
1. Some have also commented about the placement of the search bar. Update: This has been fixed in the new skin. The search bar is now on the side.
People want to know how to contribute information or use the website. We need help documentation on how to effectively use the website, since we are an immense resource... immense enough where some people tend to get lost, it seems like, and are unable to extricate themselves from that.

Important, but long term development stuff[edit]

There are people wanting to have more analysis on characters. Some of them have noted that many of the character articles rehash plot points, which is an issue some of us behind-the-scenes have brought up time and time again as well.
There are people wanting more behind-the-scenes information.

Mid-level importance[edit]

Also, some have commented on how bad the built-in search feature is. I've commented on this in the past as well, so we're probably going to use Google, until the MediaWiki people know how to develop a better built-in search feature. Update: We're using Google as our primary search engine. Nothing in the way of the search box has changed, so the "Go" button will still work, and all that jazz. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 16:55, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Comments[edit]

There's a lot here so far, with over 40 responses in just the last day... So digest, discuss, and maybe do a think tank or three. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 08:54, 19 February 2008 (CST)

You mean unregistered users can't read talk pages? Why would we want that? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:58, 19 February 2008 (CST)

The mindset was that people only came here for information, and people didn't want to see the behind-the-scenes talk... Obviously, that isn't the case. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:03, 19 February 2008 (CST)

That one was actually bugging me too. When you came in on a talk page, there'd be no "article" link either. It's good to have the context of both available, even if you're just reading. --Steelviper 09:59, 19 February 2008 (CST)

1.) As said, the unfortunate lack of character analysis has been noted already. It's been rectified with one or two articles, but overall it's kind of a mess. Kinda sad, that with a series so heavily focused on character interaction, people felt the need to rehash the story and focus on trivial tech nonsense instead. In hindsight, this should have been different from the beginning, but now we are somewhat stuck with it. I made this page you can evaluate the character articles and note things that need to be done. While many need to improved, a few are quite good actually.

2.) I agree on the search function. It has bugged me too in that it often doesn't find what you look for unless the article already exists.

3.) Not sure on behind-the-scenes information. We aren't a news site and can't be one. We do have some behind-the-scenes information on the show and the people working on it, and it could be extended I guess, but if people expect articles on the newest going-ons that probably won't happen. -- Serenity 09:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)

For the search thing we could try the LuceneSearch extension which is also used by Wikipedia and friends. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:15, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Well, I'm turned off by the memory usage on the sucker... Plus it's just better for us to go Google anyway, that way we won't impact the performance of both servers. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:31, 19 February 2008 (CST)

As for the skin (aka my department) I take full responsibility for that. I carried the colors over from the BsgBook type and I guess massed up, it doesn't sit right. Myself and Joe already talked about using the colors from the blog, in the same design look. Navbar, no problem. Rehashing that is easy. As far as the search bar, there is only so many places for it to go. I can add a second one before the bottom bar. I think we need to really focus on BW:TUT which is pretty much established. Make it stand out and also expand the To-Do topics a bit more. Maybe we can get the Help preview filled. I've never really like merchandise information on the front page, but we should still create articles about it and use our referral links to gather some sort of income for server costs, etc. Maybe it's time to open up the flood gates to unregiested users being able to edit. we would for sure have to setup the BW:VANDL patrol and change the "trusted" group to have patrol permissions. That's about it from me. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 09:42, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'd be in favor of that. I'll get started writing a revert bot next week (too busy this week), which will be available to all patrollers (of course, the trusted group would also need the rollback right in that case) so mass edits can be reverted easier. I'll extend the bot to revert moves and page creations too (although the latter needs sysop access of course; trusted users can't delete pages). When all of this is up and running, we could also experiment with allowing autoconfirmed users to move pages (see also this discussion).

Furthermore, we should write up a patrolling 101 at BW:PATROL so patrollers know how to mark edits as patrolled, how to revert thenm and how to use the revert bot. All this sounds like a good idea for a BW:TANK proposal to me. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:22, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I just want to comment on the survey itself. I've been exposed to quite a few surveys of late and when I took this survey it made an impact. The concise nature is a major plus. Nobody likes to fill out lengthy surveys. It is better to run several surveys spaced out with fewer questions than one large survey. The questions were nicely worded and well thought out. There is a clear focus on each one and the answers will greatly help the direction of this project. The prize is certainly a great incentive. I want to congratulate whomever created the survey. Now the work of initiating changes can begin.--Jonathan 13:23, 4 March 2008 (CST)

"Opening the Flood Gates"[edit]

I'm not in favor of "opening the floodgates", simply because quality of the wiki would probably go down, not up. Sure, it might get a few more contributors, but quality people are hard to come by. Also, it's harder to hold accountability to anonymous users, so I would oppose that.

There are other alternatives to having people send in corrections... which I'm working on right now and will have more detail in the next few days. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:33, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'm not too keen on it either. Registration probably keeps away very casual readers who see an error here and there. But if someone reads the Wiki often and has ideas for changes, I don't see why they can't take a few minutes and get an account. -- Serenity 10:56, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'm just wary of the "RC Patrol" culture that seems to develop when you have to deal with anonymous vandalism. You end up with a class of users that spends all of their effort cleaning up vandalism, and seem to sometimes develop a paranoia regarding sockpuppets, etc. I like that our admins are generally contributors first, so you don't see those self-nom RFA's where the user is mostly wanting block powers to more effectively execute their RC patrol. --Steelviper 16:45, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I agree. "RC Patrolling" and fighting vandalism is a time waster, pure and simple. It detracts from the main purpose of working on a reference in the first place, which is what I referred to earlier. We don't come here to fight vandals, but to increase our knowledge base and improve the quality of the site... Everyone who contributes has a set amount of time for this, since we all do this in our "spare time"... And frankly, I don't like the culture that Wikipedia generates in terms "vandalism patrol" or "RC patrol"... it's very poisonous and causes more problems than its worth. It's one of the things I got sick of when I contributed to Wikipedia.

As you noted SV, where we stand out as people is that we have this unwritten motto that we're "contributors first, chiefs second". Basically, we have an efficient work ethic and I'd be really loathe to destroy that by bringing down the floodgates. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)