OrbiterWiki:Village pump

Just a page for general OrbiterWiki discussions (for keeping the Talk:Main Page related to the main page).

OrbiterWiki guidelines

Ultimately, we're going to have to come up with a set of procedures, processes, and guidelines for use if this isn't going to devolve into mass chaos. As I doubt the community that arises around this wiki will be nowhere near the size of the one that grew around Wikipedia, it won't need nearly the complexity, but we will need something. Kmweber 2 August 2005 02:45 (MSD)

Where to place vessel development tutorials?

I could write a lot of tutorials about the funky stuff, like autopilots or animations codes, but my problem is, what is the best location for it. SDK documentation does not look right for me, tools is also wrong. Maybe we could create a section like "DLL tutorials" with a subsection "design pattern for vessels"?

Also i currently have a small little capsule project on my workbench, which is quite nice for explaining some basic things of how to use anim8or for orbiter. --Urwumpe 3 August 2005 14:44 (MSD)

Urwumpe, created a new site: Addon Tutorials. This could be the place to put tutorials. Feel free to structurize and organize the site. created also a link to it on the main page. [This thread] can be used for discussions too.

Where are the admins?

Currently rolling back a defacement takes only 1 minute, but this minute could be used better IMHO. I think it would be better the admin(s) get back on doing their job and at least IP ban Casper - come on, its always the same IP, thats too easy to be true. Alternativly i would recommend appointing some moderators or how it is called in a wiki. --Urwumpe 6 October 2005 09:03 (MSD)

They're banned

Sorry I wasn't paying enough attention :) The two IPs are now banned. RaMan 6 October 2005 13:08 (MSD)

OrbiterWiki moved

OrbiterWiki was unaccessible for about 45 minutes, which I suppose can be called a success given that this wiki is not heavily loaded. The old URL forwards to this wiki now. www.orbiterwiki.com is fully aliased with www.orbiterwiki.org, which may cause some confusion. I'm not sure what to do about this yet. Should I just forward .com to .org? -- RaMan 02:44, 22 December 2005 (MSK)

Oh, I forgot to mention that MathML is currently not available. We hope to get this set up and running ASAP. -- RaMan 02:45, 22 December 2005 (MSK)

Article quality

I think we should start, paying at least a bit attention to article quality for some favorite articles. Currently, we run well on copying stuff from wikipedia, but i especially miss more photos, drawings or other visual information which we could use. Urwumpe 11:48, 26 April 2006 (MSD)

Math formulas

I would appreciate being able to use standard wiki math notation, but this wiki is not quite configured for that. For example, $f=ma\!$ .

Oh wow, does this really work now :) Note that the texvc executable is built off the v1.5.3 distribution of MediaWiki, so it may be out of date. Let me know if you are aware of some significant differences, I'll then resume my attempts to rebuild the latest texvc source. RaMan 03:23, 13 July 2006 (MSD)

Orbiter-style wiki skin

It would be nice to have a special Orbiter-style skin for this wiki. I don't have the artistic skills to create one, but if anyone feels like making one, I'll certainly add it to the list of selectable skins. If people like it we can even make the new skin the default.

I quite like the current logo (because it's colorful :D) but perhaps it would look better with a shuttle or some other spacecraft overlayed over Earth? Any ideas / sketches / finished designs are welcome. RaMan 19:29, 10 July 2006 (MSD)

What about placing the ISS or the DG over earth, right into the center of the logo? For the other colors, i like the current lightweight style, but i am open for ideas as long as it does not get too dark. For some categories and templates, we could need some small icons, thats a large construction site currently. Urwumpe 11:18, 11 July 2006 (MSD)

I'm more a fan of the traditional layout. It's clean, light, functional and people are instantly used to it. Space themes tend to be dark, unpleasent and hard to read. Logos are OK if done to a professional standard, but most amateur efforts just look tacky IMO. --BadWolf 17:57, 14 July 2006 (MSD)

Is there a way to test own themes for the wiki or make a own skin? i wanted to experiment a bit with bright background textures (eg. MLI or aluminum), and change the look of infoboxes to look like in the shuttle or ISS flight data files (The checklists or service instructions). Not really a radical change, i must admit. --Urwumpe 20:01, 20 September 2006 (MSD)

You can certainly switch your skin to "MySkin", which is the same as Monobook but without any CSS, and then develop your own CSS for it on User:Urwumpe/myskin.css (not sure if the name is correct). You can even manipulate the document structure with JavaScript, using User:Urwumpe/myskin.js (again, not quite sure about the name). Admittedly, this is not quite the same as making your own skin, but it's pretty close. — Timwi 21:38, 20 September 2006 (MSD)

Template links

I've set up the template linking to use {{tl}} as on WP. I have protected the template to avoid vandalism --GW_Simulations_{Talk | Contribs | E-mail} 01:21, 11 July 2006 (MSD)

MediaWiki upgraded

MediaWiki has been upgraded to v1.7.1. In case anyone was affected, sorry about the downtime.

We've modified the Monobook.php a tiny bit - The category links, "catlinks", which used to be at the top are now at the bottom of the page. The links at the top are now called "catlinkstop". The default Monobook.css hides "catlinks" and shows "catlinkstop". Any user-defined CSS will need to be updated to accommodate this. RaMan 01:52, 13 July 2006 (MSD)

Capitalisation

I think the capitalisation policy needs reviewing, it seems to be confusing people and is not implemented much of the time.

For example, the guidelines say capitalisation should be as found in a dictionary. This is ok for single words, but what for sentences and phrases? A sentence is capitalised at the start. Pronouns also need to be capitalised, but are sometimes not (see napkin), then we have many articles that simply ignore the guidelines (including articles on the front page -- Too quickly asked questions).

Would it not make more sense to standardise as capitalising the first letter? It's more natural, it's used by Wikipedia, of which most users will be be familiar, and those without English as a first language, or who haven't been taught basic grammar, will not be confused. The rest of the article name should be capitalised according to the normal rules of English, but most will naturally fall into this (again, see Too quickly asked questions).

Even OrbiterWiki:Capitalization is captialised (incorrectly, by the rules of English, incidentally: colons do not signify end of sentence).

Additionally the title of the article appears as the first line in the article and consequently should be capitalised in this context.

--BadWolf 18:10, 14 July 2006 (MSD)

No opinions on this? --BadWolf 14:56, 2 August 2006 (MSD)

i think the "wikipedia rules" are better. i am german, titles are started with capital letters here and colons mean capitalization here. ;) --Urwumpe 18:34, 2 August 2006 (MSD)

OK, then considering they are article titles and titles are captialised, I shall from now on capitalise my article titles. :P

If anyone wants to go through and move them all, that's up to them. ;o) --BadWolf 18:59, 2 August 2006 (MSD)

I created a first initial draft for a new standard of capitalization rules. I prefer to stay close to wikipedia for making it easier for new contributors, but i also want to to have the freedom to differ from such rules if it otherwise suits better for our spaceflight focus. You can find the draft here: OrbiterWiki:Capitalization/Urwumpe, please feel free to comment or edit it. When when have a stable rule for title capitalization defined for OrbiterWiki, a sys-op will replace the old rules by the clarified and extended rules. (Urwumpe)

I've made some suggestions in OrbiterWiki talk:Capitalization/Urwumpe, to this end. --BadWolf

Interwiki links

Interwiki links to Wikipedia now work: use [[w:Earth]] or [[wikipedia:Earth]]. --RaMan 02:53, 18 July 2006 (MSD)

Redirects

I'm setting up some redirects on OrbiterWiki; during my experiments the site becomes temporarily unavailable. I understand that this is not nice, but I think it's worth the end result. We'll have the following redirects:

www.orbiterwiki.com  => www.orbiterwiki.org
orbiterwiki.com      => www.orbiterwiki.org
orbiterwiki.org      => www.orbiterwiki.org

This means that all the old URL will continue to work but will redirect to the equivalent URL with "www.orbiterwiki.org" in it. I hope nobody opposes to this. --RaMan 10:45, 29 August 2006 (MSD)

I think it works! Please let me know of any problems. --RaMan 12:15, 29 August 2006 (MSD)

Random Addon

How do we submit articles for Random Addon contention again? The [link] link on the front page lists existing ones for "voting". What's the procedure? I've tarted up CVEL/precis a bit.

Thanks. --BadWolf 17:36, 14 September 2006 (MSD)

Look into the random addon page, in edit view, how the general addons had been added. After the </noinclude>, you can find the random addon code. Just edit it into the general addon pages, and you can also add up to three "extra votes" for your personal preferences, just see how the other users did it. --Urwumpe 20:58, 14 September 2006 (MSD)

I couldn't resist the temptation to add the addon myself :) Urwumpe, the current guidelines do not restrict the number of votes a person can cast; it only says there should be at most one vote for each addon. In my opinion this is a fair system because everyone votes on the list of addons which they think is worthy of being displayed on the main page. Any opposition to that? --RaMan 22:54, 14 September 2006 (MSD)

Ah, thanks. I didn't think of delving into the source itself. Cheers. --BadWolf 02:29, 19 September 2006 (MSD)

Page views

Wow we've recently had our 200,000th page view! :) See Special:Statistics. --RaMan 13:02, 6 October 2006 (MSD)

What about adding a small "thank you" note on the main page when we exceed 250,000 page views? --Urwumpe 20:37, 7 October 2006 (MSD)

Sounds like a good idea! --RaMan 13:47, 10 October 2006 (MSD)

Support

No images when viewing the wiki with Opera?

I moved this talk text from the sand box here, i think its more fitting here. Also the talk page title was "Orbiterwiki:Sandbox/" does somebody have a idea if Opera might add a "/" to pages? --Urwumpe 22:07, 10 October 2006 (MSD)

Sorry for your time.... Why i can't see images on this resource? My Browser is: Opera. Thank you.

Can somebody verify this problem? I think its related to the additional "/" at the end of the title --Urwumpe 22:07, 10 October 2006 (MSD)

Got an anonymous hint: This is spam. not a genuine browser problem. (see [1]) Thank you, very much. :) --Urwumpe 17:11, 16 October 2006 (MSD)

I thought it was actually you Urwumpe who added the message and thus got doubly confused :) I even thought the spammer managed to somehow log in using your account. Now I understand. --RaMan 21:30, 16 October 2006 (MSD)