User talk:Sulfur

  This user believes in keeping talk page conversations in one place. If you leave a comment here, expect a reply on this page.


 * My 6th edit, and you finally noticed me! :) -- Sulfur 04:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

SciFi Wiki
Hi, I;m an admin on the SciFi Wiki and I've seen your work here and on MA and was wondering if you could help out at the SciFi Wiki. Thanks!!!--UESPA 02:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Series changes
Thanks for letting me know. As the user who was changing the information was only logged in for 1 of the edits I've given them a final warning. I'll keep an eye out and block them if it becomes necessary. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 07:24, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

Quote
Yeah I meant the narrator thing. Your right about that wiki rich thing though. Thanks--Skittles the hog 18:58, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Rich Text Editor
I've contacted Wikia to ask them if they can turn it off or disable it by default for all users. Hopefully I'll get a response soon. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 08:00, January 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * There are none whenever I see a page after editing. As for the editor, it is very hard changing it. For once, it stays on the default rich text editer, and it takes ages for me to switch to the other format each time I want to change over, so it ain't pretty waiting for that, when there is the chance it might not even work because it seems to og very slow changing over. Delton Menace 16:55, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Go into your preferences and you should be able to save it, and the rich text editor goes away for good. The spaces are not visible the first time the page is edited (generally).  It's visible the second, and so on-th time.  In fact, at one point this weekend, the end of the "End of Time" article had a single template on each screen.  There were 60-70 lines of blank space between each one. -- sulfur 17:15, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

I got a message back from Wikia support, they said they're in the process of rolling out a update to the rich text editor see here for info on the update.

I am hoping that this update will fix some of the noted issues. The new updates will be rolled out in the next week or so.

They did say it's *possible* to disable the rich text editor for an entire wiki, however: "'it makes such a significant impact on the number of new editors, and the number of edits that they make, that we would very much prefer not to. We would need to see a community consensus that all editors want it turned off, and even then it's important to remember that the RTE is most helpful to the new editors who are least likely to participate in such a discussion. We would much rather work with you to solve any remaining bugs so that there is no community desire to turn the editor off.'"

I think we'll need to wait for this update to come out and see if that fixes the issues, and if not then if you wish to start with a forum topic to come to some sort of consensus.

The alternative I suppose is educating new users on how to turn it off / pros & cons of using it. --Tangerineduel 12:39, January 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * I know that it's something we did disable over on Memory Alpha. Best decision we made as a group last year! :)
 * I'll wait to see the updates, and if it doesn't, I'll be more than happy to start a discussion about it. -- sulfur 23:26, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

Vincent van Gogh
Hi, I've rolled back both edits the user made to the pages. I'm not sure if a merger is nessecary given the Vincent Van Gogh pages is/has been always been a redirect page. But if the new series titles him as Van then...we shall see. I'll also keep an eye on the VvG article in case of any further user copy/redirecting/edits. Thanks. --Tangerineduel 13:54, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism
As yoru probally well aware were having a slight problem with it here at the moment, we can see one is a registered user. Is there anything we can do or is it a case of waiting for it to happen then fixing it ?--Ximodnic 03:33, January 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sadly, unless there is an admin about, there's nothing else that can be done. :(
 * I would suggest going back to a known "safe" edit revision though each time, and not just removing what you think is the vandalism. -- sulfur 03:35, January 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Will do ! -- Ximodnic 03:36, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes + CSS
Looks nice. I will admit I know nothing about CSS and have mostly worked out how to do most of the infobox stuff by trial, copy and error. The 4000 is roughly how many articles use the individual infobox. Your additions seem to work (though how might I get the whole infobox to display on the infobox page in its entirety, as it did before your additions? If that's possible?). Also in the individuals infobox's case, we'd still need to look at all 4000 to check which ones need 'mentions' adding to them, but the method you've implemented means we wouldn't need to add 'mentions' to ever single one of those correct?

If I were to just copy the code from the astronomical infobox into the individual infobox (obviously changing the wording for it) it would work just the same I'm assuming? Many thanks, the 4000 infobox changes wasn't something I was looking forward to doing. Fixing the astronomical infobox was a mindnumbing experience enough. --Tangerineduel 12:13, January 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Just making the same changes would do the trick for you. In terms of the CSS, something like the following would (should) do the trick.
 * It may not be perfect at first crack, but will allow you to make the infoboxen much simpler. (See after the code chunk here).

table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-both { text-align: center; border-bottom: 1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray; padding-left: 0; padding-right: 0; }

table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-name { text-align: center; bgcolor=Mediumpurple; border-bottom:0px solid gray; font-size:larger; color:Lavender; }

table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-both img { display:block; /*force new line after img in sidebar */ bgcolor=white; margin: 0; padding-left: 0; padding-right: 0; border-bottom: 1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray; }

table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-left { width: 33%; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; border-bottom: 1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray; vertical-align:top; }

table.wiki-sidebar td.sb-right { border-bottom: 1px solid gray; border-top: 1px solid gray; }


 * So, your infobox code would look more like:

|- |-


 * Or:

|- |-


 * Much simpler. Putting the whole box on the page is pretty easy too, but best done on the documentation page.  Over on MA, we've actually done those up as examples of each.  See here for an example.


 * Let me know if you want any help converting templates or whatever. I have no problem helping out where possible (as you have likely noticed). -- sulfur 14:03, January 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey, thanks for sorting all the infoboxes out, it's been on my "I should do something about this" list, but I haven't really got around to it. --Tangerineduel 12:59, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

Templates
Thanks for your edit to my templates but I am editing and there is problems with things appearing at the top and it won't go away. Please could you do something about it and when it's done, I'll email you back when you email me. Thanks! Trikster87 16:20 - 28th January 2010
 * When adding the new "acting" bit, you put a random horizontal break in the wrong place, and didn't close an "#if:" check. I fixed that. -- sulfur 16:24, January 28, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!
Do you like my new templates! I love 'em! Now I'm going to make a new one about a series and please feel free to contact me whenever you feel like it! Trikster87 - 31st January 2010 16:55
 * A new series? What series?  I'm pretty sure that there's already templates that cover all series. -- sulfur 16:56, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

Std pix width on infoboxen
Okay. I see what you're saying. Your templates at MemAlpha have all been rejigged to 292px with no borders so the true width is 292. Everything here should therefore be that as well. I buy that. Fine. I also think that here, as at MemAlpha, editors shouldn't be given a choice as to width, cause they'll put any old thing in. Moreover this means that if the site needs to change in the future, we change one template, and the whole site obeys. And I had infoboxen 6 months ago that did that. But they were shot down as they were being implemented, by the main admin. In the meantime, it seems like everyone is on the infoboxen bandwagon, but I don't really see that much changing. I'm not sure, at this point, if we're going CSS, as you've been pushing things, or if we're just making modifications to our clunky wiki code, as we've always been doing. If it's CSS, I don't think I as a regular user can get into that, can I? Don't you need to be an admin for that? You're probably closer to the seat of power now than I am, judging by talk page interaction. Have you addressed this point to Tangerineduel? And is there a bot that will help us to convert into whatever.jpg so that we can easily make the conversion?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  20:10, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Most bots can do that easily -- I don't have one (can't get it to compile anymore :, but it's likely best to do something similar to MA and use a template to create the image calls, so that if the ads change or the widths change down the road, there's only one place that needs to be fixed. I've not mentioned it to TD, but could bring it up there easily.  Wouldn't be a problem to do so.
 * Again, the big issue is the 20k pages that have infoboxen with images :( -- sulfur 20:14, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and yes, to fix CSS, you need to be an admin (mediawiki: space). But CSS is a huge pain in the ass, as evidenced by a slew of changes we had to make on MA today to handle a quiet update done by Wikia.  The pains of having a dark background.  Heh. -- sulfur 20:15, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

So where would I get such a bot? Cause I think some of TD's resistance to making the kind of, for lack of a better phrase, "wholesale paradigm shifts" that we need to make to infoboxen is reasonable. None of us signed up to wiki editing in order to trudge through a thousand pages and make one or two tiny little changes on each page. Most of us just want to write, not, essentially, program. Any clues you could give as to finding and using bots would be much appreciated.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  20:57, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * I see that they've updated the one bot since I last used it, so I'll look into getting that working this weekend actually, and if I can, then I'll approach TD with the proposal on the matter. There are a number of other bots out there, but that was the one I had the most luck with.  I'll let you know the progress on things this weekend. -- sulfur 23:56, March 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * I would like to defend and explain myself somewhat.
 * The infobox in question was implemented and then the the main user making the push was absent for a time, I went through Central Wiki and asked them about it, just in case there was a conflict of interest (for me).


 * I also preserved all the work and its history into a new page so it could be worked on without being pushed out into the rest of the site.


 * There are other admins and I don't want to be seen as the be all and end all of admins (there are other admins who were here before me and still put in appearances). Not that I'm volunteering but a lot of my early work pre-admin (and post) status was doing long tedious edits on all the TV story pages swapping them over from the old infobox to a the TV infobox (which I then went through again and changed to the classicTV inbox, which I've been thinking about tweaking once more; changing year to setting, a minor thing that's been irritating me, the same with the CD inboxes). Hence my somewhat fanaticism about the infoboxes working and being usable to wide range of different users (and my general dislike of the use of arrows in infoboxes).


 * The infoboxes need to be a balance of relatively idiot proof and simple to use and edit with. (It is hard enough to get new users to skim through the help pages before they edit let alone long infobox explanation pages, I'm not attacking CzechOut's efforts, but getting people to read great swathes when they want to come and edit and get their teeth into it is somewhat tricky and often makes me feel like Sisyphus) Being able to explain to new users easily where they've made a mistake, how to fix it (and why it broke) and things like that can make a big difference.


 * Central Wiki often rolls out updates designed to improve 'stuff' for the better, some things work, some are less than brilliant (the rich text editor for one), what's to stop their next roll out breaking something integral to the infoboxes.


 * The other thing I would note is that we've got a much smaller knowledgeable active editor population than MemAlpha, with our source content increasing month to month, so rolling out any big changes should keep this in mind. Also instructions and explanations can really help with intermediate editors/really active or curious editors, I've tried to do this with the Tardis:Current projects pages, just so anyone can step in and understand how the various things work, or be able to look through the histories and see how things change and whatever.


 * Though I shall also await the proposal of everything (I just kinda wanted to state my case somewhat). --Tangerineduel 14:48, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * As a followup, I've got a bot working now -- doing tests on MA with it at the moment (User:SulfBot fyi). When I get it nicely functional, doing lots of grunt work will (should) become a lot easier.  I'll keep you updated on my progress. -- sulfur 14:52, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Bot configs
Okay, I've taken your suggestion and gone to get this pywikipedia bot. I've got it sort of setup, but have hit a roadblock at login, because, I suppose, the specfics of this particular wiki are not included in the package. I'm gathering that they need to be manually setup. Do you know how I would alter user-config.py and a family for tardis?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  20:34, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I've found some sample user-confg.py files for non wikimedia sites, and i've created that and a tardis_family based on those. But I'm still getting nowhere with login. I consistently get the following errors, and wonder if you've ever seen them before. Here's the Traceback resulting from the command python login.py: Traceback (most recent call last): File "login.py", line 58, in ? import re, os, query File "/Users/WHEREVER/pywikipedia/query.py", line 28, in ? import wikipedia, time File "/Users/WHEREVER/pywikipedia/wikipedia.py", line 1182 for link in disambigpages.linkedPages ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Here's the family file. Don't really know about the language; I modeled this mostly on the mozilla_family.py file, because the instruction files at the site you gave me said Mozilla was a simple, one-language wiki like tardis. import family

class Family(family.Family): def __init__(self): family.Family.__init__(self) self.name = 'tardis'

self.langs = { 'en': 'tardis.wiki.com', }

# Most namespaces are inherited from family.Family. self.namespaces[4] = { '_default': [u'Tardis', self.namespaces[4]['_default']], }      self.namespaces[5] = { '_default': [u'Tardis talk', self.namespaces[5]['default']], }

# A few selected big languages for things that we do not want to loop over # all languages. This is only needed by the titletranslate.py module, so      # if you carefully avoid the options, you could get away without these # for another wiki family. self.languages_by_size = ['en'] def hostname(self,code): return 'tardis.wikia.com' def path(self, code): return '/index.php' def version(self, code): return "1.10.2""

My user-config.py file looks like this: import os, re, sys (I've also tried it with this line absent) family = 'tardis' mylang = 'en' (I've also tried this with mylang absent, and with it set to tardis and defualt) usernames['tardis']['en'] = 'WHATEVER' (I've also tried this with u'WHATEVER') minithrottle = 1 maxthrottle = 4 put_throttle = 4 noisysleep = 2.0

console_encoding = 'utf-8' use_api_login = True However, alteration of this file, and indeed the family file, seems to have no effect upon the message I get when I login. I always get the exact same Traceback regardless. Any thoughts?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  21:42, March 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry on the delay in responding, was traveling. Here's a tardis family file that should work for you.  Name it "tardis_family.py":

import family, config
 * 1) -*- coding: utf-8  -*-

class Family(family.Family): def __init__(self): family.Family.__init__(self) self.name = 'tardis_wikia'

self.langs = { 'en':'tardis.wikia.com', }

# Most namespaces are inherited from family.Family. self.namespaces[400] = { '_default': u'Video', }       self.namespaces[401] = { '_default': u'Video talk', }       self.namespaces[500] = { '_default': u'User blog', }       self.namespaces[501] = { '_default': u'User blog comment', }       self.namespaces[502] = { '_default': u'Blog', }       self.namespaces[503] = { '_default': u'Blog talk', }       self.namespaces[110] = { '_default': u'Forum', }       self.namespaces[111] = { '_default': u'Forum talk', }       # A few selected big languages for things that we do not want to loop over # all languages. This is only needed by the titletranslate.py module, so       # if you carefully avoid the options, you could get away without these # for another wikimedia family.

self.languages_by_size = ['en','de']

def version(self, code): return "1.15.2"

def scriptpath(self, code): return ''


 * The next trick here is to remove your user-config.py file. Do:  python login.py and it will prompt you as to which wiki family you want.  Find "tardis" in the list (should be somewhere around 30).  Follow the directions from there.  You'll want to use a different account than your "CzechOut" user though.  Just FYI.  Let me know if you need any more help -- you can drop me an email if you want too. -- sulfur 22:50, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I surely wouldn't have gotten that it was tardis_wikia instead of just tardis. Unfortunately, after following your instructions, I'm still getting the exact same syntax error. According to what I've read, it would seem to indicate that there's something python isn't liking about that "for" command on line 1182 of of wikipedia.py. But I've checked that against error logs on the net, and I can't find any reference to that specific line causing people problems. I've also come across several examples of this section of code, and people seem to be happy with it. I've occasionally seen some examples of for being prefixed by a hash mark, as in # for, but I'm hesitant about editing wikipedia.py. Any other thoughts?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  23:41, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

No, wait a sec. A hash mark just means "don't compile" doesn't it? So # for would just mean the line isn't parsed. Well, that's not it then.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  00:04, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Python issues
Oh, I suppose I should point out that if I try to get Python to compile just wikipedia.py — as with python wikipedia.py, I get the syntax error. Whatever's going on at line 1182 is definitely the problem. Is there some possibility I've got the wrong version of Python or something? I"m on Mac OS X.4, and the Python site said their recommendation was to upgrade. I did, to 3.1.1, but when I type python it's still telling me I'm at 2.3.5.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  23:46, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hrm... what shell are you using? bash?  tcsh?  You'll need to figure out where the new python binary is located.  The pywikipedia bot requires Python v2.5 at a minimum. -- sulfur 00:06, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

It's bash. And, hmm. It's saying 2.3.5, but I have installed 3.1.1. And I really don't understand why I'm getting 2.3.5 at all, because within the Mac library system (Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions) there are two folders, 2.3 and Current. Which implies that for some reason the non-current version is being used. I have no idea why this is.  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  00:46, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Um, okay, how's this for weird. I installed 2.6.4, and everything worked like a charm. I've got it to go to the login screen. Now oddly I've got two tardises, #30 a 31. Any particular theories about why that'd be?  Czech Out  ☎ | ✍  00:54, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * One was yours, one was the one from the text above. Use the one that I gave you, and remove the one you did from before. :) -- sulfur 00:58, March 5, 2010 (UTC)