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Watchlist

Why does the option show all doesn't work? I can only see changes from the last 7 days but the option show all should show me changes from the last 30 days.--BigDuke66 10:31, 11 August 2008 (CDT)

Timeline

The 2796 link for Minoru Kurita points to the Minoru who would late become part of the Nova Cats can an addional page be set up for the Elder Minoru. Thanks Ursusmajor77 21:07, 22 July 2008 (CDT)

MechFormations

I thought about making a category called "MechFormations" that lists all brigades, regiments & battalions.
And with that in place I wanted to replace the brigade descriptions from the main military article of every house with a list of links to all the brigade articles of that house & also move the descriptions that some already have to the corresponding brigade articles.
And there again I wanted to add all regiments of that brigade again only with a link so that an article can be made for every regiment.
Problem is:

  1. Can a user create a category?
  2. How do I make a template for a brigade info box & regiment info box? Those looks more than complicate to me especially with the help page for creating brigade & regiment articles and with a doc page for that template.
  3. Furthermore what should be listed in those infoboxes? For brigades I thought of: brigade symbol, name, formed, status & parent formation. And for regiments: regiment symbol, name, nickname, formed, status & parent formation. Anything else?

BigDuke66 11:36, 20 July 2008 (CDT)

I was actually thinking about this subject today, so let me give my thoughts. I was thinking of creating different categories for each faction, "AFFS Units", "AFFC Units", "DCMS Units", "Clan Jade Falcon Units", "MAF Units", and so on and so forth. I was considering breaking it down with different categories in the same way that BattleMechs are broken down by tonnage. For instance, Category:Regular Units could take you to Category:CCAF Units, which takes you to Category:Victoria Commonality Ranger Units. Each category along the way would list all of the units therein (a la Category:BattleMechs, Category:Heavy BattleMechs, Category:70 ton BattleMechs). I think it is still appropriate to leave the descriptions of the brigades that are present on the military organization articles there, but expand upon them in full articles (in the same way that Handbook: House Steiner gives some info on them, but Field Manual: Lyran Alliance gives them a more complete treatment).
  1. Yes, a user can create a category. It works the same way as an article.
  2. Use other infoboxes as a model (Perhaps Template:InfoBoxMercUnit would be a good one to base this off of) and use the "Show Preview" button often.
  3. All of your suggestions sound good, except that I'm not sure what you mean by "status". The only thing I can think of to add would be an optional line for "destruction". --Scaletail 18:22, 20 July 2008 (CDT)
Well "Status" should show what the state of the unit is, active, destroyed, disbanded, deserted etc..
More Categories sound good but I don't see how much different it is to what we will see in the articles.
Faction>Capellan Confederation>Capellan Confederation Armed Forces>Victoria Commonality Rangers>Kingston'S Rangers
Category:Regular Units>Category:CCAF Units>Category:Victoria Commonality Ranger Units>Kingston's Rangers
Of course those categories would be better then just on big with all formations. I just counted the regiments of the 20 Year Update and came out with 577 and that ist without Brigades and without the Clans. We could do it like the BattleMech category, one big with all of them und some sub categories that are more specific starting with what you have suggested "Category Regular Units". And maybe "Mercenary Units"? What else? --BigDuke66 10:11, 21 July 2008 (CDT)
Actually, the reason I suggested "Regular Units" was because "Units" sounds like it could encompass BattleMechs, vehicles, etc. as they are "units". "Military units" is too broad (although it sounds better to me now), while "House units" is too narrow. I suppose we could integrate Mercenary units to a broader category that includes House, Periphery, and Clan units; but I think that's too much sub-categorization.
On another note, when we create sections for the brigades, in addition to having a link to the main article for the brigade, we can have a link to the appropriate category that lists all units within that brigade.
I like the idea for "status" now that I understand it... instead of having a separate section for date or destruction, we could just put the appropriate date next the status. By George, I think we might have it! --Scaletail 19:30, 21 July 2008 (CDT)
Yes "Military units" sounds good but your right it also sounds to broad, I would expect to see units like Death Commandos or maybe dropship/jumpship fleets under such category too. Maybe "Ground Units"... na, or "Army Units"... na, maybe... look at the main page with the point "Unit Categories" and all the sub-points, what about making in similar.
The "House Formation" category shows subcategories like "AFFS Formations", "CAAF Formations" etc., those can show the related brigade/milita/academy articles and subcategories like subcategory "Davion Brigade of Guards", subcategory "Draconis March Militia" and subcategory "Academy & Training Formations" etc., and each of those subcategories could show their related regiments & battalions articles like "Davion Heavy Guards", "Addicks DMM" and "1st NAIS Cadet Cadre" etc..
I think I wasn't clear enough about the brigade & regiment articles. What I want to do is to add links in the main military article to brigade/milita etc. articles. Then in these articles there should be some major points covered besides the data in the infobox. I thought about "History", "Officers", "Tactics" and "Composition" and under “Composition” I wanted to list & link all regiments/battalions that are or were part of that brigade/milita etc.. So all together you can go down the ladder till you are down to a regiment article.
Now that I read my post again I wonder if we need those categories at all. Their structure is very similar to what the military & brigade level articles will host. So do we really need them?--BigDuke66 10:06, 22 July 2008 (CDT)
Sure. Things need to be categorized, so we might as well put them in categories that make sense without being unwieldy. With the categories, we don't need to put a dozen links in brigade articles. We need only throw in a link to the category. Of course, that means its another click away, but I think its useful to avoid clutter in the articles themselves. --Scaletail 18:24, 28 July 2008 (CDT)

Sample Request

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)


Clan Jade Falcon changes

Excuse me, I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but there seems to be no way to e-mail the admins of this site. I recently edited the Jade Falcon page, correcting some historical innacuracies and general anti-Jade Falcon bias which was present on the page, and I was messaged by the administrators that my posts were unhelpful and I was going to be charged with VANDALISM. I thought that this was a wiki in which everyone was free to contribute, not a "members-only" club in which outsiders are not tolerated. I am extremely upset by this discrimination, and will neither contribute nor endorse this discriminatory site.

The information that was added was extremely biased towards Clan Jade Falcon, that was why it was removed and you warned that the information you added might be considered vandalism. The current article can certainly be improved, but "Kerensky, in his hubris, decided that to have his name associated with the word "wolf" would be better for his image, and sided with the haughty and unworthy Clan Wolf [my emphasis]" is not the way to fix it. Moreover, some information was incorrect, such as the fact that more members of the Clan that Khan Crichell were involved in the downfall of ilKhan Ulric Kerensky (saKhan Chistu trapped him, for Pete's sake). "Clan Jade Falcon was the FIRST clan to allow freebirth to compete for a bloodname" is also completely untrue, as that person was actually Khan Phelan Kell of Clan Wolf.
The above reasons are why the information you added was deleted, not because of a desire to be exclusive. The warning was given because these edits violated BattleTechWiki policy, and informed you which policy it violated so you could read about it and understand why your edits were reverted. I still encourage you to read Policy:Neutral point of view so that you can better understand the reasons behind my decision. If, after that, it is still unclear, then please ask and I, or any other admin, will be happy to help you to the best of our ability. --Scaletail 17:44, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

Admin Help Requests (Completed)

Please move help requests here after the request is answered.

Category:People

I started added the characters to Category:People because it is on the main page when I realized that there is also a Category:PeopleFictional. Since I'm sure nobody wants two identical categories, which one should we use? My vote goes to People because it's shorter and easier to find. Scaletail 14:58, 25 March 2007 (CDT)

I vote for People as well. Nicjansma 11:40, 26 March 2007 (CDT)

Spam

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)
Some spammer just created this new article Board Game/. Can an admin please send in a few Stars of Elementals for a housecleaning mission? --Basara 15:04, 10 February 2007 (CST)
Went Turtle Bay on his ass. Thanks for the head's up. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 17:27, 10 February 2007 (CST)


I've added a captcha system for BTW to combat SPAM. It will be triggered under the following conditions: Nicjansma 18:39, 14 February 2007 (CST)

  1. New account creation or
  2. Editing an article under all the following circumstances:
The article contains a new link to an external website
The user is not logged in
The external link is not to wikipedia.org or mediawiki.org

I hope this will be agreeable and adequate. Logged in users will never see the captcha, nor will anonymous users see it unless they post an external link. Nicjansma 18:39, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Thank you! It was starting to get bad in the last few days. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 19:21, 14 February 2007 (CST)
Bad? This was nothing. When you are reverting five adbots, all of which are active at the same time, while you're on your own, and all of them use a myriad of proxies and sign up under new usernames… these bots haven't even started the long road to being annoying… they're not even hiding their garbage with non-displaying <div>s. --Xoid 00:36, 17 February 2007 (CST)

New funny guy to clean up after, article is Unseen. CJKeys 11:51, 28 February 2007 (CST)


Copyright Infringement

Greetings. I have recently become involved 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 GeneralT 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)
From what I've read? There's no practical way for MediaWiki to implement it without causing severe interoperability problems with foreign language versions, more processing, etc., etc., you can find specifics at meta's page on case sensitivity.
I will say this though: I prefer it this way. By making sure that SRM-6, SRM 6 and srm 6 are all different? It allows me to hunt down style inconsistencies in articles and clean them up, making for a more unified feel to the BattleTech Wiki. --Xoid 05:39, 27 January 2007 (CST)
Sorry about the delayed response. I had forgotten I put this here.... I requested a category before I opened up the section on the main page, but I would envision it as two different things, though I'm not sure if the redundancy is necessary. While I'm here, can I make a request for a "people" category. Since it is on the left-hand toolbar, it would make sense to have a category for it. Scaletail 12:07, 26 February 2007 (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)
Agreed. Most people are going to go for specific names, or type them in directly. Apart from being neater, and circumventing various technical limitations (both server- and client-side), it'll reduce the amount of bandwidth used on outbound traffic. --Xoid 05:54, 27 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)
I believe that the names of the actual pages should be standardised, but there should still be redirects from common alterations (e.g., since SRM-6 is the most prevalent 'version' so far, it would be the primary page and 'acceptable variations' would redirect to it). Ease-of-use, and a unified feel. --Xoid 05:54, 27 January 2007 (CST)


Also, now that we have a heat sink article, should we just redirect to that from double heat sink? I can't think of many differences between them that warrant two articles but, hey, that's just me. Additionally, I noticed that there is a weapons template already set up (like the BattleMech box). I was wondering if any of you guys might have orginal BT data on the weps, or if its the same as the video-games. 'Cuz that's all the data I have. --~Malithion~ 18:34, 7 January 2007 (CST)

Canon data (from the board game) is what is being used. The video games tend to vary a lot (especially if you start reporting what their statistics actually are, instead of what they say they are). As far as I'm concerned, I believe specific pages (e.g., 'Medium Laser', 'Large Laser', etc.) should exist, with either relevant text be transcluded or linked to from beefy articles on the 'overall' aspect of a given technology (e.g., 'lasers'). Same thing with heatsinks, etc., etc. Nic and Revanche may have other ideas though. --Xoid 05:54, 27 January 2007 (CST)
No, I agree with you that the board game is the origination point for all data. Everything else can be referenced, but generally starting off from the article on the board game version of the item in question. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 23:15, 7 February 2007 (CST)

Drive-by deletes?

There's been 4 articles in the last day that have had 2/3 of their article deleted by random IPs. Is this a form of vandalism? Nicjansma 12:50, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

It certainly sounds like it could be. What were the pages? Scaletail 18:26, 13 April 2007 (CDT)
This has obviously been happening a lot - I've reverted probably 20 pages in the past couple of weeks with this problem. It seems odd as it's not an adbot and there doesn't seem to be any real rationale beyond just being annoying. Bdevoe
I haven't seen this recently -- very strange. Nicjansma 16:08, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Plageurism

On the Thanatos and Lao Hu entries I had to delete the text from the articles due to the fact they were directly plageurized from another source by thier original author. CJKeys 13:28, 17 May 2007 (CDT)


Recent Spam

What can we do about this recent spam? It appears that bots are pre-pending articles with special keywords they will later search for so they know they can edit that page. Which probably won't work because we don't allow anonymous users to post external URLs. What do other wiki's do about this? Nicjansma 22:18, 10 October 2007 (CDT)

While it's not something I wanted to do, how about banning all IP edits? I don't know how other places handle this, but I don't think asking people to register to edit is too much. We will miss a few here a there, I would imagine, but if it stops this vandalism, I'm all for it. We could also look at it as a temporary measure until we come up with something better. Scaletail 10:51, 16 October 2007 (CDT)
Better idea. How about changing the already-in-place captcha parameters to include all non-registered editors? Scaletail 10:45, 18 October 2007 (CDT)
I'm opposed to this. Vandalism-by-bot will continue, with or without blocking anonymous edits. The only thing that blocking anonymous edits does is tend to cause problems; you get a flood of user accounts taking up space in the MySQL database -- making location of legitimate registered users more difficult (we are hoping we'll eventually get enough editors that Special:Listusers might eventually become a necessity, right?). Blocking anonymous edits also tends to scare off those who make once-off typo fixes. They may not contribute much, but sometimes they come back. I know that's how it was with me and Wikipedia. If I had to register an account just to fix a typo I'd never have bothered.
You'll also get the odd disgruntled user who'll make an account at BugMeNot to get around such mandatory registration, and you'll then be forced to fight a war against otherwise legitimate users. (Since there'll be no way to verify that HelpfulUser7 is always going to be the same person -- he may be a vandal one day and useful another.) Better to avoid that kettle of fish altogether, methinks. I don't particularly like your newer idea either. CAPTCHAs are seldom perfect and they are a burden on legitimate users. Considering that almost every legitimate user is registered though, it's a fine interim solution. --Xoid 23:56, 22 October 2007 (CDT)
I agree with you in that I don't particularly like either of my suggestions, either (for much the same reasons), but I also don't see anybody else suggesting anything. I have no doubt that if there was a good, simple solution it would have already been implemented. I had meant for the CAPTCHA suggestion to be temporary, as I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed that it was something that could be done fairly easily while a more permanent solution is sought. Scaletail 17:31, 23 October 2007 (CDT)
There's an extension that allows for this. ConfirmEdit. Permanent solutions are, in my opinion, impossible. The various botnets responsible for this stupidity consist of numerous infected PCs, many with dynamic IP addresses. If there is a spate of vandalism from a specific IP address or range, we'll block it. Apart from that? The most that can be done is to minimise harm and remain vigilant. The scumbags responsible for these botnets aren't going to close-up shop any time soon. --Xoid 05:19, 24 October 2007 (CDT)
I guess it's just a little frustrating for those of us who are patrolling for it. So far, Kittle, Scaletail, and I have been doing it almost constantly and at the cost of other real work. The temp-bans seem to be having some kind of impact as I only needed to edit about 5 articles this time instead of the normal 10-20. I have found that we are missing some of the vandalism, though, as I occasionally find an article that's been recently vandalized and it has some remnant of a previous attack. I don't know that there's much more that we can do, but it does make the whole experience less than satisfying. Bdevoe 15:48, 25 October 2007 (CDT)
It definitely sucks, I agree. I'll try to remain on IM (check my user page for communication avenues) so you can nudge me if you need an admin to ban someone/thing. I'm seriously considering asking Nic to bestow someone with SysOp status purely so it's possible to provide better ban hammer coverage over the day. I know Scaletail the best and would recommend him, but I've been out of the loop for too long and it'd be unfair to other editors to simply assume Scaletail is the best suited to the job. --Xoid 01:01, 26 October 2007 (CDT)
With great power comes great responsibility. Scaletail 20:31, 27 October 2007 (CDT)
Can articles be protected? Some articles on WP are frequent targets of vandalism (like when Stephen Colbert tells people to), so the page in question can be protected from edits by all but an admin (or whatever the WP equivalent is). Can we do the same here with some of the most frequent targets? Scaletail 19:14, 21 November 2007 (CST)
Unfortunately, the articles hit seem too random to be able to protect any. I've found another extension, CommentSpammer that seems to address our very problem. However, it requires MediaWiki v1.12, which isn't officially released yet (we're on 1.11). I'd rather wait until v1.12 is officially released, then I'll add this extension.
I also agree with Xoid that we could use another SysOp -- Scaletail, I think you're a great fit, as you've contributed a ton to this wiki. Nicjansma 16:08, 2 December 2007 (CST)
After months of wasting time reverting these 'gibberish' edits from spammers/vandalizers (having personally reverted 300+ gibberish edits so far), I'm leaning towards enabling the CAPTCHA for all anonymous edits. I know this will cause legit anonymous users a small bit of hassle, but we're still not requiring them to register and it should stop all this vandalism. Any opposition? Nicjansma 01:19, 27 December 2007 (CST)
Not from me. --Scaletail 07:06, 27 December 2007 (CST)
Nor I. I would welcome it, honestly. It would actually allow us to get back to some real work. ;) Bdevoe 08:15, 27 December 2007 (CST)
I have made the change. Nicjansma 10:02, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Main Page Sidebar Problem

Is it just me or does the sidebar get pushed far down whenever the BTW icon or Home links are selected? --Revanche (talk|contribs) 10:15, 9 December 2007 (CST)

Just you. --Scaletail 11:47, 9 December 2007 (CST)
Seriously? That sucks. I get it on IE at home and Netscape on my ship. I wonder what could be causing it. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 12:18, 9 December 2007 (CST)
Gross, I see that too. I'll take a look. Nicjansma 12:28, 9 December 2007 (CST)
There was a missing </div> on the mainpage -- seems like fixing it fixed the problem. Let me know if not. Nicjansma 13:07, 9 December 2007 (CST)

Uploading Program files

How can I upload program files for others to download? I've tried the "upload File" link, but is this only for images? Please Help :o) Clemmensen 04:35, 20 August 2007 (CDT)

The Upload File link is only for images. For other files, please email me (nic [at] nicj [dot] net) with what you want to share and I can upload it to the file archive. Nicjansma 16:08, 2 December 2007 (CST)

CCG Cards

I noticed that the mission cards from the CCG section have no text in the text box. The main text shows up fine when I go into edit mode, but not on the page itself. I was checking out the Death from Above card and saw it. Just thought I'd point it out. Haruspex 15:13, 8 February 2008 (CST)

Great catch! I fixed the template (it lacked the "Text" parameter), so all should be good now. --Scaletail 08:01, 9 February 2008 (CST)

Years

I have decided I have no real purpose in life, and give the years a consistent format. What tag do I use if I am unsure if the data included is accurate? http://www.sarna.net/wiki/2016 is my basic template idea

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