User talk:Administration

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I created this is a page where individual members of the Administrators group can use to make announcements to the whole group. Istioploos 20:48, 21 April 2015 (BST)

Problems in the Wiki

There had been 3 outstanding problems with the Wiki:

  1. In the default MonoBook skin its index.php has in its <div id="f-copyrightico”> there is a reference to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ '<img src="http://www.cruiserswiki.com/images/f/fe/Creativecommons.png" alt="C.C. 3.0 License" width="88" height="31"></a>'. This is wrong, the image file should be /images/f/fe/Creativecommons.png.
  2. The "MapTech" reference for a Chartlet has stopped working and it now links to the useless My Topo. These now false "MapTech" links are in the majority of the Wiki pages. A substitute has to be found.
  3. The http://www.cruiserswiki.org/index.php?title=Special:Upload link on all of the http://www.cruiserswiki.org/wiki/File:xx pages although it uploads a new version of a file it does not update the page until a day or two later. It looks that this problem is related with Varnish caching.
  4. Our Wiki should be upgraded to the most recent MediaWiki version 1.24.1.

The issue #1 is not fixed yet in the Monobook skin per se, but Vadim had made a workaround for it which seems to work quite well in JavaScript-enabled browsers.

On the "MapTech" problem Vadim worked to implement the free Navionics web API (Istioploos has obtained a license from them) and making an appropriate CSS, Javascript, and an embeddable template. Again Vadim did the bulk of the creative work. The beauty of this approach is that once the {{Chartlet link}} is used it very easily be made to use another chartlet instead of the Navionics. As an extra Vadim also made it dual {{Gallery link}} which now points to Panoramio. So, #2 is also done.

Istioploos 21:43, 21 April 2015 (BST)

Templates and Tables

Vadim and I are revising the help files, template pages, embeddable templates, and making new easier to use table by a combination of embeddable templates and CSS. This is a work in progress but please do take a look and comment on:

Istioploos 21:50, 21 April 2015 (BST)

Templates and content development

I think the work you and Vadim are doing is great - particularly if it results in Wiki users finding it easier to modify or create pages in a consistent style. As I've pointed out before, too many cruisers sign up then lose their initial enthusiasm once they discover how complex it can be to add content (let alone create new pages) without causing problems.

However, consistency of style is one thing - consistency of content is another. That's why I still feel it would be useful to have a set of 'model' pages which users could refer to in conjunction with the templates. It's either that or we're all going to be pretty busy doing a Heikell and policing all the edits to ensure consistency of content as well as style. I've been endeavoring to do this for the Western Med, since I created or heavily edited the pages for most of the countries, islands and ports concerned, but it could become an increasingly difficult task if the number of edits grows as much as we would like. So anything that helps new editors get it right first time gets my vote.

GORDON
Athene of Lymington

For more easy editing Wikipedia and friends uses VisualEditor. Presumably you'd not need to learn markup to use it. But well, it's not possible to install it here without an upgrade of Mediawiki engine itself. --Vadim 18:34, 27 April 2015 (BST)
Supposedly Pagetemplates is an effort to give an editor a set of "model" pages. It's not that obvious though that you need to go there to have a look and pick such a model there. Perhaps something needs to be done about that. --Vadim 18:34, 27 April 2015 (BST)
What Vadim said is true about model pages shown in Pagetemplates. I think that we should reference Pagetemplates and mention this in Help:Contents. What do you people think? --Istioploos 19:04, 27 April 2015 (BST)

I don't know what would be involved in upgrading the Wiki software to incorporate VisualEditor, as Vadim suggests – or even whether it would re-introduce the problems we experienced earlier with the rich editor - but if it makes it easier to get up to speed with editing, then I suggest it's worth investigating. I wasn't familiar with Wiki markup myself when I started and it took me at least a year to get reasonably competent with it. Even now, I find it easier when creating new pages to copy and paste a nearby model Wiki page - being very careful of course to change all the data from the old page!

I agree that new editors need more of a steer to the templates but also feel that they need guidance on content as well as style. For example, if you look at the recent page edits for Albany, Australia, you'll see a marked difference in approach from most of the rest of the Wiki. Almost the whole content consists of bullet points (which I personally find makes for a very difficult read). So it's still possible even when using the templates for different editors to produce completely different pages even for neighbouring harbours – which doesn't help, I believe, the credibility of the Wiki. Hence my argument for model content as well as templates.

I had looked at that page and it was so confusing that I shed away from editing it! Vasilis --Istioploos 23:02, 28 April 2015 (BST)

I hesitate to offer up pages I've created myself, but my most recent efforts have been on Croatia and Italy and a good start might be the Italy country page; a Croatian island page and either an Italian or Croatian port and marina page. I'd offer Venetian Lagoon as a region page. I'd be happy to put in some additional work on these to create model pages we were all happy with as I recognize they're far from perfect. Perhaps this could incorporate some of the work you and Vadim have been doing on embeddable templates.
GORDON --Athene of Lymington 17:07, 28 April 2015 (BST)

Please take a look at My Sandobox to see how I propose to modify Help:Contents. Sample pages like what Gordon proposes will go under Notes in the Page Templates. Please feel free to make changes in the sandbox. Vasilis --Istioploos 23:02, 28 April 2015 (BST)
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