Editing Battlestar Wiki talk:Welcome, newcomers

Do we want to prefer Americah or British English spelling in this Wiki?  I am seeing a confusing mix of both in many pages.
--[[User:Laven|Laven]] 02:40, 1 Aug 2005 (EDT)
: American spelling, whenever possible. -- [[User:Joe.Beaudoin|Joe Beaudoin]] 13:24, 1 Aug 2005 (EDT)

== "new message" problem ==
I have a problem--The "new messages" message will not go away, even after I've checked the messages. Help? --[[User:Fang Aili|Fang Aili]] 15:05, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

: This was under discussion on the update page, but I can't find that page anymore, so you might mention it to Joe on his [[User talk:Joe.Beaudoin|talk page]]. --[[User:Day|Day]] 15:32, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

::That would be here: [[Battlestar Wiki talk:Upgrade]]. I'm also having the problem again. --[[User:Peter Farago|Peter Farago]] 20:44, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

==not very useful as it is==

Put bluntly: there's no good explanation of what wiki namespace is, and how the Battlestar Wiki's namespace is set up.  The closest
you come to that is a link to the list of categories and the search page. And to add insult to injury: on the search page, "Battlestar Wiki and other wikis running MediaWiki." is a malformed link.  It currently attempts to edit the page (or perhaps the category?) instead of taking you there.   To add to that, clicking "Help" gets you ''Wikipedia's'' help files, not ones relevant to here.  That's confusing, especially since this site has its own policies for vandalism, formatting, mark up, and new article creation.  Clicking "Help" under navigation should get you the files for ''this'' site, not someone else's.  Especially since the relevant pages do exist, they're just not linked.  It's that lack of links or any sort of table of contents for the working areas of the site that makes it terribly confusing for someone who doesn't already know where everything is kept.  

Other problems: "Wikipedia Tutorial" doesn't link to the article you wanted (hint: "Wikipedia:Tutorial" is probably what you wanted).
"Wikipedia FAQ" also doesn't link to the article you wanted.

And again, shunting a NEW user off to another site probably isn't the best idea in the world, at least for the editing tutorial.  Wiki markup language is pretty weird to start with, throw in a total change of namespace without really warning them and you're likely to get WTF? syndrome.  I edit html by hand and got caught by that the first time.

I know that I'd spend a lot less time going in circles if there was a clickable navigation link that had some sort of table of contents, whether it was under Community or Projects (or even Toolbox).  But as it is, I haven't found anyplace that I can just click that would give me a portal to Policies, Tutorials, FAQs, Help files, etc.  It doesn't exist.  And it should.--[[User:Scotchfairy|Scotchfairy]] 07:14, 8 September 2006 (CDT)
:This should be getting an update before season 3. Our revised tutorial is up at [[BW:TUT]]. --[[User:Shane|Shane]] <sup>([[User_Talk:Shane|T]] - [[Special:Contributions/Shane|C]] - [[Special:Editcount/Shane|E]])</sup> 07:17, 8 September 2006 (CDT)
::Tutorial's much better, but this page is still mostly useless.  And as I said, "HELP" in the Navigation menu should do something site-related, not give you a link to Wikipedia's help pages.  That HELP button is where I was expecting to see a list of all the namespaces and shortcuts for ''this'' site.  As well as on this "Welcome Newbies" page.  I'll state again, no new user should have to dig to find these things.--[[User:Scotchfairy|Scotchfairy]] 06:00, 11 September 2006 (CDT)
:::This page is due for a revamp anyway and I definitely agree that everything should be kept on site, particularly for the help and how-to docs. -- [[User:Joe Beaudoin Jr.|Joe Beaudoin]] <sup>[[User talk:Joe Beaudoin Jr.|So say we all]] - [[Battlestar Wiki:Site support|Donate]]</sup> 20:19, 12 September 2006 (CDT)