Talk:Main Page

From Homestar Runner Wiki

First post! - InterruptorJones

Second post! (on this page) - hmmm... is that how you do a user name Stu

Just trying to figure out what happens when I post as a guest. -- 64.90.206.254 13:18, 21 Jul 2004 (MST)

Contents 1 What to do? 2 Links to toons/pages 3 Upload file 4 Stylesheet 5 Case of first letters 6 Adding the rest of the stuff 7 Sketchbook? 8 Wiki Stuff 9 Homestar_Runner_Wiki namespace 10 Let's Open 'er Up 11 CSS Tweaks 12 Case issues

What to do?

So, should we freeze the old wiki and start really moving stuff over here? Or do we need to figure things out first? What do you guys think?

First, I think we should only talk about this in one place. So here instead of the Mod forum? I don't know, I personally think the Mod forum is better. However, I'll say here that I do not think I'm ready to start moving stuff over here. I wouldn't want other people trying to do stuff when I couldn't even answer their questions. Ya know? -- Tom 08:17, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Links to toons/pages

I think the links to toons and areas of the official site should appear at the top of every page. They are already that way on the Marzipan's Answering Machine transcript pages, and you'll also notice that my beta official version of pom pom (email) has the links at the top. I actually use the wiki to navigate to pages on the Homestar Runner website. If I'm looking for strong bad email "mile", for instance, I'll just type "hrw StrongBadEmail/mile" into my browser. Firefox (using keywords) converts that to http://www.hrwiki.org/index.php?page=StrongBadEmail/mile and then I click the "Watch it!" link to see the toon. Does anyone else agree that it would be better for the links to be more prominently placed at the top of the page? -- JoeyDay 11:39, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

I think it's pretty standard to have external links at the bottom of articles. I ind of don't like the current format that's on pom pom (email). I use the Wiki to access Homestar Runner.com as well, I usually click on "Toons" or "Strong Bad Email" to do it though. Not ideal, I know. Hmm... I can't decide. -- Tom 11:55, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

I like having those links at the top. InterruptorJones 12:09, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Another thing: Look around Wikipedia. Usually the "summary" is before the table of contents. Now, the screenshot really kind of messes that up, but how should we do that? Bah, I need to get back to work. Just some more "food for thought", I guess. -- Tom 11:58, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

To be honest, I've never really like the screenshots. All they do is push the content of the pages down so I have to scroll to read it. If the screenshot was smaller it might be useful. Isn't there a way to do that with MediaWiki? I also think the table of contents should be floated. I'll figure out how to do that with the stylesheet. -- JoeyDay 12:05, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

I like the screenshots, but I think they should be significantly smaller. And I agree about the floating TOC. -- InterruptorJones 12:11, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Hey, good idea Joey! I know I see those thumb nail type things in WikiPedia all the time. And they don't even break the text format. Uh... Since you suggested it, you get to look up how to do it. -- Tom 12:12, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

It's pretty simple, but theres a whole mouthfull of code to tweek. While you guys are setting the standards, you might wanna come up with some for these. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Thumbnailed_images -- James 8:57, 29 Jul 2004 (EST)

Upload file

Can we turn this off? I haven't tested it, and don't want to try to at work, but I can only imagine the kind of crap that would get uploaded. And I'm not just talking low quality, I'm talking stuff kids shouldn't even think about... -- Tom 11:57, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Well, unless you turned it off yourself, it looks as though it's disabled by default. I kinda want to figure out how to turn it on, but will leave it off for now. I've never really liked the idea of pulling the images from elsewhere. -- JoeyDay 12:20, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

I didn't turn it off. Hm. Odd. But you're exactly right. Kids could just as easily put a link to an inappropriate image. And as to the upload thing, I like the idea, but would that increase our bandwidth draw by several orders of magnitude? I like using pretty big .png files. I know they are compact, but still... I mean we are pulling down around a GB a day now. Hey, is MediaWiki going to up the bandwidth too? I'd imagine it would, with all this stuff. -- Tom

That really depends on the page weight, but MediaWiki (with the current skin) seems to have a bit more markup overhead than Tavi, upon superficial inspection. I have no idea how much of an impact it'll have. But hosting all of the images from this server may indeed cause bandwidth to spike. If nothing else, it'll be in our best interest to size down all of the screenshots as much as possible. -- InterruptorJones 13:14, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Okay, image uploading has been on for half an hour or so. I uploaded that image for SBEmail pom pom. From what I can see, the image must be uploaded in order to do all that fancy thumbnail stuff (assuming it would work on our server, but it won't since ImageMagick isn't installed -- I'm getting in touch with our host to see about that). Anyway, check out the special image pages: Special:imagelist, Special:unusedimages. I think these will facilitate management of images pretty well. As long as we keep an eye on what's going on in there, we should be fine. -- JoeyDay 13:32, 20 Jul 2004 (MST)

Stylesheet

I'm thinking about messing around with the stylesheet, but I'm hesitant. I want to change all the fonts over to what I'm used to at the old wiki, but maybe change is good. What do you guys think? Also, do you like the link colors? I personally don't like the links changing colors after I've visited them, but maybe that's useful. Comments? Thoughts? Thanks. -- JoeyDay 09:39, 21 Jul 2004 (MST)

Heh heh. The color thing can be (somewhat) tweaked a bit by the user in his or her preferences. I know you can change the "edit new page" links to be either red or have that little question mark after them. I don't mind the purple for visited links, this way I can find that one page I haven't been to. And Times New Roman ain't all that bad. I know I see lots of "trebuchet ms" and I might like a change. That all being said: I want you, JoeyDay, to tweak the stylesheet. I just like what you come up with. I've seen it in action before and I like what I seeHolyCrapLookAtTheLogo! Did you just change that? It looks great! See, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Carry on. -- Tom 10:11, 21 Jul 2004 (MST)

I'm not at all a fan of Trebuchet MS. But I prefer sans-serif for reading, so my vote is for Verdana or Arial or similar. And I prefer the red links over the links with question marks for nonexistant pages. -- InterruptorJones 12:35, 21 Jul 2004 (MST)

Why not just make an alternative skin with the options you want? -- James 12:43, 29 Jul 2004 (EST)

I haven't said anything about this, but I was already thinking of doing something along those lines. I need to look into just how difficult it would be to set up a new stylesheet. I can't imagine it would be hard, but I just haven't researched it. -- JoeyDay 10:17, 29 Jul 2004 (MST)

It's not hard. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_style -- James 8:45, 29 Jul 2004 (EST)

Case of first letters

Well, I fixed the way the links are displaying, but for some reason, the names of the pages are still Capitalized when you land on the page. I'm assuming from here on out when we create new pages they'll be named correctly, but someone will have to go mucking around in the SQL tables to fix the current names. I can't seem to get to it from work (firewall?) but will do it later (unless someone beats me to it). -- JoeyDay 13:17, 27 Jul 2004 (MST)

Adding the rest of the stuff

Okay, I did a few tweaks on AgentSeethroo's addition. We have to figure out a few things:

1. How to list the Characters on the Characters page. I know the few characters we have setup now were done with categories. I don't know how we are going to get them all (secondary etc.) on one page.
2. I indented the 3 Features. They are under Toons, but I know they deserve a spot on the Main Menu... any other suggestions on how to do that?
3. Rejects/Everything Else - what to call the page. Or even if we need that page. Should we just list everything on the Characters page under several headings? And we have to figure out what the categories are going to be.

Ideas everyone? -- Tom 09:10, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay...

1. I'm not a huge fan of the Character page on the old wiki, but we may have to do something similar due to the amount of character "aliases" or whatever...I'll have to think about that for a little bit.
2. I think the indention is okay, but it's the only thing on the page that's indented. It makes it look kinda wierd. I also thought the Features link was gonna get ditched from the main page? Maybe I got lost sometime...
3. This is gonna take some discussion I think. I think it should go byebye, and if anyone makes ANY pages that could be deemed NOT canon or not very important, like ANYTHING in rejects, it goes under the category of Misc. -- AgentSeethroo 09:55, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

Yeah, we need to get Joey in on this discussion. I know he had some great ideas that seem to escape me at the moment. And you are right about the indent. But maybe we could have other indents?

Some of these pages are pretty big. I know that games page might work as two pages. Then an "Old Games" page could be indented underneath or something. Joey? -- Tom 11:39, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

I think that characters can be broken down, as well as games. Maybe even places...maybe...

But I don't wanna randomly start indenting and cluttering things up, either... Joey? -- AgentSeethroo 12:14, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

Hm. Does every character have to go on the Characters page? I think rejected characters shouldn't even show up on the Characters page. If they are linked to from the toons/emails they appear in, or if someone references them in comments, then that's fine. The pages for Rejects should be created, but they need to be designated as stubs. Or, perhaps we can have a "Disputed Characters" category (or whatever name was decided on in that poll a while back, and then create a "Disputed Characters" template that says something like, "The validity of this character is in question. If you feel that this character should be considered for placement within the 'Characters' category, discuss it on the talk page." --JoeyDay 09:01, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

I agree. Keep them off the Characters page, and create a category for them at most. -- InterruptorJones 09:07, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Yeah, keep them off the Characters page. But okay then, we need to set up a good system of rules to determine what's going to go in that category/on that page, and say... what's an Inside Joke. And I like the template idea. -- Tom 09:19, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Sketchbook?

I just had a thought...should we have the Sketchbook here on the main page, since it's being updated weekly (or so), or will it only be in the museum?

That's a good question. We were behind a few weeks when they started doing the Weekly Fanstuff, because we didn't know they weren't going to archive it. I say as long as we have it somewhere and record it for now, we're good either way. If it becomes as regular as Weekly Fanstuff or the Quote of the Week, then we can add it to a more prominent place. I guess. -- Tom 14:13, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

I do'd it anyway! HA! How's it look? Someone was keepin' up with it already, so I just moverized it.-- AgentSeethroo 15:41, 12 Aug 2004 (MST)

Wiki Stuff

Okay, now that that's kinda settled...How are we gonna format the WikiStuff section of the main page? I know not everything will be included in this new wiki, but some stuff needs a place, like HelpDesk and WikiSandbox and whatnot. Do we just follow the same formatting as the old wiki, even though it may be like 5 links and that's it? Is it possible to make a sidebar links thingy that'd show up on every page? That'd be awesome, and it'd set us apart a little more. Also, half of the pages that we linked on the main page make me wanna barf. I wonder why we never looked these things over periodically? I mean the downloads page, on a scale of 1 to 10 is horrible.5. There's gonna have to be some major overhauling of most those pages to make them look WAY more professional. I'd like to make this a site that TBC can NOT ignore, ya know? -- AgentSeethroo 14:58, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

Ah, very good questions. MediaWiki has these things called "Namespaces". For example the "Category:" part of the link puts the page in the "Category" namespace. Our Wiki's namespace for pages like the sandbox and stuff would go under "Homestar Runner Wiki:" just like the Homestar Runner Wiki:General disclaimer and Homestar Runner Wiki:FAQ pages. The HelpDesk is in the "Help:" namespace. See Help:Contents. Also, a lot of that is under the "Special:" namespace: Allpages, Listusers, Ipblocklist, and so on. We can put stuff over there on the sidebar too. And yes, some of those pages are totally "barf" as you say. I couldn't agree with you more. Maybe someone else has some suggestions on all this... Joey? -- Tom 15:29, 11 Aug 2004 (MST)

Homestar_Runner_Wiki namespace

The Homestar_Runner_Wiki namespace really needs to be shortened to just HRWiki. Sewiously. - furrykef 01:16, 14 Aug 2004 (MST)

Any idea how I do that? --JoeyDay 09:04, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Hm. I think I've made the change, but things are still pointing to the wrong places. Check out the "Search" page. The namespace is called the right thing there. However, the "About" and "Disclaimers" pages still point to "Homestar_Runner_Wiki:About" and "Homestar_Runner_Wiki:General_Disclaimer". I'm also looking into changing the name of "Current events" to "H*R.com updates" and making the "Community portal" link a "WikiForum" link instead. On a related note, I found a really useful page for the admins: Special:Allmessages. This lets us change all of the various system messages. --JoeyDay 10:38, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay, I'm a confused kid right now. I've edited at least three of the system messages, but they aren't changing. I've changed them from the Special:Allmessages page and directly in the Languages.php file. What the heck am I doing wrong?? Specifically, I'm talking about the "portal", "portal-url" and "copyrightwarning" pages. Here's where I learned about this: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace. Help! --JoeyDay 10:47, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay, our case-change stuff messed up more than I thought it would. Apparently, while I was editing "portal", "portal-url" and "copyrightwarning", I should've been editing "Portal", "Portal-url", and "Copyrightwarning". I wonder if there's some way we can limit our case-change stuff to just the HRWiki namespace. --JoeyDay 11:01, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Hmm, now the WikiForum link links to a Wiki page called "http://forum..." Hrm.

Let's Open 'er Up

So, lately I've had this horribly sick feeling that things have gone all wrong. This wiki is a community, and therefore a project like this should be done as a community. What we should do, above anything, is get things ready to be opened up. I'd like to see our community finish moving emails, toons, and characters (maybe I'm just lazy, but I really do feel that this is a matter of principle).

I know some of you might be freaking out and thinking that we can't trust our users to move stuff the right way, but think about this: This community has worked so far precisely because we have given everyone the freedom to edit any document. This is the wiki way! If we don't trust our community to get things right, why is this even a wiki in the first place? We might as well just have a normal website maintained by the dozen of us that are working on this migration right now.

So, what we really need to do is all the stuff that's necessary for this place to be operational. We need to build the documentation, make sure all the namespaces and options are set up the way we want them, etc. What do you guys think of this? --JoeyDay 09:31, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay, this is a little scary. I think for the mostpart, you're right, but we still have to issue of page load. If we open up both the old wiki and the new wiki to everybody, things are going to slow to a crawl again. Can you think of any solution to this? Also, I'm afraid we'll have tons of collision problems with lots of people working on the same documents at the same time. And a lot of people are going to try to copy-and-past things the lazy way, without taking the time to fix links, etc. I agree that this should be a community effort, but I think we have to resolve those issues first. -- InterruptorJones 09:37, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

I know you guys know I'm against opening it up. We don't even have any of our help page written yet. Or have the copyrights worked out: we have one place that says GNU and one place that says CC. And Jones is right about that page load. and the everyone doing everything at once thing. Just some more stuff to think about.

As to the problem Joey's dealing with: our not giving everyone the freedom to edit... I think that would create more problems. Joey's right, giving everyone editing rights makes the wiki better, but that happens over a longer period of time. Right now we have to think on the short term. -- Tom 10:25, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

CSS Tweaks

Joey, could you increase the paragraph (P tags) spacing in the CSS? It's a little difficult to make out paragraph boundaries right now. -- InterruptorJones 09:37, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Working on it... --JoeyDay 10:38, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Done. Sorry it took me so long. --JoeyDay 10:13, 24 Aug 2004 (MST)

Case issues

I just noticed something that might be an issue. Since we made case matter (for the emails), we now have the issue of Ballad of the Sneak and Ballad of The Sneak (and every other case variation) being two completely distinct pages. Is this going to be a problem? -- InterruptorJones 09:39, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

This is already a problem on Wikipedia for any word after the first word. For instance, try looking up "George bush". We'll (and when I say we, I'm talking about the whole community, not just us admins) just have to pay close attention and create redirects where necessary -- at least until all the links can be fixed. --JoeyDay 09:56, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay, "George bush" is a bad example because there's already a redirect. Try "Greek orthodox". --JoeyDay 09:57, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)

Okay, no probalo. -- InterruptorJones

Yeah, we have this issue with The Paper and The paper. I think Joey did the redirect for that. -- Tom 10:25, 23 Aug 2004 (MST)