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MediaWiki Extensions Wishlist

Post what extensions you would like to see on the wiki.

Extension	Notes
ParserFunctions	For flexible templates
Pipe Escape
ConfirmEdit	For spam control, although Kornel said he will think this out first.
Semantic MediaWiki	To automatically generate lists (such as list of deep elves and Table of Armours), and allow users to make custom queries.
Scribunto	Templates written in Lua (probably something better than ParserFunctions)

ParserFunctions is crucial for creating elegant, flexible templates. Please install ASAP. Pex 11:49, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Whose palm do we have to grease to get ParserFunctions installed? This type of functionality could be very useful--Petzl 08:49, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

In January we'll be upgrading the ChaosForge Wiki's to 1.20, which will add ParserFunctions from core. If by February this isn't done, you can officially stab me with a pointy thing until it's done --Epyon 06:26, 20 December 2012 (CET)

It's February... -- Roy 02:22, 21 February 2013 (CET)

Semantic MediaWiki would offer two main advantages. First, most lists and tables on the wiki could be automatically generated. This means that most existing lists/tables could be kept automatically in sync, and it also means that adding more useful tables would be trivial. For example, I think it might be nice to have, on every page like list of deep elves, a summary table showing HP, HD, MR, etc., of each monster. The second advantage is that users can make custom queries, such as "show me all backgrounds and their starting spells" (i.e., spells from the starting spell books). -- Roy 18:29, 17 February 2013 (CET)

Style guide

test: CrawlWiki:Style_guide

Old site

The old wiki has been put up at old-crawl.chaosforge.org. Username: old_crawl, Password: dungeon. --Flun 15:36, 24 March 2013 (CET)

Okay, does anyone know why the password on the old site stopped working? I was migrating a bunch of species articles and then it died... I hope I wasn't doing something incorrectly. -Ion frigate 23:38, 20 December 2012 (CET)

Should be fixed now. Next time e-mail me as soon as something like that happens! --Epyon 23:56, 20 December 2012 (CET)

Thanks! I will, next time. -Ion frigate 00:04, 21 December 2012 (CET)

Background articles

Just a general notice, I think a lot of these may be outdated, and they also tend to be woefully short. Admittedly, background isn't that significant, and I think that's why a lot of these articles haven't gotten much attention, but still, it's something we should work on (although it probably will have to wait until we have most or all of the articles moved over).

Something that will likely take a while

Just a general notice: redirects. They're never in categories on the old wiki, meaning they can't be conveniently exported. Thus, they're pretty much going to have to be created manually. So, if you see a red link in an article, search to see if the topic already exists, and if it does, create a redirect. -Ion frigate 02:14, 23 December 2012 (CET)

Strategy guides

A general guideline I think we should adopt for anyone writing a guide, and one that should be retroactively applied to already-written guides as much as possible: say the version(s) you are basing your guide on. That should give newer players a decent impression of how up-to-date/out-of-date the guide is. -Ion frigate 22:32, 6 February 2013 (CET)

This should probably apply to all articles - perhaps it should be a goal to tag every page with a version? -- Roy 20:43, 18 February 2013 (CET)

Wiki engine upgrade update

I sent Kornel an email about when the upgrade is coming. He is at the moment busy with getting a new version of DoomRL out and doing some server upgrades.

   At the moment the VPS split is our primary objective. Once that is
   done, we need to setup the dummy DoomRL modserver (also primary
   objective because it's stalling the 0.9.9.7 release :( ), and then
   we'll be updating all MediaWiki installations.

--Flun 15:41, 22 February 2013 (CET)

Inception

On the main page I found today a red link of "inception". The wiki search mask didn't give any hints what this could be. But especially on the main page there should remain NO red links longer than one day! Anybody able to "blue" it with some contents that males sense? -- Bwijn 11:05, 30 March 2013 (CET)

Whatever it WAS it's no longer there now. I'm removing it from the page. --MoogleDan 14:22, 30 March 2013 (CET)

"Inception" is the name of the branch where the new Abyss was developed. I guess that this branch was available in CSZO for testing purposes, and later it was removed when inception was merged into master. --CommanderC 19:35, 30 March 2013 (CET)

Attack Speed articles

I've seen that Attack Speed and Attack speed are both articles that exist, although it looks like Attack Speed is just an older version (0.11, to be precise). Is there a policy on keeping articles around that refer to old versions? If not, I propose turning the Attack Speed article into a redirect only. Antdos 16:30, 15 June 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, a redirect would be a good idea. There should be only once copy of that article. --Flun 16:58, 15 June 2013 (CEST)

I think the general rule is: if it's something currently in the game (not counting trunk), it should be updated and any outdated versions/pages should be deleted. If something is removed from the game, mark it as obsolete and keep the page for historical reference. --Lokkij 20:30, 15 June 2013 (CEST)

The Tavern & the wiki

I've seen some people on the Tavern saying this wiki is *not an accurate source of information*. This might be true for some articles, but really, most of them are up-to-date and have version tags if they aren't. So why are they saying that?
Also, if there isn't already, it might be a good idea to make a I-noticed-a-mistake-on-the-wiki-but-I'm-too-lazy-to-correct-it-thread (although it might have to be renamed :P). Do you think that would work? --Lokkij 22:39, 22 June 2013 (CEST)

It's because of a mixture of some outdated info on the wiki now, a LOT of outdated and bad info on the wiki in the past, and a middle school clique-like desire to keep the majority of players in "their" part of the playground. Unfortunately, the "badwiki" crap is unlikely to ever completely go away, not as long as there are a few vocal players in ##crawl who are fond of it.

They do have one valid point though - it's way too hard to edit this wiki. I know all too well about the spam problems we've had in the past, but the fact remains that having to send an email to set up an account is a major hurdle. Frankly, I can understand the more casual user of this wiki (which could be a very skilled player) not wanting to go through that.

To deal with that, do people think it might be a good idea to open up the wiki to anonymous editing but NOT page creation? This isn't a great solution, but it has two main advantages I can see:

• It significantly lowers the barrier to editing. I know some people may not like having their IP address revealed, but normally that isn't huge.
• It shouldn't cause a whole lot of problems with spam. I can't imagine most spambots would want to reveal their IPs, and even if they do, we have active admins to block and protect. Moreover, most of our spam problems in the past were either links on the main page (which should remain protected) or were spam pages that were created.

Or we could even try just opening up account creation again and seeing if we still get targeted for spam: Kornel has been less AWOL recently, so we should be able to deal with needing to close it back up again quickly if necessary. -Ion frigate 01:47, 23 June 2013 (CEST)

Thanks for writing that up Ion, its exactly how I feel about the situation. I think we should do something about making editing more accessible but I've been guilty leaving it on the backburner and not pushing Kornel to make the changes. Do you want to do something about it now? I can write him an email and we can list the different ways we can open up the editing. He has always been planning to do an upgrade of the wiki but not actually doing it because of his other priorities and us not actively pushing for it. So we can try to push for that upgrade. Or maybe a smaller fix of the current setup like something Ion suggests might be easier to get done, while using less of Kornel's time. --Flun 17:43, 24 June 2013 (CEST)

I'd be fine with either option, so long as we can have Kornel close the flood gates if things go wrong. It sucked having the Recent Changes page be 98% spam entries... --MoogleDan 19:29, 24 June 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, that was bad... though we do have active admins this time around, so it shouldn't ever be as bad as it was before. I'm thinking we should email Kornel about the need to make the wiki more open to editing, and ask him which (if any, though the first should just be a matter of flipping a switch) of the following he'd want to do:

• Open the wiki up to anonymous editing but not account creation.
• Open up account creation but implement account auto-confirmation a la wikipedia for page creation (this should make it easy to catch/keep an eye on potential spam accounts, but still may be difficult if we get a deluge of them).
• Put in CAPTCHAs for account creation and anonymous editing. I'm not the most comfortable with this, because I gather they're actually fairly easily broken - all a spammer has to do is have some low-paid human take three seconds to solve it.
• Upgrade the wiki to have an extension like NetHackWiki's CAPNTHLA. I'd think in Crawl's case the answers to questions should be monsters or items - e.g. "What is the more formidable version of a lich called?" or "What scroll gives you a valuable item upon use?" - in order to not discriminate against tiles players. I'd be willing to write the questions if this is implemented. This could be required for account creation, and potentially for anonymous editing (perhaps not for every edit if that's possible).

Do people have any other ideas/options to add, or should we just email Kornel with this? -Ion frigate 22:45, 24 June 2013 (CEST)

These sound good. Let's wait until tomorrow to see if anyone else has suggestions. Ion do you want to write the email (and CC us) since most of the text will be yours anyways? If not, I can always do it. --Flun 03:18, 25 June 2013 (CEST)

I'll go ahead and write it, though I'll hold off sending it for a couple days to see if anyone else has any questions/comments/suggestions. -Ion frigate 05:28, 25 June 2013 (CEST)

Another option that we ourselves can implement, but quite possibly a bad idea, would be a "robin" account - namely, an account whose username and password are put on the learndb and generally known in IRC. This works okay for accounts on CAO et al, but it seems kind of iffy on a wiki. It's admittedly very easy to put a stop to if the details get leaked to someone we don't want them to (e.g. a spammer or a troll), but it then ruins it for everybody else as well. On the whole, I'm not hugely fond of this idea, but I thought I'd throw it out there if people think it's workable. -Ion frigate 05:42, 25 June 2013 (CEST)

Backgrounds

Just curious why the background article is separate from the list of backgrounds. There is probably a good reason for this I'm just foolishly not seeing it. If not, any thoughts about merging the two? One article to reference both doesn't look overly large. Buddy23Lee 01:27, 3 August 2013 (CEST)

No reason at all! At least no substantial one. A lot of the original site framework has just stuck around due to being grandfathered in, and if it looks unreasonable, there is a good (but not 100%) chance that it's just been overlooked by others all this time. I think merging those two tiny pages makes sense, with List of backgrounds being turned into a redirect to Backgrounds#List of Backgrounds. Knock yourself out BL. --MoogleDan 02:09, 3 August 2013 (CEST)