BattleTechWiki:Masthead

Post in the section Admin Help Requests to get proper attention to the issue/problem. Please be specific and sign your request (by adding ~~~~ at the end).

Current Sarna.net Wiki Administrators

• NicJansma (Talk to me)

• Revanche (Talk to me)

• Xoid (Talk to me)

Auto-updated list found here

Admin Help Requests

Make your request here (and sign with 4 tildes (~~~~)):

Sample Title

I'm not sure how to create links on my Neveron Faction page to other articles. Can you help me? Revanche 17:19, 4 October 2006 (CDT)

Spammer

I just recently had to fix the Board Game page from a spammer, IP is 202.212.58.10 in case you want to block or take whatever action you need to.--CJKeys 11:11, 6 November 2006 (CST)

Thanks CJKeys. I think I'll try to implement a captcha system for new changes that include outside URLs like wikia.com does. Nicjansma 15:32, 6 November 2006 (CST)

Had to fix it the Board Game page again, the IP for the spammer this time was 200.31.148.46. I dont know if you can block IPs but I thought I would let you know it happened again. Thanks.--CJKeys 00:24, 8 November 2006 (CST)

Also, thanks, CJ. I blocked both IPs for 3 months. --Revanche (admin) 01:10, 8 November 2006 (CST)

This looks like a minor annoying problem right now, but I could see it getting worse. Should I spend time investigating captcha for external links in edits? Nicjansma 21:42, 21 November 2006 (CST)

I had to look the term up, since its the second time you've suggested this. How would you envision it working? Would everytime someone made an edit, they'd have to translate the image? Or, would we limit wiki editing only to registered users, who had to pass this test to register? The latter would be preferable to me. --Revanche (admin) 00:17, 22 November 2006 (CST)

Well I still want to allow anonymous edits. The captcha prompt would only occur if 1) The user was not logged in (not registered) AND 2) they posted an edit with an external link. This would avoid 90% of the 'referral spam' that spambots want. It wouldn't block vandalism, but we're only trying to curb spam-bots with captcha.

I like it. It is not restrictive for 95% of any edits, as how many times will an unregistered user seek to post links? Is this something you think you can turn on? --Revanche (admin) 10:21, 22 November 2006 (CST)

There may even be a way to get around needing that. The nastiest stuff is usually the <div style="display: none"> and similar crap that adbots love to toss around. You can also try setting a spam blocking RegEx similar to the one Wikipedia uses. It's one of the settings that is heavily documented on either Meta or MediaWiki.org. --Xoid 11:49, 22 November 2006 (CST)

• Copyright infringement

Greetings. I have recently become involoved in contributing to BattleTech through the Wikipedia end. I submitted one article over there, "Chaos March." I came over here, only to find that my article had been copied verbatim. By itself, this is fine, because I know Wikipedia articles are public-domain, however no credit was given on the part of the person who 'ported the article to MechWiki. I would appreciate it that, for all articles taken from Wikipedia, credit be given to the original author and/or a link be provided to the original article (as provided in Wikipedia's copyright, which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights). Since the only article of mine in question I have found is "Chaos March," that is all I am concerned with, however, I am sure the other authors from Wikipedia would appreciate it if you gave them the same consideration. — The preceding unsigned comment was posted by 4.234.144.246 (talk • contribs) .

Great. Just. Great. *sigh*. Alright; damage control. Nic: can you tell me exactly which pages were auto-generated? I'll run kdiff against a list of all articles with your list of generated articles so we know which ones to exclude from our inquisitorial purge. Revanche: a list of all articles you've imported would be appreciated.

Note that I could go through the 'Mechs and see if I can find any parts that are copied verbatim, though for obvious reasons that would be a PWOT (I know everything I've submitted is my own work, Daniel's 'articles' are next to non-existent and its rather obvious from CJ's fractured English that he wrote his articles himself (no offense intended CJ)). From there we've got two options here; nuke the lot and start over, or get cracking on providing appropriate licensing information. For obvious reasons I'd prefer the latter, but if you're antsy about getting sued go for the former. --Xoid 13:13, 13 December 2006 (CST)

My apologies for not signing up and signing earlier. My bleary eyes couldn't find the "create an account," button, even though it's in the same place as Wikipedia's. Apologies are certainly accepted. Lord knows I've made mistakes in the past. I'm not going to sue, I was just upset at not being credited for my work. I think this project is a great idea that can contribute a lot to the BattleTech community. Moreover, I have trolled on sarna.net for around a decade, and I would do nothing that might harm it. I think I have somewhat of an idea of at least some pages that were 'ported over and, if you all don't mind, I'll assist in linking them back to Wikipedia. Scaletail 21:17, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Sure, any assistance is appreciated. I wasn't worried about you per se, I'm worried about the 'we'll sue your pants off' type; we all know they exist and it's better to be safe than sorry. Once upon a time we ran into legal troubles at another wiki I work on. I do not want a repeat here. I hope that explains my somewhat panicked reaction. --Xoid 00:01, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I'm assuming your reffering to the name change of a group on UD?--The General^T 20:33, 14 December 2006 (CST)

Yup, that's the one. --Xoid 02:04, 15 December 2006 (CST)

Scaletail, any assistance you could give us in this matter, such as pointing out articles that may be infringing would be much appreciated. We are dedicated to making this wiki legit, as well as not upsetting others who have contributed to BattleTech :) Nicjansma 13:35, 14 December 2006 (CST)

I apologize, 4.234.144.246. I had not realized that article was copied verbatim.

Most of the 3,000 pages here are autogenerated (Planets, etc). We can use DynamicPageList (DPL) to get articles not in categories we've autogenerated and or created (mech articles).. try BattleTechWiki:SuspectPages. We can use that page list to review articles to see if they've been copied. We should also setup a template to link back to Wikipedia for articles that have been copied to give credit. Nicjansma 16:46, 13 December 2006 (CST)

Okay, guys: things are well-in-hand already, as long as we have wikicitizens helping the whole community with the procedures already in place. First of all, efforts have already been initiated to deal with this via the {{wikipedia}} tag. As 'ported articles are rediscovered, they can be linked back there. Back then, when I did much of the importing, I didn't have actual admin priviledges to do so, so it had to be exactly as it was seen, a cut & paste from wiki. The intent was clear: a different audience was being addressed. Where Wikipedia reaches out with encyclopedic info for the world that 'knows nothing' and wants to be educated on a subject, BTW is a source for fans/players of BattleTech who would not necissarily beturning to Wikipedia for source information. I 'needed' to do something quickly to show the relevance of BTW to people dropping by to check it out and I was also trying to keep the BattleTech wikiers from being fragmented between two BT-centric wikis (the other being the MechWikia).

Since then, I have alternated between using the import function granted to admins and/or stating that the article was imported in the initial summary line. There was no intent to claim ownership of the articles written, and that's the purpose of the {{wikipedia}} tag. (Point-in-fact, similar work is supposed to be pointing back to the same article over here from Wikipedia, by contribs over there.) Now, I'm not going to go back thru my contribs and hit each one up, as I'm close enough to calling a wikibreak as it is. However, as is true with every other article here, each is a work in progress and no one person will ever be able to claim "that's my article" if the wiki is successful (i.e. many editors). The Help page (and Help:Tags specifically) is very clear one how things are done here at BTW and all someone has to do is paste that tag on a page as it is re-discovered, and they'll be able to instantly see who the primary contributors of the article's history are over there.

No offense was intended nor expected, as wikipedia works under the same 'no-ownership' policy. I understand that Scaletail does feel pride in writing a well-crafted article, and my intent was not to claim writing ability (where none exists, frankly). The article, however, has served an important article here by adding legitimacy and important information for the player base. I'd reccommend Scaletail make some minor alteration to the BTW version of the article (while its still young) with a summary note as coming from a primary Wikipedia contributor of the article. And also, feel pride that it has transcended from being an introductory peice for non-BTers, to a base article for a dedicated source of BT information.

I, myself, am pretty much done with importing articles (or even editing the ones here) from Wikipedia, as there are so projects that I'd rather work on and the core material is completed. However, as Wikipedia has plenty of more material over there that really needs to be over here, importing by the cross-decking community is not a done-deal. If someone wants to address a policy page to this subject, please feel free. I do want to state to Nic, however, we don't need to be apologizing for the importing of articles from Wkipedia. Its open-source material and we already are trying to avoid the whole copyright dodge ball, as it is. We don't need to make it any harder for the few of us currently building this site. An apology for improper attribution to Wikipedia as the source is understandable and is being addressed with the cross-deck tag project.--Revanche (admin) 11:50, 17 December 2006 (CST)

Xoid, no offense taken. I was always a thespian, not a wordsmith and my grades in the fine arts (drama, chorus, etc.) vs English in high school would bear that out. As for my articles each of them are an original work. I will admit I have some articles that have sister articles on mechwikia but that is because I started there and when I came here I brought them with me. I woudl hope to hell I dont have to give myself credit for my own work just because it is in two places.--CJKeys 06:06, 15 December 2006 (CST)

Wikilinks as non-case & Mercenaries category

Two things. First, is it possible to make wikilinks non-case sensitive, or do we have to set up redirects? So many things in BattleTech have an extra capitalized letter in the middle, it's often hard to get it right. Second, would it be possible to create a "merecenaries" category? That way all those merc units can have their own category, since they're really not factions all on their own. Scaletail 22:28, 26 December 2006 (CST)

Ugh...I know what you mean (regarding all of those midword capitalizations). I'm gonna leave the response for this one to Xoid.

As for a Mercenaries category, I think that's a great idea. Specifically, however, are you referring to the Main Page, under the Factions bullet? --Revanche (admin) 10:10, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Weapons, Character Pages

I have two questions. First off, if a character in BattleTech is already in the "BattleTech characters list", should redirect pages be made so people get pointed straight to that location? I was thinking you would just use the context indicator so it would go straight to that person, but I thought I'd ask because you may decide to give major characters (like Sun-Tzu Liao) their own articles.

I'd actually prefer we split up "BattleTech characters list" and make pages for all of the characters in there. Nicjansma 16:14, 7 January 2007 (CST)

Secondly, shouldn't the weapons articles have more information than just where the weapon is manufactured? Isn't just having only where its made kind of odd? I was wondering for two reasons: 1) starting to put summaries on ALL the weapons pages would make a huge difference, and I wasn't sure if doing that would be against the BTW beliefs on the layout of said weps-articles. 2) If someone who knew very little about BattleTech wanted to find out more, here would be a great start. However, if they try to understand how a PPC or Gauss Rifle works, they would ahve to look at 'Mechs articles to (hopefully) find out.

Yes, we do want to get more data for the weapons besides just their locations of manufacture. However, when I started this wiki I pre-generated lots of pages, including using all of the manufacturing data I had available. Since some of these weapons haven't been filled with the other stats and fluff yet, all that is in them is their manuf data. Nicjansma 16:14, 7 January 2007 (CST)

Also, you guys should mention in one of the 'good-formatting' sections that people making new articles should see if they are spelling the linked weapons correctly. Many of the weapons listed on the Wanted Page are because a lot of people didn't use hyphens. Just saying. --~Malithion~ 13:54, 7 January 2007 (CST)

I also agree with this, however, creating redirects for simple spelling differences is easy as well. We'll never get everyone agreeing on a spelling for all items, and new people won't know about a policy like that either. It's easier, in the end, to do catch-all redirects so people get to the pages they want. Nicjansma 16:14, 7 January 2007 (CST)