[OOC][Info]Nothing Better Than This Wiki

[robkelk]

User "DartzIRL" should now be able to read and edit the wiki.

That leaves kestrel404 and Seraviel... and for some strange reason I'm not expecting to see Seraviel any time soon.

[robkelk]

Just made a bit of a formatting shift... Each wiki page (with a few special exceptions) has two tabs at the top: "Page" and "Discussion". I just moved the discussion parts of half of the Working Notes pages to their Discussion tabs, leaving the Page tabs for story content only.

We have the functionality; let's use it.

Oh, and the replacement for the PiratePad is now two pages, since there were two distinct items on that page: "In Which Black Aeronaut and Robkelk Get the Completely Wrong Idea of Where Dartz Was Going with a Plotline" and "The 2016 Halloween Party".

[Labster]

Do we want to continue to use the PiratePad, or move collaborative writing to the wiki? I have a slight preference for the wiki, mainly because of ease of full backups. It doesn't look like anyone is using formatting on the PiratePad, but maybe that's just because of Rob's copypaste.

I mean, my first thought was just to throw up a git repo to track story changes, because that's easy, right? Of course, for software developers "easy" often means "I can accomplish everything in one or two command lines". I did mention that my SI would be learning wizardry, right?

[robkelk]

We've all been having problems with the PiratePad, and it's trivially easy to create new pages with human-readable names on the wiki ... but I'm biased toward the wiki.

[Black Aeronaut]

The wiki is fine for drive-by collaboration. But I think we can still use something lightweight for real-time collaboration.

To that end, may I recommend etherpad.org? They're back up and running, and even offer use of their code through GitHub.  We may even be able to use that code on the wiki.

[robkelk]

Integrating etherpad with the wiki is more Brent's specialty than it is mine (assuming it's possible at all), so I'll defer to the more knowledgeable person in the conversation.

[Black Aeronaut]

Since this thread's taken on a life of it's own, I'm gonna rename it and sticky it.

[robkelk]

Is anybody here using the username "Zenobia" on the wiki?

[Black Aeronaut]

Not that I'm aware of. Anyone else?

[Black Aeronaut]

Brent, in regards to adding Etherpad to the wiki as a tool for real-time interactive writing, I really think you should take a look.  It can definitely be applied as a tool for a website - in fact, there is even an SSL enabled version already on Wikimedia.  I'm pretty sure that will make it a lot easier to apply it to our wiki.

(See a full list of websites that use Etherpad here: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/w...erpad-Lite )

Also, there is an extensive list of incredibly useful looking plugins here: https://static.etherpad.org/plugins.html

Whatcha think?

[robkelk]

Brent, in regards to adding Etherpad to the wiki as a tool for real-time interactive writing, I really think you should take a look.  It can definitely be applied as a tool for a website - in fact, there is even an SSL enabled version already on Wikimedia.  I'm pretty sure that will make it a lot easier to apply it to our wiki.

(See a full list of websites that use Etherpad here: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/w...erpad-Lite )

Also, there is an extensive list of incredibly useful looking plugins here: https://static.etherpad.org/plugins.html

Whatcha think?

I see that the GitHub pages eventually lead to MediaWiki's page Extension:EtherpadLite, with a description of the prerequisites and security concerns. "The Etherpad Lite server is not part of the extension."

EDIT: "In the current version, the Etherpad username can be overwritten and forged by pad users." Not good... we might need to wait a bit.

[Black Aeronaut]

I wasn't thinking of embedding it directly into wiki pages, only having it as an on-site tool, separate from all the other pages.

Also, wouldn't the security measures we have in place prevent drive-by spamming or vandalism be sufficient anyhow?  As in, "In order to access the pad in the first place, you must first log into the wiki"?  Or does the server have to be hosted in an unprotected filespace?

If the former: then in this case the only people we'd have to worry about are other members.  Besides, if someone DOES manage to break in, then I think we would have far more pressing concerns than someone tampering with a WIP on the pad.

If the latter: ...... that just strikes me as being rather silly if those files can't somehow be protected.

[robkelk]

I trust you, and I think you trust me... but does Miraheze trust either of us? They're the ones who get to decide which extensions will be made available to us.

[robkelk]

Just made a change to the Working Notes pages (and the preload template) that I hope will be useful: the very first line now shows who made the last update to the page, and on what day. (Of course, that's an update to the page, so all of the working notes pages currently say they were last updated by me, today.)

[Labster]

In theory I'm the one who gets to decide what extensions are available on Miraheze (barring any sysadmins hitting implementation issues), but we also have another reviewer now.  I'm still CFO of Miraheze (please donate money, we're starting to run a bit low).

The problem I keep hitting is that I'm busy most of the time.  At work, I've been around for 5 years now, which means that I really am a senior developer, because people keep asking me things how things work and I actually know the answer half the time!  I'm trying to stay involved in elections, which you might have noticed in the U.S. are kind of a big deal right now.  So there's the volunteering for Miraheze thing I mentioned above.  And then, I'm involved in writing this crazy fanfic project, There's Nothing Better, and the stories really want to come out.  And I'm writing comedy, which is just hard, because it means you might have to go over the same passage twenty times until you get the wording right and the timing tight.

The problem is that all of these things require writing, reading, and editing, so none of these things is really a break from the other.  They're all competing for time from the same well of creativity.  What gets done is usually a question of who's bugging me most, the boss, the news, the IRC channel, or the muse.

[robkelk]

Okay, BA: clean this up, please. I had to guess at some of it.

[Black Aeronaut]

Did a little bit. Mostly pruning stuff my brother wanted, and I decided to nix Outlaw Star as well. Unless someone thinks we need a little Yin to go with Serenity's Yang? THinking about nixing FMA if anyone else happens to want more - I got plenty with three teams from RWBY. I'll do more later. Right now I need to get some things done.

[robkelk]

Thanks; that lets me clean up the page.

As for Outlaw Star, it would have been nice to have a FTL-capable landing-capable cargo-carrier ship, but it isn't a necessity. (Especially if the USS Voyager shows up, looking for the Enterprise-D or -E, which is looking for Data - and the Big E's warp-capable shuttlecraft and runabouts would also help fill that hole.)

[robkelk]

Another question for BA: Which pictures of Team RWBY should I copy from their All The Tropes character page - "Seasons 1-3" or "Seasons 4+"?

(We have access to this resource; may as well use it.)

[Black Aeronaut]

Hmmm...  I'm not sure when....

Right before everything goes to shit?

EDIT: Relevant content moved to planning thread.

[robkelk]

Over a quarter of the character pages now have images. I used the "seasons 1-3" images for Team RWBY.

(I am severely tempted to put this image on Sosuke's wiki page...)

[Black Aeronaut]

Thanks Rob! At some point here, if I ever get the time, I promise I'm going to ATTEMPT to get something done, whether it be fully populating my pages on the Wiki, or getting another chapter out.

[robkelk]

You could toss a scene into the Halloween party thread, if you have a few minutes. Just a thought.

[Black Aeronaut]

True. That could be the topic that leads right into her asking about how Ben is doing to his face, and what she can do to help. Or vice-versa.

[robkelk]

Note to self (and others): We need to make at least one edit to the wiki every 30 days, or it'll be put on the "inactive" list and be subject to deletion.

New pages are nice. Adding a few words to an existing page is enough to reset the countdown clock.

To be on the safe side, we should do something on the wiki at least once a week.