Scratch Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive 46

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Community Portal Archives

Replacing FAQ forum with Wiki FAQ

Here's an idea: What if we moved all of the FAQs from the forums here, and wrote some more of our own? We could add subcategories to Category:FAQ, and also add an FAQ section to the main TOC. It would be sort of like the tutorials, i guess. We could also have a template, as proposed here. What do people think of it?
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of replacing the FAQ forum with a wiki page. But we'd need to figure out the workflow before implementing.

For example, right now someone makes a thread, and then someone says: "Hey, that's useful! It should be in the FAQ." If mods agree, it gets moved to the FAQ forum.

In then new model, somebody makes a thread, someone says it should be FAQ'ed and then __?___ happens to contact / suggest it to wikian FAQ maintainers. If they agree, then they write an entry that summarizes the useful info. Should mods edit the first post on the thread and say "We added info from this thread to the Wiki FAQ (with a link.)? (I dunno myself if this would be a good plan - what do you guys think / recommend?) Also, what should be done about all the threads currently in the FAQ forum? (Btw, I made a minor edit to title for clarity)
Lightnin (talk | contribs) 15:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It could be a good idea. It would be extremely hard. But, we could do it. @Lightin, I like your idea of editing the first post and saying that the question is now in the Scratch Wiki. But then, what is the point of the FAQ forum.
Joletole (talk | contribs) 15:35, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It's a cool idea! Here's how I think we should implement it: we first make a WikiProject kind of thing where all FAQs currently at the forums are rewritten on the Wiki. Then we get an admin to archive the FAQ forums for us, and instead make a sticky under "Questions About Scratch" called "FAQs" which links to the Wiki page and lets users suggest FAQ topics. About the Wiki page itself, my personal opinion is that we use a question-answer format, so we list all the questions at the top, and they link to anchors lower down on the page with the answers. (Of course, the answers would have a link to top).
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 15:49, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it should be single page; that would get way too crowded. 74+ pages would work much better IMO.

@Lightnin: Due to the fact that both Lucario and i are both mods and active wiki editors, there should be a good chance of it getting caught in a report. And if they have a wiki account, they can of course just make it by themselves.

A problem is, how do we know it's authentic? In the forum setup, if you see a post by an admin, you expect that to be the true answer. In a wiki though, where contributors aren't shown on the page, though, what do we do?
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 16:02, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

You could protect the answers...

P.S. Are you getting server errors on the main site? 503's in particular?
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 16:04, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

But then it couldn't be improved.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 16:15, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Or, you could say who answered the question. Like you could say "Lucario621 answered this question." That way, people know that it came from someone they trust. (sorry Luc that I used your name, you just the first mod that popped into my head). Oh, and yeah, I am getting a lot of server errors.
Joletole (talk | contribs) 16:17, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Isn't that the point? If a mod posts an answer on the forums, nobody can change it either, but those are usually good in the first place. You can't have it both ways, allowing users to improve an answer and preventing them from changing it so that its accuracy is compromised. I would personally vote for the prior, because the Wiki should be as free as possible, and we always have rollbacks.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 16:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Or, we could quote the Scratch Team in answers rather than framing them ourselves.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 16:29, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

If the answer is posted on the original forum topic, so then it could easily be referenced. But if we write other FAQs that weren't first brought up there, we wouldn't have that. (Though how could they be FAQs?)
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 07:41, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

First off, sorry if I don't get the indentation / Wiki etiquette right (and feel free to correct me.:) Seems like a lot of issues have been raised above - I'll try to address them all and suggest what seems best to me. Hardmath123 - I like your plan to move FAQ thread content to the wiki, after which we archive it and put a FAQ sticky in Questions about Scratch. Q/A format seems good. We really like the way Vimeo did their FAQ, so we're thinking of making a main site FAQ page that's very similar. http://vimeo.com/help/faq/general_vimeo_questions . It might be useful if the wiki uses a similar format. Maybe we'll index the wiki FAQ page so it can appear on the main 2.0 site support page search engine results. A single FAQ page with anchors for each entry seems best to me (like Vimeo's model). re: edit privs. I'm for the open wikipedia model. If someone is making bad edits, revert and then teach them to do better / ask them to stop. re: Quoting ST answers. That's not necessary. You guys are wiki editors! Make your own, acknowledge mistakes and criticism, and then refine your answers.
Lightnin (talk | contribs) 20:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

When replying, you add one extra indentation to show the reply.

My problem with that is the page length. We have 74 FAQ topics on the forums, some of which are pretty long (such as the moderator summaries). To put that all on one page just seems like too much to me. Besides, i'm always looking for ways to boost our article count (1,493 right now). xP

The entire wiki should be indexed by the Scratch search engine!

I agree with keeping it open. The only protected pages are really the main page, pages transcluded there, and some high-risk templates ({{!}} {{*}} {{-}} etc).

About quoting ST answers; some of it is stuff that really should come from an administrator though. Such as stuff about the administration policies (What does the Scratch Team do when they find something inappropriate? for example).
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 12:17, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Interesting (about the indenting). How do you deal with the mega-indent problem? (We didn't like it on main site with comments, which is one reason we only do single indents in 2.0.)

Re: page length. I would suggest making much more concise FAQ entries, a paragraph or two at most. I suspect most of the FAQ threads, when mined for the important facts, contain a few sentences of useful info. To me, one of the main benefits of this project would be to provide concise versions of the info on the threads. If people want more detail after reading the FAQ entry, you can link them back to the thread. (And yes, we are thinking of indexiing the whole wiki in the search, btw. So if you want to do separate pages, that could work too, although searchers will be less likely to stumble upon other entries that might be relevant to their search.)

Re: stuff coming from admins. Just ask if you have questions, and feel free to quote as I've seen you often do. But I don't think it's always necessary to use direct quotes.
Lightnin (talk | contribs) 14:38, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

So i have a compromising idea. We can make a few pages with several FAQs in a category. If there is one that should be elaborated, we can summarize it on the page, and add a {{main}} link to it.

And we rarely actually use quotes; just summarize them and reference.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 17:03, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

@Lightnin: I made a mockup FAQ over here. It's based on the Vimeo one you linked with chenges to match the Wiki theme. The #linking works, too (if you want mouse-hover-darkening, an admin needs to edit some protected CSS). Enjoy! :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 14:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Cool mockup! A minor technical improvement i might suggest: instead of using the "#"s, use a standard level 4 header, with the underline added. That way it will appear in a TOC for linking. Maybe you could also include a small thing at the bottom, floated right, link directly to this section with the hash code.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Good idea, I'll get right on it. :D
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 14:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Update: I right-aligned it and gave it a tooltip.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 14:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Lookin' good to me! Maybe you should summarize a couple threads worth of stuff, and ask everyone for feedback on how it's looking?
Lightnin (talk | contribs) 15:03, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Great! I'll summarize a few (they do need summarization) and see how it looks. :D
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 13:36, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Cool mockup Hardmath123 - it looks like you put a lot of work into it! Your example looks concise and well written. However, in my opinion, we don't really need the specially designed boxes, font colors, font sizes, and gradients. I think it would be much simpler (for both reading and editing) if we followed the general style of the wiki, as used in S:FAQ. It might not be as special or fancy, but people might be linking to the FAQ and referencing it often as a resource, and over-complicating the formatting isn't necessary. The only difference from S:FAQ I would make though, is a more customized table of contents, to make it easier to switch between categories of questions - like the one used on Vimeo. I think it's best to keep things simple with a larger project like this, rather than making things too advanced. :)
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 04:14, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

... but... that sounds so boring! :P

Seriously, though, a bit of formatting shouldn't hurt. It's a simple template, and I intentionally kept formatting to a minimum. I agree about a better table of contents. If someone lets me into the Wiki's CSS (not inline styles, that's a technical limitation) I can set up a cool little all-CSS menu which uses the hover pseudo-protocol to detect where the mouse is. Alternatively, we could just have a simple little collapsible navbox or Wikitable with links to all the questions, organized by category.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 09:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but i happen to agree with Lucario on this one. A styled TOC only would be good. The mockup you made though is a little too bright.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 18:55, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

*sigh* The TOC is not done yet. Did you really expect me to have red and blue as a color scheme? Ugh!

About the question boxes, I'm still not convinced. Having a simple template like that makes it easier to add/edit entries (there is practically no formatting code, just a simple template). It makes anchoring easier, and we can put in a "back to top" link quite easily in all the boxes, which I personally think it important in any FAQ list. Having a clickable link title which links to that question's anchor (like what you see on each forum post's timestamp) makes linking to questions really easy, all you need to do is right-click the title and copy. Also, the gradient-box looks very Scratchy, doesn't it? I thought that was a rather cool looking bit of formatting. I suppose I could remove the box and just have the header+text, but that seems a bit bland, don't you think? I mean, compare [this http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Support/Scratch_FAQ] to mine.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 05:49, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Lol. It looks nice now. Lightnin likes it too.

There are only two questions now. a) Do we use 1 big page with everything, or a few shorter pages with general categories. b) What happens to the current FAQs in Category:FAQ?

a) I like several short pages. b) Some of them could stay, such as How Do I Get My Projects to Become Popular? and Which Forum Does My Post Go In?, but Is There a File Size Limit for a Project? doesn't seem quite significant enough with these.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 17:31, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Resuscitated discussion. I vote for one long page, as FAQs traditionally are. It seems unethical to intentionally bump up our article count.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 13:43, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I removed it from the archive so that we won't have duplicate archives.

So you're going for traditionalism? That's boring. It's also a very long page. The wiki used to give a warning if a page was longer than a certain amount of bytes, saying that some people could have trouble with it. If we took, even summarizing, the 74 FAQs from the forums, and the others from the official FAQ page (which is 42.5 KB), how long would it be? It would be difficult for people who have the technical abilities to find the right part to edit... And i like the growing article count. If we're doing it legitimately, i think it's fine.
Scimonster (talk | contribs)

Fine, how about we make a new page for each category, but not each FAQ? (see my TOC/mockup for what I mean)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 15:03, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

P.S. This discussion is getting huge... is there some way to shrink the top? Are we allowed to make a subheading in the middle to make editing easier?
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 15:04, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I personally think that the FAQ page should be organized as Hardmath123 suggested, with one page for each category. It seems like the most practical solution for the number of FAQ questions we will probably have. The article count on the wiki is irrelevant to this decision.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 04:13, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, i didn't mean a page for each FAQ; i eventually agreed that we didn't need that. I meant a page for each category, like you guys think. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 07:56, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Subpage, yes.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:26, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't really love subpages. Scratch Program FAQ, Scratch Forums FAQ, etc sounds better to me.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 10:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Subpages should be fine. After all, I don't think these FAQ pages should appear when the "Random Page" button is clicked (except for the one with the table of contents).
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 22:07, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

How does this look (formatting-wise) so far? User:Hardmath123/Sandbox/faqtest
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:37, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Subpages appear in random page. And why not?

@Hardmath: Looking good.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 12:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Hey - I have an idea! So, everyone is saying that the FAQ page would be too hard to fit onto one page, so why not fit it onto multiple pages. Like so: On the first page, the name of it would be Frequently Asked Questions (Page 1). Then, 10 questions would go on that page. And on the bottom of that page, there will be a link say: "Page 2>" Which will link to a page called Frequently Asked Questions (Page 2), then on that page would be ten questions. And on the bottom of the page would be two links, one say "<Page 1" Which leads to page 1, and another saying "Page 3>." Probably all the stickys would be on Page 1, and all the old FAQ that is in the back of the FAQ forum would be on the last page. (Sorry for writing so much, I just tried to add as much detail as posible without giving a full essay :P). Tell me what you think of this idea.
Joletole (talk | contribs) 19:01, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

That's pretty similar to what we were thinking, except we were going to organize by category. :)
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 19:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I brought this discussion back from the archive, since I still think it's quite relevant. :)
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 19:48, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

"Bump" :/ This seems to have died out...
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:18, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

You're right... What say we do it next week? Someone can create a WikiProject about it, that summarizes what we'll do, then next week we go to it. (I chose next week because i'm not available for all this work this week, and i wouldn't like to miss this!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 10:57, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Let's not rush things too much scimonster. There's still a lot of things we have to decide upon before we can start moving stuff to the FAQ.

• How will everything be formatted? I think the system we decided upon is to have one central page with a table of contents, and that page would have subpages that contain the questions and answers. The answers should probably be between one sentence and three (small) paragraphs long. Does this seem reasonable?
• What categories of questions will we contain? As there will be two FAQS in Scratch 2.0 (one on the main website managed by the Scratch Team, and one managed by the wiki), we want to make sure they do not cover the same topics. We can probably work on brainstorming a list soon.

If we can answer those questions soon, then we can (probably) start working on the actual FAQ.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 18:00, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

It had just been sitting here for a couple months...

@1: yes. @2: Maybe we should duplicate, some at least? If they are directly related to the categories.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 09:02, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Any other input?
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 13:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Well?
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 11:31, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Let's get started?
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:52, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'll message Lightnin and Lucario to see if there's anything else they want before we start.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 11:59, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, Sci. There would definitely have to be a couple of people to keep the workflow correct. And yes, I agree with Lucario, we'll have to get a format figured out before you jump in. I would be open to helping as well, if needed. Though I think that Hardmath would also be a great addition. And you, if you were offering. :)
ProgrammingFreak (talk | contribs) 18:32, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

LaTex support

I just made an equation template, then realized we might as well install LaTex on the Wiki. It would be useful on all my math-intensive articles, and on the one with the list of formulae done on Scratch. JSO?
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

How do you install LaTeX on the wiki? Is there a MW extension?

It might be useful.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 12:24, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

This may help.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 13:31, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Minor Edits

Is there any difference when you check "this is a minor edit" after editing something?
Kayybee (talk | contribs) 23:09, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

It just signifies that your change was something more like grammar, spelling, minor layout, etc. rather than actually changing the content of the page. They can easily be hidden on recent changes too.
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 00:17, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

veggie learned, or rather, accepted that only after becoming an admin. xP
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 07:54, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

To quote Mr. Lucario, "meh".
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 13:45, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like something more likely to come from you than Luc.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 16:40, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

100 articles by me!!!!

I'm not sure if anyone has reached this milestone. Start Scene () and Wait (block) is my 100th article created that's still standing!!! 2.1% of my edits in the main namespace are new articles! That's 100/4768. And 1.05% of all my edits! Don't forget, that's 100 articles created!!! (and more on the way!!) And 15.04% of all articles were started by me. Wowowowow.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:44, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh wait. This is a bit embarrassing... I only did 91 so far. I'm not sure where the extra 9 came from. >_< Oh well, next week i may get 100. :P
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:48, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Maybe your user page and its sub-pages is where you got the other 9?
SJRCS_011 (talk | contribs) 19:36, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I got the extra nine because i thought that when i reached 90 it was 99. I remembered it had a nine, but i turned that into two nines... :P
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 17:32, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

And, on 9/19/12, exactly 1 year, 7 months, and 3 days after becoming a wikian, i have created 100 articles. From my first, Messages and Notifications, to my 100th, Context Menu (which i've been meaning to create for a while). This time i counted up, so it's correct. Wowowowow. No one else has gotten here, AFAIK.

2.08% of my edits in the main namespace are new articles! That's 100/4815. It's also 1.04% of all my edits.
And 14.81% of all articles were started by me. Wow.
Just to compare — 100 is almost 12% of Lucario's edits in the main namespace, which obviously means i made a lot more. 5 and 3/4 times more, actually. And Jonathanpb, the runner up in edit rankings, 100 is 5.6% of his main article edits. (I have more in the main namespace than he has total!)

So yeah, that's pretty amazing. We also just got 675 articles here.

W000T!!!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 07:38, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Nice job, Sci! Do those include redirect pages? I wrote myself a Python program to find the number of new pages I made: I have made 46 new pages, which is 3% of all my 1577 main namespace edits (ha! more than you. :P), and about 1.7% of all my 2568 edits (again, ha!). About 7% of all articles were created by me. :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 08:29, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE: Inclusive of all kinds of pages (not just content pages), Sci has created 647 new pages! I'm now going to modify my script to work for just content pages...
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 08:37, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE2: I have only 25 content page creations... :/ To find out your own, use this Python program:

import urllib
import re

t = raw_input("Username? >> ")
exp = re.compile("<li class=\"\">.*?</li>", re.DOTALL)
contents = urllib.urlopen("http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=10000&contribs=user&target={0}&namespace=0".format(t)).read()

n = 0
for i in re.finditer(exp,contents):
	x = contents[i.start():i.end()]
	if (not x.count("newpage") == 0) and (x.count("redirect") == 0):
		n += 1

print n

Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 09:03, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

It most certainly does not include redirect pages. It would probably be closer to 800 content pages if i was counting redirects. Is it Python 2 or 3?

I figured mine out because i watch every page i create (but not redirects or CP archives). So, i just counted the pages on my watchlist, removing the ones not by me.

You might have a higher percentage, which is pretty cool, but i have a higher value. :P
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 09:52, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Nah, with the new redirect-less value the percentage would have dropped to half. So you win either way. ;) But turns out Luc only has 4 more than I do, so I guess that's a great consolation. :) I use Python 2.7.1 because that's what came with my Mac. :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 09:55, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, it comes up with 103 for me. Could you make it list the pages as well? Lol
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 10:00, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

I wonder why... maybe CP archives? Though I'm looking in the main namespace, so that shouldn't really be an issue. Gimme a minute, names coming up. :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:02, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Update:

import urllib
import re

f = open("/Users/*/Desktop/t.txt", "w")
t = "scimonster"
exp = re.compile("<li class=\"\">.*?</li>", re.DOTALL)
contents = urllib.urlopen("http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=10000&contribs=user&target={0}&namespace=0".format(t)).read()

n = 0
for i in re.finditer(exp,contents):
	x = contents[i.start():i.end()]
	if (not x.count("newpage") == 0) and (x.count("redirect") == 0):
		n += 1
		#print x
		r = re.compile(".*?title=.+?&")
		m = re.match(r,x)
		#print m
		f.write(x[m.start()+39:m.end()-1].replace("_", " ")+"\n")
		print x[m.start()+39:m.end()-1].replace("_", " ")

print n
f.close()

Articles by Sci:

Context Menu
() (Custom block)
Hide Monitor () (block)
Show Monitor () (block)
User ID (block)
Scene Name (block)
Scene Number (block)
Start Scene () and Wait (block)
Start Scene () (block)
Next Scene (block)
Stop () (block)
All at Once (block)
Censor
Scratch API
Welcoming Committee
Abs () (block)
IMAGE File
Mouse Y (disambiguation)
Mouse X (disambiguation)
Mouse Y (value)
Mouse X (value)
Mouse-pointer
Hardware That Can Connect to Scratch
View
Project Review Status
Scratch on Tablets
Truth Table
Costume Center
Rotation Style
Layer (value)
Color Picker
Pen Shade (value)
Pen Size (value)
Pen Color (value)
RSS Feeds
Video () on () (block)
Set Video Transparency to ()%25 (block)
Turn Video () (block)
Watch Me Move!
Clone Startup (block)
Delete This Clone (block)
Create Clone of () (block)
Event (disambiguation)
Project Credits
Activity Feeds
Project Sharing
Gobo%27s Friends
Studio
When Scene () Starts (block)
More Blocks
Data Blocks
Event Blocks
Explore
Related Projects
Cloud Data
Cloning
Procedures
Block Plugin/Syntax
Scratch Design Studio/Galleries
Block Plugin
Scratch Versions
Scratch Wiki
Surprise Projects
Top Downloaded Lately
Translating Scratch (disambiguation)
Translating Scratch (website)
Most Common Scripts
Detecting Turbo Mode
Making Scratch Close
Removed Pac-Man Project
Post
Case Sensing
Variable (disambiguation)
Note (disambiguation)
ITopic:Welcome to Your Local Block Library!
New (disambiguation)
Loudness (disambiguation)
Reporting
Motor (disambiguation)
Wait (disambiguation)
Create Your Own Blocks (disambiguation)
Scratch Team Blog
Animation Projects
Next Background (block)
Switch to Background () (block)
Argument
Play Sound (disambiguation)
Scratch FAQ
Signature
Y Position (disambiguation)
X Position (disambiguation)
Y Position (value)
X Position (value)
Default Value
Flag (website feature)
Full Screen (disambiguation)
Game Projects
Ignore List
Key Pressed (disambiguation)
Languages (disambiguation)
Presentation Mode
Flash Player
Messages and Notifications

Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:33, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's interesting. It appears that yours is more correct, but it's actually only 102, because i created flag (website feature) as a redirect, but you made it into a full length article. So, i guess Hide Monitor () (block) is officially my 100th!!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 10:53, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

It took me a minute to grok your sentence in all its fullness... :P I suppose you forgot to watch a page sometime. :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:04, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Cool, now i have 111, which is over 16% of all of 'em! Scrolling (Stage) rocks!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 19:46, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

New Curator????!!!

There is a new curator early for some reason. Anyway, the news needs updating.
Coinman (talk | contribs) 11:41, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 20:05, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

In case you were curious, though, it's because CatPerson quit early; he/she received lots of requests and I suppose got a bit annoyed. :/
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 10:00, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh
Coinman (talk | contribs) 12:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Categorizing redirects

We have 0 redirects in Category:Redirects. That is VERY unorganized. So, i'd like to propose splitting it up into a few smaller categories.

Note:

Category:Other Redirects, Category:Capitalization Redirects, and Category:Shortcuts are already subcategories.

I'd like to have:

• Category:Block Redirects (for redirects to pages on blocks)
• Category:Disambiguation Redirects

And possibly a template to make creating these redirects easier: Template:R. It would be used as {{r|b}} which would create #REDIRECT [[{{PAGENAME}} (block)]] [[Category:Block Redirects]]. Or with a parameter other than "b" or "d": #REDIRECT [[{{{1}}}]] [[Category:Redirects]] You know, automating the process.

So, what do you think of the parts of my idea? Splitting up the category into smaller ones, and automating the process.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 11:41, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, why do we need to categorize redirects at all? If it's just to keep a list, we have one of those at Special:ListRedirects. It even shows what they redirect to!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 11:43, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Lol, good point :P I think they got categorized because the first ones were or something like that btw
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 11:45, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

+1 I see no reason whatsoever to categorize them.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:50, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

The main reason redirects are categorized is the same reason all articles are categorized - to keep things organized. If they weren't categorized, then we would just have 1500+ redirects in Special:UncategorizedPages instead. Additionally, it can be convenient having every article listed somewhere in Category:Scratch Wiki, not just floating around in random space. :P Again, it's a minor detail and not a big deal, but it just takes a few extra seconds to add the category, and if anybody is ever wondering "What's a redirect?" or "What other redirects are there?", they can see the category. :)

But by all means, feel free to separate the redirects category into more sub-categories - where it's by topic or by the type of redirect. That would definitely make things even more organized.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 01:16, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't categorize redirects, and they have tons more. They seem to do OK. ;)

Special:UncategorizedPages doesn't show redirects anyways. And as you said, it could be convenient to have every article in the category tree — but redirects aren't categorized, ATM aren't sorted, and we have a better list of them.

It's also easier for new users if they don't have to categorize them. If they want to know what a redirect is, there's Help:Redirects, and if they want to know what other redirects there are, they can visit the special page. Help:Redirects even says that "a list of redirects can be found at Special:ListRedirects", not at Category:Redirects.

But if we're not going to uncategorize them, i propose Forum Redirects and Tutorial Redirects as well as the ones in the OP.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 06:32, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

@"easier for new users" and for old ones too; I never categorize them and sci's always cleaning up behind me (sorry about that BTW).
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:01, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, you do bring up some very valid points scimonster. I'm really persuaded by your arguments (especially that there's another special page for redirects, and Wikipedia doesn't categorize them).

However I think the deciding factor is the time and effort needed to fix all of the pages. There's more than 1500+ redirects, and so, to remove the categories from them would require more than 1500 edits. Keep in mind on the wiki there's usually only about 50-100 edits on average. And I do understand that it's not a difficult task. But just like the suggestion for using sentence case on articles, this isn't something that I feel we should focus and spend our time on, compared to more important tasks like adding information about Scratch 2.0 or making more tutorials.

This also applies to the original suggestion to organize the redirects into more categories, such as tutorials, forums, blocks, etc.; it's not worth our time. There are many other things to be done in order to make the wiki more diverse and easy to use. I hope you understand the reasoning for this decision.
Lucario621 (talk | contribs) 23:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

So how about as a compromise, we don't have to categorize any new redirects, but don't have to decategorize old ones?
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 06:21, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

But's that's just miserably inconsistent. I think we should just keep on categorising them; it's easier for someone not as familiar with wiki functions to find all the redirects then.
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 15:49, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Isn't there an API? How difficult would it be to write a script to uncategorise them all? I'd be happy to write one. :)
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 16:06, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Here, just 'cos I was having fun: scratch_wiki.py :P Simple Python script to list pages in category. EDIT: a bit more complicated now! Login doesn't seem to work...? :(
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 17:48, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I probably could make a userscript to go through every link on the page, edit, and remove the category, but that might seem like over-inflating my already overlarge edit count dishonestly. Hey, maybe we could just do it with like a bot account!
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 18:33, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, a bot account would be perfect! I have most of the script you need, so I think I could do it :) How can one go about obtaining one?
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 18:55, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

You'd have to get such a thing approved by the bureaucrats. Lucario already turned this down though, I thought?
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 21:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Lucario said it would take too much effort... a script seems like much less effort. But I guess his point may have been not to waste any time worrying about it at all... :P
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 21:49, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Do we need the block images?

Since we use the Scratchblocks now, do we need the images for blocks and workarounds? The majority of them, if not all, are unused... :/
ProgrammingFreak (talk | contribs) 13:00, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, single blocks for in the template on it's page look better as images. But others are unused, but can't be deleted due to a bug.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 13:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Scripts? Nope. We can just use scratchblocks. Blocks? Yes. Having the illustration in the template looks better as Sci said, as well as the fact that it's simply more accurate to have that illustration there.
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 13:31, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for the quick answer. :)
ProgrammingFreak (talk | contribs) 14:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Better Indenting for Discussions

Hi there!

I'm kinda new here and I've noticed, that you have completely different indenting than we in the DACH Scratch Wiki have. We used yours first, but then we developed it a bit further.

It uses this scheme:

BlaBla

Greets Scratcher1

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher2

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher3

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher2

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher1

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher3

BlaBla

Greets, Scratcher4

So in every new discussion the editor gets his own indentation amount depending on the number of editors, who already joined the discussion before. This keeps the thread clear and prevents the late comments from becoming to close to the right end.

How do you like it? I thought we could establish that in the US-Scratch Wiki too.
Dasbloekendeschaf (talk | contribs) 13:34, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I kind of prefer our current system... it allows one to see more clearly who is responding to who without having to specify. :/
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 13:40, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

It exactly doesn't! Let's take my indenting "mistake" here (I know, you'll change that ;) ) as an example. It gives you such a good visual orientation for understanding who is saying what without having guide through this forests of indetations that sometimes (Replacing FAQ forum with Wiki FAQ) grow up to 7!! colons. That's so uncomfortable to read!
Dasbloekendeschaf (talk | contribs) 13:53, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I'll fix that. :P I think it's visually fine; you can easily tell from a glance who said what due to the icons in our signatures. And yes, it can get that far, but we often will start over at the original amount of indentation that discussion began at.
Veggieman001 (talk | contribs) 13:59, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

What veggie said. And what happens when you have 10 different people responding to a topic?
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:06, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

@veg ( :P ) That doesn't make much sense. Why do you start over and make the layout look ugly and (despite of the sigs, that aren't enough in this case) hard to read instead of just doing it correctly. ;)
Dasbloekendeschaf (talk | contribs) 14:11, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

This one is getting rather confusing, but it doesn't usually. :P

There's more than one correct way. ;)
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Huh??? You guys are quite hard to convince, aren't you? Anyway. It was worth trying.
Dasbloekendeschaf (talk | contribs) 14:26, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I guess. :)

PS: Keep your sig on the same line as your post; it automatically adds a new line.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 14:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Could you give us the sourcecode, so we might implement that in the DACH Wiki?
Dasbloekendeschaf (talk | contribs) 14:55, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I was under the impression that JSO did that. You can leave him a message on his talk page.
Scimonster (talk | contribs) 15:18, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to reply at the same indentation level as the comment above you, and create a specific reply with an extra indentation:

A: Hi

B: Hi there!

A: What's up?

D: I got an XboX today!

A: Cool!

B: Wanna meet up tomorrow?

... etc.
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 15:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I hit 400 edits

I hit 400 edits .
Coinman (talk | contribs) 21:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Nice!
Chrischb (talk | contribs) 22:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Cool! Keep up the good work. :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:28, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Congrats, man! :D
ProgrammingFreak (talk | contribs) 14:10, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to beat JSO soon .
Coinman (talk | contribs) 14:16, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Scratch Networking articles

The various articles about Scratch networking seem slightly confusing and a little inconsistent to me. We have:

• Mesh: how to enable Mesh; how to use (shares broadcasts/sensors/global variables); link to Remote Sensor Connections

• Remote Sensor Connections: how to enable RSC; how to use (same as Mesh); list of supported languages; link to Remote Sensors Protocol

• Remote Sensors Protocol: how to use (again); describes the protocol

• various language articles: how to enable RSC (again); some also describe the protocol (again)

• I just noticed the "possible duplicate" at Mesh/Local Network...

Would it be better to simply link to the relevant article, rather than maintain different, duplicate descriptions of the same thing across various different articles? Or can we at least be consistent and use the same wording — and perhaps have a template or something to keep them all updated and consistent?

Where does "how to use" (shares broadcasts/sensors/global variables) belong, since it's the same between Mesh & RSC: in the protocol article?

Anyway, just a thought :) They're all good articles, don't get me wrong — I just feel slightly OCD about the unnecessary duplication... :P

Relevant categories: Scratch Connections Tutorials, Scratch Networking (Should Connections Tutorials be a subcategory of Scratch Networking? Is there even such a thing?)

Also, some pages link to Remote Sensor Connections where maybe they should link to Remote Sensors Protocol, eg Python (whoops, my article! :P)

So, what do you think? (:
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 10:46, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you said. Our Mesh articles are highly repetitive, and we just need two articles really: one for Mesh (just Scratch) and once for RSC (w/ other languages). :)
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. I'm actually partially responsible, and I remember feeling a bit of deja-vu writing those. :P
Hardmath123 (talk | contribs) 11:19, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I guess; the language-specific guides are quite long, though — maybe they could be subpages, or something? Should we keep a separate article for just the protocol, to keep the technical details out of the RSC article? (: And no worries! :P
Blob8108 (talk | contribs) 12:38, 22 September 2012 (UTC)