Community Central:Community portal

Welcome Wikicitizens! Please use this Wikicities community portal to ask for help, or to make cross-project announcements.



Feature:Wikicities Going Multilingual
More information to come. In the meantime, you can add Babel templates to your user page to let people know how proficient you are in different languages.



Help Wanted
Here, new wikis are constantly being born. Like babies, these new wikis need a lot of tender loving care. If any one of these new wikis interest you, please help with growing it:

Harry Potter, Endurance, OGame, P2P, Warhammer 40k, Internet Heroes, Tron Universe, College Basketball, D20 NPC, Tierras de penumbra, Grand Theft Auto, Philosophy, Audio Recording, Academia, World of Warcraft, CheatBase, Engineering
 * Discuss new wiki ideas, New wiki incubator
 * Start a new Wikicity

Many wikis are "dead" because their founders lost interests, became too busy, or simply "burned out" due to lack of help. If any one of these wikis interest you, please adapt and help revive the wiki: Babylon 5, Linux, others...



whose/who's counting?
re: http://www.bloglines.com/blog/Wikicities?id=66 that's the beauty of stats, isn't it? you can manipulate them any way you wish to prove anything you want to prove. and here i thought it wasn't a contest. duh! ;) lol 08:34, 27 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * How foolish of you! Everybody knows stats are for beating people with - especially two-week-old stats . ..


 * I do like the way I can manipulate those to show that Creatures Wiki is a wiki that people actually stay on (high pageview count per visit) while Mozilla just has lots of people who run away after they see the scary community-chosen logo. ;-)


 * The fact that we all get over 100 uniques a day is a comforting thought.-- 11:52, 29 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * And now I'm wondering about how many redirects you have on that site. ;-)
 * "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." --Benjamin Disraeli
 * (Other Statistics.)


 * Yes, those redirects are fun, especially when you put them redirecting in a circle. We have a special javascript that opens boring pages in a hidden frame to boost our count. We also have several pages on mundane items like cheese, carrots and cookies, because everyone likes clicking on them.


 * Also many of our pages have only one paragraph and then you have to click on an arrow to go to the next paragraph, just to show more ads and boost our stats! -- 12:12, 29 Mar 2005 (EST)

Common login problems
While I'm quite happy that the common login, that is having only one login to all Wikicities, is the right way to go, it does raise some issues.

Firstly, there's the problem that you have a separate talk page on every Wikicity! This I've already raised elsewhere; The latest discussion is on my talk page here but perhaps here is a better place for it.

Secondly, some of the special pages don't work as I think they should. For example, if I list the users of any Wikicity, I get all users of all Wikicities.

Question: How should these pages work?

Question: Are there other related questions?

Comments? Andrewa 15:24, 1 Apr 2005 (EST)


 * Several of us have handled this by selecting the Wikicity where we prefer to get messages and putting a note on the others where we participate with a link to the preferred talk page. Others have used a hard redirect (not recommended).  I haven't done this very well, so I don't have a good example, but some other users have good examples.  Hope that helps!
 * (After I posted, I saw that it looks like you've already got this started.) Until there's a technical solution, I think the best way to do it is with requests and links to the preferred user and talk pages.)--CocoaZen 16:06, 1 Apr 2005 (EST)


 * Thanks for the suggestion. That's certainly a workaround for the user talk page issue, and as you say I have this in place.


 * I have seen at least one user get quite confused by having one set of user and user talk pages in the Wikicity he was using, and a second set in Wikicities itself. As he'd only created one logon id, this took him by surprise.


 * Can anyone suggest a workaround to the Special:listuser issue? Andrewa 03:32, 2 Apr 2005 (EST)


 * Why is a hard redirect not recommended? Zach 20:13, 11 Apr 2005 (EDT)


 * It's confusing to be taken to a different wiki when you might not notice you're on a different wiki. The feature could be disabled in future (I thought it already had been but it was working on starwars: today. It's already disabled on Wikipedia. People expect blue links to be internal ones, so shouldn't be taken off the wiki when they click one. Angela 23:15, 11 Apr 2005 (EDT)


 * Plus, it's a lot easier to set one up than it is to then change it back if you change your mind. Or that's the way it used to work on Wikipedia before they (rightfully IMO) disabled it. Andrewa 06:24, 13 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Novelas/Fiction
Is there any way to make the Fiction wikicity show up as "Fiction" or maybe "Novelas/Fiction" in the WikiCity category pages such as Category:Literature? JWSchmidt 14:11, 4 Apr 2005 (EDT)


 * You used to be able to add a category to a redirect, but that no longer has any effect, so you can't do this without actually moving the page. I added fiction as a see also on the category page instead. Angela 15:03, 4 Apr 2005 (EDT)

Wikiquiz forms for Wikicities
Wikiquiz is a proposed extension for MediaWiki. It was originally proposed as an e-learning tool for projects like Wikiversity. I would like to use a PHP quiz form as part of the Real Life Soap wikicity. I think getting a quiz form to work at Wikicities should be fairly simple. It would probably involve uploading a QuizForm.php file and including that file as an extension from within the LocalSettings.php file: -include("extensions/QuizForm.php")- and there would probably have to be some SQL database initialization for storing the data that would be collected by the quiz form. Is such an extension of the MediaWiki software for Wikicities something that we could do or are we stuck with the basic MediaWiki software? JWSchmidt 20:43, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * We already use a lot of extensions, so we're not tied to the default installation. Hiding your own edits on recent changes is one example of an extension we have here that's not on Wikipedia. If there were such an extension, and it had been approved by the MediaWiki developers as secure, then we could install that. Angela (talk) 20:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Creating articles
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but how can I get a "create an article with this title" link when people search for an article that does not yet exist on my Wikicity? --Evanwohrman 23:35, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
 * If you're a sysop, create a page on your wiki called MediaWiki:Nogomatch with the same content as this. Tada. 23:43, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You also probably want to update MediaWiki:Searchquery, as noted in Help:Searching -- JamesTeterenko 23:48, 9 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, whether or not you are a sysop,  you can easily combine article-creation with making a list of articles you have started . See my recent addition to http://lotr.wikicities.com/wiki/LOTR:Community_Portal and put this at the top of your User page (replacing dots with your username - preferably pasted so as to get it right):


 * Articles I started or plan to start soon


 * Then create the new subpage and type your proposed article name in double brackets; preview or save and click the new link. Robin Patterson 06:26, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mailing lists?
Are they working? When I click the sidebar link (here or in the LOTR wikicity) I get this:

Bad Gateway The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.

Apache/2.0.54 (Unix) PHP/4.3.10 Server at www.wikicities.com Port 80

Robin Patterson 04:58, 14 May 2005 (UTC)


 * There have been quite a few posts overnight, so I think the lists themselves are working, but the list of lists is not. I've just reported this at bug 113. Angela (talk) 10:33, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Google Sitemaps
I just saw this on Slashdot. Looks interesting. The FAQ suggests that they accept RSS feeds, so I've submitted mine. Perhaps a way to ensure that new wikis get the attention they deserve from early on?


 * An update: it appears to be processing the RSS feeds every 12 hours (for RSS feeds that actually update, like the wiki ones). Not sure if it's doing anything with them, but at least it's accepted it! -- 01:28, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * There's also a request in MediaWiki's bugzilla related to Google Sitemaps. Angela (talk) 23:43, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tour Bus Stop
Maybe Wikicities should have a TourBusStop. --JWSchmidt 20:21, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, it should. See also Wikicities tour. Angela (talk) 04:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * There has also been mention of this need here. The folks at Meatball wiki seem a little persnickety and they might prefer that someone with status in Wikia would submit the request to be linked into one of the bus tours that is managed by Meatball wiki. We can start work on a TourBusStop. --JWSchmidt 17:03, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Commons image question on Talk page
Sorry for a redundant post, but I followed a link to the Talk page and posted a question there. It looks like more activity is here, so I figured I should ask for help here too. See Talk:Community_portal. Thx, PhilipR

Search
it is confusing to users in scum.wikicities to use the search function - because above the search box it is written "Wikicities" - and the users think that will search wikicities, not scum.wikicities. it is very misleading to the unknowing user, and it should be changed to read WikiSCUM.

i realize the wikicities "button" links to wikicities, but that is much less important to the scum.wikicities users than seeing where to do a scum.wikicities seach - in fact, it is very confusing users. Kingturtle 18:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Wikis should be allowed to upload their own graphic to replace the Wikicities image. --Imp 16:47, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * You can now replace the Google logo by uploading a file called "Search_logo.png". Angela (talk) 05:04, 10 Jul 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree with Kingturtle; and Angela seems not to have answered! It is seriously "misleading to the unknowing user" (which can include some of us who have been wikicitizens for a while) to have a search box headed "Search Wikicities" if it searches only a single wikicity. Surely the default wording above the box for individual wikicities could be changed to say something like "Search this Wikicity"? Users can upload their own replacement if they like, but the box should be correctly headed even for those who have not. Robin Patterson 22:36, 1 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Maps
Is there any simple non-copyrighted way to display Maps in wikicities? I've tried the Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates in the Sandbox, and I presume that extension is not loaded. Is there another way to generate a map? Steve Bradburn 18:38, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Have a look at CIA World Fact Book. It's in public domain.

Name change request
Hey, can someone change the name of "The Legend of Zelda Wiki" to "Zelda Wiki" Champion Kai 17:54, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Why not just move it to "Zelda Wiki"? - upssdr  talk 07:44, 2 Jul 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing you mean the wiki name as it appears in the title bar of the wiki. If so, I've changed that now to be Zelda Wiki. Angela (talk)

Wikicurrency
Hey all. Just wanted to know whats the average time before something happens after you've requested a new city? Been about a week and not a peep, just wondering if this is normal. Thanks http://wikicurrency.org cyclotronwiki
 * According to Wikicity creation policy the timetable is around one week, check there for more information. --Robert Harrison 02:45, 19 Jul 2005 (UTC)


 * The reply earlier this month to the mail you sent Wikimedia was from me. I still don't entirely understand what you are proposing here. You already have your own domain, and you are suggesting you will be giving out other domains ("yourcurrency.wikicurrency.org"), which doesn't really fit the Wikicities model, since our wikis are on the wikicities.com domain. Could you explain what exactly this is, and how it fits in with Wikicities. It sounds more like you want to be running your own wiki farm. Is anyone else interested in this? Perhaps trialling it at scratchpad would be best since I don't understand yet why having a wiki is going to be the right thing for a currency project. Angela (talk) 02:47, 19 Jul 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Angela, thanks for that reply. The domains idea is so that people using different currencies all over the world dont have to trawl through other peoples stuff if they dont want to. Its to provide instant access to stuff relevant to their community. Domain names can be pointed to any website of course. Having a wiki is needed because of what is needed to maintain a local currency and for all the sharing and thrashing out of ideas/problems idea that a wiki gives. Being able to edit website content is a great motivator! All I need for this is a place where people can post their own services/skills directorys as well as where people can update credits and debits for services rendered. Maybe I need my own farm, hell I dont know. I dont want to get into that as I will not be able to handle all that. Cant really trial at scratchpad since people wont want to lose their work. I dont really know where to go now, what more can I do? cyclotronwiki 25 July 2005


 * The purpose of the proposed Wikicity(cities?) is unclear to me too. Are you proposing a series of wikis where people keep track of bartering?  That they post what they can do or supply and that others post trades?  Or is it less direct?  What currency would be used?  You might want to use the scratchpad: to figure out some of the details, even if it won't work for the finished environment.  --CocoaZen 15:14, 25 Jul 2005 (UTC)

"AACK! Sharedproblemreport and problemreport"
This phrase is appearing all over Wikicities. What is causing this? Seems like a bug of some sort. --Imp 00:04, 20 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Cheat at online poker!
I just noticed that one of the Google ads that comes up at PokerWiki entices the reader to "Cheat at online poker". Aside from my skepticism about whether that site's methods would work -- no, I haven't clicked through -- I'm bothered that such an ethically dubious ad would come up. Is there any way Wikia could ask Google to pull the ad from our feed? I'm frankly pretty surprised that Google would sell such an ad; surely they would be sensitive to these concerns if addressed to them. We want PokerWiki to be a site for people who are willing to expend the effort to learn to play better; such an ad seems antithetical to everything we should be about. Thanks, PhilipR 15:43, 31 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Bravo! Great find! My views on poker:

1. Poker is a game over all else so don't harm or damage anybody or anything (including your self) over it.

2. Play responsibly which also leads to

3. Play fairly! as you play poker to be with your

4. Friends, as friends matter over all else!

5. If you want to cheat, play against your self because

6. It needs to be fair to others. Don't let them win nd play a sissy game of cards, but don't be a baby. Being fair is not like how kindergarten teachers mean fair. It means

7. Be true and honest to all beings in this world (and the next if there is an oppurtunity) --Aeryka 03:10, 11 Aug 2005 (UTC)

CSS Sandbox
Is there a way to play around with site CSS without touching the live wiki? --SparqMan 16:24, 3 Aug 2005 (UTC)
 * You can edit your personal User:SparqMan/monobook.css CSS settings and when you finish, by pressing the Show preview button you can see the result :). --DCLXVI 16:40, 3 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Ah excellent. Thanks! --SparqMan 17:41, 3 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Two orphans, Lyrics and Monobook dark.css
Just checking some of the Special: pages for junk, seems like Wikicities is still fairly tidy. Anyway, I found Lyrics is an orphan, but I don't know what to do with it so I'm bringing it here. Also Monobook dark.css, I don't know why this was created, but it's not acting like a global CSS should, those aren't in the content namespace at all.

Anyway, hope that helps and/or can be sorted out. :) Garrett 15:51, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: I also came across SESIGP. It looks like some sort of wikibook or encyclopedia or something, but whatever it is I don't think it should be in the content namespace. Garrett 16:34, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Webboard-style forum
Hi, I have an idea to create a MediaWiki discussion board or webboard-style forum. It should be very useful to have this webboard-style forum in any Wikicities. I've just implemented my MediaWiki-webboard idea at Wikipedia:User:Ans/Forum. Unfortunately, MediaWiki software on Wikicities does currently not support the feature, which is required to create this forum style. --Ans 16:20, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC)

link
Hello I'm a new registered user in wikicities, I used wikipedia since 2002. I would like to ask a few questions about linking. Thank you. Roscoe x 18:01, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * If i'm registered in wikicities is that mean i'm also registered in wikicities lot of communities?
 * Is there any shorts so I could link from wikipedia to wikicities and the other way?
 * How could I make a link between communities in wikicities?


 * Welcome!
 * Some answers...
 * * An ID in one Wikicity is valid in all the other Wikicities. The password will be the same.  However, you will have a separate user and talk page in each.  Some of us put soft redirects on our pages in the Wikicities we use less often linking to the ones where we are more likely to catch our messages.
 * * There are interwiki links between the wikicities and from Wikicities to Wikipedia. I'm not sure, but I think they are fixing it so that there are links from Wikipedia as well.
 * * The interwiki links work between Wikicites. Is that what you meant?  For instance, you could link to Scratchpad:Sandbox.  Getting the actual communities to cooperate is a different thing.  :-)
 * --Robin 22:36, 8 Sep 2005 (UTC)

One user's opinion
AFAICS ... These so called 'Stats' are a waste of time and bandwidth.
 * http://peace.wikicities.com/webalizer/
 * http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaPEACE.htm

They work for 2 or 3 days at most and then, for whatever reason, are not updated until the next month, if then. I do find them to be of great value ... IF/WHEN they are properly maintained. However ... that does NOT seem to be the case. So ... my question is: ... what purpose do they serve? Why bother? 21:35, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Contrary, positive appreciation
AFAICS - our friend "-ts-" does not see very far in that respesct. I find those tables excellent, for several reasons. Rerunning only every month (or even a bit less frequently, as has been the case with Wikipedia this year) is not a serious disadvantage for most purposes. So, Erik and others, please don't be discouraged by criticism from users who find the delays undesirable.

Robin Patterson 00:38, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Do we have stats? or not? That is the question

 * Robin, you misunderstand. I find them to be very valuable ... WHEN they work!.
 * Case in point. Today is Sep 21st. http://peace.wikicities.com/webalizer/
 * has not been updated since Sep 1st.
 * http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaPEACE.htm is stuck on Aug 15th!!!
 * Doesn't appear anyone has been maintaining them at all!
 * This happens every month ... but usually they make it until the 15th before going dead in the water.
 * My point is ... if there are going to be stats ... then keep them up to date ... or they are of no use!
 * Now! ... perhaps they have changed location! Can that be? Please tell me that is the case and point
 * me towards them and I will apologize profusely! Please tell me I have been looking in the wrong place.
 * And if not ... then my complaint stands.
 * 22:57, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think I misunderstood anything. You want fresh stats every day. So does everyone. But does the fact that the U.S. last took a Census 5 years ago make its results "of no use"? No. I suggest you write to the person responsible for the stats, as I did. He can reply with the facts and the current problems. I hope he invites you to take over the maintenance so that your wishes can be met. Robin Patterson 00:27, 22 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Robin ... obviously you DO misunderstand. Please don't put words in my mouth.
 * I did NOT say every day ... I said it would be nice if they could be kept up to date ...
 * and I'm sorry ... 30 - 45 days late is not up to date.
 * Statistics is the collection and interpretation of quantitative data ...
 * and there is no collection or interpretation as it stands.
 * I assume someone at Webalizer gets paid to do this ... that it is their job.
 * The job isn't being done.
 * Now I'm not going to play some silly game with you here and continue to argue.
 * I put this here in the community portal as I know there are others who are also concerned
 * and in the hope that it would be addressed by someone who knows something about it.
 * That obviously isn't you.
 * Stats are stats ... and right now, these aren't ...
 * so I say maintain them ... or stop pretending they mean anything.
 * Enough said. Someone in charge, [not you] will either take note and resolve it ...
 * or they won't.
 * ta ta 07:01, 22 Sep 2005 (UTC)

New servers
As many of you noticed earlier, uncyclopedia.org (hosted on the same servers as all Wikicities sites) was mentioned on Slashdot this morning. The traffic caused by this link brought the servers to a halt. I got 3 new servers online to handle the heavy traffic, but there were some problems (including logo mix-ups, where many sites ended up displaying the "pirateopedia" logo instead of their correct logo) with the configuration when I first got them online (and for a few hours after). Everything should be working correctly now, though the site is running on the slow side.

Thank you all for your patience during this time. Jason 00:11, 20 Sep 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the hard work, Jason. I saw the Slashdot story and figured that was the cause. I noticed I was displaying Memory Alpha's background texture and favicon for a time.


 * Anyhow, there seems to be a weird problem when editing pages... I constantly get the "this is just a preview, the page has not been changed" message. I can hit "Submit" as many times as I want, and it keeps sending me to that page, without actually updating the page.


 * The rare time the change takes, it often doesn't actually kick in (even on Recent Changes) for several minutes. I created a new template and then started altering some pages to use it, but Recent Changes is showing that many of the pages got changed before the templates were created. Which is just weird.


 * Don't know what the problem could be, but thought I'd let you know. IanWatson 12:00, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)


 * I'll go along with what Ian said. I'm going to put a guess that some of the pages were corrupted? when the crash happened, because on one particular page, no matter what I do to the page, the change never occurs on the actual page.  It does appear to have worked on the edit and preview page, but when I save the page it doesn't finish the work, even though it might have registered as actually having been changed on the date.  It's strange.  --diaskeaus 20:45, 20 Sep 2005 (PDT)


 * The Computing Knowledgebase Wikicity keep's displaying the wrong favicon, too, even after a re-upload. It reads 'MA' in the Firefox tab (Whereas IE shows nothing). Looks like a very weird problem. --TwoTailedFox 10:25, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * Update: Clearing the Browser Cache appears to work. --TwoTailedFox 10:27, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * Could the whole Pirateopedia logo have come from Talk Like a Pirate Day? Someone reminded me of that afterward. -- Riffsyphon1024 00:38, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, in part. Uncyclopedia used that logo because of "Talk Like a Pirate Day".  Then, when it got too many hits because of the SlashDot artcle, there was a problem that caused it to show up on other wikis too.  --CocoaZen 00:43, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)