User talk:Steelviper/MemoryAlpha

Mind if I play around with this Main Page setup on my own Steelviper?--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 18:43, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Steelviper, I also think it a better idea to do what MemoryAlpha did and just call categories what they are "Articles of Interest", etc. as making up our own fun names for sections would just confuse newcomers. --19:42, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Did you know...

I love this section of the MA front page and I think we'll be able to amass enough random trivia to do well with a counter-part. I bet there's a way to have it randomly pick, say, 5 from a list every midnight or 3am or something (server time). I'd prefer this to the way the Quote of the day works, so that we don't have the same 5 appearing together every time they appear and we don't have to worry if we don't have 1800 trivia ideas. I'd also love to implement the QotD like that (pick randomly at midnight a new one from a list, rather than have one assigned to each calendar day). This would allow for continued growth as RDM continues, rather than having to have a database limited to 365 (well, for 33 out of 4 years, anyway). --Day ^(talk) 23:33, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

Alternatively, and preferably, I could just update the trivia every day myself. I trust that more than randomizers, which don't have good judgement, otherwise we might get stuck with 5 things saying what the colors of the walls are. We don't have enough info yet to update them daily. Memory Alpha can because they've got 10 movies and over 700 episodes to choose from. We've got 33 episodes (plus a Miniseries). Even if we tacked on the one season of TOS, we don't have enough to sustain that kind of thing. One every week or so, done manually for optimum quailty, is the better path for the near future. --The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 23:47, 6 April 2006 (CDT)

This is all possiable, but there is a problem though. Right now the quotes aren't in a database. We could easily do that, but that's not the problem. The problem is that I have to set up some scripts to first input quotes, then have a script "running" on the server that would have to run at midnight. From there that "outputed" data would have to go in the correct form. (This is where bot's come in.) It's the same concept for "Did you know..." random pick. That even gets more complicated. Most of the Wikipedia stuff (FA, POTD, NEWS) is run by tons of people and they have 1 million articles, so they have a large selection. MemoryAlpha has a little more stuff. I persoanlly don't see the effort for such little content. We would need to set up the boards that selects FA or what quotes go in. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 00:22, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

I have a better idea:

A) We do not have enough trivia to warrant a bot randomly picking trivia on a daily basis from a large pool, therefore we should not do that
B) I will pick the triva myself, on a roughly weekly basis, and if someone disagrees with it, they can leave a note in Talk to change it--->similar to how our Quote of the Day system works now.
C)If others are unwilling to make the effort, I will be willing to sacrifice my time to the endeavor.--The Merovingian ^{(C - E)} 00:36, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

A)not enought content towarrent the effort.
B) Knock yourself out
C)Other people can contribuate to the "Did you know..." Group effort.
--Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:04, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

Would this section work similar to the quote of the day, or would it just be random from a database? Can MediaWiki do this as default or will it need a new extension. Wouldnt be too hard to write up in php. --Mercifull 03:14, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

Merv, I don't want to, no offense to you, rely on a single user to update this thing. I think we either do it in an automated way (and if it's picking five every day from a database of 15, that's fine with me) or leave it simply open for all to update as they see fit (like the rest of the Wiki). However, I don't think that a lack of volume means we shouldn't automate the thing. --Day ^(talk)

(Unindenting, but still related to the MA thing). Over at MA, they've already run into this issue. Currently the English MA site is still manual, I believe. The German language site, though, has a template for each week, and kind of like the "Quote of the Day". So the code on the main page would access the current week's DYK's, and users can go as far ahead as they want to lay down future DYK's that will automatically be highlighted when that week comes around. Sort of a compromise on the automation vs. human quality. --Steelviper 07:56, 7 April 2006 (CDT)