User talk:Nicjansma

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The archive of previous Talk is at my Talk Archive

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Contributions

Eh, it's not like I did any real work. Just background linking and categorizing. I still fail to have the energy to actually look most things up, but I will get there... soon... I promise.... --Scaletail

I know that a lot of pages were auto-generated, including the planetary database. What would it take to edit that database to update it for 3067, and even 3130? Scaletail 12:15, 2 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, the problem is I don't have the database for 3067 and 3130 :) If you know of a data file (CSV, text file, something) that has owners for those years I'll happily update everythin! Nicjansma 13:50, 2 April 2007 (CDT)

I was kind of alluding to the fact that I would do it (at least for 3067... I'm not paying $40 + S&H or whatever it is for the poster-sized map that is the only complete map for 3130 I've seen). I'm utterly clueless as to what you would need to update it easily, so what would be the best way? Scaletail 12:01, 9 April 2007 (CDT)

The file I used to generate the planetary data is here. If you can update that file, I can easily re-update the current planets! Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Sweet. When I actually have the time, I'll see what I can do with it. --Scaletail 14:17, 4 December 2007 (CST)

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

Kittle mused on her talk page that perhaps, given the level of vandalism that we're seeing, that we may want to consider locking the wiki against edits from non-users. I know that Scaletail, Nic, and I have spent many hours correcting vandalism. I thought we should just put it out there to at least have the discussion. Thanks. Bdevoe 12:40, 16 October 2007 (CDT)

How does someone get banned? Because 212.72.56.31 has made fourteen "edits" and all of them were vandalism. ALL OF THEM. Hes not the only one either, 201.12.178.33 has made nearly forty "edits" and ALL OF THEM WERE VANDALISM. Scaletail, Kittle, and Bdevoe have been the ones who cleaned up most of these idiots' vandalism, I'm sure they agree with me. I think that the major part of the vandalism problem can be fixed if we ban repeat offenders. I don't believe that it is necessary to stop non-users from editing, some of them have made real contributions to the site. I believe that after a certain amount of vandalism that individuals should be banned, regardless of whether or not they are members. I might be more frustrated by it than most people since I have obsessive compulsive disorder, but that doesn't make it any easier to clean up after their juvenile behavior. To the contrary, I spend too many hours fixing minor grammar and spelling errors as it is. Why should I have to worry about vandalism as well? --DragonoftheRust 17:04, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

I placed a one-week ban on those two IPs, with account creation prevention. If it stops at that, so be it. It doesn't I'll make them permabans. The reason that bannings haven't been happening over this is because of the fact that Revanche is on military duty, Nic is busy and I was MIA for a good many months (long story, don't ask). There wasn't anyone else with the power to ban people. Since I'm back, for the time being, I'll try to keep an eye on things. --Xoid 02:37, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

I know that we did see quite a few consistent nonsensical vandalism from a few IPs there for a while, but I would say that out of the tens of articles we corrected, there were many other IPs involved in the process. It seems almost intentional, but I can't begin to reason what the purpose is - the pages vandalized seem random, but there have been multiple edits on the same pages over and over. The actual content seems generated somehow - but I just can't seem to figure out what purpose it serves for the vandal. Regardless, I don't think that banning just those two IPs will do much to stem the tide, but we'll just keep doing what we do. :) 24.9.228.69 11:44, 24 October 2007 (CDT) (above added by Bdevoe 11:45, 24 October 2007 (CDT)).

If you find you're accidentally logged out at the time, you can always replace [[User:your IP address|]] with [[User:your user name|]] instead. Less typing that way. :)

And yeah, I agree that it won't stem the flow much. As I said, it's highly likely that this is being done by a botnet; they typically have a myriad of IP addresses at their disposal so banning single addresses only stops the current spree. VandalBots are generally left on for an extended period of time, then the creator checks to see if they had an impact. If they didn't, they sometimes turn them off… or look for easier targets (be they another page on this wiki or another wiki altogether.) --Xoid 22:39, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Let's continue this talk on BattleTechWiki:Administrators Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Back

Due to circumstances beyond my control I was without access to the Internet for a good few months. Couple that with TAFE and such, and I've been strapped for time. I think I can start making time for Sarna again. --Xoid 23:18, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

Welcome back! My work commitment has left me with little time for other projects lately, so I've been only reverting vandalism as I've seen it; not much else. Great to have you contribute whenever you can! Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Mistitled Articles

How does one get rid of a mistitled article? I recently created a new article for the Hachiman (Combat Vehicle) only to notice that I had unintentionally created a article under the heading of Hachiman (Combat Vehicle. I recreated the article under the proper title, but I don't know how to get rid of the old article! Any advice you have would be appreciated. --DragonoftheRust 15:57, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

This one is rather simple. By default it's not possible to delete anything on MediaWiki unless your account has the SysOp flag set (this is to limit the damage that vandals and/or inexperienced editors can cause.) Add the {{deletion}} template to it and one of the SysOps will get around to deleting the offending article. In some cases we'll nuke it without it having the deletion template; almost universally in cut-and-dried cases (like this one). --Xoid 03:42, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

The SysOps regularly check the articles flagged for deletion -- simply add the template and we'll get to it when we review the list! Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Category for In-Character Knowledge?

I'm thinking that we may want to add a category for those items that are sort of general in-character knowledge (like MechWarrior (pilot) or C-bill). They're not really part of any existing category. There may be other categories as well (Game Mechanics for instance) that may be needed to properly categorize things. I think I'm one of the few to really run across this issue as most of my contributions have been in the "humanities", so to speak, of the Inner Sphere, rather than on the engineering elements ('Mechs and Vehicles). The only thing I can think of for a category is Milieu, which is probably too "William F. Buckley" for most people. :) I don't have any specific recommendations, so perhaps someone else does. Thanks! Bdevoe 12:14, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

I agree with what you're saying. 'Game Mechanics' sounds appropriate, or maybe 'Terms' or something? Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Bulleted lists

This diff concerns me. The resulting code from those extra lines is

<ul>
<li>Bullet 1</li>
</ul><ul>
<li>Bullet 1</li>
</ul>

as opposed to

<ul>
<li>Bullet 1</li>
<li>Bullet 2</li>
</li>

This makes things harder for text-to-speech synthesisers to handle and increases page size. Doing it the (currently) proper way results in source that is nigh on unreadable with long lists. Would it be possible for you to alter MediaWiki to render

* Bullet 1

* Bullet 2

as

* Bullet 1
* Bullet 2

does? --Xoid 23:42, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

From what I can tell, any blank line in a list (either # or *), restarts the list. I think this is just by-design for MediaWiki. I didn't come up with anything in searching for how to change this behavior, but I agree it's frustrating. Any ideas? Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Hello from Wikia

Hi There, I wanted to reach out and compliment your wiki. Its pretty awesome. I manage the Gaming division at Wikia and would love to talk to you about the future of this wiki. Wikia has become the home for lots of independently run gaming wikis (i.e Paragon Wiki) recently as we provide free hosting/bandwidth, product & technical support, advanced SPAM and vandal fighting tools, as well as marketing support. I would love to tell you more about us if you are open to a conversation. On a side note, I noticed you work at Msft. I worked there for 4 years (mostly in the XBOX and Games for Windows Groups). You can email me at angie at wikia.com or leave a message on my talk page Angies 13:52, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Greeting and thanks! FYI there is already a BattleTech project at wikia as well. We were trying to work with them a while back to coordinate (or merge) work. I don't see much activity over there any more. Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Problems

I just edited Lucien Davion, and when I clicked "save page," I was prompted to complete an addition problem because I inserted a new external link. 1. I was signed in and 2. The "external link" I added was apparently the stub template. On another note, the text of the section edit links is quite large (it seems to be matching the section its attached to). I'm not sure if that change was intentional or not. --Scaletail 15:31, 30 November 2007 (CST)

RE: Captcha on adding a URL when logged in, a new version of the ConfirmEdit extension changed the defaults. I've modified it so logged in users don't get the captcha on URL addition. Thanks for pointing this out! Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

RE: Large [edit] text, I've fixed this. Nicjansma 17:18, 2 December 2007 (CST)

Revanche noticed that the edit toolbar is missing, so I figured I'd point it out. --Scaletail 11:54, 6 December 2007 (CST)

Hmm - what tool bar are you talking about? Nicjansma 11:29, 8 December 2007 (CST)

Nic: the tollbar in questions is the one you see above the edit field for all wiki edits. It has bold, italics, wikilinks, sig buttons, etc. We had them up when I left in the spring and was wondering if they were lost in the recent upgrade. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 15:03, 8 December 2007 (CST)

Cool, found what you're talking about. Looks like it was misplaced from the Skin in the upgrade -- should be all fixed now. Nicjansma 01:41, 9 December 2007 (CST)

Great! Thanks, Nic. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:20, 9 December 2007 (CST)

Want to contribute

Hi there, iv been trolling about the CBT community on the net for some time, ive played a bit, but i pore over the books and pretty much everything that goes online regarding the CBT universe. Seeing as how i have insomnia id like to contribute some of my considerable amount of time to giving back to this cause. But im not so sure as to how i can go about this, any direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Master Of Disaster 70.91.143.201 19:26, 6 December 2007 (CST)

Welcome! What are you interesting in most? We have the To-Do list setup, just as jump-start ideas if you're looking for something to work on. There's also the different projects, such as BattleMech, Planet and Biographies you can contribute to. If you have another idea, feel free to run it by one of us or just go for it! Nicjansma 11:27, 8 December 2007 (CST)

Congratulations

...on your engagement. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 13:07, 21 December 2007 (CST)

Yes, congrats! --Scaletail 13:55, 21 December 2007 (CST)

Thanks guys! It's a very exciting time! Nicjansma 00:22, 23 December 2007 (CST)

Indeed, congratulations from me, too! Frabby 06:14, 23 December 2007 (CST)

A little late to the party, but absolutely - congrats! Bdevoe 19:35, 23 December 2007 (CST)

Timeline

One of the things that attracted me to BattleTech so much was the incredibly detailed history and associated dates and timelines. So since I've joined, feel like I'm becoming the timeline dork.

I've asked Scaletail if there was a way to synchronize the year/year items with the main timeline. I don't know much about MediaWiki so I'm not sure if it would be some sort of template or macro that could be developed that when you add an item to the timeline or to an item to a year, they could be synchronized and we don't have to keep going back and forth between the two keeping them manually synched.

Is this possible?

Also, I've not found other timelines but the main one. I'm probably missing something and it's right in front of my face, but the next item could be some sort of tags to allow the automatic creation/updating of the various faction timelines. Locis 14:51, 23 January 2008 (CST)

Cool! It's great to see that you've found a part of the site you can focus on. Unfortunately I don't know of any easy way to keep the two timelines in sync. We could make each year a template and show the text on both the Timeline page and for each year, but that seems like a waste... any other ideas? Nicjansma 17:46, 26 January 2008 (CST)

I've been thinking about it and maybe something like the "before; current; after" tags? For example, create a tag {SL} that means Star League and the timeline item under the year is tagged with it and then the Star League Timeline is autogenerated from all year templates that have {SL} items?

For example:

2235 year template has 5 items. 2 Items are surrounded by {MT} for Master Timeline, 3 items are surrounded by {TA} for Terran Alliance. The associated timelines are generated by using the {MT} and {TA} items.

The tags would work in reverse also, in that any item surrounded by {MT} (etc) on the individual timelines would generate that item on the associated year template.

I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics but that is my basic idea.

p.s. I've found the other timelines but sheesh, I really don't feel like keeping them manually synched! lol Locis 08:47, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Expanded edit toolbar

Nic, I remember someone asking a long time ago if you could add new edit toolbars, like Wikipedia was using. I wandered across a great step-by-step 'extension' that took little 'ol me just under a hour to add in (and that was with re-ordering the buttons in the style I desired). Here it is, if you're so inclined. (Note: in the step where you upload the images of the buttons to the server, rename each one so they start with lowercase letters.) --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 23:22, 12 March 2008 (CDT)

Image transfer

Is it possible to transfer the images that are currently located in the media archive to the wiki? This wold make it easier to use images that are already on Sarna. Maybe the images could simply be moved to the wiki, thus saving space on your server? --Scaletail 17:58, 5 May 2008 (CDT)

You're more than welcome to copy (re-upload) any of the images you wish from the media archive to the wiki. I can try to see if there'd be an easy way to auto-import all of them. Nicjansma 03:32, 14 June 2008 (CDT)

Carrying the BattleTechWiki banner out into the world?

Well not necessarily a banner but is there anything like a standard user bar, logo, etc. one could use to show it on other community's like the catalyst forum or any othere place where BT fans gather? --BigDuke66 21:54, 16 July 2008 (CDT)