User talk:Nephele/Archive-2009-06

Search Index

Just noticed on UESPWiki:UespCustomCode you mentioned the title searches won't work until each article is reindexed. What sort of index is this (on the DB or within the Wiki)? Depending on how the index is created/updated we might be able to force an index update in a variety of ways (also depending on how important overall it would be versus the time required to do it). -- Daveh 09:06, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

Good point; I'd forgotten about that little detail ;)

Looking through the maintenance scripts, there is a script called "rebuildtextindex.php", which states that it can be used to "Rebuild search index table from scratch. This takes several hours, depending on the database size and server configuration." It also goes on to say "Rebuilding is faster if you drop the index and recreate it, but that will prevent searches from working while it runs." So it seems like a kind of extreme option just to get one word added to the search index titles.

I think it should also be possible to basically get the job queue to go through and recreate the search index for each page on the site, one at a time. If possible, it would have the advantages of not interfering with searches or really slowing down the site as it goes through all the pages. (It might also be possible to get our categories regenerated while it's at it, too -- both to update defaultsort wherever necessary and to fix issues caused by namespace parameters). I'll explore that option a bit more, but if not, we can fall back to rebuildtextindex. --Nephele^Talk 15:36, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

I've put together a script that's now gradually going through all of our pages and refreshing the page titles in the searchindex, and updating each page's categories. I went for the custom script when I realized I could get a script to refresh only the page titles, instead of unnecessarily refreshing the full body of each article, too. Also, I realized just directly doing a batch job through a script was much more efficient overall than going through the job queue. The upshot of it all being that for the next few hours content1 will be doing a bit of extra work, but it shouldn't have any noticeable effect on site performance (and if I notice any effect, I'll stop the script immediately). After which, searches such as "oblivion items" should work, our bogus categories will hopefully be gone, and the new value of defaultsort should take effect on all pages where it's being used. --Nephele^Talk 20:29, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

Sounds good...Thanks! -- Daveh 20:45, 1 June 2009 (EDT)

NS_ID

You never told me about that one! :) –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:11, 3 June 2009 (EDT)

I have to keep some tricks hidden ;) Although in reality, it is documented at Help:Magic_Words#Namespace -- and listed on MediaWiki:Uespnamespacelist, too. --Nephele^Talk 11:27, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

Error in Autolink template?

There appears to be a small error in the Autolink template. As far as I can tell, it only affects one page - Shivering:Summon. This page uses the Effects Summary template, which in turn calls Autolink for the School. Currently, this is pointing to Shivering:Conjuration, when I believe it should be pointing to Oblivion:Conjuration. I had a look at the Autolink template, and I noticed that it defines ns_base as NS_BASE, but doesn't use it, preferring instead to use NS_FULL. Am I correct in thinking that if the template was changed to use ns_base in place of NS_FULL, it would work correctly on the Summon page? I didn't want to change it myself, in case it made a complete mess. --Gaebrial 06:40, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

No, it's not a problem with Autolink; Autolink should by default use Shivering as the namespace. Although ns_base doesn't look like it's being used by the Autolink template, it does actually alter the value of NS_FULL, as documented at Help:Magic Words#Namespace ("If the magic word is called without an argument, then the code checks to see whether the template variables ns_base or ns_id have been set "). The problem is in the Effects Summary template, which should tell Autolink that the school link needs to use the parent namespace rather than the default. I've made the necessary fix. --Nephele^Talk 11:25, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

Speed vs Prod

I read our deletion policy very carefully before marking those images for speedy deletion. The criterion for Images states: " Redundant images that have another copy that is of the same or better copy and of the same image file format." The images were all redundant since they had no links and another, better image had been uploaded. It also says "another copy that is the same or better copy ". In this case, the images I uploaded were all better copies. Since they are better, they obviously cannot be the same image. Unless your concept of 'better' is 'brighter' or 'better contrast', in which case either a fiximage tag would have been on the image or the image would have been re-uploaded with the existing filename. --SerCenKing ^Talk 14:10, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

My interpretation is that speedy deletion of images is OK if there are two copies of the exact same image -- whether two copies with the different names, or two copies uploaded at different resolutions, or two copies that use different formats. If the two images are not identical, then a judgement call is necessary to determine whether the two are truly redundant and also to determine which image is better. Which automatically means that a speedy deletion is not appropriate, because any time a judgement call is necessary, mistakes or different opinions are possible. --Nephele^Talk 17:18, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

It's also worth noting that images are one thing that we can't get back: once they're gone, they're gone. Thus it's almost always worth spending a little while longer on the decision. Articles can always be recovered. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:37, 4 June 2009 (EDT)

Redundance

Can you show me how to make my own page and make it good then ??, and so i can show my styles on my page??

SineBot?

On Wikipedia, they have something called SineBot that automatically signs posts. Before I suggest somewhere more prominent that we look into using a bot of that nature, I wanted to check with you first to see if there are any technical concerns that would prevent us from doing so. After all, there's no point suggesting it in a public forum if it simply can't be done. I know you're in the middle of the 1.14 update now, so this can wait if you need to spend more than 2 minutes looking into it or whatever. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 01:31, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Once the site is upgraded, I'd guess it's technically possible (without the upgrade, there could be API calls, hooks, or other requirements that are missing). However, one significant obstacle is that "the source code is not public at this point". If it's going to happen, you're going to have to write the code yourself from scratch, or convince someone else to do it. --Nephele^Talk 02:08, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, I noticed that, but they mentioned other variants, so I thought we might be able to get something that is public. I wouldn't even know where to look, personally. And as for writing it from scratch, well...first I'd need to know how to write "Hello World" in PHP. After that, I'm sure the rest will be easy! ;) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 04:38, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Thanks!

Just a quick thanks for fixing the name parameter. I learn something new every day! :) --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 04:34, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Noinclude

Hey. I'm not sure what you mean here. The template Oblivion World Summary works fine with its current noinclude tags. I can preview (new) pages that call the template without problems.

The idea of these documentation rewrites is to clean up the clutter (e.g. "{{{PageName}}}", in this case) left by the template on what would otherwise be just the documentation. --Timenn < talk > 14:16, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

I mean that when you are editing the template itself, the includeonly tags make it impossible to preview the changes you have just made to the template. The only view of the template you can see is the documentation example, but that example does not show your new (unsaved) changes and therefore is very misleading. Especially now that we actually have features to make it possible to meaningfully preview template edits, it seems counterproductive to completely disable previews and force editors to still go through the very error-prone and cumbersome process of saving your edit just to see if it worked. Although you could temporarily delete the includeonly tags while previewing the template, that process is also error-prone and cumbersome. Especially given the large-scale impact of saving template mistakes (adding hundreds or more affected articles to the job queue for each save), I think that reducing the potential for such mistakes should be a high priority.

On top of which, in general I like to be able to see something of the template itself when I pull up the template page -- not just the example given in the documentation. The template itself can provide important information that is not available from the /Doc page -- I see {{{PageName}}} not as clutter, but as useful information showing exactly where and how that parameter appears in the template. The two templates mentioned so far are not good examples, but that's mainly just because we haven't started wide-scale implementation of all the new template features. Nevertheless, I don't think we should configure the new documentation to only work if the template itself is disabled using includeonly tags; we should instead adapt the documentation so it expects that the template will be displayed. At least, that's my opinion. --Nephele^Talk 15:14, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

I can see what you mean, though I don't agree with all of it. It's probably better to throw this into the community (i.e. share the bone :)). --Timenn < talk > 17:42, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Sexuality Questioned

I guess that template's more of the temporary kind that gets used here & there as vandalism occurs and people take it off again later on, so I can see wanting to keep it even if it's not currently used by very many people. It makes me sad, though, that no vandals have ever accused me of being straight. I feel left out! <g> --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 15:52, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Helping in the Oblivion Places Redesign Project

Is there a place on uesp where i can find a list of locations to verify? i find it tedious to have to go to a place, search it on uesp, see if it needs verification, and if it doesn't, then i have to repeat. I'm glad to be working on this project, but i want to do more in less time.

Also as a side note, im not sure how you add a "this user is" box to my user profile, can you help me with this? Thanks a lot! NJDThanatos 20:26, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

See the category Oblivion Places Redesign Pages Needing Cleanup.

As for userboxes, see UESPWiki:Userboxes.--Nephele^Talk 23:32, 14 June 2009 (EDT)

Wow, thanks a lot for the help. This will let me get a lot more work done! NJDThanatos 00:11, 15 June 2009 (EDT)

clear=none

I'm just curious what the "clear=none" image tags are for that you've been adding recently. I tried looking it up in the MediaWiki help and couldn't find anything. Just asking in case it's something I should be looking at adding whenever I'm doing edits. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:20, 15 June 2009 (EDT)

It's a new thumbnail option that I've added to UESP, based on this discussion. At the moment, clear=none is basically not changing anything. However, it will allow us to change back to default behaviour for our thumbnail images without messing up those images that are currently relying on non-default settings. --Nephele^Talk 14:50, 15 June 2009 (EDT)

Ah, thanks...I thought this seemed vaguely familiar, but couldn't recall why/where from. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 15:02, 15 June 2009 (EDT)

It Seems You Can Help...

Nephele,

I have a problem and I have come to the conclusion that you may have my solution. And I'd like it. :D

Upon completing certain quests in TESIV:Oblivion GOTY, I've had annoying quest-related items stuck in my inventory. And I know that they're weight is 0, so it's really doesn't have a negative effect on my character, but they annoy me. I just want to remove them, but I have no idea how to.

I'm playing it on the Xbox 360. If you can help, that'd be great. Thanks.--Kitsune 23:36, 16 June 2009 (EDT)

As I mentioned on my talk page, I'm about 99% sure quest items can only be dropped if you use the console, which is only available for the PC version of the game. If anyone knows otherwise, they'll answer your question on the pages on which it has already been posted (such as Oblivion talk:Items or User talk:Eshe). –Eshe^talk 23:43, 16 June 2009 (EDT)

Image Deletion

Hey Neph, mind if I have a go at deleting a few images? The last update I remember was that we should give it a couple of days, so if you think it's okay I'd like to shorten the list a bit. –Eshe^talk 02:33, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

Yep, might as well go for it. --Nephele^Talk 02:44, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

Map Overlays

As you may have noticed from this conversation, I am interested in adding some more maps to various place pages, mainly in the SI namespace. Timenn and RobinHood have directed me to you for the 'overlays', so I was wondering if you had any already. Thanks! --SerCenKing ^Talk 14:39, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

See [[UESPWiki:Oblivion Places Redesign Project/Map Overlay#Available Overlays]] --Nephele^Talk 14:42, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

email confirmation

I have tried to send a confirmation several times but It doesn't seem to be getting through. Eshe^talk suggested I speak to you first. Got any ideas? Thanks. --Junebug1138 15:05, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

The standard suggestions are:

• Make sure you entered the email address correctly
• Make sure that your email account is not blocking or filtering the email (you might want to whitelist the site; site email is sent from uesp at sympatico.net )
• Don't use an AOL email address -- AOL is notoriously bad for blocking legitimate email without reason

--Nephele^Talk 17:40, 17 June 2009 (EDT)

Quote Template

I was wandering if it would be okay if I made a template based of the quote template that they use on Wikipedia. The current one we have now isn't that helpful and doesn't provide additional formatting. This would mainly be used on Lore pages or places that are alluded to by other sources (books, people, etc). --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 02:19, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Sorry, but I don't know what exactly you're asking, and I especially don't understand why you're asking me specifically. You are free to create new templates. As for the details, I don't know what current UESP template you're referring to, I don't know any details of the Cquote template, and I really don't have the time to wade through the template's code to figure out what it does. Any questions about preferred formatting on Lore pages should be a general community question; admins are not supposed to unilaterally make such decisions, nor do I have any particular experience with Lore pages or adding quotes to pages. --Nephele^Talk 11:14, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I just did not want it to be a waste of anyone's time if someone felt that it should be removed. I will go ahead and add a UESP variant. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 11:25, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

I kind of like the idea and would like to see how it turns out, but it should still be brought up with the community to see how people feel about it before it's put into use. –Eshe^talk 11:33, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Okay, I will go ahead and make a variant that fits with the UESPWiki. I will then post an example on the CP and ask for input. Thanks! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 11:43, 19 June 2009 (EDT)

Knights of the Nine Page

Removing the icon was entirely by accident... I actually don't know how it happened. But what do you mean the information is not visible? Adding the image within the box makes it less cluttered. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 20:57, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

I mean that the rest of the infobox information is shifted down so far that large parts of the infobox are no longer visible unless you scroll the page down. On my monitor/browser, the majority of the "Availability" section is pushed off the page, as is the entire "Requirements" section. The entire point of an infobox is to summarize the most important information about the mod, so I think that the actual information in the infobox is more important than an image and therefore should be visible when readers first open the page -- readers should not have to scroll down to see that information. The image is just eye-candy. Furthermore, as originally placed, the image largely occupies blank space created by the TOC, and therefore doesn't really force much information to be moved further down the page.

In general, we have not placed images in the first row of infoboxes (other than small icons) because placing images in that location displaces other, more useful information. If you want to incorporate the image into the infobox I think a better location for the image needs to be found. --Nephele^Talk 21:06, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

Also, FYI, if you want to fix the placement of images such as the Crusader Relics image, just add the parameter "|clear=right" to the image. --Nephele^Talk 21:07, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

I guess that is fair enough. I think it just looks sloppy with so many boxes (which are also different sizes). I can try to incorporate it in a more eye-pleasing manner. But thanks for the heads-up. --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 21:11, 20 June 2009 (EDT)

Sorry for bothering... but...

I have noticed that the Category:UESPWiki does not exist, causing some links to appear red at the bottom. I know that you are prepping a lot for the upgrade on Wednesday, and I was wanting to know if this was intentional or just a mishap. I was going to create it, but I wanted to ask you as a precaution. Also, if it was intentional, is Template:UESPWiki_Trail the new setup? Thanks Neph! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 13:49, 21 June 2009 (EDT)

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm trying to limit the changes I'm making to the trails and categories for now, just so that I can get through all of the formatting revisions. Therefore, I've simply changed that trail to use the existing category. Long term, I'd like to get rid of or consolidate most of these trail templates, but that process involves far more edits and revisions than I'm willing to tackle right now. Also, there are many categories that probably need to be revised. In other words, the UESPWiki_Trail template is not really the "new setup", nor is the UESP_Administration category necessarily the best category to use on that template; they're just intermediate steps. --Nephele^Talk 14:02, 21 June 2009 (EDT)

Thanks! I am still learning all the jargon and lingo for trails and whatnot, but I think I get it. :) --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 14:04, 21 June 2009 (EDT)

Patrol Logs

Hi Neph! I'm not sure if this is a known problem, but Mr. Oblivion pointed out today that revisions patrolled with the Special:Patrol tool don't show up in the patrol log. It's probably not really necessary to fix it, but I wanted to let you know :). –Eshe^talk 20:16, 22 June 2009 (EDT)

It appears that it is now working post-upgrade. You did a great job Nephele! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 16:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Oblivion Health Formula Question

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but on the Oblivion NPC pages, can you explain the whole thing about Health or Magicka being something like 40 + (5+1.4)x(PC+0), PC=4-42? I can understand the whole PC-NPC offset, but I'm thrown off when it comes to something like the afore-mentioned. (The formula was taken off Kylius Lonavo who's base Health as stated in the CS is 25.) Kestral 00:33, 23 June 2009 (EDT)

The best I can do right now is suggest checking Oblivion:NPCs#NPC Statistics and Oblivion talk:People#Summarizing NPC Health. Or else wait until I finally have a chance to post some tools that can be used to simply look up an NPC's statistics, thus making the equations obsolete. Except those tools keep getting delayed by minor things like wiki upgrades and forum upgrades ;) --Nephele^Talk 22:48, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Nephele. Kestral 00:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Cartographer

Hey there Nephele! Great work on the site (once again!). I was just diverting this to you. I am interested in helping this site as much as possible, and one way I saw was the cartographer's abilities. If there is anyway you could give me those abilities, I would be thrilled. It seems that it still needs a little bit of work, and I am here to volunteer. I have Photoshop, if that means anything in editing the layers (I'm still a little new to the jargon and whatnot). Thanks! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 04:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, cartographer rights don't have anything to do with editing the map images, but rather with editing the icons that appear on the map (location, name, wikilink, search tags, etc.) Furthermore, I've also been wondering whether to somehow move that information onto wiki pages where any editors can help maintain it -- in part to allow more people to help out, but also to take advantage of the wiki history and edit summaries to keep track of what's been done, by whom, and why. So if you'd be interested in refining the icon details, I think it might make more sense for me to explore some new ways of making it possible for everyone to edit that information. On the other hand, if you're interested in image-related processing -- for example, to create a water overlay for the maps ;) -- rpeh might be the better contact person. --Nephele^Talk 04:38, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I kind of new that but didn't, if that makes sense. I willing to help out wherever but just didn't know who has that area under their "jurisdiction" if you may. I will contact him. Thanks! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 04:42, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Protect tag issue

Hi Nephele. It seems like there's a bit of a problem with this Admin notice in that there's a Protect tag inside a Nowiki tag, but the Protect tag is taking effect anyway. Don't know if this is a 1.14 issue or not, but I sort of assume it would've been noticed by now if it wasn't. It's sort of important at the moment, since only Admins will be able to vote on the RfA for Timenn (and he won't even be able to accept! <LOL>). --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 02:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I changed the post (gasp!) so that it uses html instead of the nowiki and protect tags. That way it actually still reads like the original message, but without the effect of protecting the page. –Eshe^talk 03:24, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Even before Eshe tweaked the page, I'm pretty sure it was just an issue with the [edit] links on the page being removed -- anyone was still free to edit any part of the page. As proved, for example, by the fact that Rayquinn/Virconium was able to edit the page several times, even after the upgrade. As for the problem with disappearing [edit] links, there's an even larger problem with that feature: since the wiki caches the HTML generated for any page, the presence/absence of edit links has nothing to do with whether the current reader has edit rights, but rather is controlled by whether the reader who generated the cached content has edit rights. I've been aware of the edit link issues for a few weeks now, but I haven't done anything yet because I'm not sure how to truly fix the issues -- or whether it's even worth continuing to mess with the [edit] links. --Nephele^Talk 03:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like caching is the blight of MediaWiki from what you've said here and in the 1.14 discussion. :) One way or the other, the problem is fixed now and the Edit links show up on all sections on that page now. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Out of sheer stubbornness, I fixed the issues ;) And in the process, learned some new little nifty extension tricks. For the curious, nowiki tags should now work to disable protect tags and the [edit] links should now correctly appear/disappear, including correctly recognizing the current reader's permission.

As for caches, yes, they are the bane of my existence. But our wiki would need maybe 100 times as many servers without caching, so I know it's a necessary evil :) --Nephele^Talk 07:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Just as a follow-up, to make sure you haven't just disabled the protection system entirely, did you check if existing "real" <protect> tags can be rendered useless by an average user by putting <nowiki> tags around them? :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 18:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I tried to cover all the loopholes :) Putiing nowiki tags around a protect tag will be processed as a deletion of the tag. Before processing all the protection tags, any nowiki ... /nowiki sequence is replaced by a md5 hash of the entire string. The upshot of which is that the protect tags are hidden, but the changes in the string's content will still be detectable. I double-checked my logic with multiple tests on my test site.

Nevertheless, I also know that coding errors can happen, so if patrollers notice anything that might be a problem, let me know and I'll check it. From the beginning (even before I started tinkering with the extension) I've acknowledged that by itself ProtectSection might not be foolproof, however reliable patrolling can add any additional necessary checks. --Nephele^Talk 20:25, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Name Change?

I have been thinking about changing my username (to something less linear and less misleading; I don't necessarily want to be considered a go to authority for anything about Oblivion... hopefully that makes sense). However, I was wondering if anything would be messed up in terms of my patroller status and the like. I know contributions are kept, but I wasn't sure about this. Also, I think it would be wise to propose strict guidelines for renames, as it is not something that needs to happen on a weekly (or even monthly) basis. Thanks Neph! --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 07:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree we probably need to put together guidelines for renames -- not just for when renames are allowed, but also for how to go about requesting renames and how to provide some accountability.

I believe your patroller status would be unaffected (even if it is affected, it's an easy fix now that all the admins can do patroller promotions). However, there are still a fair number of things that aren't fixed -- in particular there's no attempt to fix any place where your name currently appears on wiki articles, or even more importantly, on wiki talk pages. All your old signatures are unchanged (although thanks to redirects, the signature links will still work). Also, your patroller nomination process will continue to list your original user name (probably a note would need to be added so that future editors understand what happened). Finally, I think there are warnings about what might happen if an editor with a lot of edits is renamed, although I'd have to check to be sure. These types of secondary issues are a major reason why TheRealLurlock never asked to be renamed to Lurlock. --Nephele^Talk 07:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I was initially concerned with that; however, with the recent renaming of Rayjquinn to Viroconium, his edits remained with his profile. That would be the major setback in my eyes, and it would not be worth it if I lost all of my edits. I am willing to fix the important links mentioning my name, as it seems that it is imperative to do so. I even looked on MediaWiki's Renameuser Page, and there seems to be no warning of lost edits either. However, it is up to you whether you think I should allowed a request. :) --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 07:31, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

In terms of number of edits, the only reason I know for concern is that the code has a couple of parameters. define( 'RENAMEUSER_CONTRIBLIMIT', 1000000 ); is "The maximum number of edits a user can have and still be allowed renaming, set it to 0 to disable the limit." -- but that's a pretty high value ;) The other parameter is define( 'RENAMEUSER_CONTRIBJOB', 5000 );, the upshot of which is that if you have more than 5000 contributions, it has to do the renaming in batches. Presumably it works well (there aren't any warnings, or any posted problems on the extension talk page), but it does mean that things work differently if you have alot of edits. Nevertheless, it's still too large to make any difference in your case. --Nephele^Talk 07:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

So presumably I will be fine? Okay, after I night of rest and thinking, I will contact you tomorrow! Thanks again! :) --Mr. Oblivion^(T-C) 07:50, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Maps and newloc

First, thanks for fixing that link on the MW Map talk page - serves me right for only testing it on the game article.

Second, I've been good (I think) in adding "newloc" to everything I've added to the maps since that discussion took place... but is it necessary these days? You mentioned above that you were thinking of making the maps wiki-editable (BTW - my sink still needs cleaning), so is it worth doing or is the clearing out of the old newlocs just wasting your time? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 21:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe I cleared out the really obsolete newloc tags maybe a month ago, so I don't think there are too many left -- correct me if I'm wrong :) However, longterm I think a more wiki-based solution would be far better for everyone. Basically a set of wiki pages (UESPWiki:Morrowind_Map_Design/Main_Data, UESPWiki:Morrowind_Map_Design/Bloodmoon_Data, ?) containing tables with lists of all the map locations, and a system whereby edits to those pages are automatically loaded into the map database. Technically, adding some code to the UespMap extension to make this possible wouldn't be too difficult, but I haven't done much other than think about it so far. --Nephele^Talk 22:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

ImageMagick

Did you/Daveh install this during the upgrade? It doesn't show on Special:Version but the quality of the image thumbs has gone through the roof, and I wondered if it was down to an extra extension. It looks like there's a bit of an unsharp-mask going on after the resize, and it makes a huge difference. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It was one of the changes associated with the upgrade; it's a configuration setting (plus extra software install on the server) rather than an extension which is why Special:Version doesn't show it. Glad to hear it makes a difference just with regular thumbnails, too. MediaWiki does mention that ImageMagick provides better quality, but the real reason I asked Daveh to install it is because it adds some extra features (e.g., transparent thumbnails, animated thumbnails, SVG images) and it's required by one or two new extensions. If it makes such a noticeable difference, it might be worth forcing all of the thumbnails to refresh... in fact, I just remembered an easy way to do just that, so I'll probably go ahead and do it. --Nephele^Talk 16:03, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I knew about its ability to resize transparent PNGs and about SVGs, but I had NO idea that it did such a good job of a simple resize. It's a very welcome surprise! At first I thought I was imagining it, but once every single image looked better I assumed something must have happened. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

In case you want to actually see a side-by-side comparison, see for example old vs new. I doubt I would have figured out the improvement from memory alone, but side-by-side, the difference is pretty noticeable. All of the pre-move images are still on the site (for now, at least), so if you take the time to figure out the URL for an old thumbnail, you should be able to see the GD version of any image (GD being the built-in image library that was previously used). --Nephele^Talk

I'd thought I was imagining it until I saw this image. I knew the previous version hadn't looked that good, and indeed it didn't.

This reminds me of a suggestion I made when we did the MW map: should I run an unsharp mask over the zoom17 tiles? I'll knock up a few examples when I have a moment, because I think it would make a difference. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Forum Suggestions

I'm wondering if you can take a look at this: http://forum.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?t=13543
Also, note that my tone is not meant to be bossy or naggy, if it comes out that way. Kestral 00:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wanted pages page

The Wanted pages page is currently showing "Invalid title in result set;" as the most wanted page on the site. Is this due to an error on one or more pages, or is it due to a bug in the underlying code? --Gaebrial 07:27, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm guessing that some our templates are ending up producing links such as [[]]. That message is produced when the link can't be converted into a valid title, and following the semi-colon it's supposed to print out a "safe" version of the title, but nothing is appearing because the title is empty. Checking the database confirms that 259 pages currently contain links to ''. A couple examples of those pages are User:Arch-Mage14, Polle_Gold_Mine, and Oblivion:Traveling People. --Nephele^Talk 17:11, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

How do you go about finding those links to ""? I've checked the Traveling People page, and the only template it contains is {{huh}}.

It's not something funny going on with the #switch function, is it? All three of the pages you mention link to templates that contain #switch statements which either resolve to blank or don't find a match. --Gaebrial 06:55, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I took multiple uses of the {{SI}} template off that page yesterday, which might help. Could we get a full list of affected pages so we can see if there's a common factor? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 07:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Here's the full list (now at 276 entries):

+----------------+----------------------------------------+
| page_namespace | page_title                             |
+----------------+----------------------------------------+
|            104 | Hints                                  | 
|            130 | Dark_Brotherhood                       | 
|            130 | Psijic_Order                           | 
|            130 | First_Era                              | 
|            130 | Factions_H                             | 
|            130 | Dictionary_M                           | 
|            110 | Hints                                  | 
|              3 | Daveh                                  | 
|            110 | Places                                 | 
|            110 | Ald'ruhn                               | 
|            110 | Balmora                                | 
|            110 | Ebonheart                              | 
|            110 | Caldera                                | 
|            110 | Seyda_Neen                             | 
|            104 | Monsters                               | 
|            104 | Witch_Covens                           | 
|            118 | Playing_DOS_Installments_under_DOSBox  | 
|            110 | Gnisis                                 | 
|            110 | Vivec_(city)                           | 
|            110 | Sadrith_Mora                           | 
|            104 | Old_Unofficial_FAQ/General_Info        | 
|            110 | Tel_Fyr                                | 
|            110 | Tel_Mora                               | 
|            110 | Tel_Branora                            | 
|            110 | Tel_Vos                                | 
|            130 | Death_Blow_of_Abernanit                | 
|              4 | Administrator_Noticeboard              | 
|            110 | Holamayan                              | 
|            110 | Vivec_Arena                            | 
|            110 | Vivec_Hlaalu                           | 
|            104 | Elysana's_Robe                         | 
|            104 | Lysandus'_Revenge                      | 
|            104 | Blackmailing_Prince_Helseth            | 
|            104 | Elysana's_Betrayal                     | 
|            110 | Tureynulal                             | 
|            116 | Dagon_Shrine                           | 
|            116 | Blood_of_the_Daedra                    | 
|            130 | Khajiit                                | 
|            116 | Attributes                             | 
|            116 | Character_Creation                     | 
|            116 | Crime                                  | 
|            130 | Daedra                                 | 
|            116 | FAQs                                   | 
|            116 | Creatures                              | 
|            116 | Classes                                | 
|            116 | Cheydinhal_Recommendation              | 
|            116 | Skingrad_Recommendation                | 
|            116 | Houses                                 | 
|            130 | Black_Marsh                            | 
|            130 | Elsweyr                                | 
|            130 | High_Rock                              | 
|            130 | Hammerfell                             | 
|            130 | Morrowind                              | 
|            130 | Skyrim                                 | 
|            130 | Valenwood                              | 
|            116 | Traps                                  | 
|            116 | Acrobatics                             | 
|            116 | Glitches                               | 
|            116 | Horses                                 | 
|            116 | Wayshrines                             | 
|            116 | Easter_Eggs                            | 
|            116 | Caught_in_the_Hunt                     | 
|            116 | Enchanting                             | 
|            116 | Molag_Bal                              | 
|            116 | Namira                                 | 
|            116 | An_Unexpected_Voyage                   | 
|            116 | Spell_Effects                          | 
|            130 | Dwemer                                 | 
|            116 | Vampire_Cure                           | 
|            116 | Clavicus_Vile                          | 
|            116 | Sanguine                               | 
|            116 | Spells                                 | 
|            130 | Summerset_Isle                         | 
|            116 | Leveling                               | 
|            116 | Nature's_Fury                          | 
|            116 | Vanua                                  | 
|            130 | Totambu                                | 
|            130 | Red_Mountain                           | 
|            116 | Fort_Bulwark                           | 
|              4 | IRC                                    | 
|            116 | The_Wayward_Knight                     | 
|            116 | Gaspar_Stegine                         | 
|            116 | Borissean                              | 
|            116 | Raminus_Polus                          | 
|            116 | Agata                                  | 
|            116 | Anga                                   | 
|            116 | Fyrelight_Cave                         | 
|            116 | Greenmead_Cave                         | 
|            116 | Unique_Items                           | 
|            116 | Clothing                               | 
|            130 | Daedric_Princes                        | 
|            116 | Echo_Mine                              | 
|            116 | Smuggler's_Cave                        | 
|            116 | Bothiel                                | 
|            106 | Bestiary                               | 
|              4 | Task_List                              | 
|            116 | Grayrock_Cave                          | 
|            130 | Vivec_(god)                            | 
|            130 | Boethiah                               | 
|            116 | Potions                                | 
|            108 | Catacomb_Escape                        | 
|            108 | Dwarven_Mines                          | 
|            116 | Blankenmarch                           | 
|            116 | Patch                                  | 
|            108 | Goblin_Caves                           | 
|            130 | The_Legendary_Sancre_Tor               | 
|            116 | Beneath_the_Bloodworks                 | 
|            116 | Sinderion                              | 
|            116 | Kirsten                                | 
|            116 | Deepscorn_Hollow_(place)               | 
|            116 | Daedra                                 | 
|            116 | Dremora                                | 
|            116 | Dungeons                               | 
|            116 | Increasing_Skills                      | 
|            116 | Amulet_of_Kings                        | 
|            116 | Soul_Trap                              | 
|            116 | Bound_Armor                            | 
|            116 | Ayleid_Crown_of_Lindai                 | 
|              4 | Upgrade_History                        | 
|            116 | Things_to_Do_When_You're_Bored         | 
|            110 | Vivec_St._Olms                         | 
|              5 | Oblivion_Map_Design                    | 
|            110 | Ald'ruhn_Homes                         | 
|            116 | Umbra_(person)                         | 
|            116 | Spell_Tomes                            | 
|            116 | Sigil_Stone                            | 
|            116 | Useful_Potions                         | 
|            116 | Pale_Pass_Fort                         | 
|            110 | Potions                                | 
|            130 | Daedric_Alphabet                       | 
|            116 | Bandit                                 | 
|            130 | The_36_Lessons_of_Vivec                | 
|            116 | The_Flesh_Spire                        | 
|            116 | The_Dreaded_Refuge                     | 
|            116 | The_Claw_Monolith                      | 
|            116 | The_Lust_Keep                          | 
|            116 | The_Gore_Steeple                       | 
|            116 | Random_Oblivion_World_2                | 
|            116 | Random_Oblivion_World_4                | 
|            116 | Belisarius_Arius                       | 
|            104 | Business_with_Orcs                     | 
|              5 | Morrowind_Redesign_Project             | 
|            116 | Knights_of_the_Nine                    | 
|            130 | Mannimarco                             | 
|            130 | Battle_of_Red_Mountain                 | 
|            117 | The_Bloodworm_Helm                     | 
|            116 | Glitches/Proposed                      | 
|            116 | Umaril_the_Unfeathered_(quest)         | 
|            116 | Garlas_Malatar                         | 
|            116 | Kynareth's_Grotto                      | 
|            117 | Open                                   | 
|            130 | Aldmeris                               | 
|            104 | Missing_Person_Case                    | 
|            110 | Siege_at_Firemoth                      | 
|            116 | Roleplaying                            | 
|            116 | The_Palace_Sewers                      | 
|            116 | The_Old_Way                            | 
|            110 | Lorbumol_gro-Aglakh                    | 
|            116 | Eris_Senim                             | 
|            126 | Creatures                              | 
|            126 | Armor                                  | 
|            126 | FAQs                                   | 
|            126 | Ebrocca                                | 
|            126 | Milchar                                | 
|            126 | Miscellaneous_Items                    | 
|            126 | Xedilian                               | 
|            126 | Knotty_Bramble                         | 
|            116 | Notes                                  | 
|            126 | The_Museum_of_Oddities                 | 
|            126 | Corpserot_Passage                      | 
|            126 | Execution_Point                        | 
|            126 | Althel's_Ghost                         | 
|            110 | Abandoned_Houses                       | 
|              2 | Timenn/Sandbox/Rewrite/1               | 
|            114 | Belladonna_Berries                     | 
|            116 | Factions_D                             | 
|            117 | Necromancer's_Amulet                   | 
|            104 | Standard_Protection                    | 
|            126 | Greenmote_Silo                         | 
|            110 | Elms_Llervu                            | 
|            110 | Nalasa_Sarothren                       | 
|            126 | Merchants                              | 
|            126 | Blind_Watcher's_Eye                    | 
|            126 | Amber                                  | 
|            110 | Sorosi_Radobar                         | 
|            116 | Agnar's_Journal                        | 
|            110 | Death_Blow_of_Abernanit                | 
|            116 | Death_Blow_of_Abernanit                | 
|            116 | The_Legendary_Sancre_Tor               | 
|            110 | The_36_Lessons_of_Vivec                | 
|            126 | Factions_S                             | 
|            116 | Shagrol_gro-Uzug                       | 
|            116 | Battlehorn_Castle_Maps                 | 
|            116 | Battlehorn_Castle_Creatures            | 
|            116 | Battlehorn_Castle_Items                | 
|            116 | Controls                               | 
|            110 | Ralen_Tilvur                           | 
|            130 | Marukh                                 | 
|            104 | Open_a_Chest                           | 
|            104 | Research_Notes                         | 
|            110 | Clothing_Artifacts                     | 
|            116 | The_Sunken_One_(creature)              | 
|            130 | Velothi_Mountains                      | 
|            126 | Bregor_the_Cremator                    | 
|            117 | Interesting_Places                     | 
|            116 | Deepscorn_Hollow_(quest)               | 
|            116 | Deepscorn_Hollow_Items                 | 
|              5 | Oblivion_NPC_Redesign_Project          | 
|              2 | Benould/Porsche                        | 
|            110 | Manor_District                         | 
|            104 | The_Bodyguard                          | 
|            104 | The_Postman                            | 
|            104 | An_Unexpected_Journey                  | 
|            110 | Fort_Firemoth                          | 
|            110 | Smuggling                              | 
|            104 | The_Assassin                           | 
|            104 | The_Duel                               | 
|            104 | The_Cure                               | 
|            104 | The_Delivery_Boy                       | 
|            104 | The_Courier                            | 
|            104 | The_Escort                             | 
|            104 | The_Princess                           | 
|            104 | The_Traitor                            | 
|            104 | Retribution                            | 
|            104 | Defamation                             | 
|            104 | The_Riddle                             | 
|              3 | Temple-Zero                            | 
|            130 | Dragon_Break                           | 
|            130 | Heart_of_Lorkhan                       | 
|            130 | Direnni                                | 
|            116 | Cap'n_Dugal                            | 
|            116 | Vampire                                | 
|            104 | The_Lost_Child                         | 
|            104 | The_Libel                              | 
|            104 | Public_Relation                        | 
|            104 | The_Imprisoned_Witch                   | 
|            104 | Two_Cowards                            | 
|            117 | The_Ultimate_Heist/Archive_1           | 
|            104 | An_Object_Lesson                       | 
|            104 | The_Matchmaker                         | 
|            104 | The_Abducted_Child                     | 
|            110 | Elven_Nations_Cornerclub               | 
|            104 | The_Recompense                         | 
|            128 | Shadowgate                             | 
|            104 | The_Temple_of_the_Orcs                 | 
|            104 | The_Noble's_Jewelry                    | 
|            104 | Antique_Ivory                          | 
|            110 | Library_of_Vivec                       | 
|            110 | Hall_of_Justice_Secret_Library         | 
|            110 | Telvanni_Tower                         | 
|            104 | The_Procurer                           | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Llothanis              | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Gah_Sadrith            | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Bal_Oyra               | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Firewatch              | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Port_Telvannis         | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Ranyon-ruhn            | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Sadas_Plantation       | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Sarvanni_Molecrab_Farm | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tel_Ouada              | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Adurin-Ouaka           | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Marog                  | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Alt_Bosara             | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Hla_Bulor              | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tel_Mothrivra          | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tel_Muthada            | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Windmoth_Legion_Fort   | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tel_Oren               | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Firewatch_Library      | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Telvanni_Library       | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tel_Aranyon            | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Tower_of_Tel_Mothrivra | 
|            122 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Verulas_Pass           | 
|            116 | Traveling_People                       | 
|            124 | Tamriel_Rebuilt/Polle_Gold_Mine        | 
|              2 | Arch-Mage14                            | 
+----------------+----------------------------------------+

You'll have to convert the page_namespace on your own (the database itself knows nothing about the namespace names; that part is all done by code). For example, use the NS magic word: {{NS:116}} = Oblivion. I suspect I might have to somehow debug this from the php side, especially given examples such as Traveling_People that don't seem to contain anything suspicious (it doesn't even contain any UespCustomCode or MetaTemplate bits -- the only other extension that I noticed is some ref tags, but that's not being used on most of the other pages). However, even on the php side, it's likely to be a bit of work figuring out exactly where the code thinks these empty links are appearing, so if you can figure out anything on the wiki side, that would be great! --Nephele^Talk 18:13, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The only common factor I can see is in-page links (ie, linking to a header on the same page rather than another one). I've removed the refs from OB:Traveling People and the one internal link from SK:Shadowgate. Please could you check again, Nephele? I know that not everything with internal links is being listed, but that could be because things are being added gradually rather than all at once. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 19:22, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yep, that seems to have done the trick; both of those pages have disappeared from the table (although a few others have appeared in the meantime, so the count's at 277). In which case, the problem is a coding issue. I'll scan Mediawiki to see whether it's a reported bug, and in particular whether it's been patched yet; if not, it'll take a bit longer for me to work up my own patch. --Nephele^Talk 20:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh how I love debugging... especially when I have to ask somebody else to check the results :) Okay, final check. I've re-added the links. Have they gone back into the list? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 20:34, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, they've reappeared (and the count is up to 279). So the debugging could have been worse -- it could have been something random ;) Thanks for tracking down the cause; it should make it much easier to find a fix. --Nephele^Talk 21:09, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Yay, fixed! Thanks to bug report 17713 and its patch. I did a null edit on our two test pages, and they disappeared from the list. To fix the rest, either someone can do the same thing on all 277 pages, or else I could simply delete the empty entries from the database table -- but I'd want to spend some time double checking whether other database tables are also affected before messing about at the SQL level. --Nephele^Talk 21:35, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Go team debug! I'll null-edit that lot tomorrow, assuming I have to wait as long as I did today for my code to compile / SQL jobs to run, etc, etc :/ –rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 21:57, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you for tracking that one down, and fixing it. --Gaebrial 07:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)