UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archive 2

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Copyright Page

• This needs to be filled out. Of course that means choosing a license. Probably the simplest thing to do is just to place the whole thing in the public domain. Alternatively, the Creative Commons By-SA license or GNU FPL licenses might be used. However, both of these licenses have technical requirements that must be met to apply them.
  • The copyright page ought to be protected.
  • Fully meeting this requires editing some system settings as well as the copyright page. (Set in MediaWiki namespace. Requires sysop privileges.)
    • Article page footer text.
    • Edit page footer warning/terms.
• The copyright page also needs to note that some Bethesda copyright material is present -- and that this is the only copyright limited material that is allowed to be present.
  • We should also have a © Bethesda template for those pages, and should then apply it to all the book pages.

--Wrye 13:27, 13 Oct 2005 (EDT)

See the proposal: UESPWiki:Copyright and Ownership

HTML File Cache

Need to make sure this works. I tried setting it up as per the instructions but it didn't seem to do anything. This option make be needed to help reduce the site load. We may also need to look at installed a PHP cache as recommended in the Wiki installation (TurkCache?).

Daveh

It looks like the cache system works. I don't see the probelem. --Aristeo 19:41, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

We're using the default file cache of MediaWiki where anonymous users get the cached version from disk. We're also using the Zend PHP cache system since it was simple to install. Current server load is no where near high enough to worry about more complex caching systems. -- DaveH 20:11, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Navigation Bar

An overall Site bar has been added to let people quickly link to the main areas of the site content. Deeper site bars (of varying levels) might be useful with possibly an option of which ones are displayed. An overall site tree page, according to category, may also be useful (does the Wiki have an internal tree generation?).

Daveh

We don't need anything fully automatic. Categories help sort different types of content sort of automatically, and we have manual menus of content (eg: Oblivion:Oblivion) that has a more friendly look to it. --Aristeo 19:41, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

News

Right now, the only way to really do news on the main page is to manually edit the page and cut/paste old news into archive articles. This kinda defeats the purpose of having a database web system. We need a simple form of news submission form that the main page can display the most recent articles of. We'll have to see whether Wiki is capable of doing this currently or if we have to implement it on our own.

Daveh

Install the Inputbox wiki extension, the Parser extension, and upgrade to version 1.6.7, and I'll be able to make this setup you're referring to. With those extensions, I could even develop a forum on the wiki like the one Wikia.com has.

All done! -- DaveH 20:09, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Page Archive

I just archived everything from Feb 2005 to June 2006 into /Archive 1 by copy and pasting older conversations, because this page was getting too cluttered and long with old conversation. If you want to start discussing something from that page, you can either link to it from this page, or move the discussion back over here at your discretion. --Aristeo 13:59, 29 June 2006 (EDT)

Parser Functions

Is there any way we can get Parser Functions installed? Thanks! Fushi 00:23, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

I'd second the request, could let us do some fairly cool things if we're lucky! :-) -- Endareth^Talk 00:31, 26 April 2006 (EDT)

This is done. -- DaveH 20:09, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Requests for Adminship

This is where you can nominate yourself or another to become an admin of UESP. Admins are held to high standards, and should be kind to their fellow members, wise in making decisions, and patient in dealing with others. Nominees should be active members, and on UESP long enough for others to determine whether or not they have these qualities. Finally, Daveh will make the decision, based on his judgment and the opinions held by the voters, whether or not the user is to be an admin.

Requests for Arbitration

This section is for requesting administrative intervention for a dispute or other decision.

Requests for Deletion

Requests for deletion should be tagged with the {{[[Template:Delete]]}} template.

Requests for Protection

Any requests for page protection, unprotection, or protection against page moves should go here.

• Arena:Arena, Daggerfall:Daggerfall, Battlespire:Battlespire, Redguard:Redguard, Morrowind:Morrowind, Tribunal:Tribunal, Bloodmoon:Bloodmoon, Oblivion:Oblivion, Lore:Tamriel, UESPWiki:IRC, UESPWiki:Editing - I have protected these pages against moves, because they are being linked to on the sidebar. --Aristeo 17:00, 2 July 2006 (EDT)

Other Requests for Administrators

Any other requests that require an administrator's help should go here.

• The image [[:Image:Oabsorbattribute.png]] and all its associated pages (including talk) need to be moved to [[File:O-absorb.gif]] (yes, rename the png to a gif, it'll then get overwritten by an actual gif). See discussions at [[Image talk:Oabsorbattribute.png]], User talk:Marbx. Wiki doesn't seem to provide tools for renaming/moving images (or at least I'm having a hard time finding them). Thanks!--Nephele 12:54, 21 July 2006 (EDT)
  • What you would need to do is download the image from the site and make the .png to .gif conversion, then upload it to Image:O-absorb.gif. After that, I can delete the old image.— Unsigned comment by Aristeo (talk • contribs)
    • OK, done. I'd been concerned about trying to keep the talk page, but realized that the talk page does have a move button. So now just need to get Oabsorbattribute.png deleted when you get a chance.--Nephele 16:21, 21 July 2006 (EDT)

• I have requested that more file types be allowed, such as .doc, .xls, .txt., .mdb, and .pdf. If one tries to upload them, the upload page says "Upload warning - ".xls" is not a recommended image file format." (Actually I've only tried .xls at this point, not all the others, but I hope they'll all be allowed.) Aristeo replied that "We're going to upgrade the wiki soon, which will allow us to override files on the wiki." Yay! I can wait. Also, this comment was made:

For the record, there's a reason .doc, .xml and .mdb files are not generally allowed on public forums like this. Through the use of macro scripts, it's possible to run malicious code from these file types. Not that I think it's likely that anyone would do that here, but then I've a few nasty folks come around here trying to mess things up. They usually get banned pretty quickly, but if they were to decide to retalliate, that would be one potential threat. I do think that harmless formats such as .txt and .pdf should be allowed. But anything out of MS Office is potentially dangerous, and so should probably be avoided. --TheRealLurlock 17:11, 30 July 2006 (EDT)

I hope additional file types are allowed; it only lends more power to, e.g., folks that want to crunch numbers and give data tools (spreadsheets or databases) to players here. If needed, we'd be happy to have a vetting service where users submit files to admins for scanning or perhaps have a limited security level allowed after a person has shown a modicum of being "for real". Anyway, I hope additional types are allowed with the wiki upgrade. This summarized request will be here as a reminder until such time as the wiki is upgraded and other file types are allowed, or until allowing other file types is jointly rejected. --RedKnight 22:05, 4 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks for the great wiki!! --RedKnight (who is posting solid insights into selling to merchants to this wiki alone)

• Is there a way to make the "Orphaned Pages" list in the Special Pages more useful? There's a lot of stuff on there that really shouldn't be, making it hard to find the pages which are legitimately orphaned. Things which don't belong:

• Talk pages. Unless the article it's attached to is also orphaned, talk pages shouldn't be on the list.
• Anything transcluded. That's not really orphaned, because it appears on other pages. This includes things like the "Description" and "Author" pages for all the books, descriptions for every quest, stuff like that. Not really orphaned if it's transcluded.
• Menu pages. Just a page full of links to other pages. While technically orphans since nothing links to them, they really shouldn't be on the list, because they're vital navigation pages.

The talk pages and the transcludes are the worst. There are so many of them on there, it makes the list pretty much useless, since you can't really see what's genuinely orphaned, and what just appears to be. --TheRealLurlock 00:01, 9 August 2006 (EDT)

• In the past few months I have seen a lot of shuffling within the UESPWiki namespace and the sidebar, which have disoriented me a few times (and I'm a regular editor). I think it would be good for the organisation of this wiki to create a site map which would set the architecture of the site. This way, it would be much easier to identify where the links on each of the pages should point to and which ones should go on the sidebar (top level/most used).

• • That's what Daveh has been wanting to create for a while. And I'm sorry about changing the menu around, I'm responsible for that. --Aristeo 09:59, 9 August 2006 (EDT)

Search

The search page needs an improved design to make it easier to choose the various options. Part of this might be through the stylesheet or the search PHP page. An alternate search PHP page could also be created.

Daveh

The wiki isn't designed to have more than the default namespaces. I don't know if we'll be able to find something. --Aristeo 19:41, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

• Another thing the search function is severely lacking in is some basic logic tools, like AND/OR searches, case-sensitive, or quoted phrases. For example, I recently discovered that the "Allies for Bruma" quest was mistakenly labelled as "Aid for Bruma". So I decided to fix it. Moved the main page, then tried using the Search to find all pages that used the wrong name. Problem is, the search gives you a list of everything which contains "aid", "for", OR "Bruma", not just pages which contain all three. As you might well imagine, that is quite a large number of pages, most of which were irrelevant to the search. Putting the phrase in quotes made no difference. It even used partial words, like "Aid" gives me "Plaid Shirt" from the clothing page. I had to go through pages and pages of results to pick out the ones I needed to change. (In fact, check it out now. Even though I've made the change, and the words "Aid for Bruma" should not appear anywhere anymore, look at how many results you get from the search...) I'd have better results just pointing a Google search at the site. Surely there's something that can be done about this? (If nothing more than just literally placing a Google-search button on the sidebar.) --TheRealLurlock 18:02, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Yes, there's a number of things that can be done to improve it, all of which take time though. I'll think about it and see what the best solution is. -- DaveH 20:02, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Site Load

There is a question of whether the site can handle a Wiki of all the pages. Currently the UESP is serving 120-150k hits, 90-110k files, 30-40k pages totalling 2-3 GB of bandwidth per day. Once Oblivion is released I can easily see this increasing by a factor of 5 (if not more, peak visits during Morrowind were a factor of 3 more than current values). While this only translates to a few pages per second (or so), it still may be much for the virtual server to handle. Caching options can be considered as I'd don't want to have to get a more expensive server contract for the site unless there is no other option.

Daveh

I don't notice any problems. --Aristeo 19:41, 5 July 2006 (EDT)

Load seems very fine with a lot of room if we need more. Bandwidth use is around 15% of the current maximum. CPU use is similarily 10-20% with average loads of 0.5, The current server settings maximize use of memory meaning we're using 90% of RAM typically but in a controlled manner to prevent exceeding 100% and forcing it to start swapping. Stability is also fine with the server running for months without problems (current restarts have only been due to upgrades and setting changes). -- DaveH 20:06, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Vandalism

See UESPWiki:Vandalism

Wiki Security Upgrades

MediaWiki software receives regular security upgrades. I don't know if Dave is keeping on top of this, but it would probably be a good idea. But requires ftp access to site. So, Dave or someone he trusts a lot!

Wrye 13:27, 13 Oct 2005 (EDT)

i would strongly recommend using ssh and sftp instead of the easy to snif telnet and ftp for remote access -- The Nerevarine 09:53, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Wyre and Garrett seem to be knowledgable enough to do it, and I know Daveh can upgrade a wiki. I'd only give my vote to a sysop, and it seems that Endareth is on a more-or-less permanent wiki break. I wouldn't even give myself my vote, since I know nothing about the PHP nor the inner workings of a wiki. But I do think the wiki needs to be upgraded; we're way behind.. --Aristeo 19:09, 24 July 2006 (EDT)

I've upgraded to 1.6.8 and any further upgrades to the 1.7.x path will have to wait until I am brave enough to upgrade the PHP to 5.0. -- DaveH 20:08, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Morrowind Books

[Moved discussion to the admin noticeboard]

Just discovered that most of the Morrowind books are duplicated in both the Morrowind: and Tamriel:Books/ namespaces. Now, I'm not going to go adding Delete tags to every single one of them, but if you or one of the other admins could take a look at this and get rid of all the redundancy it would help out. I have already changed the links on the Morrowind:Books and Morrowind:Faction Books pages, not sure how many more of them there are. But as many of these pages as there are, I think it would probably be good to get rid of them, as that's a pretty large quantity of unnecessary duplication. --TheRealLurlock 00:18, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

1) It might be worth to compare the Tamriel and the Morrowind books together to see which is worth keeping and which is worth deleting. 2) I'm going to sleep after this edit, so Nephele is probably going to be the deletionist.--Aristeo 00:32, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I was going to suggest Nephele, but then I remembered she doesn't have Morrowind, so she can't look this stuff up as easily. And the other admins haven't been really active lately. Anyhow, if there's any way I can help, let me know. --TheRealLurlock 09:35, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Actually, it probably would be useful if you went through the duplicated books, and put a delete tag on whichever copy you think needs deleting. That would definitely make it easier for me to find them (and, by the way, I do now own Morrowind... I just haven't done much other than install it so far). Depending on how extensive the edit histories are, I might be inclined to do some delete/restores that allow the two pages to be merged, instead of actually deleting the pages. (Gives me an excuse to try out some of those fancy admin features I've read about!) But I can judge that better once I see which books are on the list. --Nephele 12:41, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

oooOOOooo... A merge :D That's exactly what the pages need! We really don't have a very good way to propose merges, (or deletions for that matter, but that's another story) so I still recommend marking the articles for deletion with the delete tag. Nephele, just be careful with the merges, because they're a pain to undo if something is messed up. --Aristeo 12:58, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I doubt the page histories will be much of an issue in this case, because we're talking about the books, which are pretty much the text copied verbatim from the game, no interpretation or added content by the editors, nothing controversial or potentially incorrect about them, so there's not likely to be more than an edit or two per page, and most of them will be minor typo and formatting corrections, nothing important worth archiving. (Also, it's been my practice when seeing typos in the text of a book to leave them in as written. If the typo appears in-game, it may be intentional, so it's not for us to correct it.) I may go through and find all the Morrowind books to label them for deletion/merging, but you should now be able to find most of them just by looking at the Orphaned Pages list, since I changed the two main pages that linked to them. (Some may be individually linked from various other pages, so that may be harder to track down.) --TheRealLurlock 17:48, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Okay, you should be able to find them on Orphaned Pages, but you can't. Or at least, I already marked the only 2 you can find. Anybody else have a clue where they may be linked from? --17:56, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I've taken care of the ones that had been marked for deletion. I opted to give preference to whichever version had been created first, and deleted the more recently-created page. In other words, I didn't always delete the specific page that had been tagged, but the final result should match what you wanted.--Nephele 19:22, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

On the topic of books, might I inquire why there exist article pages for both the book's contents and a description article as well...it seems rather superfluous to me. After all, take the following:

Lore:Children of the Sky: The book.

Lore:Children of the Sky/Description: The description; which reads "Description of the Nords.".

See my point?

Might I suggest - if it is not against the better interests of the site - that these "Description" pages be appended to the "Book-Content" page. Simply adding such under the heading of "Description" at the top or bottom of the page, then listing a brief analysis of the contents, would surely be more appropriate to the circumstances than this...

Oh, and ere anyone says "because we need it for this chart, I'd ask: why? Surely a new table can be designed that does not require such redundant topics. -- Booyah boy 14:23, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

If the /Desc pages are being used in multiple places, then it's no longer redundant; instead it allows various links in different places to be consistent, and makes it easier for editors to set up links to the books. At the moment, the /Desc pages are being on all the Lore:Books pages, and also on the Oblivion:Books page. Admittedly, though, it's not being implemented all that well at the moment. The Morrowind:Books page isn't using the descriptions; this probably needs to be fixed at some point. So many of the /Desc pages are missing that pages like Oblivion:Books end up filled with ugly red links. Finally, the naming is somewhat inconsistent: non-book pages use /Description instead of /Desc for the subpages (e.g., on Oblivion:Places... hopefully this inconsistency isn't completely my fault). But I think these problems will slowly get resolved, and so it's better to work on improving the system than scrapping it altogether. --Nephele 14:45, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I agree whole-heartedly with you, Nephele, and apologize, for obviously my comments were poorly phrased...in short, I am not advocating that the pages be "scrapped", rather, that they be implemented more appropriately.

My primary reason for bringing this forward is thus: due to the sheer number of book-description pages, they appear quite often when clicking the "Random page" link; apart from containing little content (due to their nature), they would - most likely - act as something of a deterrent to future purusal of the wiki by outside parties. Might there be some means by which you - the administrators - can limit the access to these pages, or, at least, prohibit them from appearing when hitting the "Random page" link? -- Booyah boy 15:10, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Good point. I don't use Random page too often, so I hadn't thought about that before. But probably the Random page should be set up to not use any subpages like these, and perhaps also get it to skip stubs and any page less than some meaningful length. The only problem is that this requires even higher-level access than admins have... Daveh is the only one who can implement any changes. I'll add a suggestion to his talk page, but since he's already got a sizeable to-do list, there are no guarantees he'll be able to get to it soon. --Nephele 15:05, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

The random page feature was made so that people might find themselves on a stub that doesn't have much attention, and could increase upon it. It's not really a serious feature, it's just a "for fun" kind of thing that some editors might like to use to find a page or group of pages that they would have otherwise not have heard of. --Aristeo 17:53, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

That sounds great, Nepehele. Thank you for resolving this issue on my behalf. Hopefully Daveh will find the time to get to it sometime soon...for now, I'll leave this topic alone, lest something remains to be said on it's original premise (Morrowind books, that is). -- Booyah boy 15:10, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

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