All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXIX

[Bob Schroeck]

So... new user who registered about three hours ago...


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I'd like to think this is someone who supports our goals and purposes...

[GethN7]

Rob, I approved those edits you had issues with concerning footnotes. I don't consider them bad per se so long as we cover all relevant information even before their use (which was done), and while we are more informal than Wikipedia, including them after appropriately long descriptions for additional clarification and/or providing more specific information to elaborate on a well-made point seems fair enough to me.

In fact, I recommend we modify that rule since MediaWiki does allow for their use while PmWiki never really supported that feature. They should not be an absolute requirement, but should be permissible so long as all the relevant information is already cited and the reference link is just pointing to the place the editor got more specific information.

[robkelk]

I begin to wonder whether kuma is a troll.

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, it's starting to seem that way, isn't it?

[Labster]

Kuma shock!

[GethN7]

Yeah, it's starting to seem that way, isn't it?

I'm not jumping to assume malice when it could just be stupidity (i.e. - did not check to see if their idea was already done), but let's see if we have a pattern of this.

[robkelk]

The rule that any one troper can only have four trope candidates in the trope workshop at a time was created specifically because kuma was flooding the workshop. Since it went into place, kuma has consistently pushed t have trope candidates pushed out of the workshop, no matter how unready they are, so that they could propose more trope candidates. kuma wants the spotlight.

In the years that kuma has been posting, their grammar has barely changed. That doesn't happen with somebody who writes that much... unless the writer is deliberately writing in a particular style.

kuma either fails or refuses to read what other posters tell them.

On Usenet, we called people who acted that way "trolls". It didn't matter whether they were malicious or simply unable to change.

[GethN7]

The rule that any one troper can only have four trope candidates in the trope workshop at a time was created specifically because kuma was flooding the workshop. Since it went into place, kuma has consistently pushed t have trope candidates pushed out of the workshop, no matter how unready they are, so that they could propose more trope candidates. kuma wants the spotlight.

In the years that kuma has been posting, their grammar has barely changed. That doesn't happen with somebody who writes that much... unless the writer is deliberately writing in a particular style.

kuma either fails or refuses to read what other posters tell them.

On Usenet, we called people who acted that way "trolls". It didn't matter whether they were malicious or simply unable to change.

Hmmm......that does establish a pattern. I say we start imposing limits then, like tempbans. I've administrated other wikis with people like that. One wasn't a troll, just a very developmentally disabled man who just wanted a pigpen to make a squalor and didn't understand (or rather didn't want to understand) they had to keep it clean for the benefit of others. We may have a similar situation in this case.

[Labster]

I have some interesting news.  I had to learn Wikibase from scratch for a job last week, so I thought I'd make a little task here that might help people put infoboxes on our website.  The idea is that only knowing the wikipedia page, you can use an infobox generator template, pulling info from Wikidata, which would be substituted into the page you edit.  Once generated, you edit the page again to clean up after it, or link it up.

I've been developing it over on our fanfic wiki, and it currently consists of three files, Module:GetWikibaseQID, Module:Geninfobox, and Template:Generate Infobox Book.  The name was chosen here so that you could take {{Infobox Book|...}}, replace the first part of the template with {{subst:Generate Infobox Book|...}}, and it would fill in missing data for you while not messing with any current data in the template.  And you can add it to new pages with a simple {{subst:Generate Infobox Book|wikipedia page= ...}} (default {{PAGENAME}}).

I chose "book" as the first one.  Now that everything is working, we can easily make more.  I'll have to have some discussion with Rob to make sure the output format lines up with the current infobox before deploying.

[Labster]

I pushed the template generator over to ATT now, so you can play around with it, likely in Special:ExpandTemplates instead of saving on pages already.

I guess what I haven't really thought about is how much work should be done by the normal infobox template, and how much by the generator. I'm starting to think the generator should do less work. Like instead of linking the AO3 tags directly, lets you paste in the tag, and the Infobox hyperlinks it. But then the template needs to have fields for more than one tag, like Sailor Moon has.

I'm not sure what to do about authors. Should authors be automatically linked? This might give us a lot of redlinks. Put them in a field, or comma separate? What if I fetch a lot of authors? Or at least more than two.

Wikidata gives us wiki URLs, but not wiki names for Fandom and wiki.gg. Should they just get a special field for this, or should I just put a bunch of hyperlinks together in one field?

[robkelk]

Note that the template generator is only as good as the wikidata item. I just used it to create an infobox book template for "Jesus the Christ" and got a bare-bones template that I had to supplement with data from the matching Wikipedia article.

We can use this to accelerate the creation of infoboxes for literature works pages, but we can't use it to replace the process. At least, not until Wikidata has a lot more data in it.

EDIT: Oh, and the template is called "Populate Infobox book". Example usage: {{Populate Infobox book|wikipedia page=Jesus the Christ (book)}}

[Bob Schroeck]

We should write up a good introduction to using this tool and somehow make sure the users are aware of it. I wouldn't trust the sitenotice; we've had plenty of evidence that people don't read it. How else can we share this with the users?

[robkelk]

We should wait a week or so while we beta-test it before we announce it. So far I haven't stress-tested it at all.

But that just gives us a week to come up with an idea.

[GethN7]

We should wait a week or so while we beta-test it before we announce it. So far I haven't stress-tested it at all.

But that just gives us a week to come up with an idea.

Concur. Let's make sure this is baked before we take it out of the oven.

[robkelk]

I've exported Template:Mbox (with "include templates" checked) from dev.miraheze.org. Before I import that to ATT, I need to ask: Will doing so upset any of the other admins?

Not unless it breaks something near and dear to my heart.  <grin>  Go for it.

Finally had time to go for it.

Look at the lint errors go away - ~18,000 "Obsolete HTML tags" errors has dropped down to ~1,700, and I'm still working on updating boxes. EDIT: ~600 now that the boxes have all been converted.

And look at the in-article notice boxes gain a consistent look-and-feel... Bonus!

[robkelk]

Could folks take a look at the pages in Category:Pages for speedy deletion, please?

Is there anything there that shouldn't be deleted?

Can anything be deleted now, or should they all wait for a month or two?

[Bob Schroeck]

The only problem I have with deleting Helluva Boss/Characters is it has a subpage that actually has content.

I've nuked the rest because I agree that none of them are worth keeping. They're all either zero-content or poor duplicates of existing pages.

[robkelk]

We had one sub-subpage of "The Owl House/Characters" with content. (Not much content, but still content.) I moved the content to the main Characters subpage and tossed the sub-subpages. No doubt we can do the same with "Helluva Boss/Characters".

[Bob Schroeck]

Meanwhile, I'd like to nominate MilkmanConspiracy for promotion to autopatrolled/automoderated, if only to make the Moderation queue smaller. Prolific contributor, no copyright issues ever, and takes instruction well.

[Bob Schroeck]

We had one sub-subpage of "The Owl House/Characters" with content. (Not much content, but still content.) I moved the content to the main Characters subpage and tossed the sub-subpages. No doubt we can do the same with "Helluva Boss/Characters".

Fair enough. Done.

[robkelk]

Meanwhile, I'd like to nominate MilkmanConspiracy for promotion to autopatrolled/automoderated, if only to make the Moderation queue smaller.  Prolific contributor, no copyright issues ever, and takes instruction well.

Seconded. This troper does a good job.

[GethN7]

Meanwhile, I'd like to nominate MilkmanConspiracy for promotion to autopatrolled/automoderated, if only to make the Moderation queue smaller.  Prolific contributor, no copyright issues ever, and takes instruction well.

Seconded. This troper does a good job.

I will third that.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, then. MilkmanConspiracy has been promoted.

[robkelk]

... I wouldn't trust the sitenotice; we've had plenty of evidence that people don't read it. ...

Probably because it's far too long -- we're alerting people to seven different things in it right now.

What absolutely, positively must remain on the sitenotice, and what can be tossed?

1. Alert that new users are moderated: it's been there for four years - by now, it should be in the new-user message. (it's also a half-k long -- tl;dr.) Vote to toss... and to restart sending people the new-user message.
2. How to change the rules: Nobody's suggested changing the rules in years. Vote to toss.
3. Forums are down: It's been years, we have to assume we aren't getting that forum back. Vote to toss, and to point everybody at the still-working forums.
4. Infoboxes need summaries: We got a few to begin with, but none in over a year. Vote to toss.
5. Links to disambiguation pages need cleanup: We got a few to begin with, but we also got a lot of desired links to disambiguation pages changed to individual pages. Vote to toss.
6. Pages listed in Category:Needs a Better Description need better descriptions: We got a few to begin with, but none in over a half-year. Vote to toss.
7. Visual Editor's been turned off. It's been there for months. Vote to toss.

So, yeah. Get rid of the entire sitenotice. Then, when we have something that's actually newsworthy, people will actually see it.

[Bob Schroeck]

7. Visual Editor's been turned off. It's been there for months. Vote to toss.

Are we absolutely sure that that's the case? I just got a new computer for work (thus no accumulated cookies and whatnot), and when I visit the wiki on my lunch, I'm still presented with both Edit and Edit Source.

As for the rest, can't say as I can disagree with you.