Scratch Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive 13

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Community Portal Archives

Signatures

Hi, you might have noticed already, but when you post new messages your signature isn't your own customized one anymore... From now on, when you type ~~~~ it will always use a default signature with your scratch.mit.edu profile picture, your username, and links to your talk page and contributions :) It's not customizable anymore.

Your sigs in old messages won't change by default, but you can change your old custom signature page to <scratchsig>YourUsername</scratchsig> to make your old messages look like the new ones :) Please do so to make the wiki look better ;P
JSO (talk | contribs) 20:28, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow! Awesome JSO! This is astounding! :D :D :D *high five*
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 20:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Sweet! 2 internetz for you JSO! --
Andresmh (talk | contribs) 20:43, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, glad you like it ;p
JSO (talk | contribs) 22:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Cool! :D Is there a way to make the text green, though? xD
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 22:13, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Not really sorry :p
JSO (talk | contribs) 22:17, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

At first I was sad about the new signatures, but I'm not anymore; they PWN!!! :D :D :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 22:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Jonathanpb :p I'm really happy you like them. It's a bit sad you can't customize them anymore but at least all signatures look decent now. And it's easier to separate sub-replies and replies etc :p
JSO (talk | contribs) 22:37, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

WHO CARES THAT THEY CAN'T PERSONALIZE THEIR SIGNATURE!!!??? WHO WOULD EVER WANT TO!!!??? :D :D :D :D :D :D :P
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 22:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Me? xD
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 03:38, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

These are cool. :)
Scmb1 (talk | contribs) 19:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: New users don't need signature pages anymore, all these scratch sigs appear automatically now. I just suggested to change your old signature pages, so sigs from before the change match the style :)
JSO (talk | contribs) 13:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

So, can I delete my old signature page?
Aidan (talk | contribs) 20:35, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Well for the purpose of archives, just change it to "<scratchsig>Aidan</scratchsig>" :)
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 01:41, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Can we advertise the Scratch Wiki in the Miscellaneous forum?

As you probably know, there have been many users that got an account here, edited for a few days, and then left... we could make a sort of advertisement; it might bring some editors back.

And it'd be fun to advertise the wiki - to be honest, its activity level is quite low... at least we have some regular editors.

Can we advertise the wiki? :D :D :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 05:22, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I suppose. Sure! Be sure to mention that there can be plenty of articles on tutorials, Scratch Mods, popular RPGs; stuff like that! :) But of course mention that the person should have some general Scratch knowledge, and at least a little bit of experience in the community. Nothing too hard :).
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 02:48, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Woo! :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 04:36, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Editing Pages Tool Bar

Since I've started creating and editing articles, I have noticed that our toolbar and the Editing Help page are not entirely complete. First of all I want to address the toolbar:

I feel that our toolbar needs more features such as: Right, Center, Left Justify, Font Size, Underline, and other buttons so that we don't spend so much time writing code. Regarding the Editing Help page, It's not complete and it's almost done! Lets finish it so that all contributors can create high quality, aesthetically pleasing articles!
Dazman (talk | contribs) 08:09, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Well there are ways around this, just use <center>TEXT</center> (just replace <center> and </center> with <right> and </right> or whatever. And <font size="NUMBER">TEXT</font> can change the font size. Just use <u>TEXT</u> for underlining. Hope this helps... :)
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 16:19, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I can add buttons to the bar quite easily, what extra buttons would you like to have?
JSO (talk | contribs) 19:15, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

The reason by not having other toolbar features is because those features aren't commonly used for wiki articles. Font size shouldn't be needed for most articles either, as the headings do well. For centering and other adjustments to the right - why do you need that? For images there's special code for that.

Ah yes, the help pages.... I'll have to work on that Dx. I mostly copy them from a special Mediawiki website and edit parts to make it fit to the Scratch Wiki theme. So, I would prefer if you don't work on those articles yourself...
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 19:25, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand that there are ways to work around adding buttons, however I feel that it just takes more time to write code and if you don't know the code then you have no way of incorporating it into articles. I find it annoying to have to search for HTML that will work. I guess I agree with Lucario that changing font size might make the wiki lose its conformity.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 01:51, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Well if there's anything we need it's a create new article button, probably under toolbox... Especially now the old search is gone...
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 05:42, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Its already pretty easy to create a new article. I just think that our toolbars need a more friendly user-interface.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 06:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Why don't we go halfway and create a help page that lists all the HTML? :P
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 06:52, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

That would probably work. We could add more HTML Tags to the Help:Formatting Page.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 07:07, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

That would be nice! :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 08:47, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it Would! Also Can someone tell me how to make archives while were on the subject of Help Topics?
Dazman (talk | contribs) 17:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Making archives? We put old messages into a new page (the archive) and remove them from the Community Portal. But we lock the archives from editing, and that requires admin powers, so it's normally the admins who create archives.
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 02:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

What uses do you want to use the specific HTML tags for?
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 00:08, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I think we should add text orientation as well as HTML Tags for Tables. Basically I think we should add the codes for BBC Scripts. The ones used in the scratch forum.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 04:36, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

BBCode would be *very* difficult to add, and I'm not even sure if it's possible. However, if your goal is to add tables to articles; you can always look at this page: Tables. :) In addition, as you can see here, there are other possibilities for buttons, but not all of them are needed - and we don't really want to encourage users to use underline, or highlight text in the article, or do strike-through text; similar to Wikipedia.

And sorry if it was vague, but what I was trying to ask was - what article did you want to use aligning tags and/or tables for? A tutorial I'm guessing?

But believe me; I'm glad you've brought up this issue. When making the wiki, me and JSO were both thinking about the editing bar, and we wanted it to be easily accessible and usable for everyone, with many handy features. Not many people have brought this up - so as a new, brave editor, it's nice to see your ideas.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 23:44, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Lucario, I guess anything is fine really. All I want is a simple and easy way to access codes whether this be through an improved toolbar or more detailed tutorial pages. I just think that for new contributors, especially those with no knowledge of HTML, that we need more simple and/or more detailed articles explaining it. This is not just for myself.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 02:31, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

My question though, is why do you need those specific codes? What do you need to align or create tables for? Aligning text to the right side of a page for example, would make it not match to the rest of the wiki... thus it is possible, but it's not on the edit toolbar, as we don't recommend it. I'm trying to think of a good example to relate this to, but I can't think of any. Well here's one:

In a Scratch project, you can't just put a video into it; such as from Youtube or vimeo; it's not recommended by the Scratch Team, as it might be considered plagarism, and it doesn't really use that much creativity. However you can somewhat do it by importing and separating images from an animated GIF file. However you have to do more work to do that.

Does that make sense? I hope so...
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 20:39, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey I'm just throwing out ideas. If you want uniformity then by all means I agree with you. However if you look at Wikipedia, Images and text are justified and wrapped. Even though Wikipedia includes more features and options, the site still looks nice and the articles are organized. I understand the for most people that adding features might be pointless, those who understand what they're doing can improve articles aesthetically as well as ergonomically.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 22:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if this is a silly question; but what do you mean by "justified and wrapped"? On Wikipedia, if I change my browser size, the text doesn't stretch (going by "Justification (typesetting)" on Wikipedia). As for images, there are many different preferences that can be seen here.

Also for clarification, if you want to make a suggestion for the Scratch program, it would be nice to know what kind of projects you would want to use it for. So the same applies with Scratch Wiki and it's articles; so I was just wondering how it could be used well. Even if you don't have specific intentions, we'll still consider it though ;).
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 00:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

By justified and wrapped i mean the location that it snaps to on the page automatically. Like in MS Word. I guess I myself don't have a particular example. I'm just looking to find a way to improve the Wiki.

Moving to new hosting soon

Hi everyone!

I guess you noticed the wiki's been running extremely slow lately. I've also had an enormous amount of 'error 500: Internal Server Error' causing loss of work etc. We'll be moving this wiki over to new servers quite soon, however, the change should go almost unnoticed ;)

Some tips to survive until we've completed our movement...

• when you get a 'Error 500: Internal Server Error' after an edit, don't click back, it may cause loss of all changes you made. Wait a bit, then click 'refresh' instead and all changes should be saved :)
• Don't open too many loading tabs at the same time because apparently they sometimes block eachother. (it's an extremely weird thing but it is happening)
• be patient :)
  JSO (talk | contribs) 18:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I find that sometimes it's slow and sometimes it's not... Most of the time it is though... Glad we're moving to new servers! Just a little question, how long will the wiki be down while the servers are changed?
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 18:00, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

If everything goes right, the new hosting should be set up in parallel with the current hosting. In theory there will be no downtime. I might have to set the wiki to read only for some time though; but certainly not more than an hour.
JSO (talk | contribs) 18:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Great! I've noticed how slow it's been lately. It can be quite annoying. I'm glad to hear were moing to a better server :D.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 18:49, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Awesome JSO! I hope it's moved as soon as possible :D
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 19:03, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Awesome! :D

Will the new hosting be the Scratch servers?
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 02:53, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm excited. :D
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 04:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, if everything goes right the wiki will be hosted in the MIT Media Lab :)
JSO (talk | contribs) 12:28, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

update ;) I'm working hard on moving the wiki now and you should be able to see results quite soon :) I advise you not to make anymore changes until I finished as all your work will most probably be lost.
JSO (talk | contribs) 15:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Should the stuff on project types share an article or have an article each?

You know, things like "Animation projects", "Game projects", "Music projects"... should they all have a section in Project Types (as they currently do) or should they have an article each? We were discussing this earlier in a non-related discussion and it sort of dropped away...

My opinion: I don't think we'll be able to write much on each of those project types, so letting them share an article would be nice. :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 04:35, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. We want the site to be simple and easy to navigate and find what your looking for. Making separate pages for each is not a good idea.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 04:46, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I personally think each major project type would be best to have it's own article. Mostly, it might help give some inspiration to users, and there's definitely a lot of potential for each type. In addition, I need something to put under "Scratch Program" under the table of contents that I'm working on, and I previously thought project types would go well, so I think it would work great :).

@Dazman: I personally don't think that having separate pages for the different project types would make navigating much harder. There's still all of the categories and such...
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 20:19, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's just go with separate articles for now - but if those articles don't have much stuff, can we combine them?
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 23:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Remove certain edit tools

As one of the previous discussions brought the edit tools to my attention, I'm thinking about maybe removing the strike-through tool and the line break tool. This is because they're not needed much. The strike-through tool isn't really recommended on the wiki much; it shouldn't have to be used for most articles, and except for some rare cases, for making line breaks, you can just press enter on your keyboard. What do you guys think?
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 20:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that pressing enter works with images though.
Dazman (talk | contribs) 22:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Ooh, good idea Lucario!
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 23:31, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

@Dazman: Well, yes; images are generally a bit differently positioned compared to paragraphs. However if you place an image directly before the text of the paragraph, the top of the image will line up with the top of the paragraph; so that's a good rule of thumb to go by.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 00:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Just because they're not widely used doesn't mean it has to be removed... :/ I found it useful when crossing out stuff on my user page.
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 04:33, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Strike-through text is very easy HTML though... it's just <s> and </s>. :/
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 23:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes Chrischb, but I don't *recommend* using strike-through text on the wiki. It's like a bad habit. I personally don't see why you use it on your userpage...
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 01:24, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

The Guidelines page should be more noticable

Several times I notice users doing things such as creating articles on users and the like; the guidelines state clearly against that sort of thing.

I think it's not being read - should there be something on the main page that links to it?
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 04:31, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Require users to read the guidelines before making an account. Heck even make them take a test on it afterwards :).
Dazman (talk | contribs) 05:38, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it should be put on the main page... and maybe the Welcome page should be put on there as well.
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 05:41, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Well we tell all users to view the welcome page right? So maybe the guidelines could just be part of that page?
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 06:59, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe something on the wiki's home page saying "New to the wiki? Read the Guidelines page!"
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 04:17, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes yes yes! :D And we could put the Welcome page there with it.
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 04:27, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that less than *insert unknown percentage here* of the wiki readers have accounts xD. So I don't think it's really that much needed. It also wouldn't really fit well... I've tried when I was working on adding "Want to become a contributor?" - didn't work out well. Though it could go somewhere on the top of the main Community Portal page :).
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 01:28, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Can we add that then? :D
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 05:47, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah - add something about the guidelines page on the top of the S:CP page. :) (see, that's how you use shortcuts ;D)
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 00:29, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Why didn't anyone tell me? XD

I made the image that is featured right now! :D But why didn't anyone tell me? XD
Aidan (talk | contribs) 20:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

We don't do that. :P
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 23:13, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

As he said. ^^ But anyway, congratulations! :D
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 04:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm running out of ideas on things to edit.

I feel stupid... I come online to edit, and then I don't know what to do. :/ Almost every article we can think of has been created, templates are fine, and... yeah. :S
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 09:23, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

I know, I'm the same... We've been working on this for so long so hard, and now it's so good that there's not much to do... :(
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 09:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't Worry. When Scratch 2.0 comes out there will be plenty of editing to do!
Dazman (talk | contribs) 05:58, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm like Chris and WeirdF, I don't really know what to edit... it sounds silly, but I feel like all the articles have been created and now all we can do is revise them.

Well, at least having all articles means that the wiki's quite complete! :D
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 06:01, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Write some articles about Clutter :3
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 14:30, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Done! :P
WeirdF (talk | contribs) 19:30, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you thank you thank you!!! I really wanted that article to be created, but I know absolutely nothing (well, nearly) about Clutter. ^_^
Jonathanpb (talk | contribs) 06:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)