User talk:Nicjansma

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The archive of previous Talk is at my Talk Archive

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Planet Coordinate Data

Hi Nic. I was looking through the planets that are in the Wiki and noticed that all of them (or at least all the ones I checked) had incorrect coordinates. All of the X and Y coordinates are the same. Looks like it was probably an auto-generation issue, but I wanted to bring it up to see if you would be able to correct it, especially since you have the original data that was used to develop the entries. Thanks a lot! Bdevoe 17:13, 18 August 2007 (CDT)

Thanks Bdevoe, I will determine if I can auto-update the coordinates. Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)
Hi Nic, not sure how active you are right now but I feel a major overhaul to this wiki's stellar cartography is called for. See User talk:Scaletail#Stellar Cartography overhaul

Vandalism to front page

Hi Nic, please take a look at the history of the front page. Two spammers (bots I presume) created user accounts and added a lot of gash to the page. When I tried to protect it I found it was already protected, so I suppose protection is only against edits from non-registered users. Is there anything you can do to totally lock the front page to all but admins? Frabby 07:44, 8 January 2009 (PST)

I've verified the Main Page is "full protected", as opposed to semi protected. This means only Admins should be able to edit the front page. Are you seeing any more vandal activity lately? Nicjansma 22:22, 25 January 2009 (PST)

Non-canon content

I do acknowledge and appreciate that this wiki began its life as a fan site. I also acknowledge that Fanon is welcome here. But to be honest, I would rather segregate Fanon material into the newly created Fanon wiki (see front page). The reasons are manifold. Most importantly, I feel that some potential contributors are put off by the prospect of encountering unvalidated Fanon in the articles of the BT Wiki. I have repeatedly explained our policy, and that Fanon is segregated from official/licensed material. But many users seem to expect that a BattleTech Wiki would not contain Fanon at all. To be painfully honest, I do agree with that sentiment, and deep down in my heart disagree with the policy.
The reason why I raise the topic here is that you, as the owner and bureaucrat, have the say in this matter as far as I see it, as this is your site. I feel bad about taking Fanon stuff away from the contributors, but the inclusion of Fanon, even if clearly marked, may damage the reputation of the wiki and hinder its evolution into "The" BT wiki - especially if we have people like User:Cray contributing here. I therefore suggest to take the step and purge all Fanon articles from here, moving them to the Fanon Wiki instead and keeping them separate in the future. (I can totally live with the proposal being shot down in flames, but felt I had to voice my feelings on the matter.) Frabby 06:51, 26 February 2009 (PST)

I'll totally agree with Frabby especially the point about evolution. To be honest I didn't even knew this wiki allows fanon that's why I marked an article for deletion that is fanon.--BigDuke66 13:06, 26 February 2009 (PST)
As far as I know, the problems only arise when people don't flag fanon contents as fanon. Maybe that's being done out of ignorance, but even so. And if that would be the case, then I'd rather suggest raising awereness of the {{fanon}} tag. Onisuzume 04:23, 27 February 2009 (PST)
I'm certainly not opposed to the new Wiki for Fanon, if the need exists and people want to create content there. I do think BTW's {{fanon}} tag works adequately enough; I want people to still be able to post Fanon here as well, if they wish, as long as it is tagged accordingly. Nicjansma 17:34, 1 March 2009 (PST)

Understood. Just to clear this up, the BattleTech Fanon Wiki has already been set up some time ago by a user from this wiki. Next questions:

  • Is it okay to actively point people to the Fanon Wiki (through Talk pages)?
  • Is it okay to add a notion to the Policy:Notability about the Fanon Wiki?

Frabby 23:25, 1 March 2009 (PST)

This leads to another problem: Can other BT-fansites demand that you also link to them, for equal treatment among fans? (I encountered exactly that problem in another SF-wiki.) --Detlef 05:04, 2 March 2009 (PST)
Well, if they link to you, then its only a common courtesy to link back to them I guess. Its also only a small effort to edit to links page. But still, demanding it sounds a bit too... drastic. As for the fanon wiki, my only problem with it is its lack of contents. Onisuzume 05:32, 2 March 2009 (PST)
If we can agree that this wiki should actively seek to promote the Fanon Wiki (in an effort to concentrate on canonical/official content), then I would tag all Fanon articles here with a request to the original creator to port them to the Fanon wiki, and perhaps do it myself (with appropriate credits). That should give the Fanon Wiki some more content to evolve from. Personally, I'd like to see a co-existence of both Wikis with the aim of more clearly segregating Fanon from official products. Frabby 05:48, 2 March 2009 (PST)
A co-existence with a clear separation sounds perfect to me.--BigDuke66 07:31, 3 March 2009 (PST)
My only concern is actively promoting moving content to another site, that after 6 months, has only 6 articles. I wouldn't want to redirect content to a site that's only going to get a portion of the exposure content would get here. Nicjansma 23:47, 27 March 2009 (PDT)

ParserFunctions upgrade

Hi Nic. With the upgrade to 1.15, the ParserFunctions extension also needs to be updated. You can download version 1.15.x here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/ParserFunctions. Thanks so much for the help! --Ebakunin 00:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Updated! Let me know of any other extensions that need to be updated. Nicjansma 03:28, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Other extension suggestions

I know you've been spending a lot of your time updating BTW, but you might want to consider adding these extensions as well:

Also, if you turn on search suggest (which would be great), you might want to install the TitleKey extension. It allows for case-insensitive suggestions.

Nic, I really do appreciate all the work you put into the wiki. Thanks a lot. --Ebakunin 05:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Ebakunin, all of those links point to TitleKey. I also wanted to say somewhere (so might as well be here) that the site appears much more mobile-friendly now, which was unexpected. Second the appreciation, Nic --Revanche (talk|contribs) 12:02, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Links are fixed --Ebakunin 13:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC) Tongue.gif
ImageMap is too awesome for words. Can you imagine using the current maps to move to other planet articles? Come on! A lot of work (unless Nic's bot could automate it), but the result would be awesome. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 13:31, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Totally awesome. However, we have a double-layered problem here:
1) Many individual systems/planets/worlds on this wiki are misspelled or misplaced, which leads to:
2) The world database requires a complete overhaul. I'd say it cannot be fixed. Which in turn teaches us that however we implement the ImageMap system, it absolutely requires an user-friendly maintenance option for updating it with newly found systems or correcting misplaced/misnamed systems. Trying to do that under the current structure requires an enormous amount of work on dozens of articles each time.
3) And while we're at it, I would like (read: think we absolutely need to) create a new, unified template for Systems to differentiate System names from planet/moon/asteroid/habitat names with general system information (sun type, # of planets, politcial timeline); we also need sub-templates for individual planets and all the extra data available on their topography, population, special features, moons etc., and last but not least, a list of sources referring to the individual systems/planets. So really, a gargantuan project that, if ever completed, will send the IS Atlas packing. Smiley.gif
Oh, and to be sure, I am actually serious about every word I just wrote. Frabby 13:52, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay in response, Frabby, but couldn't tolerate the idea of carrying on a conversation via an iphone while on vacation.
Are you suggesting a Project (with a capital P) for this? If so, I'm willing to assist is someone took up the leadership mantle, with guidance. If yes, please start a Project page (or re-focus the current one) and I'll be along. I'm interested, because I know how involved you are in planetary research and I'd like to conduct a Factory Project, but feel it needs to follow a successful planetary one.--Revanche (talk|contribs) 14:06, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I seem to be very good at starting huge projects that run out of steam long before they are finished. Will adress this one on the Projects Planets as you suggested (and my first point would be to make it into Project Systems), but this is queued in behind my essay about Canonicity in the BT universe... whenever I get going with that proper. Frabby 21:07, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Roger that. Feel free to reverse-poke me when you do. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 22:04, 7 July 2009 (UTC) Wink.gif

Followup: I've installed the following extensions:

I've also turned on $wgAutoSuggest so you should get auto-suggest for the search box. Nicjansma 18:04, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much Nic! --Ebakunin 18:07, 8 July 2009 (UTC) Smiley.gif
Seconded! --Revanche (talk|contribs) 20:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

On this day...

When you look at the main wikipedia page you see the "On this day..." area. I wonder if something similar would be good for this wiki. Problem is that when I look at the timeline all entries just show the year and not an exact date but I guess exact dates are quiet rare to find.--BigDuke66 13:28, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

You hit the nail on the head — I doubt we have 365 exact dates to work with. In general, the Powers That Be just give us the year. --Ebakunin 16:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

"Interwiki" links for Sarna's downloads

Just had an interesting thought: why not make interwiki links for such things as Sarna's various downloads section? While not really an interwiki link, it just seems right to have local files appear as if they're not sending someone off to an external site. If you deemed it worthwhile you could make a simple script to change all the current instances of "[http://sarna.net/files/rest_of_path link_text]" to "[[Download:rest_of_path|link text]]" without flooding recent changes or the usage of 'bots with the 'bot flag set on their account. I was originally thinking that you might could set it up with 5 interwiki links (data:, designs:, docs:, media:, and programs:, but just plain "download:" would probably cause less confusion. --Xoid 17:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

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