User talk:Xoid/arc/2007/November

Project BattleMechs

• Great job with the Phoenix editing. You might be interested in joining Project: BattleMechs (the link is on the bottom of the main page). --Revanche (admin) 22:44, 14 November 2006 (CST)

• I woudl also like to thank you for cleaning up the PHawk. I never realized so many errors made it through on tht one. I would like to welcome you to the wiki and welcome you to the BattleMech Project. There are a great deal of entries, about 99% have been run through MS word but somehow something always slips by.--CJKeys 08:21, 15 November 2006 (CST)

No problem. :-)

Heh, it's incredible what MS Word lets through on occasion. I'm just glad Firefox has a built-in spell checker, it's a great help. --Xoid 02:12, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Templatation

• Wow, simply wow. I don't understand many of the things you've done or created (ex: Tl and Tlp templates), but its clear you know what you're doing. I'm curious: where I've learned by comparing to other wikis and pouring thru the MediaWiki help page and still have a long way to go, where did you learn to wiki? What do you consider the best source for new editors? --Revanche (admin) 13:25, 15 November 2006 (CST)

Follow-up: With the Daikyu (and probably others), you removed spaces that existed in the infobox and such. I ask for educational reasons and not to be nit-picky: is that because it has some affect on the code or is it for your standards of cleanliness? --Revanche (admin) 13:42, 15 November 2006 (CST)

It can (in certain, rare cases) cause unexpected errors (usually minor, sometimes major) so I tend to annihilate excess spaces on sight. There's also force of habit; double spaces aren't rendered on the web (unless you like to make extensive use of the non-breaking space, that is) so I tend to view them as unnecessary. --Xoid 02:12, 16 November 2006 (CST)

I learned to wiki primarily on the source of all quality misinformation: Uncyclopedia, though I've read through Wikipedia and Meta's guides on numerous occasions. The key thing to remember is that all this WikiML? It's nothing more than shorthand for XHTML. Even with the highly up-to-date version of MediaWiki you have, you'll still need to resort to some basic XHTML here and there.

Part of the reason I managed to pick this up all rather quickly is because I'm just good at it, the rather formalised structure of programming and markup languages is something that just clicks with me.

Tl is a very simple template. It has a single unnamed parameter (the {{{1}}}), a matched pair of [ and ]s to make the link, and I used character entities references to make it appear inbetween a matched pair of { and }s. (I try to avoid using <nowiki> tags as much as possible — less work for the parser is always a good thing, IMO.) I can't take credit for the idea though, it's existed on Wikipedia for quite some time. --Xoid 02:12, 16 November 2006 (CST)

I've visited Uncyclopedia not that long ago. It was very well done. In fact, I was thinking of using it as a 'prank' resource when more of my collegues were familiar with Wikipedia.

As for XHTML: that'sa great lead, thanks. Now I can increase my Google net when I want to leanr something. --Revanche (admin) 09:17, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Indent First Line?

• Xoid, I'm thinking you should put 'Resident Wiki Expert' in your sig, 'cause I hope you like answering questions! This one comes from RogueBaron: "Is there a way to make an indent like a paragraph (i.e. only the first sentence is indented)?" --Revanche (admin) 20:02, 15 November 2006 (CST)

There is most likely a way to achieve that through CSS (in fact, I'm relatively certain of it however… be aware that older browsers (e.g. IE6) probably won't render it properly). Does the BattleTech Wiki have a common.css? I hope so, it'll be like pulling teeth to implement otherwise.

'Resident Wiki Expert'? Nooooo! Not again! *goes and hides in a corner* --Xoid 02:12, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Well, you've done an impressive job with what you have done, so you deserve it! ;) --Revanche (admin) 09:17, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Linebreak Removal

• Hey Xoid, thanks for all of the help so far! Question though -- is there a reason you're removing all of the linebreaks in the templates? I find them harder to read and maintain. Nicjansma 11:25, 16 November 2006 (CST)

There is. With templates that are supposed to be displayed inline, like {{tl}}, {{unsigned}}, etc., line breaks cause a mess. <includeonly> is another case where line breaks can cause a mess (though it's harder, it still happens). For most templates, pretty much the only place templates can have line breaks in them is inbetween a <noinclude> and </noinclude> tag. For really large templates (with multiple paragraphs of text), line breaks are fine everywhere except the start and end.

I'm getting the sinking feeling that it's looking like I'm talking in gobbledegook. I'm sorry I can't explain it as well as I'd like, but the best way of putting it is like this: you can either have slightly harder to read templates or slightly harder to read articles. This is because of how the linebreaks are included whenever you call the template — forcing you to make an article harder for editors to read by not using linebreaks when you naturally would. --Xoid 05:28, 17 November 2006 (CST)