Community Central:Community portal

Welcome Wikicitizens! Please use this Wikicities community portal to ask for help, or to make cross-project announcements. Newest items are at the end.

Sister cities
Greetings Wikicitizens.

At PeaceWiki, we have started a page called WikiNode that links to other Wikicities that we feel might be of interest to our own citizens. Please give us a visit and consider doing something similar in your own city. I realize there is a list of all Wikicities here on the main site but not all of those will be of interest to everyone. So in the spirit of expanding our separate cities into a larger Metropolis, you may wish to consider linking to some others which have common/similar interests. Please consider including us. ;-) Simply lift the code, create your own Sister City page and post a link. We'll all come visit. thanks.


 * Hello, please see my proposal on the peace-wikicity Talk:Sister_Cities, thank you. MattisManzel 19:55, 19 Feb 2005 (GMT)


 * Greetings Wikicitizens & PeaceWikicitizens.


 * Sister Cities within Sustainable Community Action Wikicity. Thanks for the example Philralph 10:08, 3 Mar 2005 (GMT)

WikiMac
Fellow Wikicitizens,

WikiMac is developing well, and we'd like to take this chance to invite more people in to help us out on a new Macintosh information community. In response to the proposal by PeaceWiki, we have started linking to other wikis with computing-related content, especially to the Mozilla and Podcasting wikis, as they deal in two topics which are of interest to Mac users.

We, too, will be linking to other wikis as we feel needed. In the meantime, a tiny progress update from WikiMac: Our category pages are getting a face-lift (and main pages which form the title for the category are getting a link to the category too), and we're implementing new templates. What this really means is that for the visitor to WikiMac, things will get a lot easier -- you will be able to browse with much more ease.

Multilinguality is one very important point at WikiMac. As the wiki on Wikicities in the most languages (6: DE, EN, ES, FR, IT and ZH), we have already started on translating many articles. Right now, System Preferences is available in German, French, English and Chinese. Only the main pages and the page on the Macintosh are available in all six languages.

In the meantime we thank the whole community for their support and invite you to visit WikiMac at your earliest convenience.

Thanks, --DavidFeng 17:54, 19 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Wikicities tops the Alexa stats
The latest Alexa Statistics show Wikicities has a higher page ranking than many other sites which provide wiki hosting. The recent indexing by Google is probably responsible for our increased ranking.

Login/IP Issues?
I logged in into novelas.wikicities.com and started Novelas:No_hay_Estrellas:Capítulo_2. When I pressed "submit", my login status changed and my name was replaced with 207.142.131.251. I scared, because that shouldn't be my IP unless my ISP changed it, and went to a IP detection site. Well, I still have 80.xx.yy.zz as my ip. So, Yours, --Jmoysae 13:45, 17 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * Why did my status change into logged out? It could be just a "time out" issue, since I spent many time in editing).
 * Why did my reported ip change from change 80.xx.yy.zz into 207.142.131.251? It's weird! Do you have some kinda proxy? or maybe someone is sniffing you?


 * 207.142.131.251 is the IP address of one of our servers. The site was recording that instead of the IP that forwarded you here. This has now been fixed. Angela 21:20, 18 Mar 2005 (EST)

Los Angeles wikicity
Some of the statistics at LosAngeles:Special:Statistics are broken and not displaying any numbers. this also caused to display as -1 ... http://losangeles.wikicities.com/ --   AlexTheMartian | Talk 18:55, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * This is a known bug which is also affecting conworld and others. You might find the WikiStats more reliable than the Special:Statistics page. Angela 00:51, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)


 * ehh, I kind of wanted to display the number of articles on the main page like wikipedia does, but oh well. Will this ever be fixed? --  AlexTheMartian | Talk 11:48, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)
 * Hmm... This used to be broken on the Calgary: wiki, but it now works. -- JamesTeterenko 23:38, 24 Mar 2005 (EST)

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)

WikiStats
WikiStats seems to be broken (404). Any info on this? Bloodshedder 03:03, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Not sure what the intention is here, but try this for now? Last run on the 19th . . . -- 03:14, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Temporarily at http://www.wikicities.com/nustats/WWW/Sitemap.htm as well. Please don't link to that URL since it's not permanent. Angela 20:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm is now working. http://www.wikicities.com/wikistats/ gives language options, but those are not working. This should be updated daily now. Angela (talk) 20:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Spam
Has everybody been getting nailed with spam this past week? It seems like we've had several pages under constant attack lately. Gens1s 03:19, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Please report the URLs at talk:Spam Blacklist so they can be blocked across all wikis (assuming this feature is working now). Angela 20:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * It's working, it was successfully blocking a legitimate url over on Mozilla. Of course, it was a dated url, so we changed it (it was a frameset...). --Tom talk/Bliki 21:02, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Changing Wikicity title & project namespace
Is there a way of changing the tile and project namespace for a Wikicity? Currently these are both "Calgary Community" for the Calgary wiki. I would much prefer a title of "Calgary Wiki" and a project namespace of "Calgary". -- JamesTeterenko 23:40, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Since you had so few pages in the project namespace, I've changed these. Angela (talk) 20:39, 3 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.  -- JamesTeterenko 21:11, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

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)

Community Project Proposal - Template Wikicity
When I started the protoscience wikicity I was surprised to find a large number of red links, particularly for "help" items. For example, upon trying to edit a page, there are red links for things like Project:Copyrights. If you click on "Help" in the navigation box, you get (There is currently no text in this page); not real helpful to someone starting a wikicity from scratch.

Proposal. Start a new wikicity called "Template" and then have a community effort to add pages that would:
 * 1) provide some content for all red links
 * 2) provide some useful pages that will help during the initial growth of a new wiki
 * 3) provide a few pages that every wikicity should have, such as a WikiNode page.

When people start a new wiki, maybe they could be given the option of starting with the Template wikicity. Alternatively, they could go to the Template wikicity and copy individual pages that they would like to use in their new wikicity. I think this would help save new wikicities from "recreating the wheel" to produce a bunch of pages that are just concerned with basic wikicity functions. JWSchmidt 16:41, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

LI'm not sure that's helpful. Copying the template to every Wikicity just leads to 300 different versions of a page. Wouldn't it be better if those red links pointed to the existing help pages on the Central Wikicity rather than needing to be recreated every time? 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)

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)

Computing Knowledgebase
Greetings Wikicitizens.

One thing I have noticed is that, by definition, Computing covers many aspects. And one of these Aspects is the WikiMac Wikicity. Computing also covers many aspects, such as Programming (such as HTML), and particular software, (Mozilla's software, for example).

So, since it makes little sense to duplicate such information, I have a proposal. A shortened version of such topic will be present on the CK Wiki, however, I'd like to work with other Wikicitizens on linking particular portions of the CK Wiki to other Wikicities, that specialise in such topics.

For example, the CK Wiki might include a basic HTML Tag List. But, Each tag would sprout it's own page, with a link to another Wikcity, that would cover a more detailed usage of that tag.

Same thing goes for the Mac section. Basic details would be there, but links to the WikiMac Wiki would be present for more in-depth topics.

So, I call for those who help in running other like-minded Wiki's to contact me (TwoTailedFox@Gmail.com), so we can help in tunnelling traffic to each Wiki, that would enable a particular user to find what they need quicker. Who knows, they may like what they see, and choose to stay, and help build more elements of the Wikicity --TwoTailedFox 13:11, 24 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)

Wikicitizens
Are you a Wikicitizen? Anyone who edits or contributes to the Wikicities may be a Wikicitizen. Add your ID to the list of Wikicitizens, if you wish. --CocoaZen 22:36, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

WikiSCUM open for business
This is a wiki that chronicles the history and current activities of the underground music scene in Santa Cruz County, California. Take a look and see what it's like. Your contibutions and ideas are welcomed. http://scum.wikicities.com Kingturtle 06:57, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Article validation
Aerik asked on Wikimedia's technical mailing list about the MediaWiki article validation feature, suggesting this might be useful for Wikicities. Details of the feature are at Article validation feature and MetaWikipedia:Category:Article validation. The English and German Wikipedias are intending to use this feature, but at this stage, only for testing purposes, to see whether or not the data is useful in any way.

I'm not sure most of the Wikicities have enough users to make this sort of validation feature useful, but I'd be interested to know whether any of the communities do feel a need for it. The feature could be made available in MediaWiki 1.5 which should go live within the next month or so. Does anyone have any views on whether this rating system should be installed on all Wikicities, or on specific cities only? Angela (talk) 16:43, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Scheduled downtime tomorrow morning
Tomorrow (7 June) at 7am UTC (3am Eastern Standard Time, 9am Central Europe), all of Wikia's servers are moving to a new colocation facility across the street. Wikicities will be completely unavailable during this. We are moving at the request of our colo facility, which is putting us into their new fancy facility, since they are planning on shutting down the old one. A complete set of backups of all databases, images, and configuration files will be made before the move occurs. Our IP numbers and the machines themselves will be unchanged, so you should not notice any difference once the site is back up. The move should take no more than a few hours, but please check the offsite status page or the #wikicities IRC on freenode for updates. We're sorry for any inconvenience caused by this. Angela (talk) 15:54, 6 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)

Multilingualism
Is the Central wikicity multilingual? I've seen only the main page translated in japaneese. Maybe it is good idea to translate some of the pages here in many languases to help all the users and possible wikicitizens who understand english with difficulties. I think that this will help the community to grow. --DCLXVI 13:33, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Personally I think that would be great, but I'm not good enough in any languages other than English (and sometimes not even there) to make sensible contributions. We'd need someone who was willing to do the translation of key pages and either a very committed person, or enough people with skills in that language to keep the page(s) up-to-date.
 * We also have the user language templates to help identify the degrees of comfort that users have with different languages.
 * --CocoaZen 01:01, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I suppose, that is not so hard for the creators of non-english wikicities to translate some pages here in their language. I can translate them in bulgarian and french. If the main wikicity is really multilingual. --DCLXVI 14:10, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I can help with Spanish or Portuguese, though I don't yet recall seeing wikis here in those languages. -- PhilipR 14:21, 17 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