From FIRSTwiki

Contents 1 Current issues 1.1 FIRSTWiki Trashed (Admins please read) 1.2 New Logo Vote? 1.3 Feature article 1.4 Template vs. inter-wiki link 1.5 Common edit summary notation

Current issues

FIRSTWiki Trashed (Admins please read)

Wow, the wiki got totally trashed. My proposal would be that we find the date when the trashing started (looks like somewhere around October 8th) and rollback the entire wiki to that date. There may be some edits lost, but the wiki has not seen a lot of action (at least from real users) lately so shouldn't be too much lost.

I tried restoring some of the pages, but there is just too much!- PeterFll

List of all trashed pages

hackedpagesDenman 11:26, 11 Oct 2005 (EDT) I don't know how to restore so i can't i'm afraid

Denman, I redid your search on all subdomains - I think I got everything now. For anyone else looking in though I'd like to point out what appears to be a bug in the History and Editing screens. When I would go to a particular page in the history, and then click Edit, I would not see the same page in the Edit Screen. Usually I would have to go one page farther back and then click Edit. In other words, when you go to a History page and click edit you actually see the NEXT page in the history on the edit screen which is very confusing and a real pain for someone trying to restore pages. Perhaps someone can help me validate that is a bug and help fix it? - PeterFll

New Logo Vote?

Can we vote for a logo? It's been awhile since anything happened over there. --Astronouth7303 14:21, 22 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Maybe I'm mistaken ... but wasn't there consensus on the puzzle-ball logo? As for which revision, I imagine it should be the one with our current logo. Further discussion can take place at FIRSTwiki:Logo candidates. --Mrawls 14:29, 22 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Actually, we were waiting on some more logos, specifically from Phrontist's graphics class where there was supposed to be a couple of students working on logos. After we get a few more logos, we will have a vote in FIRSTwiki:nominations for adminship style --209.158.180.130 14:49, 22 Jun 2004 (EDT)

It's been over a month....I move for a vote, and I also move that until such time as a vote shall be held, the Temp logo (2.1) be replaced with the puzzle ball logo, revision 3 (2.4.3). --Goobergunch 17:04, 6 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Feature article

Okay, well let's try this. A featured article can stay up for 4 days. We can store previous articles on FIRSTwiki:Featured articles. To decide on a new article, it would be nice to have at least 2 users voice some concern ... but lacking that, any sysop can make the decision. Once a page is featured, it should be removed from FIRSTwiki:Featured article candidates. In order to keep this going, I'm going to make the bold statement that if you put a page up for featured status, you should seriously consider completing another article. (Though, to nominate a page, you certainly don't have to have contributed to it ... you only have to think it is really good.) --Mrawls 15:08, 20 Jun 2004 (EDT)

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There's not so much completed content available for a feature article as per wikipedia, so I think some talk is in order about what we want it to be at this early stage. I see it as a place where we can show off our better articles, hopefully getting them some edits and us good attention from the FIRST community. So, the question of when do we consider an article ready for featured status is important -- must it be complete (PBASIC currently is not, but I wanted to see what a page with a picture would show up as ... someone is free to change it if they wish). Must the page be prim and proper? Currently we have a candidate page, but no one really adds to it, and no one really fixes the articles there.

So, do we want a featured article ... when do we consider an article worthy ... how often should the article be updated ... and how should the article that is to be displayed, be decided? All these are important decisions to make. Keep in mind that this policy is for the current, and not only can it change in the future, it probably should. --Mrawls 12:51, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)

How many pages on here are complete? I'd say update the nominees page w/summeries and write a perl to choose/update. --Astronouth7303 16:30, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)

I assume you mean a perl script? I don't think that would be idea. We want human interaction here. The nominations will (should) be updated prior to being featured ... and we want to take in some comment from other users. (The update is more than giving an intro, which the articles *should* already have; it involves editing, fixing spelling mistakes, adding content, re-structuring/organizing if necessary, etc.) I do think we need to decide how long an article should be up and establish procedure for changing it. But I think that procedure should involve human control. --Mrawls 18:24, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

It's been more then 4 days since the FF page has been the Feature article ;). I think it's time for a change. --Sciencewhiz 10:33, 23 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Yeah; in fact, it's still the Featured Article.... --Goobergunch 17:04, 6 Aug 2004 (EDT)

How about Kit of parts? (That's where Special:Randompage took me) --Astronouth7303 17:17, 6 Aug 2004 (EDT)

Template vs. inter-wiki link

I noticed that we started switching from using [[wikipedia:]]-style linking to {{wikipedia2|}}-style linking. I was wondering why? Is this just to try out templates, or was there some reason why the old style wasn't good enough? Let me complain, for a bit, lacking an answer presently ... The new style does not resemble any of our current links, and is potentially confusing to newer users (and me). The old was fine, so as they say, if it ain't broke, why fix it. And as I saw on another page, too many templates isn't the most effecient, plus you seem to be limited to 5 for the time being. Now, is there is any "pro" to the issue? In summary, (not abbreviated though ;), change is bad ... --Mrawls 09:38, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Hmm, I didn't think about the confusing to new users part. I think that swings me over to the normal interwiki links. It definitley is useful that the wikipedia and CD links are identified clearly, but I think we should go with a simpler (en.wikipedia.org) or (chiefdelphi.com). --Max 13:11, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)

I don't think that wikipedia links should use the template, but it's nice for chiefdelphi. Perhaps one for firstrobotics.net would be good also. However, I don't like the fact that you have to use different templates for links with alternate text (is that the right term?). If it can be fixed so that you don't have to do it, I'd say go for it with CD, but leave the wikipedia links alone. --Sciencewhiz 12:55, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

That sounds reasonable, though I think it would be best if all the links were of the same style. But I do want to get one thing straight from Max. I believe that inter-wiki links are just shorthands that are listed in some file, and that adding additional links (e.g., for CD) would be as simple as adding a single line mapping [[Chiefdelphi:]] to a particular URL -- though I'm by no means familiar with the mediawiki code ... that's just a guess. --Mrawls 13:32, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

If that's the case, that should definetly be done, rather then the templates. --Sciencewhiz 13:48, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT) See here: Interwiki_links --Sciencewhiz 13:55, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Sciencewhiz, you are correct and I think thats a nice convenient idea except for one possible consideration: Mrawls, they are just shorthand now, but future versions of mediawiki (and other wikis getting in on the interwiki action) are going to try to have some features that make interwiki links more. I believe I have heard things like interwiki "what links here" and other stuff. --Max 01:45, 20 Jun 2004 (EDT)

I created the templates so that Wikipedia links would look different than intra-FIRSTwiki links. The ChiefDelphi links show the CD links different from other links AND lets you just type in the CD thread # (or forum # using Astro's template CDForum) and not the whole URL. --SilverStar

But why is looking different good? [[wikipedia:something]] seems sufficiently different from [[something]] that I think most people will understand what each does rather intuitively. But if we start introducing an entirely new syntax ({{ instead of [[), then it introduces confusion. If difference is the only reason for using them, and difference seems like a major reason *not* to use them, I think the practice should be abrogated. --Mrawls 18:28, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Since MediaWiki is opensource, and the parser has to have a section for interwiki links, why not insert a little thing to add those images? (If max could send me the code, I might be able to stumble through it enough to figure out where) --Astronouth7303 16:03, 18 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Modifying the parser to inline a little image in code is definitley not a pretty way to do it. Hardcoding in something like that is probably the easiest way off the bat, but, I think the proper way is to setup MediaWiki:InterwikiName or Template:InterwikiName that get automatically inserted for that interwiki link. This would allow easy modification of the formatting of the link. As I said in FIRSTwiki:feature requests, I'm gonna try to avoid the parser. There is plenty of other stuff I can do (in FIRSTwiki) that is probably a more effective use of my time. --Max 01:45, 20 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Common edit summary notation

After being reprimanded (by Max :p) about edit summaries, I made a edit summary notation as a shorthand for common edit summaries. Astro* suggested using this notation universally. Is this an acceptable shorthand? If so, I will incoprorate it into the Style guide and Policies and guidelines pages. --SilverStar (Advay) 23:06, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)

I'm unsure of the use of sect(same as automatic section editing comment?), cmt(if you are editing a talk page, isn't that assumed), WP. Also, for temp and cat, why not just put the template or category link in the comment? Provides a quick link from history/recent changes to the appropriate category and it is clearly evident that it is a template or category. Maybe you could give some examples. Maybe I should keep telling you about every minor problem I can think of so you can turn it into a previously un-thought of useful feature :p --Max 23:09, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)

sect would be useful when creating a new section. cmt would only be used with other changes on a talk page (to indicate adding a comment AND doing something else). --SilverStar (Advay) 23:30, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)

It seems with too many shorthands, they lose their purpose. I.e., you'd (or, well, I'd) spend all sorts of time figuring out what it meant, when writing the whole thing out, which doesn't take so long, would be much clearer, especially to new editors. The way I see it, use abbreviations when they are obvious in the context. Plus "rv" for revert, if you wish. E.g., added intro. The edit summary is supposed to be short, so typing things out shouldn't kill anyone's fingers. --Mrawls 09:33, 17 Jun 2004 (EDT)