STOWiki talk:Community portal/Archive07

Discussion archives

• /Archive01
• /Archive02
• /Archive03

Welcome!

This works just like any other Discussion page on any other wiki. Click on the "+" tab above to add to the discussion. Thank you!

• If you're new to the wiki, please take a look at our Talk page guidelines.
• Be polite
• Assume good faith
• Be welcoming
• Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~).
• Put new text under old text.
• Click here to start a new topic.

---

Another extension

...do we want it? — Eyes 14:52, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

TLDR. What does it do in non tech speak? --Dukedom 15:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Gives you a selector to select the formatting guides and load them onto a new page, or before or after existing text. Also let's you put a box on wiki pages to type in a title, go to the edit page, and get that text already into the edit box (as long as its a new page.) — Eyes 15:35, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds great, we should probably test it in thoroughly in the sandbox first, I guess. But I really think, that would be a great piece to have, especially, when there are tons of new authors coming to add their foundry stuff without a lot of prior wiki experience. --RachelGarrett 16:17, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I already did quite a bit of testing on both MediaWiki 1.16.5 and 1.17. The current version doesn't integrate with the new backend features in 1.17 as well as I would like, but that's purely a behind-the-scenes issue that can be addressed later; everything from a user perspective functions in both, as least as far as I've thought to test. I still want to consider it beta until it's had people beating on it in an active, live environment, but the current version survived all the tests I could think to throw at it. — Eyes 17:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Borg skin

I like it. I think I'll keep it as my deault until they make a Romulan skin. :D --Marhawkman 19:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, we are glad, you like it. Moved your comment over from the unrelated Traits Talk page. --RachelGarrett 09:26, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

O_o' not sure why I posted it there..... I thought I posted it somewhere else. Thanks for moving it. :D--Marhawkman 04:54, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Borg STF Walkthtoughs-Season 4 Update Details

I'll be updating the STF walkthrough pages as soon as I can after the Season 4 STF revamp Launch. I'm rather busy IRL at the moment, so it may be a while. I'll be trying when I can to play through the updated STFs and then when I complete them I'll update the walkhtrough on the wiki. I plan to update ALL THREE STF walkthtrough's (The Infected Walkthrough, and my Cure and KA walkthroughs). If anyone can help me with completing the STFs after they are relaunched contact me using my discussion page.--Cyrano.Jones 18:01, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Cardassian skin?

With the up and coming Featured Episode series, I think it would be cool if there was a cardassian/DS9 theme for the wiki. Good idea and is it possible? I don't know who'd create it though? --Cyrano.Jones 18:48, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

That would be me. It is something on my radar, but nothing with high priority. Sometime soon, the site will revert to a default StoFederation theme. The StoBorg and StoKlingon themes will remain available for registered users through the preference settings. --RachelGarrett 17:10, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Curse?

I was looking at the curse website, STOWiki doesn't seem to be listed anywhere on the site! Is STOWiki still a part of the Curse Network or are we a seperate entity now? --Cyrano.Jones 19:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we're still hosted by Curse. As I understand it, they have about 30 or so different MMO wikis out there. But thanks for reminding me that we aren't linked from the main site. That was an issue I meant to press with them, and I got sidetracked with so many other matters (like the new skins). I was also advised by someone at GuildWiki to try to get the Curse footer, but I don't know if the necessary extension will work with out custom skin. I'll need a chance to test that. (For an example of the footer, see the bottom of any page on [GuildWiki].

On the positive side, they did just recently add a meta-description to our main page to help enhance our search engine rankings, so we're not exactly an ignored orphan either. — Eyes 10:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Lately today I noticed a bunch more Curse stuff, a footer and stuff, but everythings screwy. DOFFs don't load, I often get database errors, and in general the Wiki's just not working right, to the point it's not really useful to me at the moment. What gives? - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 22:07, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

We appear to have a new Favicon as well in the browser bar. As least I don't recognize it. --Drmike 22:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I've investigated as much as I can without server or repo access from Curse. The biggest issue seems to be that the namespaces created by our various wiki extensions aren't showing up, which would particularly affect doffs.

Unlike some have speculated, I don't believe this to be a database issue at all, merely some kind of configuration error or extension incompatibility (four new extensions have appeared on the wiki: Variables, Poem, EmbedVideo, and CurseExtension). I seriously doubt anything in the database is actually damaged, but the screwed up namespace configuration makes certain things like properties, forms, and widgets (which are heavily used with our doff system) unreachable at present. I'm pretty sure all of the other problems are related to whatever has seemingly overridden the namespace configuration.

I'll try to get in touch with Curse as soon as possible to get this resolved. — Eyes 15:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The errors the pages give are database errors saying that certain rows don't exist. Either the extensions have caused a misconfiguration making the DOFF/etc things look for stuff in the wrong place, or the database has been damaged. Knowing MediaWiki it's probably the former, though I couldn't rule out the former. To say more on my part would just be speculation. - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 16:56, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Also someone REALLY needs to edit the footer before CBS Studios notice, because Star Trek is NOT copyright Hi-Res studios, and sites that have tried to push Star Trek content as anything but copyright CBS have had significant legal problems in the past. - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 16:57, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The more I see, the more certain I'm becoming this a configuration screw-up, probably due to an accidental overwriting of the $wgExtraNamespaces array after the extensions have set up their configuration, thus making those namespaces unreachable. The SQL error I'm seeing on the categories is displaying a constant used to refer to one of the missing namespaces; I've seen it used in a place it wouldn't normally show up in the source of another page too. I'm pretty sure we're looking at a corrupted query caused by misconfiguration and not the much scarier prospect of database corruption.

I also requested the copyright notice be changed when I sent my report to Curse just moments ago. I just realized I also need to request the skins be restored, so I'll pass that along now. — Eyes 17:19, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully we can get this all sorted. DOFF stuff is the main reason I use STO wiki! - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 21:52, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a reason why STOwiki is not listed on the bottom of the Curse-hosted wikis? I checked the other wikis just to see if they don't list their own and that's not the case. On a side note, I can see they've activated the banner ads on most of their wikis. --MatthewM 16:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Curse has abour 40-50 wikis, last I knew, and I was told they're adding a few more soon. Unfortunately, not all of us make the footer. :( — Eyes 16:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

UGC?

I see that the Foundry Portal on the wiki isn;t doing very well :( . I wonder why no one is adding their missions to the wiki? How can we get players to add their missions? I also think the Foundry Portal should be carefully monitored to make sure everyone conforms to the regulations for foundry wiki entries.--Cyrano.Jones 11:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

STOWiki:Admin portal#Foundry_pages_without_disclaimer. It is being monitored, and not just through those tools, but also through all of us watching recent changes. As for why weren't not attracting more authors, I'm not sure. A main page announcement is probably the next step we should take, and for that we'd need someone to make images similar to what we have for the Borg Invasion announcement (except, of course, appropriate to the Foundry). Otherwise, anyone who can spread the word can help. — Eyes 11:48, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

SubPageList2 extension is broken

When I tried to create a subpage list, it gave me this: "Warning: Parameter 3 to efRenderSubpageList() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/stowiki/public_html/includes/parser/Parser.php on line 3333". Any way to fix it? Karika 21:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

That extension currently has a release status of unknown and looks like its probably way out of date. I'll ask for it to be replaced with SubPageList, which appears the most up-to-date extension of this kind. — Eyes 07:14, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Opening up anonymous editing

moved to Project talk:Anonymous editing#Opening up anonymous editing

'Images' or 'Gallery'

Ok so I know there are bigger issues right now, but this one is a little bugbear of mine.

For a section in an article for the <gallery> element, should it be titled Images or Gallery?

So far I've gone for Images, and have been changing articles as I go along so it says Images, but now I'm starting to think Gallery might be better. Is there an offical line on this, or does anyone have a preference?

Can we come to a consensus on this, as I'd like it to be standardised accross the whole wiki. Pedantic, I know!

Cheers --Zutty 10:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I like to include <gallery> element. Moreover, I'm also pro-standardization. Personally, I think "Gallery" describes this element well - it is a compact presentation of images. "Images" is an undefined collection of pictures I'd say. Moreover, calling it "Gallery" allows for differentiation in meaning when you're talking about the "Images in an article" or the "Gallery in an article. /My two cents. - Markonian 23:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Walkthroughs vs Transcripts

Hi guys. Another silly, pedantic thing here! We have a number of walkthrough articles that are in fact a full transcript of every line of dialogue in the mission.

I'm not completely sold on the idea of having these transcripts at all, but in any case I think they should be differentiated from walkthroughs. A walkthrough should be a strategy guide to help players who are stuck beat a mission. Given the length of some of these transcripts, its just as easy to try to figure out for yourself how to finish a mission as it is to try to wade through the walls of text for the small bits of pertinent information.

I've created a template for transcripts that I'd like to start using on those missions that have complete dialogue in them. What are people's thoughts on this? --Zutty 23:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean and it makes perfect sense to me. So we can have both for each mission - one transcript sub-page and a precise and not overly long walkthrough sub-page (that e.g. explains how to avoid bugs or provides strategies). If you're unsure about this I'd suggest we pick a mission and do both sub-pages for them to see it in practice. Greetings, - Markonian 23:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Second the idea. This bugged me for a long time. I'm almost on the edge of prohibiting transcrips altogether, because they constitute a severe copyright infringement. Separating them from the walkthroughs is a huge win. Thanks, Zutty for creating the template. --RachelGarrett 09:15, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. *cough* <-- points to the bottom two bullet points. — Eyes 14:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wiki Promotion and Editing...

So with Eyes' recent push to open the wiki to unregistered users it seems to me the primary goal is to grow the user-base and expand community involvement. That being the case I figured we should also discuss methods of Outreach and Promotion to get more people involved in the wiki. I hope i'm not overstepping my bounds by starting the discussion?

Well, the STOWiki Global Chatroom is a good start, but clearly not enough. Aside from opening the wiki to non registered edits what other options are there? Perhaps a push for attention on the forums? Let this page where we share ideas on how to get more people involved.

One thing I could think of, is asking the various STO Internet Radio show's to promote us. It could be via live read or even an actual streamed ad. I could edit together a 10, 15, or 30 second radio spot with some elbow grease and effort that could be put into rotation if they are willing. Maybe STOWiki could even host it's own podcast I dunno.

Ideas? -- BrooklynKnight 22:44, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a video campaign is the solution, I could put an ad for STOWiki on my livestream- http://www.livestream.com/stomedia. I could make the ad as well?--Cyrano.Jones 16:08, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi folks. Thanks for thinking about how to help the Wiki. Since spots and videos are a matter of taste, I'd ask everyone who produces something like that to post it here for review by the community before we start broadcasting. Of course you are always welcome to add a StoWiki.org link in your STO forum signature. I would only ask you to restrain from using superlatives like "best wiki/community/site ever". We don't need to boast like that :-). Regards, --RachelGarrett 23:23, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, at the moment, I have no real ideas to contribute, but I do want to say that I support trying to better promote the wiki. I've gotten the impression from talking to Taylor (a wiki manager from Curse) that we have a pretty low hit count compared to other wikis on the Curse Network. It's part of the reason our requests to them can take a while--we don't get prioritized when there are a lot of outstanding requests from other wiki. We could therefore benefit from improving just general usage as well as trying to increase useful edits. — Eyes 14:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

One thing I was thinking that I can't do is having someone design User Icons and Banners we can use on the forums. Something with a design aesthetic that matches STOWiki, uses game elements, different versions and flavors to match everyone tastes for race or faction. etc. Maybe someone can volunteer to create unique banners for those who would rather incorporate STOWiki into something they already have... -- BrooklynKnight 18:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe I can help with this. It should be simple enough to create some frames from the three new themes for you guys to put graphics into them. I'll take a look at that tomorrow. --RachelGarrett 23:48, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, here are two frames that you can use to composite StoForum signatures in Fed or Kling style (the borg style requires a lot of tinkering and I don't have the time right now):

• 
• 

To use one of these, get an interesting background picture, resize/crop it to 500x150 px, and use a program like Photoshop or Paint.Net to place one of the frames on top. You must save the result as jpg with a maximum size of 50kb. See the forum guidelines.

Example:

• 

Regards, --RachelGarrett 13:24, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Contacting Cryptic

This occurred to me several days ago, but it slipped my mind before I replied here. Many companies do have some kind of program for fansites, such as providing media assets and such. I'm not sure off the top of my head what they might do to aid with promotion, but I think it might be a good idea for us to contact them and see what they might have in place. Comments? — Eyes 07:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Once upon a time I suggested to StormShade to integrate a bbcode tag with the forum to allow direct links to StoWiki.org. However, I never got a reply. As things stand right now, I actually don't want to court them too much. The realization of the F2P/P2W economy makes me quite twitchy. What we could get with close to 100% certainty would be a dev interview. I know TerranRich used to have irregular chats with Zinc way back then. Regards, --RachelGarrett 08:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Video Advertising

moved to sub-page

Podcast List

At the risk of drawing attention to its two year old {delete} flag, on the Talk:Podcasts page I linked to this section for suggesting the Community pages as a possible new location for a hub of Podcast information. My logic for keeping the Podcast page is there, and the debate seems to have dried up since TerranRich first set the flag (he clearly wanted more discussion).

My reason for creating a heading here is community promotion begets community promotion. I can't count the number of times I've heard podcasts mention STOwiki, and it's perhaps worth a discussion of boilerplate information that can be distributed to any/all podcasts. It's the kind of mutual awareness that is beneficial for all parties (most notably the audience), and thus should be outside any concerns related to "advertising". For podcasts, their competition results in making better podcasts, for a wiki, more users results in a competition to make pages better. :) Just my 2 EC. --Brackynews 20:10, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Unable to change skin

My skin has been defaulted to the STOfederation skin, and I can't change it in My Preferences > Appearance. The "useskin" parameter for all the skins doesn't work either. Can anyone help? Karika^Communicator 16:54, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

There is an issue with some of the code Curse uses to track web traffic, which is that the other skins aren't loading it. We've found the other STO skins are loading it properly, so they have just been reenabled. But Cavendish and the other skins are not currently loading the analytics code. Curse has plans to fix this and reenable the older skins, but for the time being, we need to use only the skins that correctly load this code. (Our traffic seems to be getting very underreported, and it's very important that Curse has good numbers for us.) — Eyes 17:19, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Cavendish is working now for me. Karika^Communicator 17:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Is STO Down?

For just over 24 hours now, I have been unable to connect the STO launcher to the server to play the game, nor have I been able to access the official STO website (including Help) to see what's going on. I can access all other websites easily. Is there something wrong with STO, or is the problem at my end? Kimpatsu 21 December 2011--221.252.146.212 06:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

There's a problem with Cryptic's websites, the same applies to Champion Online - some are unable to access it. For me, the STO homepage works fine. About the Login: Change your Proxy: In the Login-Screen, pick Options and choose another Proxy (US/EU), that should help. Good luck! Markonian 09:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:NPCinfo editing

Greetings! I'd like to modify the NPCinfo-Template but my understanding of wiki-code is too limited. Therefore, I hope an experienced user may help me with it.

Issue (1) is: The rank of Elite Tactical Assimilated Gorn, e.g. Aculeus, displays in the category section as Elite Tactical Assimilated Gorns. The goal is to display it as Elite Tactical Assimilated Gorn - so, preferably without 's' and without '... NPCs'.

Issue (2): Please add an option for 'race' and 'race2' (the same way as with locations). For two reasons: first, it allows for better race-display for hybrids (like Naomi Wildman and Spock (e.g. race = Vulcan, race2 = Human) and allows to display the former species of Borg (e.g. Donatra -> race = Borg, race2 = Romulan, or Aculeus: race = Borg, race2 = Gorn). Regards, -Markonian 13:31, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Issue 1: Elite Tactical Assimilated Gorn is a good description of what they are, but doesn't strike me as either a rank or a profession (mainly because it's both and the species at the same time). I suggest adding the category to the pages manually ([[Category:Elite Tactical Assimilated Gorn]] at the bottom of the page) rather than trying to shoehorn this in awkwardly into a parameter that the term doesn't fit. It seems like enough of a special case that it's better not to add support for it to the template.

Issue 2: race2 parameter added. — Eyes 14:33, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! "Elite Tactical Drone" is probably the preferable rank designation, or no at all. Thank you for adding the "race2". I've just used in Donatra and it looks cool. --Markonian 13:56, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Is anyone else having problems accessing Cryptic sites?

I saw the earlier topic where a person was having trouble signing onto Star Trek Online, or get into the website.

I am not only unable to sign on, I can't seem to access any Cryptic Studios websites... STO, Champions Online, or their home page. I can't sign onto either game either; I get stuck at the Cryptic Launcher Autoupdate... don't even get a sign-on screen to change settings. I've tried from 3 different computers, and all have the same result. Can't sign onto the games, and can't access any of the websites.

Is this just me, or is there something seriously wrong with Cryptic generally? I was able to sign onto Champions Online until last week, but ever since getting the email from Cryptic saying that STO F2P is available to all former subscribers (which I am), I can't access anything to do with Cryptic.

Any suggestions or feedback would be helpful. It would be sad to see that STO and Champions Online are forever gone. Or maybe they just don't want anyone from my region (I'm in Asia) playing anymore.

Lluren

January 8, 2012

SOPA and PIPA

Unfortunately, I'm asking this too late for us to participate in the blackout, but I would like to see if the community would support us putting a message on the main page indicating that STOWiki opposes SOPA and PIPA, especially the likely liability it could potentially expose wikis to (to name only one reason to oppose these bills). — Eyes 16:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I think showing our support would be a great thing. It will show the hundred of users that don't already know about this and how to (hopefully) stop the bills. CaptainEdward 16:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. The more awareness, the better. Keyfob 19:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Second the idea. Problem is, that due to our relationship with curse, we cannot effectively go into total blackout. But a nice banner notice would be great. Regards, --RachelGarrett 18:58, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

What did I miss at the Wiki?

Since STO has went F2P, I am now back to make edits. Any new rules, regulations, pitfalls? --Omega X 03:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back. Same old for the most part. But don't add Doffs unless you checked out our form for that. --RachelGarrett 18:58, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Patroller user group

I suggested to the admins a while back that we change our configuration to make the patrol feature in MediaWiki useful to us. We had an idea of creating a patroller group who would be able to see what edits were unpatrolled (they'd see the same red ! next to those edits in recent changes that we admins see) and would be able to mark those pages as patrolled. I'd also like to attach some other relatively safe rights to this group as well, such as the ability to move pages without leaving a redirect, the ability to move images, and the ability to use the rollback feature (though the last one isn't really important).

This would also come with changes to what edits are automatically patrolled. Right now, any edit by any non-admin user is unpatrolled, which isn't much use to us. We would change it so that any user that has been registered for 30 days and made at least 50 edits would have all of their edits autopatrolled. That way, the red ! would only appear next to pages edited by relatively new users. The complete previous discussion is here. — Eyes 15:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

The patrol user feature sounds both reasonable and applicable to me. The previous discussion implies a general in-favor-of position. Over the past months we had several polls, therefore I suggest we do another one on this topic, because a) it affects the users and raises awareness and b) the voting system on this wiki has proven to be a democratic, useful tool. -- Markonian 18:47, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I want to be a little careful about getting too many votes going on at once. We've got a recall vote going on the Project:Policy/Deletion/Old so we can replace it with Project:Policy/Deletion (or something like it). We're also trying to get to a final draft of Project:Community events. I guess for now, the questions on this are just if anyone thinks this idea should be modified and getting an early sense if there is anyone that would object to this idea. — Eyes 12:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Unable to change skin...again

Same problem as before. None of the other skins are accessible. Karika^Communicator 17:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

We have some serious configuration issues right now. I'm trying to get in touch to get them sorted out. — Eyes 17:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The 2800

Hey guys! I started an article on the new FE series mission, Second Wave, which you can find here: Mission:Second_Wave. It probably needs cleaned up and the items need added in, so feel free! Thought I'd get the ball rolling :) And bring it to your attention! - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 01:04, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Update on configuration issues

I've now been in contact with Curse. Essentially, there was a serious network infrastructure problem that occurred this Tuesday. In order to deal with, a number of pending changes had to be pushed to our configuration (as well as those of the other Curse wikis) without having time to properly test them.

They are still working on restoring the network (which has to come first), but I see signs they are trying to address our issues as I write this. I think we'll be seeing a resolution soon. — Eyes 09:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I noticed before I left for work last night that everything had been resolved except restoring the skin options. Curse wants to discuss that today. I'll post another update when I have more news. — Eyes 12:14, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

More updates:

• Due to a significant increase in hit count from the last time Curse took a hard look at our numbers, we've been rebranded.
• There are a few issues with the Curse footer. The copyright notice should be fixed soon. The positioning issue will require an update to the skin itself. Hopefully, we'll have that ironed out sometime tomorrow.
• Curse is planning to update the wiki to version 1.18.1 soon. I've been informed our skins are incompatible. I'll be working to correct this when I finish upgrading one of my sandbox. We probably won't get the skin options until this is taken care of. — Eyes 20:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Policy on outdated pages?

What is the policy regarding outdated pages? Should they be deleted, archived, or marked with some template? And how would I go about doing this? Vyn 22:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been meaning to answer this, but I've been busy. We don't really have a policy. {{OOD}} is a good template for a page that should be updated, and {{Removed}} is good for something that's no longer part of the game. For removed, it'd also be best to remove the page from any categories other than Category:Removed from the game (added by the Removed template). Depending on the templates used on the page, though, this is sometimes easier said than done. Let me know if you have any trouble. — Eyes 12:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

You forgot {{nu}} which in my book is a less urgent version of {{OOD}}. And if I recall correctly we talked about using {{Removed}} only as sparse as possible when that template was written for the KDF Zone. --Dukedom 13:39, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers! Outdated references to skills like Starship Operations Training have always been bugging me, but I'll be able to do something about it now.Vyn 22:19, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit: that would be a skill suitable for {{Removed}}, right? Vyn 22:24, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, I'm having trouble deciding whether we should keep the old skills and mark them with {{Removed}} or just delete them. Unfortunately, the infobox template is automatically adding them to Category:Skills, so if we're going to keep them, we'd also want to make to make a legacy version of that template. — Eyes 13:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Why do DOff pages don't count?

Out of curiosity, I've been wondering why Doff pages do not appear on the Main Page's article counter. Similarly, when you look in the Doff related categories and subcategories it says "(0)" besides them. Is it intentional? -- Markonian 15:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I've been meaning to look into the specifics of how that counter works, but I'm thinking it excludes pages below a certain length. The doff pages are, for the most part, very short. I just checked one of them, and it was only 177 bytes. The number next to the categories is showing the number of subcategories, not pages. — Eyes 15:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but in that case the counter also ignores short stub-pages, does it? -- Markonian 16:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I found an article that explains this. Apparently, the count is of articles in the main namespace that include at least one comma. It doesn't specify whether this happens before expanding templates or after. If it's after, well, most of the doff pages don't have any commas.

When we get upgraded to 1.18, this will change to counting any page in the main namespace with one link, but it'd only "recount" each page individually when they next get saved. At any rate, by the time I've got the import extension ready to go, it kinda looks like those new pages will get counted. — Eyes 18:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Duty Officers and Assignments Hunters

Hi all, First i want to tell that in the newest patch February 16 http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=255177 , has been added some new assignments and modified the rarity of some older assignments (latinum related assignments). If anyone finds new changes/updates on the assignments please update the wiki too if you can. I'll do my best too. Second, i became a assignment hunter and ive been study many assignments very carefully and i think i found a "secret" related to assignments respawn/rarity (the assignments cooldown which is not same thing with the rarity). If an admin or Eyes can take a look at that green additional note on Assignment (Rarity) to confirm by leaving the message or modifying it in white if this in unsure or inesthetic for the page's aspect.Or modify the text for better consistency or grammar/misspellings. Thank you. Cris333 17:47, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Upcoming duty officer import

Because the renaming of so many of the doffs came earlier than expected (before I was even close to the testing stage), I've reconsidered my strategy for importing the duty officer data. My original plan had two phases where first I'd get the upload done and then work on an extension to better handle displaying the data on the various pages.

The plan I'm strongly considering now still has two phases. In the first, I'll have the import extension just upload the duty officer data into simple tables on a Federation and KDF subpage for each specialization. This isn't nearly as flexible, but it should be quicker to code and test so I can get the data out on the wiki quicker.

In the second phase, I'd work on getting the import extension to load the data into the duty officer pages like Tactical Exocomp and getting the extension written that I want to use to properly "page" the duty officer tables. While I think this will work fine, I'm not ruling out the possibility that the thousands of pages needed could cause unanticipated problems, so I can't guarantee this second phase will work out. — Eyes 20:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

The first phase is complete, though the Starfleet pages are already long enough to cause some concern. Once again, it looks like this is another solution that can probably only be used for the short-term.

Entertainer holograms

Its noted in the release notes: Added new assignments rewarding Orion (Fed) and Vulcan (KDF) Entertainer Hologram duty officers.

Has anyone seen heads or tails of this and knows what it's about? If its a duty officer that I dont have and is half-decent, I need it :P But I haven't seen anything as of yet that seems to be along that lines. - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 03:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

For the Federation, it's a duty officer you get from critical success on special deal trade missions. The common one I received had Eidetic, Photonic, Resilient, Seductive, and Unscrupulous traits. Higher ranked versions will supposedly be rewarded from correspondingly higher ranked assignments. Vyn 06:26, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Currency

I've playing the game since it's free, and I'm amazed. Really good, so I want to support the creators. Unfortunatelly I cant affor to pay monthly, but if I want to buy Cryptic-points it 

redirects me to Perceft Wolrd where I can buy Zen and convert it to C-points. Will this benefit Cryptic Studios? Pecek 13:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, though it's a really roundabout way on PWE's count to work a billing system. - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 22:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Server kaput

Looks like the entirety of STO went poof. Is this just my networking, or has the site and game become inaccessible? - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 21:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

.. Looks like it's just not me: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=257675 ... second time in a week, yeesh... - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 21:46, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Damn, look at all the whiners and folks who think they're server techs. Every internet service has down time. Even google. --Drmike 22:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I am a server tech, though :P - - VA Maiyannah Lysander 23:31, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Back up it appears by the way. --Drmike 23:04, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Official recognition

Saw it just now: Go to the STO homepage, click on "The Game". Below "The Foundry" it says "Wiki" - which is a redirect to the STOWiki.org main page. Wow, congratulations to the STOWiki community! --Markonian 23:05, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Assimilated 'Graviton' Deflector Array

The Assimilated Graviton Deflector Array has been renamed in game as Assimilated Deflector Array.I renamed the item on all related links , i created a new page with this name with redirect to Borg assimilated technology and i uploaded new icons with the new name for a proper use (mouse over reading,iconlink..). I have a small problem and i ask help from an admin or wiki moderator or a professional wiki user to delete this old named page http://www.stowiki.org/File:Assimilated_Graviton_Deflector_Array_icon.png to let the wiki to use Assimilated Deflector Array icon without very rare layer from http://www.stowiki.org/File:Assimilated_Deflector_Array_icon.png (wiki can't use the new named icon because it sees as duplicate) I d'ont know how to delete old multimedia with older name . Also (how) to delete the old named redirected page http://www.stowiki.org/index.php?title=Assimilated_Graviton_Deflector_Array&redirect=no . Thank you. --Cris333 11:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

help my please

hello friends, I need your help, recently I realized that 3 of the skills that are supposed to give me every time I took hold of range in the bar aparesen use of powers such as the impulse to warp 20, I wonder if someone feels the same and how to fix it, to clarify I am vice Admiral

I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you're asking. What three skills are you looking at? How many levels in each do you have? --Drmike 19:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

STO Forums moderators want to get in contact, regarding account hacking

Just to drop this here. PWE_BranFlakes (STO community manager) wants to get in contact with the STOWiki admins, regarding possible account hacking. Apparently he has a hard time reaching someone official. The forum thread can be found here: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=4094120#post4094120 --Backyardserenade 19:25, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Argh, I thought he meant when he was contacting an admin, he meant he had contacted someone at Curse. Disappointing to see that he was talking to someone else entirely. I've sent a PM to BranFlakes about this so he can contact me in case they can't get in communication for some reason.

At any rate, all I can tell the community right now is that I have no information beyond what's in that thread and the other one linked by the OP. And regardless of whatever the accuracy of the information there may be, it never hurts to take preventive steps like running antivirus and anti-spyware scans and changing your password. This is especially true because you can rarely know with any certainty how much time has passed between account information being compromised and someone actually getting around to steal items and credits from your characters. Hopefully, we'll have some more concrete information to share soon. — Eyes 22:03, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Branflakes said somewhere in all that that he can;t receive PMs. Not sure if that's true or not but I wanted to mention it.

On a personal note, I just have a flash blocker installed and the antivirus and malware cranked high :) --Drmike 22:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

He said he can't reply to PMs, not that he can't receive them. It was to make sure whoever did send him a PM would include an email or IM handle so he could respond. —Dr Ishmael 00:29, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Quick update

Contact between Cryptic and Curse has been arranged. I'll provide further details if and when I have more. — Eyes 11:35, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Change to abuse filter

I've made a change to one of our abuse filters to prevent the recent section removal spam, but there's a chance it may be a little too broad. I'll try to refine it later, but as the spam activity is ongoing, I wanted to make sure we had something in place to stop it now. — Eyes 16:54, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Never mind. User:Dr ishmael just gave us a better one, and I've put it into place. — Eyes 17:05, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Reminder on deletion policy vote

There is still an ongoing vote to replace our existing existing bloated deletion policy with a simpler new deletion policy. According to our existing policies, to do this through a community vote, we need a minimum of five yes votes and a three-to-one majority in favor. Technically, this is two separate actions, but we're handling both with the recall vote on the existing policy.

Since the discussion is a large wall of text, I'll provide a short version of my support for this change.

• The policy places too much emphasis on whether {{delete}} or {{speedydelete}} is used.
• On a small wiki like ours, more streamlined and natural processes encourage more participation and doesn't require users to be as familiar with our policies. (The new policy encourages what users are likely to do naturally.)
• The new policy better emphasizes discussion and compromise on controversial deletes than a yes/no vote does.
• I don't have to technically violate policy to delete pages where no one even cares to vote because the page doesn't get enough attention. (Which generally means it's a good candidate for deletion.)

There have been concerns raised that the new policy gives too much power to admins to decide what to delete, and I've argued that calls for better admin selection methods rather than a lot of restrictions in the deletion policy. That's a discussion we want to get started with the community as well. — Eyes 18:24, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

The vote is over, and the new policy has passed. Thanks everyone. — Eyes 17:42, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Admin selection

Since this might get a lot of discussion, I'm going to start it on a separate page: Project talk:Admin selection. — Eyes 17:42, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Skins?

Are we going to see the missing three skins again? Karika^Communicator 20:12, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I'd been hoping with the upgrade, we'd get STOklingon and STOborg back. I don't think we'll be getting Cavendish back. Unfortunately, the skins may be what's holding up the upgrade. I thought I had fixed all the compatibility issues, but there may be some Curse-specific issue I don't know about, and I don't think I can get a update until after the weekend. — Eyes 11:13, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Since we're discussing the upgrade, I would suggest you get them to install ConfirmEdit and use the Asirra module to screen user creation, at the least. We have it at GuildWiki, triggering on user creation and edits that add external links, and it has drastically reduced the amount of spam we see (it's a level above even AbuseFilter). —Dr Ishmael 15:54, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I've already requested that configuration. ^^ — Eyes 17:09, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought you might have, since I believe Curse has added that to their default wiki setup, but figured I'd mention it anyway. —Dr Ishmael 17:42, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

ConfirmEdit is bundled with 1.18, and yes, Asirra is being installed on all English language wikis on our network. And to answer your questions, Yes, it is skin issues that are holding up the upgrade for STO. it's really important that you guys work out a vector based skin (skins) before the next major update of the software. -- Wynthyst talk 08:16, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Just an update for you, STO Wiki will be upgraded to 1.18.1 tomorrow (4/13). The deploy is scheduled for 9:30 am (CST) and should be a non-service interupting deploy, but the wiki will be in Read Only mode while the upgrade is being processed. This should take 5-15 minutes. The upgrade includes your custom skins (all of them). -- Wynthyst talk 21:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

"Ships item" link

On the main page there's a link named "Ships Item" in the "equipment" category. This link send you to the starship equipment page which only talk about engine and deflector. I was wondering if it would be a better idea to link it to the Starship Components page which talk about every items you can put on a ship. What do you think about that? Bimanolc 02:55, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Misconception between Hubs and space stations/starbases

I post here because there's many page related to the problem. I discovered recently a misconception beteween Hubs and space station/starbases on STO wiki. As I thought, space station/starbases were artificial creation that float in space and Hubs were social like gathering place (don't get me wrong, I know some space station are considered like hubs but not all of them and hubs also include some planets and the battle group omega). While navigating amongst different pages treating that subject I found pages misinterpreting:

• Hubs as space Station/starbases like Guide: Starbases
• Space station/starbases as Hubs like Hub
• fusionning both like List of space stations

What I say is not that these entire pages are wrong. There’s really valuable information on them. The only fact is the information needs some reorganization. I certainly would like to give it a try but I would need to make major changes and maybe show you a plan of what I think could be good (i'm not used to the system here yet). What do you think about that? Bimanolc 15:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Guide: Starbases just needs to be moved to Guide: Hubs, and that problem will be fixed.

The Hub article looks fine, and the definition makes sense - a location with access to bank/mail/Exchange and other services. The presence of these services tends to draw more people to visit the location, which leads to the location also serving as a place for social gatherings. The majority of hubs just happen to be space stations: ESD is both a space station and a hub, while First City is a hub but not a space station.

The category problem is due to the infoboxes being used on the individual articles. Space stations should use {{Stationinfo}} while planets should use {{Planetinfo}}, but there are a number of planets like Risa using the wrong template. Someone needs to correct these to use the correct infobox. —Dr Ishmael 16:25, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree for the guide! that's what I was thinking. For the Hub article, I'll try to elaborate the definition a little i think i can make it even better and maybe try to update the article cause "spending emblem" and things are not up to date. I'll also try to take a look into the category problem ... if I have the time (added to my to do list :P). Just to let you know, I've tried something for the Space station article. I'll post it soon! Let me know what you think. Bimanolc 18:51, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

"Under Construction"-Update

The "Under Construction"-section needs an update. I'd say we should keep Guide: The Foundry and Corsair Flight-Deck Cruiser in, though.

New links could be to Utopia Planitia Shipyards, Mission: Alpha, Mission: Klingon Academy Event, Odyssey Science Cruiser, Odyssey Tactical Cruiser, Bortas Battle Cruiser. --Akira-sensei 09:22, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

1.18.2 upgrade

First of all, I don't know why Special:Version is saying this is version 1.18.2 when we were going to get 1.18.1 (though it doesn't matter much). STOborg and STOklingon are back (though Cavendish isn't). Also noticable on Special:Version is the black-on-dark-blue text that has to be selected to even be seen. Karika^Communicator 14:51, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, back when was told about it, it was 1.18.1 we were going to get, but it doesn't really matter. I was expecting the color issue with the tables and the updated CSS has fixed it.

I am also aware of the "Change protection" button issue (being it exists on this very page). That's on me, as I thought I had already modified the skin to deal with it, but apparently, I got ahead of myself. I'll submit the needed change after a few days; I want to wait to see if we find any other problems that require changes to the core skin files.

I checked on Cavendish about a week ago. It's not a standard MediaWiki skin, but a separate project, and it doesn't look like they've even released a version compatible with MW 1.18 yet. So even if Curse sorts out the analytics code issue they have with multiple skins, Cavendish will probably still not be an option. — Eyes 15:28, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I have an error to report. Images in Galleries have a white background that really distacts from the images. For example:

• 

  See the white background?

- Mitchz95 16:31, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. — Eyes 16:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Catagory tags at the bottom of pages seem to be spaced out a bit differently after the upgrade, where as prior they were more tightly spaced, is that intended? — Rɪᴘʟᴇʏ^[<span=help title="Ripley's Talk Page">^T|<span=help title="Ripley's Contributions">^C] 17:54, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Not intentional on our part, if that's what you mean. Apparently, it's a change in the common styles for 1.18. If people don't like it, we can almost certainly override it. — Eyes 18:21, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

When you do a search now, the results page includes the checkbox of namespaces. It didn;t used to. The other problem with that is now the results are forced down under the page fold. users may not be aware of where the results are and get confused thinking that there aren;t any results. --Drmike 16:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I just noticed on the File:Combat_Mugato.jpg page that the metadata at the bottom is unreadable. When you view it, it appears to be white text on a white background. Not sure how it was previously but it;s a concern now. thanks --Drmike 14:39, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Fix in place. You may need to use shift-reload (or your browser's equivalent) to load the new CSS. — Eyes 15:22, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The show/hide javascript is broken. I've upgraded Template:AssignmentChainsNav to use MW 1.18's built-in collapsible elements, but I don't know if that JS is used anywhere else. —Dr Ishmael 16:50, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. The problem was just another JS function (addOnloadHook) they dumped in favor of jQuery. This particular switchover has caused me headaches before... — Eyes 17:14, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Surely I cant be the only person to notice that images are failing to load, seemingly at random. This breaks most pages on the wiki that have icons or screenshots. --Zutty 18:49, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I've noticed that too, but only starting a few days ago, so I don't know if it's related to the MW upgrade or not. —Dr Ishmael 20:17, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Signatures in the mainspace

I have been noticing an increase in user signatures in the mainspace for quite some time. Could an AbuseFilter entry be added to filter this? Karika^Communicator 14:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it. The abuse filter variables are generated after the ~~~~ is replaced. I'm also against using the abuse filters for simple mistakes. Instead, I tried to make the message on the edit page clearer and the "talk pages" part stand out more. — Eyes 15:30, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

For me, at least, bold text doesn't stand out very much in a white-on-dark color scheme, so I'm not sure how much that is going to help. —Dr Ishmael 16:19, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, modified it that whole bullet point only appears when editing a talk page. I think that's the best we can do. — Eyes 16:45, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know you could use parser functions in the MW: namespace like that. Spiffy! —Dr Ishmael 18:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

It's message-by-message. Some get fully parsed, some don't. We got lucky that this one does. — Eyes 18:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

It is possible to get filters to id signatures, you could have it simply send them a "warning message" explaining that signatures are not appropriate in the mainspace, or, an alternative would be to just have the filter flag the edit when a signature is included an have an admin contact the user directly and explain. -- Wynthyst talk 23:48, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Moving {{infobox}} and {{coloricon}} into SMW

I've modified the infobox template (current test at User:Karika/infobox) to use SMW properties (tech demo at User:Karika/infobox/test). I've also created a replacment icon template (User:Karika/Icon) that is tied to the new infobox template via SMW, and also to replace the very similar {{Icon}}, {{Coloricon}}, and {{Iconlink}}. Any suggestions/ideas? Karika^Communicator 16:14, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

CSS: why force size on a?

Something that's been bothering me for a while is that the CSS here forces a font-size property on the <a> element. I can't find it in any of the MediaWiki:*.css pages accessible on the wiki, so I assume it's in the core skin files, but Chrome's page inspector shows this rule:

a, a:visited, .plainlinks a {
  color: #6dc7e3;
  text-decoration: none;
  font-size: 10pt;
}

Why does it force all links to 10pt? A link is an inline element and should normally inherit the font-size from the parent block. We currently have a number of annoying hacks to override this (a number of them in MediaWiki:Stocommon.css, {{Item}}... can't remember where else I've seen it right now), but there shouldn't be any need for that in the first place. —Dr Ishmael 18:03, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere

The 'what link here' functionality is broken. Observe...

http://www.stowiki.org/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PCshipinfo

--SomeGuy 17:16, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

In what way, exactly? You mean that the link on this page doesn't count? The wiki treats that as an external link and doesn't count it. That's by design. An internal link like this one will be, though. — Eyes 17:37, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Never mind. Now I see it. Worked fine a moment ago... I think I know what's going on. — Eyes 17:49, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I've sent Curse a fix for this issue. — Eyes 18:42, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm Back, Baby!

Hi all. Long time no see. I regret just disappearing without saying anything. I had kind of fallen out of love with STO and decided not to play anymore. However the Cat Carrier has tempted me back, so I thought I'd swing by the old wiki! TBH I still have my reservations about STO, but I actually kind of miss it. Plus Im still keen for the wiki to be the No.1 source of information on STO, so its back to work for me! --Zutty 10:50, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back, Zutty! — Eyes 11:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

New Logo

Hi again all. I've taken my sweet time with this one, but I finally got around to applying my proposed new logo to Eyes' sandbox wiki...

http://sto.aeongarden.com/wiki/Main_Page

If you approve I'll apply it to the main wiki. I was only able to log in to the old 1.16 sandbox wiki, so I may need to port the changes in STOCommon.php, but its a pretty simple change.

The logo itself is the new PW/Season 5 STO logo, with the word WIKI added in the closest font/colour/style as I could get it. I used Inkscape; if you want the source, let me know. Thanks --Zutty 19:27, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I like the logo, but I don't like how it breaks out of the layout into the left gutter. I don't know what could be done to avoid/fix that, though. —Dr Ishmael 20:19, 11 May 2012 (UTC)