Wiki Community/Technical Discussion - Davis

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2005-03-29 11:54:05 links inside footnotes don't work. *whine* also, the footnote macro uses camel casing, but footnote is actually one word, so there's no need for this sillyness. —ArlenAbraham

Hint, any macro cannot be used inside any other, which is unecisarily limiting. Also given the complete and total inconsistancy of the markup (" " anyone) it's incredibly difficult to parse without reimplementing moin moin. Unfortuantly this is the system the providers have choosen for us to use, and use it we must.

There's no reason we can't have all markup, macros included, work from within macros. It's just not the behavior of the current macros (this will change). The reason why moin didn't do this is because its Parser object is too large and includes undesirable markup (such as horizontal rules, images, etc). We've already got a 'lightweight' parser for use with things like Events Board, but once I integrate it with the normal parser object regular macro integration will get much easier. Speaking of attachment:, would you be in favor of an all-in-one [[Image(name.jpg, "caption", thumb, alignment)]]-style system? —PhilipNeustrom

How come regular links but not interwiki links work inside macros like thumbnail? —NickSchmalenberger

In response to the above. I've been thinking a lot about this and for wiki markup there is a delicate balance between human readable and ease of parsing. The claim for XHTML was that the reduction of human editability was not a big deal because people didn't write their HTML directly, which is patently false, and as such XHTML is more annoying than HTML (although almost no one used the auto closing rules for HTML because they where difficult to remember). My big issues with this wiki's markup has to be that the macros are not whitespace invariant, mainly the header macros and the old style attachment macro. Most of the rest of my concerns are syntactic quibbles many of which are the result of feature creep. atachment: is deprecated by the new thumbnial macros, and I don't see any reasonable reason to disallow inlined headers. Ideally the syntax could be wrapped up in a few lines of lex(1) and yacc(1) but I think it's currently too stateful.

If you where going to rebuild the system; I think typeface macros should be allowed anywhere, and that the syntax of the presentation macros should probably change so that they're all the same style syntactically. Also I'd eliminate the table macro, replacing it with, so called, "semantic markup" where appropriate. I'd keep the list as is, even though it may not be consistant. The [[foo(bar,baz,...)]] syntax is pretty ugly in my opinion but workable. As for the typeface macros, I'm not the biggest fan of pairing but it does mostly work, I'd consider going stateful ala TeX, but most users prefer pairing I believe

The major changes would then become:

change from ==Foo Bar== headers to something akin to [[[Header(2,"Foo Bar")]]] which is ugly but at least consistant.
change from ---- to [[hr(size)]]
change from [nbsp] to maybe ____ ( I don't know for certain ).
chnage from "tripple curly brace" (which cannot be represented?) to [[Verbatim("text")]].
possible removal of [[heart]] or a seperate syntax for special characters — this would also effect/clean up nobreak space.
change from -->foo bar<-- to [[Center("foo bar")]]

These have some uglyness and short commings due to the given macro syntax but at least it's mostly consistant. Hmm I totally lost my point here, I guess the point is: whitespace dependents, eww; inconsistant syntax without clear breakup of layout and text, eww. —KennethWaters

Reverts should note themselves with "Revert to n versions ago" or "Revert to version n". Either would be better than the current nonsense with the timestamp. (Although, if the latter, recent changes should probably also reflect the version number.)

2005-04-02 19:34:57 Is DavisWiki part of the interwiki map used for interwiki links? Because of all the recent furvor about interwiki linking, I checked us out on wikipedia and noticed that they don't interlink back to us (just a normal link). But then I also noticed that they had an interwiki map that didn't contain a ref to us. Getting, finally, to my question: is there a wiki way to interwiki back to our wiki from other wikis? —CarlMcCabe

i think you can just edit the page and add davis wiki to the list. i'm not sure what it would take for people to start using the interwiki links. — ArlenAbraham

2005-04-03 14:03:27 davis map GIS data has a ton of stuff. what would it take to integrate GIS data into the wiki map? —ArlenAbraham

2005-04-03 16:48:41 I will be converting the map to use a vector format, so I'll take a look at that then. What data specifically are you interested in? —MikeIvanov
"2005-12-02" It would be quite simple to use UMN Mapserver to re-create the wiki map with outside sources of geographic data.

2005-04-03 17:58:17 [[HR]] does not clear both — it should —KennethWaters

I disagree... a long thin image right or left justified should have text flowing to the other side that can have interspersed horizontal lines. A [[BR(clear)]] or something like it would make more sense. — JabberWokky who dislikes comment boxes. :)

Structure, not presentation. I think hr s should be put in implicitly by the header tags, rather than having an explicit mechanism. —ct

2005-04-09 14:12:34 Two pages needed to be combined, and the only way to move the pictures was to download them from one page, and upload them to another. Was there an easier way to do that? —CraigBrozinsky

I fixed the rename functionality to support this properly. So now just delete the page with the 'right' name and rename the other to that name and you're set. The images will be merged. —PhilipNeustrom

2005-04-11 14:28:23 http://www.daviswiki.org/Haring_2205?action=diff&date2=0&date1=1106029795 I'm back on my clear rampage, and have noted that people have started doing things like this, which are patently incorrect and cause the page to look bad at ecseptionally narrow or wide widths. I'm not sure how to fix it perhaps a [[clear]] tag that causes the next block level html element (such as a <p>) to be blessed with clear:both. I don't personally like this solution but it is a decent compromise, provided people are going to care how pages look and continue padding things out manually. —KennethWaters

I agree. Any other thoughts? I wish that sections (using ==headings==) would work in all situations, but in many cases the page has little content aside from a number of pictures (and we shouldn't penalize this).. The thumbnails work best when there's a lot of text/sections, obviously, but we should have a [[clear]] functionality perhaps. —PhilipNeustrom

2005-04-11 21:14:27 Why not just make the Thumbnail macro inline instead of floating. Then we can move these things around with tables, the same way as we had to do before we had thumbnails. (Of course, this will break even more stuff than the Senate change) —KenBloom

This is impossible with HTML/CSS. You can't inline a div and have it maintain its width (similarly with tables — and there's the problem with tables that you can't have tables next to each other). Also, using tables for layout is bad^TM. What we'd hoped for is making the thumbnails defaultly inline and optionally float left or right, but as I said, it doesn't seem possible. —PhilipNeustrom

Note [Baker's Square]. The icons look nice, but should be [[Visa]] and [[MasterCard]] tags rather than images uploaded to each page. — JabberWokky

they're a bit large, maybe use smaller icons if you're going to make a macro. - ArlenAbraham

I don't like those specific icons, just the concept. I also have a doubt as to the rights to use them (the icons from merchant services are copyrighted, don't use them elsewhere, etc, etc). I think I know a source for some Free-as-in-speech ones. BTW, for the record, I didn't upload those. I'm just promoting the idea because I like it. — JabberWokky
I have to say that I don't like the icons at all. While it's useful information it seems like commercialization to me. As the only graphic on the page it draws your eye right to the corporate logos. I'd rather see the information stay in text form. - jackhaskel

I hadn't thought of the copyright infringment aspect of uploading those icons to the Baker's Square page. I did, however, download those icons from each of the respective credit card companies' web sites; they make them available as part of a press kit. The royalty-free action would be a very smart thing to do, though. —JeffLeCates

2005-04-18 10:21:19 Given the prominence of "breaking news" on the front page, would it make sense for that link to disappear if no one has edited it after some period of time (3 days maybe)? —CraigBrozinsky

That is probably a good idea, I would say 5 days though. If it is more than 5 days old it is definitely not "breaking.`" —GeorgeLewis

I agree. In the past we had edited the Featured Page to note a shooting on campus, so I think making it appear when there's something of note is a good idea.

My vote is for three days. It's not "breaking" after more than that IMO. -JackHaskel

2005-04-20 17:39:26 What exactly happens when someone clicks the "Updated" button on the Recent Changes page? I couldn't find any documentation stating how many edits it covers, how much time it covers, etc. I ask because I frequently find myself clicking on a page, then going to Info->diff to see how its changed in the past 10 minutes. Didn't it work on this latter strategy up to a couple of days ago? Why the change? —CraigBrozinsky

"Updated": marks pages edited since you last pressed 'clear observed changes' (click to see differences since you cleared). So that means you'll see all and only differences since you last pressed that "Clear observed changes" link at the top of the page. If this makes sense you might want to integrate it into some sort of help page? Can you think of a better/more intuitive interface?
ohhhh. heh. Thats an awesome implementation, Philip— I just need to start using bookmarks more regularly :-) I think the problem is I didn't read the definitions of the icons at the bottom of the page, and searching for the word "Updated" didn't turn anything up b/c its an icon. All is fine now— I've paraphrased what you said and added it to WikiTips.— CraigBrozinsky

Bookmarks are different, though! But I'll remove the reference to "bookmark" on the recent changes page to avoid the confusion.

Gotcha— clarification complete. now that i understand them, bookmarks are a neat idea. finally i can get some work done without obsessing over recent changes every 26.3 seconds!

Does anyone who run windows know why so many images are uploaded with names like "C__Documents%20and%20Settings_Leviathan_My%20Documents_My%20Pictures_pse.jpg"? On my mac it grabs just the "pse.jpg" part for the name.

2005-04-20 23:05:46 Looks like IE screws up the upload file name. —AndrewChen

Just checked in IE, this seems to be the case - ArlenAbraham

This should be fixed now. It should be confirmed by somebody with windows IE, though.

2005-04-22 12:36:33 Is there a way to find out what pages link to a certain page? —GonzaloEyzaguirre

If you just click on the page title it'll do a search for the page title. Doing said search will turn up all links to the page in question (but will also contain other pages that might not have the exact phrase but are related).

You can now go to Info -> Links or click on the page title.

2005-05-18 22:52:40 It would be neat if there were a script that would automatically search the contents of pages currently in the editing process for words that can be linked to other wiki pages and provide a checkbox if you would like to add the link it suggests. Is this possible/desireable?—MichaelGiardina

But links aren't easy to add in this way because the links on a page are usually embedded in narrative or descriptive text, which would require more editing on a user's part. An alternative, however, would be a script that produces suggestion blurb at the top that says, "Hey perhaps considering making this page link to these pages which mention the title of your page." -jr

2005-05-30 12:26:37 When you rename a page it should somehow take the history of the prior page with it. Otherwise it's too hard to see prior versions, or know where a page came from. Or as a quick fix, how about a link on the "info page" to info page of the prior page. Right now the only way to find the old page history it is to find the old page in the recent pages, click on diff (so that way you don't get auto-forwarded), and then click on info. —JaimeRaba

This is what it used to do and it causes many problems. For instance, what happens when I rename a page to a name that was once a page, but is now deleted? The history of the two pages could have been developing in parallel and so merging their history would basically just create nonsense. —PhilipNeustrom

What about a link to the old history? It's pretty hard to get to otherwise, as I indicated above. Virtually impossible, if you don't know the name of the old page and it's not in the recent changes anymore. —JaimeRaba

In "Info" it says the page it was renamed from or to, respectively. Do you want a link directly to the page in question?

Yes, because how are you going to get to the info page with the rest of the history? (C.f., adventures.) If you go to the old page, it will auto-forward. You could manually adjust the URL, and that, at present is the only option, unless you go through the recent changes, and do the diff and then do info. -jr

2005-06-21 15:59:12 Would it be possible to create a page that shows recent and/or popular search terms? A page like this would be useful in helping wiki gnomes steer new page development towards the interests of the un-gnomish. —CarlMcCabe

2005-06-25 16:25:08 what is the <(> markup, as seen on the colleges? —ArlenAbraham

Help with Tables

2005-07-14 14:13:53 when you make redirect pages, the preview should say <!>This page redirects to page "Page Name" —ArlenAbraham

I still think this is a good idea and would like to see it in Sycamore. Anyone else? — me again

question that seems like this is the place for. every time I log out, I cannot log-in. my password is never remembered. any suggestions on how to make this feature work? Thanks! —rocksanddirt

2005-07-19 13:41:56 you need to turn on cookies for davis wiki. how you do this depends on your browser. —ArlenAbraham

Cookies are on. if I don't log out, i'm fine. even quitting & shutting down the computer. it is when I log out that it forgets my password. Also, how do I get the timestamp on comments like this? *sigh* I feel like such a lamer today. —rocksanddirt

2005-07-19 14:08:51 The cookie is deleted every time you logout. Enter what you want to write in the comment bar above and it will automatically timestamp your comment. —MiriamKaufman
2005-07-19 16:02:12 Have you checked the Box in User Preferences that says remember my information? —BrentLaabs

2005-07-19 16:10:57 thanks for the help everyone. I'll keep at it....and make sure i've got the save my info box checked. —RocksandDirt

Did you ever fix this problem?

2005-08-01 16:33:20 if you look at the revision histoy for noodle express it shows the orginial editor as none. what's up with that? —ArlenAbraham

I fixed that page's revision history & thanks for the heads-up. It happened because it was an old-old style pagename ("NoodleExpress") and we didn't do things right way back when we did the conversion, so the author/comment info was lost in some cases. —PhilipNeustrom

2005-08-04 20:12:59 There are two versions of the Sustainability page. The second one has two spaces at the end of the name. How does one get rid of the second copy? —JasonAller

2005-08-07 22:00:08 if someone does three (no comment) edits in a row, something giant and red should remind them to preview —ArlenAbraham

Might I humbly suggest BarnabasTruman? — jw

Brilliant!

2005-08-25 00:26:32 I had a long detailed question, but i'll put up the reader's digest version: How does the RandomQuote:People macro work exactly? —MichelleAccurso

2005-08-25 03:26:54 The macro just grabs a random bullet point from the page. —MikeIvanov

2005-08-25 19:51:53 Sorry if this is written somewhere else, but how does one move a picture from Mystery Picture to Mystery Picture/History? —CraigBrozinsky

2005-08-25 20:24:24 As far as I know, you'll have to save a copy on your hard drive, upload to Mystery Picture/History, and then delete the one under Mystery Picture. Make sure to look at General Page info under the info tab. —BrentLaabs

2005-09-01 12:48:58 I know that a page linking to itself generates no link, this is still the case when that page is used in another page with the include macro. In that case, it might be nice if it generated the link. I know the link could always be put on the page doing the including instead, but if its not too hard of a change, it might be worth making for the flexibility. —JevanGray

This is still outstanding.

2005-09-01 13:01:52 To facilitate searches, is there a way of creating a thesaurus that can be linked to the search function. For example, porn, porno, pornography, adult movies, adult videos, debbie does davis don't bring up the same pages. —CraigBrozinsky

How about we make the default behavior for [email protected] be the same as that of the [[MailTo]] macro? Then we can do away with the unnecessary wiki syntax whenever there's a displayed email address?

yeah, i dig it - arlen

2005-10-09 23:24:12 I know how much everyone hates interwiki linking, but I don't like the way they're parsed sometimes. Say I want to make a wikipedia link to Jägermeister. I would have to enter [wiki:WikiPedia:Jägermeister Jägermeister] which parses like so: Jägermeister. Wouldn't it make more sense just to enter [wiki:WikiPedia:Jägermeister] and have that look the same way rather than like this: Jägermeister? Or even simpler [wikipedia:Jägermeister]? —ArlenAbraham

I agree that the syntax is terrible. How about [nameofwiki:"name of page"]? So, if you wanted to link to Rochester Wiki's page on Rochester, you'd do [RocWiki:"Rochester"], etc. It seems to make the most sense given that we treat pages in the wiki with "quotes" and pages to the web without quotes (because we usually have long urls and don't worry about spaces). If we can just decide what we want then I think nearly anything is better than the current system. Also, it would be nice if there was a page in the wiki called, say "Interwiki Map" where people could add wikis, etc. —PhilipNeustrom

I like your quotes idea, I hadn't thought of multi-word wiki pages. We don't link Davis wiki pages with underscores, so why use them on interwiki? I'm just a little irked by the look of a colon followed by a quote, but i can't think of anything better. Did we decide on a syntax for linking to an anchor on another page? Perhaps they should be similar. - arlen

2005-10-10 12:48:32 Hi guys - I was just wondering if there was a reason the wiki wasn't specifically incorporating or advertising the text book lookup program that's hosted on the daviswiki server? —MichaelGiardina

It wasn't a Davis Wiki project. I just hosted it on the same server because I didn't have anywhere else reliable to put it. I wouldn't want to artifically inflate its possible value by making it more prominant than it would otherwise be if it was made by someone not associated with Davis Wiki. Also, not everyone on the wiki is a student! —PhilipNeustrom

2005-10-11 13:05:44 The event board is weak. I assume this is just a lack of labor to improve it. It should have start and end event times, cost of event, who can go (students only, public, etc.), event reference (URL, newspaper page, etc.), be editable/revertable like other pages, and past events should be viewable too.

Why is the Event Board not editable? Is this for technical reasons or for policy reasons?

I notice when the infamous JasonCash hit the Events Board, it was cleaned up without any trail. I assume Philip had to do this from the shell? —SteveDavison

The reason, as you suspect, is technical. Recent changes doesn't log when events are deleted as it's usually only the poster who can delete events.

2005-10-11 13:56:38 For the restaurants template, there could be an area for the type of payment options they have. i don't know if anyone would actually want to import this info, but this info is currently on one of the city's web pages —CraigBrozinsky

That would probably be general enough for the Business Template (of which Restaurant Template is a subclass).

2005-10-20 10:15:11 I'm noticing enough similarities on these link-dumpers that maybe some kind of a filter-script could auto-revert these pages after a specified period of time (so they won't notice they page deletion and go away). —JaimeRaba

2005-10-22 17:10:22 Install NTP to keep the server time set right. It is currently approx. 7.0 minutes fast. —SteveDavison

2005-10-30 20:02:18 do commented lines (ie ## comment) show up in searches? —ArlenAbraham

Yes. Don't use it for 'keywords' or anything because that's a bad idea.

2005-11-05 00:22:21 Just a note, that any links on the wiki that link to outside ucdavis library resources may now be out of date and link to 404 not found. An example is the "Ask Now" service on Medical Services. These resources likely still exist, but the whole lib.ucdavis.edu service was reorganized... meaning we might need to do some work on refinding them whenever they come about.

I say someone writes a crawler and finds the broken links and puts it on a page called Broken Links. - arlen

2005-11-06 12:10:00 I'm not sure how the nospam macro works, but would it be more effective to have the email addresses turned into PNGs, or would that just create clutter? - arlen

PNGs don't scale as font size increases. Usability! - TravisGrathwell

SVG then?

SVG isn't yet a widely enough adopted standard? Might be a solution later on.

2005-11-15 Proposal: When making a comment in a comment box... the text explanation of your change in the Recent Changes tab simply reads, "Comment Added." Can we change this to "Comment: FIRST LINE OF COMMENT (cont...)" ? This will perhaps spark interest in those who would otherwise ignore a comment.

2005-11-17 10:12:19 Proposal: Under recent changes, highlight those pages in which the user was the previous editor. In other words, if I edit pages A and B, I am especially interested to know when someone edits them after me as it is more likely to reflect my edits than at any other time. These could be bold, colored, or in some other way brought to the users's attention. Perhaps even a separate tab showing edits of my writings. —SteveDavison

2005-11-26 02:46:05 Can BR have a clear option or is there some other way to have a br clear=both style tag? Witness the "stacking" in The_Posh_Bagel?action=recall&date=1132995500 —JabberWokky

== == (blank section heading) does this, but can sometimes be avoided (see my edit)

2005-11-26 02:47:57 Also, the latest version in the info page has no date. Is that a technical limitation, or can there be an absolute reference so people can copy the "latest revision" url specifically for reference (rather than "whatever the current revision is" url)? —JabberWokky

Good idea!

You can use the url with "version=<current version number>" for now. It's not in the UI, though.

2005-12-02 02:23:10 As people add and delete pages, its interesting to see the number of pages ebb and flow around 6000. I added up the number of pages from the User Stats page, and it only added to 5548 (#images is 5587). Are the other 452 code or something? Also, if we can trust the 6000 figure, a polynomial fit of the growth rate (#pages = 0.0061*days*days + 9.0142*days) suggests we'll hit 700 by mid to late january. okay, back to work ... —CraigBrozinsky

2005-12-02 21:21:27 to add to the list of a billion more important things, it would nice if disambiguation pages were filtered from the orphaned pages page. —CraigBrozinsky

2005-12-10 00:59:50 I'd dig it if the logins were done over an SSL-encrypted link. —GrahamFreeman

I can turn on SSL for apache. Questions: How do I have it just use SSL for the login? Is it okay that I don't have a 'key' for the site? —PhilipNeustrom

mod_rewrite rocks my world. Put something like this in your non-SSL <VirtualHost *:80> section:

 <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

   RewriteEngine On

   RewriteRule ^/User_Preferences(.*) \
     https://www.daviswiki.org/User_Preferences$1 [NC,R=301,L]

 </IfModule>

This will redirect HTTP requests for /User_Preferences (or any other path justifying an encrypted connection) to an HTTPS connection. You'll also want to do the reverse (redirect /Front_Page and other non-sensitive pages from HTTPS to HTTP), unless you're cool with the added CPU and bandwidth needs of encrypting all connections.

You'll want to generate a self-signed SSL certificate, or (ideally) use one from www.CACert.org. If you're not sure how to go about doing this, we can meet up at Mishka's or Roma or something and get it done. I'll be back on Sunday. —GrahamFreeman

CACert doesn't have a valid root certificate on this machine/browser. Do they have them anywhere? What's the point of getting your SSL cert co-signed by them? —KennethWaters

'cuz DavisWiki.org is a community effort, and CACert.org is more of a community effort than Thawte. And it's free. And it's better than what we've got now. And this isn't a bank - the only confidential information on this site is authentication information. Besides, by encouraging DavisWiki.org users to install the CACert.org root cert on their machines, we help to improve and facilitate that worthwhile and like-minded effort. —GrahamFreeman

Sure it sounds good on paper, but as it turns out there is no way to safely install a rootcert, unless it's cosigned by some other root certs. So co-signing by CACert.org doesn't actually provide any more security than self-signing. Further CACert is not audited, using it could, in theory, be compromised and "less" safe (in the sense that it provides a false sense of security). Those two things combined should encourage people to not install the CACert root cert, unless you can somehow verify the fingerprint. —KennethWaters

So, let's help to audit CACert or host in-person GPG signature parties or otherwise help to improve the process instead of dismissing community-driven certificate signing/verification efforts as being useless because they're imperfect. I absolutely disagree that this would lead people into a false sense of security - I think it'd be just the reverse. Because self-signed certs are so prevalent, folks are all too willing to click past the warnings they encounter when they encounter a site that uses self-signed certificates. And with self-signed certs, there's no verification whatsoever. However, when using a commonly-used yet non-commercial authority such as CACert.org, one can't help but learn a tiny bit about the way this stuff works, which in turn helps to encourage better practices than simply clicking-past-that-pesky-meaningless-warning-message. —GrahamFreeman

2006-01-05 21:46:59 Note: Wikipedia.org uses CACert.org-signed certs. See https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/Server_admin_log, which is linked from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers —GrahamFreeman

2005-12-10 03:02:26 If we are worried about security, can we salt the password hash? I'm unable to follow the entirty of the password handling in a quick audit, but I can tell that they are not salted. Let's not be like mediawiki, instead let's be responsible. —KennethWaters

2005-12-25 20:28:05 There should be a way to revert renames. Right now you have to rename the page to what it was and delete the useless redirect. One of the reasons wiki works is that it's just as easy to vandalize as it is to fix vandalsim. —ArlenAbraham

Let's say someone changes the name of A Page in The Wiki to Page X. To fix the problem, one would have to:

It currently takes three clicks to rename a page.

Just on the subject, there should be a way to revert image deletion/renaming too. Fortunately, we've never had to deal with severe vandalism, but what if? (What if a few people tried for 30 minutes to do as much damage as they possibly could? Ideally, we would be able to keep up real-time. Could we? This has not been tested.) —SteveDavison

I could help you test that. *laughs maniacally* (I do like the idea of image reverts though.) —BrentLaabs

Steve: I'm pretty sure the image revert thing will be implemented in Sycamore. — ArlenAbraham

Yeah, it is. I'm not sure what to do about renaming. Is it a big deal? The problem is that it's easier to rename than it is to un-rename.. Any suggestions? Turning off renaming and forcing manual renaming seems backward because a lot of people wouldn't be able to figure out how to do it on their own.

2006-02-21 01:46:45 Pages that I can't edit, such as Recent Changes have the same "please login to edit" message as when i'm not logged in. it should say something like "you do not have permission to edit this page" —ArlenAbraham

2006-03-15 01:13:23 Has anybody run validator.w3.org on daviswiki? —NickSchmalenberger

Yes (it fails). Sycamore (the new code), passes validation as HTML 4.01 Transitional, however (at least the last time I checked it, that is. It's a goal, at the very least!) —PhilipNeustrom

2006-03-20 18:44:16 Maybe some sort of anniversary macro. [[Anniversary(yyyy-mm-dd)]] would output the number of years since that date. Good for automatically updating the content of the page without editing. —JasonAller

2006-03-28 11:27:14 The spell checker is really whacked (OK, we all knew that). Among other things, it includes question marks, but excludes apostrophes in its tokenizing. This is backwards. —SteveDavison

Yeah, it does suck. I haven't touched it. —PhilipNeustrom

Two things. First, how does one add a time tag to an entry, e.g. to preface this message? I used to copy the time tag written above the edit frame, but it has dissapeared. Also, I'd like to maintain my #pages predicting equation, but I'm not sure how given the new version of the page counter which reports abnout 1000 pages fewer than the previous version of the page counter. Is there any documentation on the discrepancy? —CraigBrozinsky

The time thing is something I'd never considered. When I really need to write the time I usually look at my computer's clock. The miscalculated old pagecount is an interesting case. It turns out that MoinMoin stored versions of pages on every preview (inaccessible to the user), and we didn't know about this. So when we made the pagecount mechanism take advantage of the technique we were using for case-insensitive links we didn't throw out these preview-versions. This is why the count is so many pages off. Every user who had ever previewed a page contributed to the page count. The page count wouldn't fluctuate, however, because these preview pages are never actually deleted. As for predictions and so forth, this may actually make it more interesting because you have to factor out the growth of the editing user base from the previous figures. —PhilipNeustrom

2006-05-18 23:07:23 events.daviswiki.org doesn't lead to the events board. does anyone else ever use this? —ArlenAbraham

2006-05-18 23:09:15 The search function shows highlighting for title matches. for example, if you search "technical discussion," and then click on the first title match (this page) there's a little box that says "highlighting off" even though nothing on the page is highlighted. —ArlenAbraham

Word, ought to be fixed at some point.

2006-05-18 23:24:26 The Edit/Info/Talk buttons are not displayed when viewing a diff —ArlenAbraham

Intentional. Click the tab to go back to the page (this didn't use to work). This is to give more room to the title area because the "Differences for" takes up a lot of space. On 800x600 this leads to wrapping on tons of page titles with the icons.

What about changing "Differences" to "Changes" or some such shorter word. Did we discuss this already?

Yeah, this is probably a good idea. Heck, we could change "for" to "on" and cut an extra letter out there, too!

2006-06-04 12:05:06 Why does the wiki care about filenames (like case, three letter extension) of uploaded files? It seems like people have had problems with case of their extensions and the response was make the wiki case-insensitive, but I'm curious why it needs to be case anything? Why not just allow any filename that unix allows? —NickSchmalenberger

Because that's the way it is, basically! If you really want to know the reason, it's because PostgreSQL is case sensitive (this is something that varies depending on which database you use) and to make it case-insensitive (properly) we need to code around it. Also, I'm not really sure what you mean with your comment. Are you saying we should be case-sensitive? I disagree, if that's what you're saying. —PhilipNeustrom

2005-02-09 13:24:08 It'd be sweet if the events from "Regular Events" were automatically added to the Events board. Probably not an easy task though. —JackHaskel

2005-03-21 18:47:50 Any chance of a WAP/WML interface for advanced mobile users? —TarZxf

2005-01-27 23:58:46 It would be nice to have the option to add ending times on the events board. Editing entries would be cool too. —JackHaskel

2005-10-16 20:44:05 Is there a way to turn off the "Comments" section when making an edit? I sometime confuse the "Reasons for Change" section with the "Add Comment" section of a page. —CraigBrozinsky

2005-10-27 22:27:06 Have a page which is sort of a cross between Recent Changes and the Info diff's. In other words, create a function which will give the diffs (just the diffs) of all the pages changed since the viewer last 'cleared'. This would quickly allow everyone to see what's been happening without having to view each of the pages. Malicious activity would be instantly seen this way, too. —SteveDavison

2005-11-25 19:33:05 Have the wiki generate a separation line between diffs and the actual page content when using Info->diffs. This will make it easier to see where the diffs end and the page begins. —SteveDavison

2005-11-25 19:35:15 Have a sort of macro which would expand (upon Save page) for date and name. For instance, if I write %d it would expand to the current ISO-8601 datestamp, and %u might expand to —SteveDavison

2005-11-25 19:38:41 This has been said before, but Comments should show the start of the text under Recent Changes, instead of "Comment added". —SteveDavison

2005-11-25 19:40:53 The "Please comment about this change" field should be longer. Encouraging more detail is a good thing. —SteveDavison

I think the current size is fine. Recent Changes would be even harder to read with multi-paragraph explainations for edits that should more properly go elsewhere. Edits are best discussed on the page itself, User pages, or Talk pages.

Actually I was thinking about 50% longer, say another 40 characters. At least make the input box smaller to reflect the allowed size.

I propose that a tab called "Events" be created going directly to the Events Board. —SteveDavison p.s. I don't know why the

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macro was removed from this page -Phil?

I've also wondered why there's no events tab. That would be nice. If you're worried about too many tabs, you could get rid of People. Even better, let the users choose their tabs. Steve, I think the comment bars were removed because people were using the comment bar for conversation rather than threading (like I'm doing). However, a time stamp button would be nice as well. - arlen

I agree, I never use the People tab, but I frequently check the Events Board by going to the Front page and clicking Events. Since the Events system works differently than the rest of the Wiki, it especially deserves it's own tab. On the subject of Events, one cannot use "Info" to view recently added events. It would be nice if it worked somewhat like Recent Changes in that it would remember which I'd seen and allow me to view only new events.

It's true that

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can be abused, but it's nice in that it gives a Wiki-accurate (ahem) timestamp and author attribution. For new proposals this especially makes sense. It's also easier to spot new comments when they are at the bottom -otherwise one has to use Info/Diffs. We have to trust that people will thread properly when commenting on earlier proposals. I'm adding it back in for another go. —SteveDavison

Don't forget that you can always click the diff icon on the recent changes page to see the diffs. - arlen

2006-04-10 17:27:43 It'd be great if submissions that match certain strings of text (geek translation: "regexes") were automatically flagged for administrator approval before being made publicly available. Similarly, it'd be great if there was a similar list of words to screen from the "Recent Changes" page. This would help to stem some of the less productive debates/flamewars/revert-wars that we've seen lately. —GrahamFreeman

So long as they are limited to one or a couple entries, they aren't anything other than annoying. We can 'bookmark' a page (and soon will be able to view recent changes of just bookmarked pages), but the "opposite of a Bookmark" (a usenet style "killfile": a "flag to ignore edits on this entry") option would be an excellent idea.

Define "they", please. "They" = the counterproductive edits? Or "they" = the moderation-inducing strings of text? -Graham
BTW, credit for the better idea is due to PN. I just chose to put it on this page. -Graham

2006-10-16 21:02:19 can we put a cap (or scaling) on image sizes in the events board? it's full of oversized show photos and i can't edit other peoples events to scale them down. —ArlenAbraham

2006-12-28 16:26:16 How do you find revision info for pages that have had their case changed? See Gill —ArlenAbraham

2007-02-12 17:53:33 i realize alexa is kind of a crock, but daviswiki traffic jumped enormously in the past month. any ideas why? —CraigBrozinsky

The UCD flash mob page was popular on Digg at about that time. —GrahamFreeman

2007-02-12 19:21:14 One feature that I miss from the wiki before sycamore was seeing the size of edits. What was the reason this was taken out? —NickSchmalenberger

It's really slow because it just grabs the page text for all of the pages and then counts the length of them. We can make it work so that it's not a performance hit (by storing the size of the page someplace), but the way it was implemented before didn't seem like that good to begin with (meaning: we'll redo it later and make it right).

You have all the pages stored in MySQL right? In strings or something else dynamicy texty I suppose? I don't know about MySQL, or even like it, but is there a way to get MySQL to tell you the size of the record? This seems like the sort of thing that a database should be able to do. Maybe like in this thread (on oracle): http://forums.devshed.com/coldfusion-development-84/how-to-get-size-of-field-from-metadata-187137.html —NickSchmalenberger

2007-03-22 10:40:34 I notice that the "pages deleted files" button seems to have disappeared from the files tab of some pages. Is this true? For what reasons? —NickSchmalenberger

If your recent test on your page failed, it's intermittent (oh joy!). screenshot —wl
No, it worked for me there too. Are you an admin or something? Maybe only admins can see deleted files on pages besides their user page.

Nah, I'm a regular user. Can you name any pages that you know have deleted files, but the button doesn't show up? —wl

On JessicaYang there is a deleted files button, but in recent changes it says "Image sparkleducks.JPG deleted. JessicaYang" without an upload of a file of the same name afterwards, but the file by that name is in the regular files area, not deleted. Anyway, maybe it is due to a file being replaced by a file of the same name or being permanently deleted. If it is permanenly deleted, I would like to see some sort of log of when permanent deletions occur and what files are included in that. —NickSchmalenberger

Oh! Yes... that's what happens when somebody uses "Replace File". I've noticed that myself. It's not the most clear Change in RC (like renaming entries... which at least give a known comment prefix) —JabberWokky

Uploads and deletions should also be visible in the info of a page, not just in recent changes. And like I said, in JessicaYang's case, it doesn't appear to me (looking at recent changes) that a replacement file was uploaded for sparkleducks.JPG. The last thing about that file is that it was deleted, and yet it is in the regular file area. —NickSchmalenberger

The image isn't listed in "Page's deleted images" because it's currently marked as active on the page. The older versions of the image are on the page for the image — see here (under File History). —PhilipNeustrom

Okay, the file history feature pretty much answers all of my questions. although it would still be nice if there could be a unified page history to see. I didn't know about that before, awesome. Thanks. —NickSchmalenberger

Yeah, I agree. It's a bit more intensive, but it's possible. The problem is actually UI. Right now the page history area is dedicated to letting you compare differences between versions. That UI doesn't fit with the idea of there being files and map points on there, and would probably be confusing to most people if it was stuffed together. That unified UI works on the Recent Changes page mostly because it's sort of a 'log,' rather than an interface into the differences between times. If you have an idea, please post it! —PhilipNeustrom

2007-04-03 23:48:43 quick edit it amazingly cool. can you make it compatible with pages accessed via the changes buttons on the recent changes page? currently that won't work. —CraigBrozinsky

Yeah, we can totally do that. I didn't think of it at the time. —PhilipNeustrom

2007-06-26 22:06:26 EVENT BOARD->ICAL? For the Event Board, has anyone succeeded in using some dynamic ical generator to life the events data into ical format which would be excellent for virtually all calendaring systems, including the one everyone's using these days: google calendar? —JaimeRaba

It should be relatively easy to do, but I think it would require that events be stored as their own objects in the database and the events page be a list of all such objects within a time range. While not a hard concept it's not anywhere near how the current setup works. Maybe we should borrow some code from plone, I'll take a peak later.

While we're on the topic a few people have mentioned how nice it would be to auto layout the events board so the pics are all a standard size and off to the side of the event info, so no scroll ridiculoso to get past day 5 of some play to find what you're looking for.—AlexMandel

2007-07-05 21:18:02 Does anyone have an idea why Google seems to hate us all of the sudden? For years Mike and I have been watching our ranking for the search phrase "Davis, California." We've seen the wiki move up in the ranks over the years, and it's always floated somewhere in the first ten pages of results — even from the get go. In the past two years or so it's been consistently on either the first page of results or on the second page. I just noticed that we're absolutely no where to be seen in a search for the phrase, now, which makes me think Google is totally hating on us — but I have no idea why. The first Davis Wiki result is #227 and it's our Volunteer Opportunities page. What the?

For comparison: we're #11 on Yahoo! Search and on the first or second page of all of the other search engines.

I've noticed that we've been disappeared in many different extremely relevant queries. What the..

Looking at our web server logs, it doesn't look like google is even really crawling us any more. Using google's "webmaster tools" tells me that "Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Dec 12, 2006." No other clues are given in their webmaster tools to tell me why this is the case.

Anyone have any clues? I put in a complaint on their "dissatisfied with your search results?" area but I have no faith in it being read. —PhilipNeustrom

I have no clues, but it can't be the case that Google hasn't crawled here since Dec. I searched on my CovertProfessor page, which was created on 4/3/07, and it was in the search results. — CovertProfessor

Yeah, you're right about that. It's definitely fishy. —pn
Perhaps a lack of space in the meta tag? just a thought, perhaps contact google about it? I dunno, you can also just pay them, I am sure that would get us indexted :). ~Dave A space is not needed...

The only major change to the markup of our pages that I can think of is quickedit. Perhaps the duplication of content in the source is being picked up as some SEO practice or something. —WilliamLewis You won't see that stuff if you can't edit the page — and so the google bot won't see it.
I would like to lay the blame at the feet of Jimbo (NSFW). Basically, since they're marking all of the wikipedia links as rel="nofollow", and they're like the only decently sized site linking to us. So I say unto you all, go forth and link! —BrentLaabs

2007-07-06 03:28:50 Quickedit... everything is in javascript. But is it in Javascript for non-logged in users (like Google's spider)? —JabberWokky

No, google won't see the javascript string because it can't edit. See my reply to william's comment above. So much for that theory..

2007-09-08 19:24:01 Would be nice if the Search also searched the Calendar/Current Events... —GarrettGallegos

i'm sure this is a basic question for some, but when downloading, what is the difference between "compressed source tarball" and "bzipped source tarball"? thanks!

bzip is one type of compression that can be used to compress to a tarball —ArlenAbraham

how do i get a copy of the macro that generates the events board? —JessicaRockwell

It is [[Events]] but it is useless on any page aside from the Events Board.

ah. cool. now if i'd like to look at the coding for the events board, so that events posted can be edited, how do i do that?

http://www.projectsycamore.org/ has instructions for getting the code. —JasonAller

ok, so i have this page. and i have also found the "how to install" page. i have a mac, so i have python. do i need to install all the other requirements? and what about those optional libraries? will those be useful for editing the events board?

You'll need the other stuff, too. Your python is probably a bit old, so you'll need to get version 2.4 or greater, along with the other stuff. The easiest way to get this kind of stuff on a mac is probably to install darwin ports. Darwin ports install info here. Maybe we should move this discussion to sycamore to avoid recent changes clutter.

i installed python 2.5.1 earlier by going to python.org. but to get all the other applications i'll go to the link you provided. what about the optional libraries?

By the way, Dive into Python is a great python tutorial (language the sycamore wiki software is written in). The tutorial assumes prior programming background of some sort. See beginners guide to python links, and some tutorials that are suited for people without prior programming background.

hmm, i've been looking at this python tutorial. are the ones you recommended better? so i've done some stuff in my terminal...which i know is nothing. but i'd like to see the actual coding so i can better understand what the hell i'm doing.

Any is fine as long as it gets you comfortable with the basics of the language. #python on IRC is also good for python questions.

Why is it that on the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis page, when I click preview the text begins at the top of the page perfectly aligned with the image. but in actuality the text begins below the picture? *amazed at the mystery* —JessicaRockwell

Margin and padding differ between the preview and the real page.

ah, ok. guess i'll have to keep fooling around with it.

2007-12-12 12:18:38 How come I'm not allowed to view Locked Pages? —BrentLaabs

I hide it because it lists the time when the page should be unlocked. I figured people might set alarm clocks to those dates and then jump back on the entries with that information? How do people feel about this?

Oh, I just figured that it was an old MoinMoin page that didn't get deleted because everyone had forgotten about it. I noticed it on Orphaned Pages. Yeah, that might be a good idea to keep hidden. -BL

2010-02-19 08:16:50 Would it be possible (and desirable) to set up an e-mail notification system for messages/edits to your own User page? I ask because it seems all too common for new users to not discover welcome messages, attempts to help, and so on. I think it would make outreach a bit easier. A simple toggle in User_Settings, on by default, and using the listed e-mail address ought to do the trick. Thoughts? —TomGarberson

2010-03-01 13:58:19 I haven't seen this in my (very brief) scan of the above comments, but I'd be surprised if no one has brought this up before. When going through a pages edit history (by using the "next edit" or "previous edit" button one-by-one), it'd be great to also have the actual edit comment written up there by differences. It can add a lot of context, and unless you're looking at the "info" page you won't see it. For example, this edit had the edit log comment of "googlygooglygoo." I understand that this wouldn't be practical (probably) for looking at edits 240 to 260 and have a list of change comments, but is there some way to have that info be added if we're looking at consecutive versions? 251 to 252, 252 to 253, 251 to 250, etc. Like I said, it can really help when someone is tracking hundreds of edits one-by-one. —ES

I would very much like to see this as well. It would be really helpful to be able to see the changes and the comments in the same place. —CovertProfessor

IP Address Features: It might be handy to have some basic cross-referencing and lookup features for editors' IP addresses. Possibly have either a sub-page or a quick list in a user's userinfo showing each IP address from which they have made edits, so you don't have to look back through their entire edit history to see the different addresses. Also, having each IP address link to a page listing each user who has made edits from that IP would be really handy. —TomGarberson

2010-05-16 10:22:05 The system's poor recognition of line-break shifting gets on my nerves sometimes. In that particular edit, I made "zipcar" into a link, and moved Trader Joe's + Car Sharing into the fulfilled wishes section, but you probably won't be able to discern all that without further in-depth examination (okay, I also added a few line breaks to make the raw source more readable, which exacerbated the issue). Which brings up a potentially more troubling thought: the system's shortcomings could be (ab)used to make subtle edits.

Solution: steal whatever RegEx algorithm is used by WinMerge, since they're open source anyway. (half-joking, but still...) —EBT

2010-06-22 16:03:40 When a wiki page is edited, it may be changed in several places, including in the middle of the page. We know that a page has been changed from the Recent Changes page. You can figure out where the page has changed by clicking on "info", and then trying to find the appropriate time range. But the "diff" text that results is shown out of context with the rest of the wiki text. Line numbers are shown for the diff text, but wiki text is not numbered, so it isn't clear where these changes actually are. Furthermore, there may be a series of changes in a selected time range, requiring the user to flip back and forth and search manually for each change in the page context.

A much more efficient way to do this would be to offer a button that combines the time indexing functionality of Recent Changes with the highlighting functionality of Info. If a user turned this feature on or clicked the appropriate button, the page would be displayed with all changes since they last viewed the page highlighted in color. Newer changes could be shown with a stronger highlight color than older ones, to make it easy to follow the progress of the changes over time. The functionality to track the time since a last view is already present in the Wiki in Recent Changes. The Info button would still be retained for people who want to see changes over other time ranges or prefer the current method.

Optionally, metadata such as the edit time and editor ID could be displayed with the highlighted change, or next to it. However, in some cases this info is not required, because edits are already often tagged with names and times.

This has the following advantages: 1) 0 clicks required to see how a page has changed - changes are visible inline, all the time 2) No need to hunt for the context of a change. The highlighting is inline, so the location is obvious 3) More intuitive than the current method, esp. for inexperienced or non-technical users. 4) Extremely simple interface —IDoNotExist

Making the "messages!" notice stand out

2010-12-11 12:07:06 Okay, since there has been some complaints about the "messages!" notice, I've come up with a hack that will make it more noticeable. This is not a code update, just an appearance update. Just to allow the flip side argument: Would anybody have a problem with my installing an update like this? Any support for the messages notice as it is now? —JabberWokky

That'd be great for outreach to new users. Can you drop a screenshot on here? —TomGarberson

Thanks to Sarah's feedback, I now have three different ones, each with different positives and negatives. Note that the font size in the Yellow ones could be adjusted... I did those two quickly, based on the first.

I like option 3! It seems to be the most idiot proof of the three. —WilliamLewis

I agree with WL — #3 is the one that is most likely to get users' attention and get clicked on. —cp

Option 1: Orange Tab

Orange Tab is a fixed placement tab (so when you scroll up and down, it stays in the upper right hand corner in a very visible fashion Same Orange Tab, same page, just scrolled down a bit

This one is nice when you're browsing. Distinctive.

Option 2: Yellow Bottom

Yellow Bottom is a bar spanning the bottom of the page with a notice. In earlier versions of IE, it just says 'messages!'

Another drawback with this one is that only "messages!" is clickable, which I don't think is very obvious. I can make the bar clickable, but then I can't have it say "You have". That, incidentally, is why I left the link blue.

Option 3: Yellow Top

Similar to the bottom, Yellow Top spans the top... but without code changes, it overlaps the top of the page. That's a fairly big negative... with the positive being the fact that this is closest to the common notices on the web these days.

Pretty much the same drawbacks as Option 2, with the clicking and the text. These are basically identical except for position. Without code changes, I'm limited in what I can actually do.

2010-12-13 11:24:11 Okay, with very few votes, it looks like number three it is then. I've got a meeting in about seven minutes, but I'll make the change right afterwards. We can always change it in the future. —JabberWokky

I missed this discussion somehow but sometimes the current "Messages" feature doesn't clear for a cpl times AFTER I've read the messages. I hope this doesn't do the same thing. Personally I don't see a need to change it. -PeteB

Okay, that's now one vote "no change" to two votes for number 3. I'll hold off. -jw

Make that three votes for. This at least is a change that can be made without effecting any other wiki spot wiki and has been an issue in need of some change for a long time. Option 3 may not be a perfect solution, but we can at least try it for a week or two and then revert if there is a problem. Other CSS changes have been made during the last sixth months without discussion. — JasonAller

The issues you're talking about only show up if you have an interwiki presence and you miss one of your userpages that have been changed. The people this is needed for won't have those problems. Those who have those problems are savvy enough to deal with them. —WilliamLewis

Three voices for it, one to keep the same, adding the CSS now. -jw

I'm going to count this as positive feedback. -jw

Now that I have seen the look of the yellow banner at the top, I still like it. Yes, it is big and obnoxious. But that's the point. You can't miss it. People *were* definitely missing it before. Yes, it covers up things. That's good. We want people to click on it in order to make it go away, and see the messages. Often the community is trying to say "hey there! please stop doing what you're doing and talk with us!" So, if it interrupts them a bit, that's what we want. But — for me, it did not take me to my user page. Rather, it took me here: http://wikispot.org/Interwiki_Bookmarks#profiles — I'm not sure a new user would know what to do with that. I'm using Firefox, btw. —CovertProfessor

2010-12-23 11:33:52 Is the bar there until you click on your userpage? Using both the newest Chrome release and IE9, I see no yellow bar at all anywhere. —EdWins

Yes, it should be there until you click on your user page, at which point it will go away. —cp

After this edit, I cleared recent changes and am logging out - mind trying again?-ES

No go. Maybe JW can shed light on it? Cleared cache and everything... These two screencaps are using the newest Chrome Release on W7. prelogin, showing some of recent changes postlogin, showing all of the changes since cleared/logged out -ES

It should appear while (time when you last visited your profile < time when your profile was last edited), with a note that there are a couple other things that can affect it (mostly having to do with your bookmarks and settings in your wiki settings). I'm not sure what happens if you remove the bookmark or explicitly unwatch a wiki. ⁓ʝ⍵

Removed bookmark and both watched wikis. Logging out/clearing cache. Will relogin in using IE9 later if someone doesn't mind leaving another comment.

Ok, I just left you another comment. I also unbookmarked my own userpage to see if that changes anything for me. Can someone leave me a comment? —CovertProfessor

When I deleted the bookmark to my user page, I no longer saw the messages banner. When I restored the bookmark, I could see the messages banner when there were changes to my page. However, clicking on the word "messages" still does not take me to my user page. This must be related to jw's comment that "there are a couple of things that can affect it (mostly having to do with your bookmarks and settings in your wiki settings)." I should add that I did not have this problem with the little yellow flag. Clicking on that always took me to my user page. —cp

(Note that this does not contradict anything anybody has written, it's simply clarification): I can absolutely state that the link there is the exact same thing that was there a month ago (with a very small possibility that Mike or Philip snuck in a code update, but they both said they weren't working on Sycamore, focusing instead on LocalWiki. Philip is out of town and semi-offline until after the 28th). Anybody who knows how CSS works can back me up here... the HTML code is exactly the same, only the presentation and positioning is different. After that, I can't speak to the extreme subtleties of how the link itself work. All I did was a purely cosmetic change. That said, there are some funky details when you get into how it works that have caused some questions before. To make it even more complicated, it is plausible that an account created after April 2007 works slightly differently than those created before (there was a slight change regarding default messaging settings shortly after Wiki Spot launched). All that said, I'll repeat the one thing I can be certain of: while people might be discovering new things about messaging and how the link works via increased scrutiny, the actual functionality of it is the exact same when you click on it. The only thing that I changed was the appearance of it (as I only used simple CSS). ⁓ʝ⍵

I understand what you are saying about it being a purely CSS change, but all I know is that I am definitely getting different behavior than I got before. I have no explanation. —cp

Used firefox to edit my wikispot page, per JW's suggestion. Worked as expected - I got the yellow banner as soon as I refreshed the page I left open on Chrome. Oddly, I have yet to see the yellow banner when someone edits/comments on my DW page. ? -ES.

Dumb question - are you going to your user profile (have it bookmarked) as your entry point? If so, you'll never see a notice, as it is cleared BEFORE the page displays (since you are already on that page). ⁓ʝ⍵

It's a very valid question, but nope! Typically I go straight to 'recent changes.' Yesterday, I actually logged out after clearing changes, cleared browser cache, went to the home page daviswiki.org, then logged in. There was an edit t my page, but no bar at all (as seen in the thumbnail above). The only time I've seen it so far is when I edited my wikispot profile page, per your suggestion. I was on the recent changes using Chrome, and it just took a single page refresh to see the yellow bar pop up. -ES

To send yourself a messageEither log out or use a different browser (that you are not logged in on — I suggest installing Arora as a nice lightweight alternate browser), and edit wikispot.org/Users/YourAccount (because it can be edited anonymously). Go back to your logged in browser (or log back in), and viola! You have messages!If you use Chrome, try using "incognito mode" to have a logged out window.

2010-12-23 12:53:26 As an aside, this is part of why I did it this way — I'm trying to open these kinds of things up to community feedback and involvement. So feel free to suggest any alternatives. The original issue was that people weren't noticing the messages button because it was too subtle. There are plenty of ways to alter it (so long as it doesn't require an actual code change). —JabberWokky

I truly wish I had logged in earlier this month, stay away for too long and bad things happen. Maybe it's just Internet Explorer 8, but I think not (apearance of the screens, maybe, complete redirects highly doubt IE causes this). Here's what I'm talking about:

In this image, there used to be a little yellow message alert that would show up next to my name and if I clicked it, viola, boom I go right to my page. Now though with the change that was made in the next image:

I have no choice but to click this huge ugly bar. I can't even see my name, let alone click it (also note not being able to see the DavisWiki logo). So, now I click this huge monstrosity, and, all appearances aside (which might be altered by I.E. and other browsers {which one would think is another problem with these types of changes... kind of annoyed at the suggestion of downloading another browser just to use the wiki}) I am now surprisingly enough not taken to my page at all, but am instead redirected here:

So now, I have not only had no choice but to click this bar which blocked my name, along with any other options I enjoy such as just clicking the recent changes tab... I am now taken completely away from the DavisWiki altogether and have to click my name in the link on the InterWiki/WikiSpot to not only get back to DavisWiki, but also to my page to see the message(s). Yes, ugly and annoying, no offense. I would rather either have this system changed back to the old version (which worked perfectly well) or go to the much less obstructive version. The only other option is to download and install a different browser??? Come on, that's just poopoo talk ... the wiki should be the same for all browsers and I doubt very highly a different browser will cause an Interwiki redirect anyway. If it does, tell me how.

It doesn't. There has been no change to the link itself in the last few years. The appearance of the link is all that can be changed with CSS, and that was the only thing changed. The link itself has operated the same way since April 2007, as indicated by this question from 2008 in the FAQ. As a final note, I don't believe that anybody has suggested you download a different browser to use the wiki, merely noted that different browsers, operating systems and monitors have slight differences in how they render text. ⁓ʝ⍵

Ok, I think I am starting to figure this out now. Assuming JW is right (and surely he is), perhaps what was going on before was that we'd seeing the little yellow messages flag right next to our name, but we'd click on the name because that was what looked like a link. The problem with the current solution, and all of the proposed new solutions, is that the "messages" notice is no longer next to our name link, and so we click on the messages link instead. I am of the opinion that Interwiki bookmarks is not a good place to send new users looking for messages, but I understand that no code changes are likely to be made. So, it seems to me we have a choice among the following: 1) the old way: user might miss that they have messages, but if they saw the notice, they would likely go to their user page; 2) the current way: user is more likely to see that they have messages, but also less likely to be able to find the page where their messages are, or 3) some third way where the message flag is made bigger but is still next to our linked user names. If there is a way to do #3, I think that is worth considering.

By Jove, I think you've hit on what has been happening! I've been wracking my brain trying to figure this out. I'll bet your observation that people were clicking on their name (taking them to their user entry) is dead on. It was starting to drive me nuts, because I knew what I had done, and it couldn't have changed the actual links themselves. By changing the appearance of the links, however, while it didn't change the behavior of the wiki, it did change the behavior of the people using the wiki (i.e., they clicked on the messages link for the first time, rather than their name, and thought things had changed). For a number 3 option, note the "Orange tab" option above. It at least allows people to click on their name, if they are in the habit of doing so. ⁓ʝ⍵

That's what I've always done (clicking my username) whenever I saw I had a message alert. Always let me see my messages on my user-page that way. What I think I am reading here now is that IF someone actually clicked the "message" link it always redirected to the interwiki link? That makes no sense to me at all. It just sends you to the interwiki page pictured above and causes frustration (at least it did with me). I wondered why it was redirecting me to a page on the interwiki (where no messages reside, but a link back to your page does) when it makes more sense to just click your name and view the message(s). Clicking the username, while it may not have been the technical thing to do, is the common sense thing to do and what I am guessing the majority does do. I think that whatever tab or link is created to resolve this should still allow the users to click their name, or at least link directly to the userpage rather than to the interwiki.— Wes-P
Glad I could help! It's been bugging me too. JW, the orange tab option allows people to click on their name, but it doesn't tell them that this is what they should do. Is there any way to tell the new user that? —cp

Wes: That's a behavior that has been complained about many times, but Philip defends as being the correct way to handle it. Maybe Local Wiki will handle it in a more obvious manner, that would be an issue to bring up when the development hits the feedback stage later this year. CP: I agree, and thus: Does anybody have any problems with flipping to the Orange Tab format to try that out as a way to resolve both issues (visibility and the new confusion)? I'll wait until this evening unless I get three clear voices of "Yes, go do it!" (again, I'm trying to make sure everybody has an opportunity to speak up in changes like these). ⁓ʝ⍵

ʝ⍵, does PN defend it? On the page you linked to above, he seems to agree that there is a better way. And you offer a very good suggestion, IMO, for dealing with the problem. In any case, I am certainly willing to give the OTF a try, since the YBF seems to be causing problems. It's not a perfect solution, but maybe it will work better. —ℂℙ

I know he's defended it in the past. It's very plausible that there have been other positions over time, and I certainly can't state his current view with absolute certainty. Regardless, there has been a stated moratorium on Sycamore development to focus on Local Wiki development. Thus this change is an incremental fix to cover the interim. ⁓ʝ⍵
I didn't like that what I called the "over banner" covered up the three links - and with a different link! The message indicator shouldn't cover up those links and take up so much space at the top of the page. One possibility would be for the message indicator to have a link for the user page where the "message" (Maybe someone edited the user page and it isn 't really a message.) is and also have a link to the messages page. —BruceHansen

It is the same link, working the same way, as before. To be clear: No link has been changed in the past few years. Period. It works the exact same as before. You were probably, like several people, it seems, clicking on your username rather than the actual word "messages". No changes have been made to the links at all, except in appearance. They work the exact same as before. ⁓ʝ⍵

2011-03-18 19:50:18 Still using this? —Wes-P

2011-05-10 10:47:45 So, on Monday afternoon I found myself in a small office with light wood floors, two cheap IKEA desks and a couple of $5 sheets of tileboard glued to the side of the wall to serve as whiteboards. In short, I was in Mike and Philip's office. They gave me a fairly comprehensive overview of what they have accomplished so far in an actual demo of the working software. While it still has some bugs and a simplistic UI, it's pretty clear they have done some outstanding work. I didn't use it, but over Philip's shoulder I was shown that the GUI interface is in place, demoed one of the best mapping systems I've ever seen, and led through a few other really impressive bits. We talked tech for a bit, and they are — as they planned to from the beginning — really using the Django framework in a way that should keep things easier to update over time, so long as we have active development of the software. We also spoke about improving the visibility of their work so that we, the current community, know what's going on, and came up with some good ideas toward that goal. I'll write up a longer (and more public) overview of my impressions in the next day, but I do want to say that the work to date has been oriented toward a very calculated and clear improvement of what we have. —JabberWokky

2013-02-12 12:33:30 Could there be an app created for the davis wiki? That would be awesome!! —JenniferStanton

The new LocalWiki platform, which DavisWiki will be moved to, has much better mobile support. E.g. if you check out https://play.localwiki.org (link is temporary and will take a while to load) you'll see it looks really good on a mobile phone, and even editing is supported (on iOS 6 and Android). The new platform also has some technical functionality that make building an independent, yelp-type phone app much easier (for instance, a couple of prototype independent apps have been built - https://github.com/hampelm/localwiki-mobile). I've been working to try and get some funding for mobile development as well - http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/31273837498/localwiki-mobile (this particular proposal didn't make it, btw) —PhilipNeustrom

When will the move officially occur Phil? —PeteB

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