NSwiki:Village pump/Archives

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Contents

2004

Category Creation

Calendar Category?

Maybe we can have a category for pages relating to special Calendar pages. Anyone else think this is a good idea, or am I just obsessing over creating categories? --Athamasha 18:53, 5 Dec 2004 (GMT)

You're obsessing.  :) I think there may be one more article in the whole wiki that mentions a national calendar. Since we're trying to keep Categories limited to national factbooks and/or widely shared concepts, I don't see the need at this point. Maybe this discussion with bring dozens more out of the woodwork ... but I somehow doubt it. → Fris Θtalk 19:08, 5 Dec 2004 (GMT)
Okay. This is why I ask instead of just going ahead... --Athamasha 22:52, 5 Dec 2004 (GMT)

WTF Category?

While categorizing some of our articles I occasionally stumble across a WFT is this all about? article. I usually drop a note to the author on their Talk page, but with anonymous editors that doesn't always work. The current batch includes Strange gas and Special material. Do we want a special category for those oddball articles that aren't really national or regional, except that in some crazy way maybe they are? → Fris Θtalk 20:57, 6 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Sounds good to me. Maybe then people can do research on them and try and figure out what they are. I would recommend calling it the "Mystery Pages" category or something rather than "WTF." --Athamasha 21:37, 7 Dec 2004 (GMT)
Further possible names: obscurities; inscrutabilities; perplexities Rechze • (talk)
On further reflection, this one isn't really needed. Special:Uncategorizedpages is adequate to the task. → Fris Θtalk 14:31, 23 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Documents Category

Any documents that are situated on the wiki, do not seem to fit under any other category. I have seem at least six 'consitutions' that would fit uner this category, and therefore propose its creation. Rechze • (talk) 03:09, 17 Dec 2004 (GMT)

I'm fine with them just being left in national factbooks, but I wouldn't argue strongly against the concept. Documents might be too much of a catch-all name, as we already have a Category:Treaties. → Fris Θtalk 14:31, 23 Dec 2004 (GMT)
On further thought, considering that documents are fixed items, ie. not to be changed, any actual texts of documents such as entire constitutions should not be on the wiki, but just linked, considering their nature. Rechze • (talk) 00:36, 30 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Population Updates... Well, not needed

Topic moved to Community decisions

Can't Upload Graphics

I can't seem to be able to upload any files. I keep trying to upload the electoral symbol of the Communist Party of Constantinopolis, and I get the error: Could not copy file "/tmp/phpokoP44" to "/home/sc434/ns/wiki/images/c/c4/Communist_Party_of_Constantinopolis.gif". -- Constantinopolis 14:56, 15 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Uploads ought to work - I'll look into it when I get home. Possibly a naming problem? --Goobergunch|? 17:57, 15 Oct 2004 (GMT)
Okay, it's a PHP safe mode problem, which I can do very little about. I'd have to get Servage to fix it, which might not be that easy. --Goobergunch|? 19:57, 18 Oct 2004 (GMT)

One is able to place a picture -which is hosted from another web site- on an article, simply by putting it's address, like so (go to edit to see how I have done this if you do not know):

Battleship_Yamato_sinking.jpg

I belive this to be sufficient until the upload dilemma is resolved. Rechze 12:39, 31 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Depending upon your PHP configuration, version and whether it's loaded as a CGI program/Apache module, you may be able to disable local safe mode by adding "php_value safe_mode Off" to your .htaccess file. I was unable to get it to work on my own webserver, but it is said to work elsewhere. --The Mindset 12:54, 26 Nov 2004 (GMT)
Okay, I double checked my sources and it turns out this was a bug in an old version of PHP, so probably won't be able to help you. --The Mindset 20:06, 27 Nov 2004 (GMT)

---

Category Creation

The following Primary Categories are now available on the Main Page:

Nations | Regions | Alliances | Characters | Wars | History | Factbooks | UN | NationStates

Historic Nations | Corporations | Languages | Religions | Hardware | Species | Roleplay | Sports Roleplay | Gameplay | NSwiki

In addition to that, any nation that has multiple nation-specific pages should have a Factbook (Category:Factbooks) so we don't have a bunch of unknown, uncategorized pages floating around the wiki. If most of your NS or NSwiki activity is based around a region (BookCrossing, Projekt Myra) or an alliance (CACE, GDODAD), make that your factbook instead.

There are also another half dozen minor categories available in Category:Roleplaying, some of which may be superfluous or convertable to something more general (Currency → Economics ?). I'm thinking we shouldn't be adding any more primary categories (or for that matter, secondary) without discussing them here first. I'd also like see it become official NSwiki policy.

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? → Fris Θtalk 18:01, 29 Oct 2004 (GMT)

I'd like to see a voluntary limitation on the use of Categories. The way I see it, almost anything related to your nation/region/alliance is fair game for a factbook, but the broader categories don't enjoy the same freedom. For instance, if you have a history of Wars outside of NS roleplay, they can go in your factbook, but not in Category:Wars. Even though you roleplayed every bit of your history, none of it should be added to Category:Roleplaying. Those ... ummm ... Master Topics should be reserved for things that have a general relationship to the topic, and appeal to a wide variety of players and readers. If two nations rp a war on IRC or via offsite forums, that particular war could justifiably be placed in both player's factbooks, but shouldn't be added to Wars. Other categories like Sports roleplaying, might have a smaller but intense population ... but I still don't want to see every nation that participates in Sport RP added to the category.
The thing about categories is that we already have nearly two hundred of them, and the Factbooks are intermingled with the General Interest categories. If we start creating new Cats for every subdivision possible in this quasi-fictional world, no one will ever be able to keep up with them. As the sysop self-appointed to categorizing all the lost articles, I appeal to you - please limit your categories, and don't add unnecessary categories to your articles. Thanks. → Fris Θtalk
What about Category:History? If I create an article about an historical event, should I put Category:History down the bottom as well as Category:Pantocratoria? --Pantocratoria 10:49, 6 Dec 2004 (GMT)
Virtually everything in the wiki is a historical document of some sort. I'd leave Category:History alone except for articles that collect all the historical information in one page ... "A Short History of Pantocratoria", that sort of thing. Most people put that on their main nation page, but for some it's an elaborate series. I'd say, "one page => Category:History" , "Several pages => National factbook". I wouldn't use both. → Fris Θtalk 21:01, 6 Dec 2004 (GMT)

2005

Character Subcategories?

Should Category:Characters be subdivided? It seems to be getting distressingly large. I'd suggest adding subcategories for specific types of characters. (Gods, AIs, immortals, nonhumans of particular species, et cetera.) --Khrrck 03:51, 4 Jan 2005 (GMT)

I don't know about Gods and immortals, but I could potentially see separating out the historic (non-playing characters) from the actively roleplayed characters. The chief problem is that we have tied Category:Characters to the standard character template, Infobox_Character. If we start recategorizing, we're going to have to create a bunch of new templates and/or alter a ton of individual pages.
I don't see as much of a problem from a "distressingly large" category as Khrrck seems to. Greater subcategorization might make sense in Wikipedia where people are likely to seek out related topics, but here I think readers are more prone to follow links within articles than to seek enlightenment by reading an entire category. It's confusing enough for new users as it is - adding new infoboxes or requiring every new contributor to understand a complicated categorization strategy strikes me as a lot more work for relatively little benefit. → Fris Θtalk 04:48, 4 Jan 2005 (GMT)
I think that Category:Sports characters is an example of what a good Category:Characters sub-category is about. Sports characters are very, very rarely RPd outside of Sporting threads, and they are easily lost within the all-encompassing uber-Cat of Characters. There are also enough of them to warrant a sub-category (58 at the last count), are there actually enough articles on individual Gods, AIs and such to make such a sub-cat worthwhile? - Starblaydia 12:43, 3 Jun 2005 (GMT)
I don't see why we couldn't have a few general sub-categories along those lines. Say one for religious characters, one for military characters, politicians, celebrities etc etc GreatGodOm 22:09, 2 Jul 2005 (GMT)

NGO Category

We have Category:Corporations for our for-profit organizations, Category:Agencies for our intra-governmental organizations, but we don't really have anything for non-government, non-profit groups like Trade Unions and such. While there isn't much need for one at the moment, it was suggested that a new category might be helpful towards inspiring the creation of those sorts of articles. → Fris Θtalk 14:31, 23 Dec 2004 (GMT)


UN commitees subcategory?

Why not put a UN commitees [1] subcategory? I had edited several of them, then they could be categorizated in a sub-category, to be more readable in the UN one. Rufus T. Firefly 17:02, 16 Apr 2005 (GMT).

Corporation sector sub-category?

It is a good idea to divide corporations with original sector from the game? (IT, automobile manif, basket weaving...) Because now it is very difficult to find which are on a sector instead another... Rufus T. Firefly 17:02, 16 Apr 2005 (GMT)

While it might be useful to sub-divide the Corporations category, using the in-game sectors might not be a good idea—my nation has many major corporations that don’t fit into any of those categories (military organizations, which certainly don’t fit, news media, which might be considered Information Technology, package delivery and postal services, et cetera). Commerce Heights 20:37, 23 Apr 2005 (GMT)

Political subcategory for parties?

We have 58 parties, but I think that a division in different ideal subcategory could be useful, also in order to create international organization (like the Comintern and similar). What do you think about it? Rufus T. Firefly 07:50, 31 May 2005 (GMT)

Something like a Comintern would make a good subcategory, but only if it already exists on or around NS. Creating a subcategory with the intention of having political parties mentioned on the wiki join it is a little bit of cart-before-the-horse engineering, I think. - Starblaydia 12:03, 31 May 2005 (GMT)

UN Delegate Subcategory/List

Perhaps UN Delegates should go in a category for easy reference by proposal proposers? Or is this already somewhere? It seems like the in-game one is a bit hard to use. → Ceo\squawk 05:37, December 12, 2005 (GMT)

Mmm...I can't see it really helping. The game one is sorted by region; this would be sorted by name. Other than that, much difference? Plus, the game one is automatically updated; this would get out of date pretty soon. Finally, fairly few delegates have pages on here, out of the 2,000 that exist. As such, it wouldn't be that useful anyway. I'd say: probably not. I'd be interested to hear other community opinions, though. Gruen2alk 06:55, 12 December 2005 (GMT)
I've tried to keep lists of friendly UN Delegates on the IDU off-site forums, but some regions change their delegates a few times a year. The idea is good, but I don't see an easy way to keep things up to date. That said, it couldn't hurt to have an article listing current and past UN Delegates that have had NSWiki pages, if you feel people might be interested in that sort of thing (and they might). But I'd limit such a page to only UN Delegates that have Wiki entries. Mikitivity 20:23, 12 December 2005 (GMT)
Yes, I was just thinking something along the lines of a category:UN Delegates, which could be just stuck onto the end of a page. Might not be feasible, though. → Ceo\squawk 22:24, December 12, 2005 (GMT)

Altering the Infobox for nations

Is there any way one can alter the Infobox (I hope I'm remembering the term correctly) that one uses to make one's nation's page? Specifically, any way to remove the links to the various so-called calculators? Trokenyan 01:18, 6 Jun 2005 (GMT)

I figured out how to add a blocker to this some time ago, but it was disabled again by changes to the MediaWiki software (Version 1.4 beta, as I recall). See NSwiki talk:Info boxes for details of how it used to work. If the authors figure out the fix to restore nested templates, I will gladly reinstate the 'blocker'. → Fris Θtalk 00:09, 7 Jun 2005 (GMT)
I'm tempted to find the old version of the appropriate bit of code and reinstate it; I've got all of the old copies of MediaWiki saved on my computer. Unfortunately, it's on the other computer (the one that's not a laptop and that I won't turn on during a thunderstorm) and I won't be on much until Thursday due to a trip to Avalon, New Jersey. --Goobergunch|? 00:34, 7 Jun 2005 (GMT)
I'd appreciate restoring this option. It's either that, or not use the template at all, as I refuse to have "advertisements" for the self-so-called calculators on my page. Trokenyan 23:03, 8 Jun 2005 (GMT)
Just make yourself a custom infobox and you can put whatever you like in it. For instance see the box on my nation article. . - Starblaydia 11:00, 9 Jun 2005 (GMT)
You could always place the code for the current generic infobox directly into the article, and remove the links to the economic calculators for your specific instance (generic infobox template found here:Template:Infobox_Nation). Rechze • (talk) 11:55, 9 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Starblaydia -- the table at the top of your article is simply HTML. Can you, or anyone else, tell me how much HTML can be used in a page? I'm much more used to that. Rechze -- I had to stare at that page, and swear, and fiddle around with it, before I found the "view source" tab. I had no idea one could find the actual markup code for the various info boxes. At least now I'll be able to adjust the info box. Now if someone could point me to a tutorial on the actual markup code used in wikis, I'd be extremely grateful. And no, I don't mean stuff like Page_editing, I mean an explanation of stuff like GenericInfoBox. If I could learn wiki markup code, I wouldn't have to keep complaining like this. ;) Trokenyan 06:41, 12 Jun 2005 (GMT)

I've developed a possible fix. Replace "Infobox Nation" with "Infobox Nation sans" and replace "Infobox Region" with "Infobox Region sans" in the applicable part of the template. The addition of the word "sans" should repress the calculator links. --Goobergunch|? 17:57, 19 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Anybody have any problem with me doing a facelift on the infoboxes? Yes, I'm the responsible one for jazzing up the FAC and Featured templates. ;) --Pacitalkia 04:27, 15 November 2005 (GMT)

Corporation box

I think that put in the box of corporation (like in the character one) the space for the logo could be cool. As you can see in all of the Freedonian corporations, now the logo is on the left of the page but it looks not so nice. Rufus T. Firefly 20:07, 11 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Provinces/Cities

Why not put a field for the coat of Arms? I'm bored to have a frame in the left of the page. Rufus T. Firefly 10:44, 16 August 2005 (GMT)

I do not know about coat-of -arms, but I would like to see flag sections in the city and province infoboxes. Also, I say flag, not coat-of-arms, because not many provinces/cities odentify themselves with a coat-of-arms, but everythiing has a flag these days. Swilatia 17:41, 26 December 2005 (GMT)

I don't think it's feasible to change the main infobox, as it's in use in so many places. However, a generic "image" field might be a good compromise, with a "caption" to say what it is, whether a flag, a coat of arms, a seal, a photograph, whatever. → Ceo \ squawk 18:04, 26 December 2005 (GMT)

A generic image field that could be used for either a flag or coat of arms would be cool. Would it be possible to include text that suggested that the field was for a city logo, and not a city map? Mikitivity 22:46, 27 December 2005 (GMT)

I added a flag field, but of course you can also use it for a a coat of arms, a seal, a photograph, whatever. I hae yet to do this to the province infobox. Swilatia 23:22, 26 December 2005 (GMT)

I don't think that was a good idea. The problem is that now, all of the pages on the wiki using the city infobox are disrupted by the addition of another variable.→ Ceo \ squawk 23:23, 27 December 2005 (GMT)
That was a bad idea, Swilatia. Infoboxes are generic templates. Not everyone has the time or inclination to make badges and flags. I will revert your edit, so that most people's pages aren't screwed up, and I'll make you a new box into which you can put an image. Please be careful when editing widely used Infoboxes: you can always take their code and use them on one page, when radical alterations might not be suitable. Thanks. Gruen2alk 18:17, 28 December 2005 (GMT)
I understand this. However, this is not entirely my idea. Maybe an advanced version of the city infobox could be crated, like how there is an advanced nation infobox. This is just my two-cents worth of a suggestion though. Swilatia 00:06, 29 December 2005 (GMT)

A new template has been created. Swilatia 00:57, 7 January 2006 (GMT)

Table of contents?

I would like to see an organized table of contents which arranges the content material in each primary category in a logical manner, similar to a site map. For example, if I click on the gameplay category, I wish to see an organized tree of articles that would expound on the topics discussed in the NationStates FAQ. 64.50.192.206 18:44, 9 November 2005 (GMT)

If I had either the time, the inclination, or the ability to write that major a modification of the MediaWiki code, I'd be applying for a job as a professional PHP programmer and as a MediaWiki developer. Which I'm not. --Goobergunch|? 03:21, 10 November 2005 (GMT)

FACs

There's a few featured article candidates that seem to have achieved long-term consensus to be featured, and the current one's been up for a while, so is it time to change them? ~ Ceorant (or rave) 02:03, November 19, 2005 (GMT)

Usually we leave them up for about 45-60 days each. If it's been up there for longer than at least 45, then whatever article you think should go up next can replace the current one (my language article ;)) --Pacitalkia 03:58, 19 November 2005 (GMT)

Sorry to be an annoyance or anything, but shouldn't the FAC page that went up after Pacitalian be something other than Pacitalia? Kajal 21:44, 24 March 2006 (GMT)

No annoyance at all, in fact, I think we're about to change the Featured article to something new either tomorrow or in the next 48 hours. (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 22:15, 24 March 2006 (GMT)

Blank Articles/Placeholders

According to NSwiki:Deletion policy, gibberish articles are speedy deletion candidates. However, do blank pages or a blank placeholders belong in NSwiki? → Ceo|squawk 18:48, November 30, 2005 (GMT)

If a user blanks an article that has content on it, I leave a blanking tag on their talk page. If the article is not updated, or if the article never contained content, there is precedent for adding an inclusion tag. Gruen2alk 19:37, 30 November 2005 (GMT)
So it's an inclusion tag, not a delete tag? → Ceo|squawk 21:10, November 30, 2005 (GMT)
I'm unwilling to say that they're speedy material without consulting with the other sysops. We never reach consensus that quickly, however...for the moment, yes, I wouold go with inclusion, rather than delete. Gruen2alk 10:25, 1 December 2005 (GMT)
I don't think that it really makes sense to put an inclusion tag on, because what can you debate about a blank article? We should try to reach consensus to have either delete or let stand. I'm going to post on NSwiki:Community decisions and see if we can get a consensus on whether to have them as speedies or valid parts of NSwiki. → Ceo\squawk 01:11, December 4, 2005 (GMT)

Regional Ecology

A number of us in the International Democratic Union have been working to build entries for the flora and fauna of our nations. Having shared borders means we also have a shared ecology. I was wondering that since there are lists of international airports (obviously which can be useful for roleplaying), that perhaps we could create an article called "Ecology of the International Democratic Union" which could serve as a list of articles (examples currently include Antrian Hare, Den Jay, Musk Pike, and Tnani). One possible NSWiki justification ties into UN roleplay ... as environmental category resolutions come up, the ecology of our region would be publically available for NationStates players to easily access and possibly use in their discussions / debates. I'd appreciate thoughts and suggestions here, as we have many more animals and plants to work on. Mikitivity 19:16, 23 December 2005 (GMT)

Could a category within a International Democratic Union factbook suffice, or are you interested in adding a little more detail to the list than that? → Ceo\squawk 19:47, December 23, 2005 (GMT)
Ooooh, better place for this -- thanks! A category could work, but I was thinking of dividing the list up between flora and fauna, and maybe even making it a table where we could list threatened species and nations in which they are a vital economic resource. For example, I was eventually going to talk the coastal nations into making a whale (seeing that there is a Whaling resolution) and wanted to suggest that one nation might want to hunt it, so the overview article might be a useful way of displaying that info. But for the short-term, even a category would work. Mikitivity 19:59, 23 December 2005 (GMT)
My suggestion would be to add a section called Ecology to the IDU main article. I don't really see the need for a whole page, if it's just going to be full of links. If, however, it will be an article in its own right, then I don't see why not. Your region page isn't too cramped for space. Maybe if you first made a section on IDU, and then, if it looked like it cold go into a whole article, transferred it over. Gruen2alk 20:34, 23 December 2005 (GMT)
Even with the massive linkage issues, I think it could take on a legit form like the UN resolutions list Fris made (the one on FAC status). Perhaps, if there were to be a table, you could have thumbnails, small descriptions (like excerpts from the main articles on each species of flora/fauna), and, of course, the links. I think, with the right effort, it'd be one of the better tablarticles on the Wiki. --Pacitalkia 20:41, 23 December 2005 (GMT)
Actually the UN Timeline is ultimately what I had in mind (the color coding and table format were my contribution to Fris's article). The question is, are we (IDU authors) up to the challenge. The UN Timeline is now benefitting from contributions from a number of active UN players. I appreciate all these ideas and will discuss them with the article authors on our forum, but would it be possible to start with a IDU Ecology category (allowing the Wiki engine to index for us) and later move to a thumbnailed Ecological Summary article? Mikitivity 23:17, 23 December 2005 (GMT)
If you're going to ever do an article, the time to do it is when you start. Once you get a whole bunch of articles in the category, you won't want to go back and manually put them into an article. → Ceo\squawk 23:58, December 23, 2005 (GMT)

Potential New Meta Page?

Unless we already have something like this, I believe it might be beneficial to create a "Request for Administrative Help" page. This could be used when a administrative page move was needed, to report vandalism, or any time when someone needed sysop-style help. That way, you wouldn't have to pick an admin to ask and risk the chance that they would not be active. If it was feasible code-wise, it could also be a nice addition to have the banner (like for new talk page messages) flag up for all admins when a request was added. → Ceo \ squawk 20:20, December 24, 2005 (GMT)

This is a good idea in my opinion. When I upgrade to 1.5.4 in the next day or two, I'll see how feasible the coding tweak is. --Goobergunch|? 00:35, 25 December 2005 (GMT)

"Show preview" doesn't work

When I press the "Show preview" button after writing/editing, it downloads and shows the editing page/tab, not the page as it's going to be. Leaves me having to hit the "Save page" button, re-edit, etc. I'm on Win98, using Mozilla 1.7.5 behind Privoxy 3.0.3 and Tor 0.0.9.7 Trokenyan 06:31, 2 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Try scrolling up; the result of the "Show preview" button should be that the page as it's going to be appears above the editing page/tab. --Goobergunch|? 16:13, 3 Jun 2005 (GMT)
Ah ha!! That was the clue I needed to fix it. The default setting puts the "preview" at the bottom, lost in all the clutter of other "helpful" bits. As the "preview" does not, in fact, show you what the result will look like, but rather, shows the text formatted like the rest of the edit page, it's not obvious what has happened.
Changing to "show preview before edit box" separated the "preview," visually, from the rest of the edit page, thereby making it possible to spot it.
Why isn't the preview formatted like it will appear when one is done? BBS's manage to do this, and they are an older 'technology', AFAIK.Trokenyan 01:06, 6 Jun 2005 (GMT)
In Opera and IE, the Show Preview shows exactly what the page will look like, with the addition of the Edit box between the end of the text and the Category bar at the bottom. There are no other preview page elements among "the helpful bits", though the Category bar is in fact separated from the rest (a fairly minor quibble). I can't figure out what else you're talking about, as it's prerfectly fine What you see is what you get previewing. → Fris Θtalk 00:16, 7 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Template:Image doesn't work properly

As everybody may have noticed, the upgrade to 1.4.5 b0rked Template:Image. My attempts at fixing it haven't gone very well, and the originator of the template hasn't been on the wiki since February. So if anybody feels like taking a stab at fixing it, do so with my blessing. --Goobergunch|? 20:09, 25 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Fixed. The Mindset 01:04, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)
Sorta... The Mindset 02:00, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)
Okay, I'm pretty sure it's totally fixed now. :) The Mindset 02:47, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)

While we're on the subject...any chance of finding a way to resize images? At present there appears to be absolutely no way to do it (I've even tried the <img> HTML tag, which seems to be nonfunctional). --Bedistan|Beditalk 02:10, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)

Afaik, this isn't possible, since we can't even use the <img> tag in templates. On a happier note, I think I've managed to get it working to the same standard it was before. Sorry for flooding the "recent changes" page though. - The Mindset 02:13, 29 Jun 2005 (GMT)

"What the slani hell?" Department

Uploads are slanied

I've tried numerous times over several days to upload an image for one of my articles, only to keep getting this message:

Could not copy file "/tmp/php0hXC14" to "/mounted-storage/home2/sub003/sc434/ns/wiki/images/temp/20050802140753!FieldOfFlowersWest.png".

Is anyone else having this problem? --Bedistan|Beditalk 2 August 2005 14:10 (GMT)

Oooooookay, apparently nobody else is having this problem, because people are successfully uploading things left and right, while I just gave it another try, to no avail. Is the wiki software prejudiced against me for some reason? --Bedistan|Beditalk 14:34, 7 August 2005 (GMT)
If you have already upload this image, and you want to re-upload, you can't. First the admins must delete the old one. Rufus T. Firefly 14:48, 7 August 2005 (GMT)
So far I haven't been able to successfully upload it even once, so presumably that's not the problem. --Bedistan|Beditalk 16:57, 7 August 2005 (GMT)
I know about this bug, it's related to Safe Mode. Unfortunately, I don't know why it occurs; it seems to just randomly affect some uploads and not others. Perhaps an organized analysis of why images fail to upload would help - please report failed image uploads to NSwiki:Failed uploads. --Goobergunch|? 17:59, 7 August 2005 (GMT)
Well, I tried converting the images I was having problems with from PNGs to JPEGs, and now they upload fine. Perhaps file size is the issue? The PNG versions were all over 300KB (and in fact if I'd realized they were that big I'd have gone ahead and converted them anyway), while the new ones are well under 100KB. Looking at Special:Imagelist and sorting by size, there are no uploaded files larger than about 145KB. Perhaps there's a limit somewhere in there?
Unfortunately the images are still useless, because I need them in a thumbnail form, and that doesn't work. --Bedistan|Beditalk 21:02, 9 August 2005 (GMT)

2006

UN Resolution Info Box

Could somebody create an infobox for UN Resolutions that when placed at the top of a UN resolution page automatically links the resolution or repeal to the UN Resolution category? Some info that should be included in the info box: Title, Number, Category, Sub-Category, Status, Date Adopted, Date Repealed, Author, Votes For, Votes Against, Percentage of Votes. The info box should then be color coded based on the category, but we can do that manually. Ultimately I want something that looks like album infoboxes on Wikipedia. Build it for me once and I'll take care of getting the boxes onto the hundreds of resolutions we have!  :) Mikitivity 17:36, 1 August 2006 (GMT)

Here it is. And to change the colour of that thing on the top, add to the code a line "colour= (hex number of desired colour) | oh, and don't try using the american spelling. it will not work that way (its a script thing). --swilatia 00:08, 25 September 2006 (GMT)
Thanks! I have no problems with the English spelling.  :) Is it possible to tweak the box to include three more fields: % of votes (45%, 67%, etc.) and then "Previous Resolution" and "Next Resolution"? They might not be necessary, but also might be fun. I'm still stuck on Wikipedia's album infoboxes. But let me stress that when I saw this new box this morning I thought it was AWESOME and I'll slowly back populate the UN resolutions with these! Danke! Mikitivity 16:02, 26 September 2006 (GMT)
Now that I'm using the Resolution template I realized that we also need a template for Failed Resolutions, such as the two Repeal "Sexual Freedom" resolutions. What I'd like is for the new template to not include a link since there is none, to have "voting ended" instead of "adopted", and to automatically throw the items into a "Failed Resolutions" category. In theory, a repeal article can be *both* a failed resolution and a adopted one. Mikitivity 20:23, 5 November 2006 (GMT)
I've edited the template you can use the same one. If it's a failed resolution, don't include the {{{resnumber}}} or {{{linknumber}}} parameters, and add: 
|voteend = Voting Ended

at the bottom. Also set status to failed. That ought to work, and it will categorize it too! Ceoranta 22:09, 5 November 2006 (GMT)

Fuzzy watchlist math

Direct quote from my watchlist page:

"63.5 pages watched not counting talk pages"

How exactly does one watch half of a page? Am I only reading every other letter or something?

--Bedistan (jon seplab) 18:11, 26 November 2005 (GMT)
It means that you've managed to watch a page without watching its corresponding talk page (or vice versa). Don't worry about it, although I can fix it myself if you want. --Goobergunch|? 00:32, 25 December 2005 (GMT)

Regional Ecology discussion moved to the bottom of the suggestion box, as that's where it should go, I think. → Ceo\squawk 19:47, December 23, 2005 (GMT)

Page not registering edit

The recent changes and its history show that I have very recently edited the World Cup 34 page. When I compare the differences, the edit is clear: I reordered the groups to note the results of the qualifying stages. However, the page appears just as it did before I edited it.--Ember Nickel 21:07, 28 April 2007 (GMT) (PS: like the name of this section)

Try purging the page cache in the future if the page doesn't seem to update (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php?title=[TITLE OF ARTICLE]&action=purge) LE (WP) | Talk 01:55, 30 April 2007 (GMT)
Cool, thanks. It works now.--Ember Nickel 20:14, 30 April 2007 (GMT)

NSWiki bug

I suppose this bug is well known, but I didn’t find any information about this, please forgive me if I didn’t search well, i donno if i'm the only one concerned

40 % of the time I try to access any page I have the following error:

A database error has occurred

Query: BEGIN

Function: Database::begin

Error: 1226 User 'goobergunch1' has exceeded the 'max_questions' resource (current value: 72000) (mysql.servage.net)

Backtrace:

• GlobalFunctions.php line 451 calls wfbacktrace()

• Database.php line 408 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()

• Database.php line 358 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()

• Database.php line 1450 calls databasemysql::query()

• Database.php line 1420 calls databasemysql::immediatebegin()

• Database.php line 332 calls databasemysql::begin()

• Database.php line 1529 calls databasemysql::query()

• LoadBalancer.php line 595 calls databasemysql::getlag()

• LoadBalancer.php line 118 calls loadbalancer::getlagtimes()

• LoadBalancer.php line 179 calls loadbalancer::getrandomnonlagged()

• LoadBalancer.php line 344 calls loadbalancer::getreaderindex()

• DatabaseFunctions.php line 52 calls loadbalancer::getconnection()

• User.php line 675 calls wfgetdb()

• User.php line 625 calls user::loadfromdatabase()

• Setup.php line 212 calls user::loadfromsession()

• index.php line 63 calls require_once()

Love and esterel 09:33, 13 April 2006 (GMT)

User talk:Goobergunch, NSwiki:To do. It's a known problem that Goobergunch can't really do much about. We just have to put up with it. Ceo \ rant \ rave 13:19, 13 April 2006 (GMT)
Thanks for the info, good luck → Love and esterel 23:49, 14 April 2006 (GMT)
If needed, my FTP account (800 MB free left) can host all images hosted by the present server or even a part of or the whole wiki eventually → Love and esterel 12:16, 15 April 2006 (GMT)
My FTP transfer here is fine. That's not the issue. --Goobergunch|? 21:34, 17 April 2006 (GMT)
Everything works well now, congrats → Love and esterel 22:19, 19 April 2006 (GMT)
Now I have the problem. :( I did download and install a new Firefox version (which is being glitchy with Vista right now). Which is why I'm having a hard time editing things, or may accidentally double 'save.' Has there been a "cure" to this old bug? --Einmyria 14:12, 19 October 2007 (GMT)
It's not an user operating system or web browser error, it's the MySQL database complaining, with not much help from anyone as how to fix it. - Starblaydia 15:11, 19 October 2007 (GMT)
Ahh, I see...Thanks for letting us know. It seems to have corrected itself over time.--Einmyria 14:19, 20 October 2007 (GMT)

Linkspam/IP editing

Has forcing account creation/disabling anonymous editing been considered to help curb the linkspam? LE (WP) | Talk 11:43, 23 May 2006 (GMT)

Yeah, I've considered it. The problem is that we get a lot of legitimate edits from IPs, more so than Wikipedia. I don't particularly want to discourage editing from legitimate users, but the spam is getting ridiculous (it's probably not helping the server problems, either). I'd be curious to hear what others think. --Goobergunch|? 17:10, 23 May 2006 (GMT)
I doubt that forcing accounts would hurt NSwiki very much. Yes, it would be yet another password for people to remember, but less spam, less page edits, less new useless pages and less work for admins can't be a bad thing. - StarblaydiaYlomTiny.png Star Talk. 18:30, 23 May 2006 (GMT)
I would like to suggest not disabling editing by unregs completely, because it deters people who can't/don't want to create an account, but disable page creation by unregs. We could also have a system so the unregistered users could request another user to create a stub for them that they could expand on. Ceo \ rant \ rave 22:38, 23 May 2006 (GMT)

Well, can something please be done about them? LE (WP) | Talk

I am also getting sick of this link spam, and although I was only going to suggest disabling page creation for unregistered users, afte today I am going to have to agree with Nightbane. Also If these linkspammers actually bother to register before spamming the pages, they should be permanatly banned without warning...I saw some of the link spammers only being banned for 3 months, something tells me they will be back.John 23:08, 18 June 2006 (GMT)
I am forced to concur. I wish we could allow anons, but the linkspam is taking forever to deal with. Perhaps block anons for a period of time, and then reenable them and see if they don't come back? Ceo \ rant \ rave 02:54, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
I also have another idea, but it might be technically impossible. Would it be feasible to give the admins a "mark as linkspam" button that would rollback the edits (or delete the page if there were no significant edits) and block the user in one fell click? That would make it way easier to deal with. Ceo \ rant \ rave 02:56, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
That's an excellent idea, though I wouldn't limit it to just admins. Perhaps a category:linkspam for it so that admins can just browse through it ever so often, rv the spam and block the IPs that did the spamming in the first place. I still support the non-anon page creation thing though. - StarblaydiaYlomTiny.png Star Talk. 07:04, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
Well, I was thinking mark as linkspam would be more of an admin tool, that would auto-revert and block with one click, not just "mark" it, and non-admins don't have block or delete rights. But perhaps non-admins could have a button to automatically put the linkspam into a category. Ceo \ rant \ rave 23:19, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
I suspect the IPs involved are bots using open proxies. Per Wikipedia, open proxies should all be indefinitely blocked, incase they are misused like this. LE (WP) | Talk 06:59, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
That's policy here, too. I know a bunch are blocked. How do you find out if they're open proxies? Ceo \ rant \ rave 23:19, 19 June 2006 (GMT)
This is a list of unblocked ones on metawiki, and this list as well. LE (WP) | Talk 05:25, 20 June 2006 (GMT)

Okay, the software upgrade provides us with a bunch of helpful features. One of these is the ConfirmEdit extension, which I'll be implementing in the near future. Another is that pages can now be protected against unregistered users only, which I'm going to go through and implement on a bunch of pages right now. --User:Goobergunch|? 06:42, 3 July 2006 (GMT)

Problem

Im having trouble with my flag not showing, along with my map. Well general infobox trouble (again)-Okie (feels very noobish) http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Okielahoma Also wondering how to creae an article in sports roleplaying sub category

Have you actually uploaded a flag image, and have you checked what the image is called? You can also insert images directly by simply pasting the url. Regarding your map, though, I don't recommend doing that unless you first scale down its size. To create an article in sports roleplaying, simply add [[Category:Sports roleplaying]] in the article. (By the way, please remember to sign your comments/questions with four ~s, so we know when you've asked.) Aridd 00:43, 11 November 2006 (GMT)

2007

Known Issues

Announcements, kinda...

I've created a Tourism page and a List of Passport Codes if anyone wants to contribute to those...--Einmyria 11:53, 27 October 2007 (GMT)

I have updated and fixed {{flag}}, {{flagicon}}, and {{flagcountry}} to work properly. --TerranEmpire 00:19, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

WikiStates Terrorist Vandal

I am also User:Kmweber on WikiStates, and Bluth Corporation on NS. About a month ago, someone contacted Blast regarding a vandal claiming association with us doing dirty deeds (dirt cheap!) here on NSWiki. Blast is the other admin/b'crat on WikiStates; in addition to both those rules, I am the equivalent of what Wikipedia (and all the WMF wikis) call a "steward"...I'm the one who owns and maintains the server WikiStates is hosted on, and I'm the only one with CheckUser on WikiStates.

Sorry for the delay--since it was posted to Blast's talk page, which I don't necessarily check very often, I only just now found about it. Anyway, I CheckUsered the reported IPs, and it turns out they all belong to a known vandal who has been targetting WikiStates on several occasions, the last of which was on September 13. We don't allow anonymous editing on WikiStates, so the offender was using several registered accounts...when one was blocked, he registered a new account with a similar name (often as simple as xxx1, xxx2, xxx3, etc.) to continue his vandalism. Like I said, the last time he vandalized was on September 13, almost two months before he apparently went to work here...all his accounts were blocked within a few hours of being created.

SO...no, the individual claiming to be a "WikiStates" terrorist is not an actual contributor to WikiStates, but has vandalized us in the past as well, and all his known accounts have been blocked for at least a few months now. If any similar incidents that may appear to have a connection to us occur in the future, please contact myself instead of Blast since I'm in a better position to do something about it, either on my WikiStates talk page or by e-mailing me (I have "E-mail from other users" enabled both here and on WikiStates). Please don't post on my talk page here, since I doubt I'll be checking it very often.

If we see something threatening us that looks like it might be threatening you, I'll be sure to let you know, and hope you do the same!

Thanks!

Kmweber 02:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Help Needed

For admin help, see NSwiki:Request_for_Administrative_Help.

ParserFunctions

Really I guess this is a request for sysop help... I'll put it in there too but the last thing I added to that was in May and I have yet to receive a reply... I figured I have a better chance of getting a response here. Anyway one of the reasons that Template:Navbox doesn't work is that (among other things) the extention Parser Functions is not installed. It adds a variety of VERY useful template commands such as functions. This lets you set conditions to show or hide items within a template depending on whether or not data was provided in the transclusion.. It is VERY handy and makes it very easy to create complex, variable templates. Is there any chance this could be installed? Or are we better off just sticking to custom tables made to suit whatever purposes we need them for. -- TerranEmpire 03:44, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I would second to this as it would also make template creation much easier. It would also prevent collision with namespaces and interwiki prefixes. --Marian 22:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Aaaaah My infobox died!

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Okielahoma Yeah i tried to change the colors to match my flag and kaput. Something snapped. Aaaah! Okie 21:29, 7 March 2007.

Fixed. You put a newline where you should not have. --swilatia 12:26, 9 March 2007 (GMT)

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Friendly_Aliens this maybe different to the query above query but my infobox is f00ked and its the same for my comrade Roudland and maybe others. How can i change my page back to normal? Baz 10:10, 11 April 2007 (GMT)


Infobox Link Gone Bad

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Bercktesgaden My flag and seal refuse to link and its a valid page...--209.213.19.142 22:41, 14 July 2007 (GMT)

You put the share link rather than the direct link to your photobucket album. In the future use the direct link not the share link that photobucket gives you. I have corrected the links in your page so they work properly. John 00:56, 15 July 2007 (GMT)

two pages?

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/UN_Member http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/UN_member hmBlacksmith 04:23, 16 September 2007 (GMT)

Is there a "redirect" function on NSwiki like there is on Wikipedia?--Einmyria 01:32, 26 October 2007 (GMT)

League Pyramid

http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Setinje%27s_Football_Pyramid

It decided to shrivel and shrink... --64.136.164.35 21:58, 19 August 2007 (GMT)

Since the article has been replaced, I'm putting it up as a candidate for deletion.--Einmyria 01:32, 26 October 2007 (GMT)

2008-2010

Disambiguation Complexion

http://www.nswiki.net/index.php?title=Kalasion_(territory) http://www.nswiki.net/index.php?title=Kalasion

How do I add a disambiguation!? I have the link to it for the second one, but that's it. I can't configure the link. Kalasion 22:29, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I just tinkered with the disambig note so it links directly to the territory article. If you intend on starting more pages with the name "Kalasion" in them, you can simply create a page entitled Kalasion (disambiguation). Omigodtheykilledkenny 00:00, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Uploaded Images

I keep having problems with uploading PNG images. Many times the colors of the PNG image will all end up messed up when I upload it. For example, this ends up as this. What I'm finding particularly puzzling is that on other occasions I've uploaded PNGs with the exact same colors in them with no problems at all, so I'm at a complete loss as to what's going on and how it can be remedied, if that's possible. Needlessly to say, I'm finding this incredibly frustrating and its making it impossible for me to work on certain pages to my satisfaction, since I can't include proper versions of the relevant images. GIFs are not a possible alternative, since those don't seem to deal with transparency well and as a result any antialiasing gets stripped, leaving a rather ugly result, and JPGs just plain don't support transparency. I tried some different indexing options, with no results. All that said, help resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated. Gulliver 25 January 2011, 11:55 (EST)

Those two images look identical to me.  Bettia  Talk  14:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
They aren't. The color of the original is #3771c8, which ends up getting turned into #4d52cd, as illustrated here. And I've uploaded PNGs before containing #3771c8 without any problems before. Gulliver 26 January 2011, 10:58 (EST)
My eyes must be going. Both of those images appear to be that first shade of blue, rather than the second purplish-blue. Is anyone else seeing the same thing here?  Bettia  Talk  14:13, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Huh, I just looked at the image from my Windows partition, and on that it came out fine, so then the problem is obviously on my end. Still weird, since other uploaded images worked and I can definitely see that color on other sites. But those questions are beyond the scope of here. Urgh, my brain hurts. Gulliver 6 February 2011, 00:38 (EST)

On the table: Improvements and other priorities

Safely said, the long-term goals of this site are to have five sysops on staff (since we have a sort of de facto shift rotation going on where we can provide round-the-clock monitoring of the site for vandalism, manual linkspam, policy violations etc.) I've posted a notice encouraging users to nominate others or themselves for the position (we won't discriminate against self-nominators as much this time) on the Main Page under Announcements.

Our second priority thus far is updating the Main Page to reflect current MediaWiki code and updated designs. Our front page falls a bit flat in comparison to others: we have two suggested templates (see this section of the talk page for Main Page to view the ideas from User:Jey and User:Swilatia. Current opinion favours Swilatia's template but if you'd like to say your bit, do so there. I'd personally like to hold an open poll to select the new template, choosing between the two, or remaining as is. Thoughts? (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 02:18, 4 March 2007 (GMT)

Cuisine Category

Often many of the articles (and for good reason) focus on the political / military aspects of NationStates, but I wanted to suggest that we consider creating a category for cuisine that might help promote more cultural articles. Any thoughts? Mikitivity 00:09, 12 March 2007 (GMT)

Sounds like a great idea to me. I'm always in favour of ways to expand upon every aspect of our nations, especially outside of the political and military fields. I'm sure, considering what I've seen of some of the awesomely detailed nations out there, that some people will have some material to stick in there! The Charr 01:24, 4 April 2007 (GMT)

Birthday Today

Is it possible to write a script that would search all of the character articles and randomly select a couple characters each day to link to on the main page who's fiction birthdays correspond with the calendar date? For example the script would read all of the characters that have the "category:character" or its sub-categories and then today would grab a few to link to? Mikitivity 05:37, 24 April 2007 (GMT)

That would be really cool, I hope that there is a way to do it! John 20:39, 24 April 2007 (GMT)
It's definitely do-able. All the characters would have to categorize their birthdays exactly in the same manner. It would then be categorized according to day, then month, then year. The main page could very well point to the "day" category for birthdays.--Einmyria 01:46, 26 October 2007 (GMT)
How about month/day/year? Kalasi 01:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Quotation Template?

I know that Wikipedia uses the quotation template. Is there some way this could be implemented here? Entsteig 04:25, 4 June 2007 (GMT)

Create it yourself, then you can use it immediately! There's no need to ask. If there's a purpose to be served in creating a template, just do it. LE (WP) | Talk 09:15, 5 June 2007 (GMT)
Template:Lgquote Kalasi 18:56, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Was just about to say that, lol. --Todd McCloud 19:24, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Citation of Sources and References

Wikipedia uses a feature in which footnotes, citations and references are placed in one useful location (normally towards to bottom of the article).

I am currently developing a custom info box for a NationStates nation that will use references, but are not being supported on this page. Would it be possible, to enable citation and references facilities for this wiki? Thank you. --Marian 22:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

'Delegate' vs 'Delegate, Errinundera'

I think I've had my fill of seeing two dozen edits per day by Willd "Fixing disambiguation link" for any page containing the word "delegate." For some screwy reason, someone created a separate disambiguation page for "Delegate," because Erinnundera named his city that -- and now 99% of the links to Delegate no longer work. Add to that, the disamb. page has been blocked due to vandalism, so now we can't even fix the problem ourselves.

Sigh...the next time one rogue player decides to name his city after an essential part of the game, could we please just add the disambiguation note to the top of the original article, instead of creating an unnecessary disambiguation page and ruining all existing links? Omigodtheykilledkenny 17:03, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed with Kenny. A similar incident occurred when creating the page for my region, United Nations (region). Both the region and the regular United Nations page have disambiguation notes, and it works well. Jey* 18:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Jey. Right now it doesn't seem to be working, so I'm hoping that it just hasn't kicked in just yet, or is a minor technical problem easily corrected. Omigodtheykilledkenny 19:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your problem is. Every link to "Delegate" goes to either "Regional Delegate" or the disambiguation page where you can choose the option to go to "Regional Delegate". I followed the standard disambiguation protocol. I sought the advice of a sysop here and received their advice here. Following that advice I raised the matter for discussion here. willd 02:25, 20 November 2008 (GMT)
Hundreds of pages were already linked to "Delegate" before you decided to change it. Anyone, including a sysop, should have known that such an abrupt switch would cause serious problems. I'd call it bad advice. Omigodtheykilledkenny 07:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
NSwiki is a community project. One player and one sysop doesn't add up to a consensus. Obviously it's too late to do anything about this one, but I hope future such disambiguations will be handled after having sought a wider input. ~Gruen2alk 11:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki Links

Would you be interested in setting up interwiki links to WikiStates (and we'd reciprocate, of course)? It'd certainly cut down on the number of redlinks. Kmweber 20:37, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not a bad idea; I've been thinking on it a bit myself lately. Hopefully a bureaucrat sees this note. Omigodtheykilledkenny 21:17, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Silly question, perhaps, but would interwiki redirects work within said proposed system? - Starblaydia 21:46, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
I believe so...I just tried it out on WikiStates (we've already got interwiki set up there for Wikipedia) and it seems to work...http://wikistates.outwardhosting.com/wiki/WikiStates:Sandbox is the page. Kmweber 23:34, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
I'd put in my hat for interwiki links to Wikistates. I'm not sure just how you can make this more public knowledge. Han 23:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
• Noting that the World Cup community is now diverging slightly with NSwiki and Wikistates (Qazox and Taeshan seemingly got well into it during nswiki's downtime, while the more II-minded such as Valipac & Isselmere already have all their things there to begin with), Having some way to link all our intertwining and interwikiing sports pages would be excellent. I don't particularly want to have to touch wikistates with a bargepole, but I'd rather do that than have a few WC teams all lonely over there and a few glaring omissions in the links over here. - Starblaydia 10:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, this is Valipac, and I'd love to be able to link my articles in to the World Cup articles. Any progression on this topic? --Valipac 04:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
• I think it would be a good idea. I was into it for awhile until June when i decided to move everything back. I would say we would nbeed it most to link World Bowl and World Baseball Classic stuff. User:Taeshan
Added. WikiStates:Main Page ([[WikiStates:Main Page]]) goes to the WikiStates main page. While in the database, I've also added interwiki support for the Taijitu regional wiki (TaijituWiki). --Goobergunch|? 03:20, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Google Chrome / Sidebar Fix

MediaWiki implements a five-year-old KHTML 'fix' for WebKit-based browsers that is unlikely to be relevant anymore. It causes problems with newer WebKit browsers (notably Chrome), where the navigation bar is pushed below the main content box. This bug has been fixed in MediaWiki version 1.16, but NSWiki runs on version 1.12. In order to fix this bug without upgrading, the file skins/monobook/KHTMLFixes.css should be blanked or commented-out. See: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28350 --Glen-Rhodes 21:09, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

'Speedy' deletion?

I realise this isn't particularly urgent, but do any of NSwiki's administrators look at Category:Candidates for speedy deletion? I was just traipsing through there and I've noticed some articles which been tagged since January. That's not what I would call speedy! Bettia 13:45, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

"What the slani hell?" Department

What does this do? It would be grateful if you could put a description here to clear things up. Cheers! --Marian 13:31, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Link spam

The ConfirmEdit extension was supposed to have mitigated this problem, yet it continues. Has it been more frequent than before? And is the ConfirmEdit feature still active? If so, is there another way to screen edits for unwanted vandalism? Omigodtheykilledkenny 18:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

And again. What are we doing about this? Omigodtheykilledkenny 02:37, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Article deleted. Speaking as a bureaucrat, I can say that I have no additional knowledge about certain features being activated on NSwiki than all users do through current events. The only one who can really answer your question, as far as I know, is Goob. For the time being, I think we just have to be vigilant. Jey* 03:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
Self-Support (failed) - either protect the article from vandalism or delete it. Please! :P (You can probably block the offending IPs too.) Omigodtheykilledkenny 15:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
And this one, too. Omigodtheykilledkenny 18:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Link spam, mark II

Seeing as this site has been obviously overrun by spammers, and there are hardly enough editors to revert all the spam edits as they flood in, could we maybe talk now about blocking unregistered IP addresses, or else filter them so that only human beings can edit NSwiki? --Omigodtheykilledkenny 22:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the best solution would be to restrict editing to registered auto-confirmed users. Waddayathink? --Marian 21:27, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
Whatever the solution is, it needs to be done quick because we're getting overrun here - hundreds of pages have been vandalised over the past day or so. I'm doing my absolute best to keep on top of things but I simply don't have the time to get rid of it all right now. Bettia (talk) 07:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if this has been suggested, but...

I've reverted some spammer edits, and I notice most if not all are done by folks who haven't logged in - they just use their IP addresses, put up a spam, then either log off or switch proxies. If we required people to sign up for accounts to edit here, would that help the situation any better? --Todd McCloud 07:37, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree, it's just been getting silly lately - we either need to block anonymous users, or use the filter that Kenny suggested above. Bettia (talk) 08:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Or failing that, get a couple more sysops on board to block these spambots and protect/delete pages when needed. Bettia (talk) 09:42, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
I'm available. ...But really, you are both right. 3 have happened in the last few hours. Kalasi 01:02, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I think we should try a CAPTCHA system for anon users or something at first. It would stop bots dead on its tracks. --Marian 18:08, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Well, I mean what's difficult for users to set up an account? It only takes a minute, and it's not any more painful or painless as making an Nationstates account or offsite forums account. I personally hate when I make an update and forget to sign in (as I just did about a minute ago, lol). I'm also reverting any advertising edits I see, because they're quite annoying to me. Hope that's ok. --Todd McCloud 18:35, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
Could we do this? Only allow registered users to edit things? We're getting bombarded with spam, and really all I do to check it anymore is look for authors with IP addresses. Almost always, they're doing some kind of spam. --Todd McCloud 00:35, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree, it takes a lot to keep on top of these twats. Until any changes are made by the crats (or Goober if the crats aren't able to do this), I may have to do something drastic ;) Bettia (talk) 10:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
OK: The spamming is also using up bandwidth.--Marian 19:51, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
We're getting killed out here! It seems the more we resist, the more the bots step up their game! --Todd McCloud 05:15, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I've sent a telegram to Goober about mounting this code on the MW software. Hopefully he gets back to me about it soon. (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 10:14, 16 July 2010 (UTC)
You couldn't give him a quick poke, could you? I don't know how to contact him and we need something done urgently. Bettia (talk) 07:48, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

2011

New linkspam guidelines

Since we are getting bombarded with linkspam again, here are guidelines that admins and users should follow until we get this resolved (hopefully with the ConfirmEdit and/or CAPTCHA extensions). I know most of this is pretty common knowledge but I'd like to make sure we are all on the same page. There's nothing much more we can do until Goober gets back to me, which may be a while.

  1. For admins: All anonymous IPs found to be spamming links to external sites or violating NSwiki policies in any other way will be given an infinite ban. We will no longer be giving them second chances and I expect all administrators to just get rid of these annoying time-wasters. There was one instance I just discovered of an IP that was given a 3-month ban. Well, guess who came back to terrorise the site again? The same address. Infinite bans on anonymous spammers, please. Let's not make more work for ourselves.
  2. For admins: Continue to follow the same ban guidelines for other types of vandalism (such as user-created vandalism, disputes between users, etc.)
  3. For admins: Please make sure you are reverting linkspam either before or after you block the anonymous user. Also please protect pages in the following manner — upgrade the page's protection to block unregistered users if the page is up-to-date, or was recently edited, or was authored by an active user. If the page has not been edited in over two years, or the author is no longer active on NSwiki, it's okay if you provisionally upgrade the protection to sysops only. If someone wishes to make an edit in the future we can easily downgrade the protection. Any pages that were not actually real articles and were just created for the purpose of linkspam/vandalism, or pages that were tagged with speedy or with dispute tags like NPOV should be automatically given sysops only protection. For good measure, you should protect the talk page of the article as well. Remember that page protection should wait until after you have completed reversions or have deleted a page, otherwise you delete the protections!
  4. For all users: Let me first start off by saying thank you to the few people that have gone above and beyond to keep administrators informed about linkspam and other vandalism. I'd like you all to please continue to help administration by pointing out pages that have been vandalised. You can do this by leaving a message on the talk page of an administrator (a great example would be what User:TerranEmpire wrote on my talk page), or listing the page(s) at NSwiki:Vandalism in progress. We appreciate you taking the initiative to patrol pages, categories and meta pages.

Thanks, everyone. (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 20:30, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping us in the loop Paci, it's much appreciated ☺ Bettia (talk) 09:09, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
In regards to guideline #3, upgrading the page's protection to block unregistered users is called semi-protection. Either way, I'll still keep an eye out and drive 'em out! --marian 23:12, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Question

I'm trying to figure out whether or not it would be possible to import this template into NSWiki (I'm guessing there wouldn't be any legality issues) -- I tried copying and pasting the source into a new edit window but it didn't seem to work. This may just be my n00bery speaking, though. Aishkiz 04:53, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

It would work, but Wikipedia has not only some unneeded rows, it also has very complicated formatting. Someone (maybe me) will have to make it from scratch. Kalasi 18:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't know about that one, but I've been working on a much more basic one: User:Vincaelumiata/Template:WeatherTable--Vincaelumiata 17:08, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Spam gone mad

We really need to only allow registered users to edit, the spam is getting ridiculous and would be stopped by only allowing registered users

Seconded. Unless I was the one who posted this in the first place, in which case I still support myself. But I don't think it was. Yeah... someone needs to get a hold of goob. TerranEmpire 06:07, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
It would help but it wouldn't stop it completely. Today I've had to block three nine eleven registered accounts whose only edits were to advertise various New York based businesses on their userpages. Also, there are some pages where anon editors have made a lot of good edits, and it wouldn't be right to punish them. The best way to stop this would be to install an edit filter / captcha system (as discussed at the Village Pump), but only Goober could do this at the moment. Bettia (talk) 08:49, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
I could see that it could cause mayhem for many users that do not login to edit pages. However, I say it would only attract users to register and spam, which could be immensely more problematic because at the very least spambots have to receive multiple IP addresses to flood around blocks. However, many users could just create multiple sock puppets and spam that way, or worse, multiple sock puppets on multiple IP addresses. --Vincaelumiata 03:01, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Users making Userpage nation articles

Ive been noticing more and more users seem to put their nation info on their user page rather than creating a nation article. Should we try to advise such users to place encyclopedia content in articles, or is it considered the choice of the user, at least to an extent? --Vincaelumiata 16:31, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Users are permitted to treat their userpage as a sort of personal sandbox if they so choose; it's up to them. If it gets to be a problem on a particular page we might consider advising them how to title/position their articles properly. (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 04:48, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass {{delete}}

http://nswiki.net/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/75.93.18.148 This IP user seems to have started to add {{delete}} to pages. I honestly believe it is an honest user who has not logged in, but it still is something to note, particularly as the IP address is close, but not exact, to any of the previous editors of other pages content-wise. --Seperate Vermont 03:55, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

My first impression is that I'm not satisfied that this is the author and I don't believe any of those articles satisfy the speedy deletion criteria. The nation it refers to (Greater Tomania) doesn't exist at the moment, although it did exist a month ago. I'll think about this some more, but chances are I'll be declining all those speedy requests.  Bettia  Talk  16:33, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
OK, I've gone through all of them and most of these have been declined. Most of these pages were linked from other pages relating to Greater Tomania - however, there were a few that were orphans and so I saw no harm in deleting these. I would suggest that if whoever placed those speedy requests really is the author, they should log in as User:Greater Tomania and do the same.  Bettia  Talk  12:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Question

On the article Nodsturmpanzer III, what am I doing wrong with the {{AFV}} template? I thought I'd just copied everything normally from the reference version I have saved on my computer. What am I doing wrong? -Inutoland 22:48, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Never mind. I fixed it. I'm still not sure what was wrong, but I pasted in a new blank and transferred the information in. It works now. -Inutoland 04:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Redirect request

Could a sysop please delete the current Democratic Socialist Alliance page (presently a redirect) so that the current region with that name can have the page? Thanks. --Omigodtheykilledkenny 18:55, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. (( Pacitalkia )) Time sent: 21:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Awesome. Thanks Pac! --Omigodtheykilledkenny 00:35, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

2012

Fatal error

I've gotten an error message saying Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 125829120 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 45963840 bytes) in /home/goobergunch/nswiki.net/includes/media/Bitmap.php on line 362 for over a week now when I try to access the wiki page of Hippostania. Is anyone else having this problem? --Hippostania 04:03, 12 May 2012 (PDT)

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