Perplex City Wiki:Discussion

Perplex City Wiki Discussion Section

As this is a discussion page for the setup and layout of the Wiki, i've set up this page on here instead of the forums. Regular users of the Wiki should be able to join in the discussion on topics which affect the wiki.

Site Upgrade

Upgraded the site to MediaWiki 1.8.0 (Release Notes). As always, if you experience any issues with the software, let me know. -BrianEnigma 16:38, 10 October 2006 (PDT)

Collaboration of the Week?

I would like to propose adopting some of Wikipedia's projects--especially the Collaboration of the Week project. I'm very impressed with the wealth of knowledge that already exists in this wiki; however, many pages are outdated or stubs, and could use some serious work. Article writing is right up my alley; however, it seems foolish to tackle such a huge task myself. Besides, it'd be a lot more fun to work together as a group, article by article.  :) I'd love to see the wiki shine. Thoughts? xnera 08:42, 3 July 2006 (PDT)

fFollowing up, I still think it's a good idea. Actually, xnera, what you've been doing lately is probably the best/only way a COTW will really work. pick a set of pages, and improve en masse. like with the info boxes and suchlike. Uhm, I guess I don't have much to really say here except, you know, wheee. you're doing a fFantatsic job, you know :) the wiki does indeed shine more every day you're here :) Scott 22:33, 10 October 2006 (PDT)

User Security Levels

• sysop - gives you editing power on locked pages, the ability to make new users, and other little stuff. Basically it's the gold key access.
• bureaucrat - means you can change privs of other people as well.
• developer - I'm not entirely sure what this does, but presumably gives greater access to backpanel controls, so you can easily change the look and fFeel of things, one assumes.

In case you were wondering, there is also a "bot" priv which make users bots. hey hey :) I'm not entirely sure what the subtleties of that are, actually. presumably you can make a user a bot, and their edits are fFlagged a bit differently, fFor better or worse as you see fFit. make scripts fFor rapid edits of stuff, or red-flag annoying users. either way. we have no bots.  :)

Open Registration + Blacklist

What does everyone think about possibly opening up free registration to all, with registration required to edit articles, but using the MediaWiki Spam Blacklist plugin? This is the same one that Wikipedia uses to prevent spammers. I'm not sure how much administrative overhead it is to manually add people to the user database--but even a tiny bit of manual intervention is an extra step that might deter a new user from contributing. I'd like to propose a "register-yourself" model with the Spam Blacklist plugin for a limited trial, until we get comfortable that it's either not working or working better than manually adding people. Then we can either continue to use it or revert back to the old way. Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

I am reluctant to open registration. This is largely because I had to deal with the onslaught of spamming which occurred a year ago, and there's a good chance I would be the one to deal with it again in the fFuture. I can tell you, adding new users is a really simple thing. I have the page bookmarked, so all I need do when given a new account request is input a name, and generate a response to the person. Pretty easy on my part. However i do fFully recognize the fFact that any effort on the part of the luddite user may be the difference between contibuting new work, and turning away and never looking back. So letting the user do their own registration would be a great thing. So. yes. a trial period might be a good idea. Basically, as I understand it, the plugin simply refers to a blacklist everytime an edit is submitted. So as long as their blacklist is well kept, it should work out dandy. My vote is yes to a trial period, then. Scott 23:17, 24 September 2006 (PDT)

Yes, it updates from Wikipedia's blacklist every 15 minutes. They're really good at controlling spam--I don't know how much of that to attribute to the blacklist and how much to attribute to manual removal, but we'll give it a chance for a few days/weeks and see what we get. BrianEnigma 17:35, 26 September 2006 (PDT)

fFollowing up on this: Yes, it seems to be working so fFar. Which is to say, we have had no outbreaks in the past 2 weeks. fFar fFrom conclusive, of course. But it makes me happy. Scott 22:33, 10 October 2006 (PDT)