All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XVI

[robkelk]

Here's another Wikipedia page that we don't have a Useful Notes / Mechanics of Writing page for: Spec script

[robkelk]

Well, we're down to under 150 pages on the Orphaned Pages list.

I think I've picked most of the low-hanging fruit; now somebody - or a team of somebodys - has to go in and do a bunch of page merges; many if not most of the remaining pages on the list duplicate the topic but not the content of pages that are being linked to.

EDIT: And there are a few pages, such as "All The Tropes:About/common.css", that will probably remain Orphaned even after we've finished this cleanup.

[robkelk]

So, are we ready to ask to have these pages deleted?

And, if we are, who do we ask? The Stewards?

[Bob Schroeck]

It's worth a shot.  If they're not the ones who can do it, they can tell us who is.


Meanwhile, who is User:Paladox?  Are they Miraheze staff?  They've been trying out a user renaming script several times in the last few days.

[robkelk]

IIRC, Paladox is one of the Stewards.

[Bob Schroeck]

Gotcha. Thanks.

And I just discovered why I came across "hidden" content on user pages while clearing out or updating TVT links. It used to be that "User:[username]" went to a regular wiki page as recently as 23 April, which is when I made my most recent edit to my own personal user page. At some point after 23 April something happened that forces the SocialProfile page to appear instead and prevents you from editing the original content. It's still there, but the Edit link just redisplays the profile page instead of opening an edit window, making it impossible to recover or change any content you may have there. Even more annoying, it overrides every link on the page history that might allow me to see the original content. (And if it's going to do that, why bother permitting me to see the history at all? It can just slap my wrist and refuse to show it like the edit page.)

So, is there any way to disable this damned thing so I can rescue the page I've spent so long working on?

[robkelk]

No guarantees, but loading your User page and then immediately going to "Special:ToggleUserPage" might work.

I never pushed that button on my User page, so I still have the old page. OTOH, I have no idea whether it's a one-way switch.)

[Bob Schroeck]

That did the trick! Huh. I tried the button last night and it did nothing. Going directly to the link, though...

Thanks, Rob.

[robkelk]

Bob, you put the cleanup tag on the page - what do you think of the possible solutions?

[Bob Schroeck]

Replied there.

[robkelk]

Does anybody know who's using the internal-link markup to make a work name boldface? (For example, coding ''[[Monty]]'' on the page "Monty".)

That usage ends up breaking when an external link is added. (For example, changing that code to ''[https://www.gocomics.com/monty Monty]'' ) Once that happens, somebody has to go in and apply the actual boldface markup to the work name. (For example, '''''[https://www.gocomics.com/monty Monty]''''' )

[Bob Schroeck]

I've been doing that, because as a rule I put external links in standalone sentences along the lines of "You can read it [url here]." Which I do because I find the change in text color from black to blue and the addition of the off-site link icon to be unsightly when applied to the bolded instance of the work name that's supposed to jump out at the reader at the top of the article.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm starting to wonder if User:Geo Soul is trolling me, or just profoundly and incurably stupid. After all the advice I gave them about what makes for a good works page, this is what they create, and then they ask if they did anything wrong.

[robkelk]

Well, I already pointed out the "refusing to learn from one's mistakes" clause in How We Do Bans Around Here...

[Bob Schroeck]

All this fuss for what turns out to be a low-quality lemon. Which despite the claim of authorship and the same name appears to have been written by someone with a slightly better grasp of English.

EDIT: How can someone be so hard-of-thinking? This has got to be a troll. I swear, they are have to be actively avoiding looking at any other work page to compare their work to what we have.

[robkelk]

Something decent (IMHO) came out of it, at least. I put together a new page (that I've been intending for months to make when I had a moment) to serve as an example of what should be on a page on the day that it's launched.

Of course, now we have another stub page... Anybody want to help flesh it out?

[robkelk]

FINALLY!!!

It only took two years to fix the mess that was created when somebody decided to change that page without asking first.

Of course, it took so long because going in and fixing pages one by one revealed other things that needed to be fixed... so my list of cleanup work is longer than it was before I started, even with me putting cleanup tags on so many pages and trusting to Wiki Magic that they'll get cleaned up.

[robkelk]

I think five new disambiguation pages is enough for one afternoon/evening...

[Bob Schroeck]

You'll have to be clearer about that. <grin>

[robkelk]

Don't want to do them all in the same day - have to leave some work for other people and other days.

[robkelk]

Just closed the thread on Talk:Epic Fail... and added an entry about the actual epic fail that took place, so that we don't get anybody else adding the hoax to the page.

[Bob Schroeck]

We may want to keep an eye on new user Arts and Crafters. Their first action on registering was to post a request on Carlb's talk page asking him to unblock and promote someone (possibly themselves?) on Uncyclopedia. Which strikes me as the kind of request that's made by someone who's likely to be trouble to some degree.

[Bob Schroeck]

Ah, jeeze, now what? Patrolling new changes and saving edits are now failing for me. Is anyone else seeing anything like this?

[robkelk]

I'm not having any issues there.

EDIT: Are you sure you're logged in? I have very occasionally had Miraheze log me out during an editing session.

[Bob Schroeck]

Whatever it was, it went away by an hour later, which was the next chance I had to deal with the pages in question.