gmane.comp.web.wiki.wikia.vim

HTML character entities

John Beckett — 2008-10-07T07:41:25

Please bear in mind a new guideline when editing: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_Tips_Wiki:Special_text Summary: * Do not use < or > or & (for < > &). * Except: - use <q-args> for - use <S-F1> for (and similar for , etc) I have used a bot to remove HTML character entities from all tips, except for the above (and a couple of strange {{help}} template cases). For example, a tip that used to contain "<CR>" now contains "". Entities other than < > & have not been changed. With luck, you won't notice anything different when reading a tip, but editing will be a lot easier. The above link has some background. In brief, some research leads me to believe that the MediaWiki software that processes wikitext will reliably generate valid HTML if the above summary is followed. John

Re: What are Tips?

Benjamin Fritz — 2008-09-25T16:06:20

I like option 2...like you said, it's easy to miss. I also like the text at vim.org a little better that the text in "about this wiki."

Re: What are Tips?

John Beckett — 2008-09-22T22:56:35

It's easy to miss, but the first item on the Main Page ("Welcome to the Vim Tips wiki") has this information in the first "About this wiki" link (the text starts with an abbreviated version of the vim.org description). Do you like any of these options: 1. Expand the description on "About this wiki". 2. Put most of the description at the top of the right-hand column on the Main Page. 3. No action ("About this wiki" is ok). John

What are Tips?

Benjamin Fritz — 2008-09-22T18:34:16

At http://www.vim.org/tips/index.php there is a nice description of what tips are and why we have a tip collection, in the left column of the page. I think we need this same information on the wiki, but I don't know a good place for it. I really think it should go on the home page, but the home page already has quite a bit of stuff on it! What does everyone else think?

Tip headings

John Beckett — 2008-09-21T05:25:16

I have tried an experiment by changing Template:TipImported and Template:TipNew (and a bit more -- see Recent changes) to reduce the size/prominence of the heading material that appears on tips (tip number/previous/next/author etc). For example, see the results at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/The_super_star http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_multiple_words This is motivated mainly by some feelings, expressed most strongly by Sightless, that the heading is irrelevant and distracts from the tip. My eyes were quite happy to skip over the old heading, so it didn't worry me, but I see the point and am trying this test. I made quite a nice change to "Imported from" but testing shows that the old tips have been removed from vim.org. Therefore, I have omitted "Imported from" altogether. I also omitted the display of the rating (aka karma) because it is obsolete and often misleading (because we have drastically edited the tip since the original karma was assigned). The "Complexity" and "Author" are now optional. P

Candidates for deletion

John Beckett — 2008-09-20T04:11:04

Next Sunday (in one week) I intend deleting all the stuff at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Candidates_for_deletion Please reply if you see any problems, or edit the talk page of the above. Fritzophrenic has commented on my proposal to delete a redirect page (he's making the valid point that we should keep old titles as redirects so inward links continue to work). I agree in general, but I'm not sure that Fritzophrenic has noticed which redirect I was hoping to delete. Consider tip 810 http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/VimTip810 This tip has had three titles: 2007-06-04: Highlighting Text Beyond 80 Columns [imported tip] 2007-10-18: Highlight text beyond 80 columns [from "titles project"] 2008-08-27: Highlight long lines [renamed after recent cleanup] The "titles project" was the bulk renaming exercise where we considered the title for each tip, then ran a bot to rename 578 tips as agreed. You can see the original titles (some of which are severely broken) at http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:JohnBeckett/T

Wiki software upgrade

John Beckett — 2008-09-10T02:00:18

Wikia are upgrading the software driving each wiki to MediaWiki 1.13.1. The main enhancement concerns moving a page (changing the title): Double redirects are automatically detected and fixed. For example, if "A" redirects to "B", then you move "B" to "C", the redirect on "A" will automatically be changed to "C". More info: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki_1.13 Please report if you notice any problems. John

Re: Help links now show Vim 7.2 docs

Benjamin Fritz — 2008-08-28T13:40:29

Help links now show Vim 7.2 docs

John Beckett — 2008-08-28T04:16:06

Vim 7.2.006 documentation has been placed on vimdoc by Dan Sharp, and he has copied my current CGI help script from vimplugin to vimdoc, and I have edited Template:Help to use vimdoc rather than vimplugin. Dan told me that he hopes to keep the documentation reasonably up to date in the future. Therefore, our {{help|whatever}} links should show 'vimdoc' in the link, and should display 7.2 docs (rather than 7.0). If you have recently visited a help page, you may need to reload your browser/cache (perhaps Ctrl-F5) to see the new version. Now we'll see if Fritzophrenic can remember where he put that note about the help link not working until vimdoc is updated... John

Candidates for deletion

John Beckett — 2008-08-02T08:06:50

Next Sunday (in one week) I intend deleting all the stuff at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Candidates_for_deletion Please reply if you see any problems, or edit the talk page of the above. The proposed deletions are fairly uncontroversial (mostly the info has been merged elsewhere). I'm planning to remove the tip talk pages that don't have any useful content. Please have a look to verify. John

New sysop

John Beckett — 2008-07-08T22:36:42

We have had quite a bit of spam lately. Wikia have been extremely helpful and have provided a couple of tools and a guard dog (aka Uberfuzzy). Thanks Angela and Uberfuzzy! However, I think we should have more than one active sysop. I have asked Fritzophrenic if he would accept a nomination to become an administrator and he has agreed. Please reply here with any comments, or on my talk page. Assuming we have consensus, I will promote Fritzophrenic in 24 hours. Thanks Fritzophrenic! John

Re: Japanese edition of the Vim Wiki

Angela — 2008-07-01T14:02:33

It's a bit early to tell since it was only just created, but Shun (Wikia's Community Manager for Japan) can talk to the new users there about ways they could work together with the English one. Angela

Re: Japanese edition of the Vim Wiki

Benjamin Fritz — 2008-07-01T12:52:11

That's...cool, I guess. Is there sufficient demand for this to keep it going, I wonder? Also, is there any effort to translate articles and keep the two wikis somewhat in-sync?

Japanese edition of the Vim Wiki

Angela — 2008-07-01T12:06:06

There is now a Japanese edition of the Vim Wiki at http://ja.vim.wikia.com/ Interwiki links can be added between the two simply by typing [[ja:Article title]] on any non-talk page. Angela

Candidates for deletion

John Beckett — 2008-06-22T01:55:28

Next Sunday (in one week) I intend deleting all the stuff at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Candidates_for_deletion Please reply if you see any problems, or edit the talk page of the above. I've done quite a bit of pruning so it's a long list, but I think you'll find that the proposed deletions are fairly uncontroversial (mostly the info has been merged elsewhere). However, please have a look to verify. John

Replacing short tips that rely on external links

John Beckett — 2008-06-10T05:46:47

Please help review what I've done at: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Vim_information This page contains links to tips that I think should be deleted (I haven't yet flagged those tips with {{delete}}). Underneath each link is a brief statement of the tip content (just a couple of external links). I need one or two people to comment at the bottom of the page indicating their opinion of the proposal (that is, do you think that replacing these very short tips with a single "information" page is a good idea?). If you want to expand any of the summaries, please do so (my intention is that the text on "Vim information" would remain after the tips are deleted). If we can get consensus on this soon, I'd like to flag the tips with {{delete}}, then give people a week to contemplate the candidates for deletion, before deleting them. John

Re: Ads in articles

John Beckett — 2008-06-09T02:24:54

I don't understand how vim.org works, but it appears that www.vim.org is an alias for vhost.sourceforge.net, so only things that work on sourceforge as possible. I'm pretty sure that vim.org is not available because it was not mentioned when people discussed where to host the tips before we moved to Wikia. As I said, we'll have to wait and see what actually happens. And then wait some more to see if there are any further adjustments. I have received a very interesting alternative suggestion, but I don't think we should do any more discussion until things settle down. John

Re: Ads in articles

Benjamin Fritz — 2008-06-08T14:42:58

I took a look at the proposed new style, and it really doesn't seem too intrusive to me. As long as they stick to their statement that "distracting movement in the ads will be kept to a minimum," I don't see the problem of a static ad floated to the right of the article text. If it does become a problem, I suppose we can look around, but I think a great deal has already been invested in this site, and quite a push of this new site has already occurred on the mailing list and IRC channels. I think we would damage the interest in the site (which has just begun to grow) if we suddenly move it yet again. Obviously, if it becomes a problem (with popup windows or distracting animations or sound in the ads) we should move, but I would like to believe that those in charge of Wikia understand this, realizing that they could lose a lot of visitors and probably a few wikis if they do anything outrageous. I have never had a problem with tasteful, static banner ads (which is pretty much what they are talking about here

Re: Ads in articles

Martin Tournoij — 2008-06-08T13:46:32

I understand that a site like wikia has to make a profit, and one of the best ways is using advertisements, but this seems a bit too much IMO. Can't the Vim wiki be hosted at the Vim site (www.vim.org)?

Ads in articles

John Beckett — 2008-06-08T04:54:43

Last Friday, the wikia-l mailing list announced these changes: - Articles will have ads in the content area. - No ads on talk pages or user pages. - Logged-in users will see one 300x250px ad at the top right. - Where ad would disrupt a table, it will render as a banner. - Main page will change to accommodate a 300x250 ad. - Monaco skin (modified) will be shown for anonymous users. - Logged-in users can choose skin. - Rolling out over next few weeks, starting Tuesday. I couldn't see much more info than what I have summarised above, but if you want to read the hostile feedback from admins of large wikis, see "Wikia's New Style" at: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/2008-June/thread.html A slightly expanded version of my summary is at: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia's_New_Style The talk page on the above redirects to a forum with more hostile reactions, some of which are extremely well written. Clearly we will wait and see what happens. I didn't notice any mention of the type of ads, or what anonymo

Re: Tips relying on external sites

John Beckett — 2008-06-04T11:52:01

I interpreted your first post as saying that it was no problem for tips to have links to worthwhile sites. I was just trying to agree, and I certainly was not trying to hint that your concern was to do with your site. Re Dr Chip's site: I have already gone to quite a lot of trouble to update around a dozen of his obsolete URLs (his site changed some time ago, and we had many broken links that I think I have fixed). So we should be in total agreement that external links to well-known sites of interest to Vim users are no problem. Other external links may also be ok, but they would need case-by-case consideration IMHO. If links break, we'll have to fix them. Therefore we shouldn't go crazy by creating lots of links, but a few worthwhile links are great. John