STOWiki talk:Suggestion Box

Suggestion Box archives

• /Archive01

This page is for Wiki related suggestions only. To request game features visit the appropriate forums [[1]]. If your feedback does not comply with this rule, it will be tranfered to this site by an admin. Click the "+" button above to add your own suggestion, or "Edit" to reply to someone else's suggestion.

Item Icon Layers

Hey guys, I really love how you managed to put layers on item icons, so you can basically create anything, for example:

Now as you can see, some of the MK numbers don't show up when you enter a combination which usually doesn't exist, such as:

The "Tetryon Beam Array" icon doesn't have any MK numbers listed (since you'd have to save every single MK number on a new image). However, as you also can see, the "Legendary" layer color (even though this rarity level doesn't exist yet) works perfectly, no matter what icon is behind it.

My suggestion: Could you make the MK numbers work like the rarity colors; as layers? That way the final gap would be closed and you could create any item of any rarity and MK number you want. Also, since MK XI and XII exist now, it would be nice to add those as well.

Phaser Beam Array supports MK I through X, but no higher than that, either XI nor XII. The image is white now because I used no rarity modifier.

Thankies for taking my idea into consideration! :)

ErisTheVorta 20:13, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi Eris. This is something I'm interested in. I'd also like to take it further and make the coloricon template work as an inline item from a CSS perspective, but thats some further work.

I'm going to take a look at the game files (at the office ATM, so it'll be this evening, GMT+1) and see if the mark numbers are separate files or if they're embedded in the item icons. Will keep you posted. --Zutty 11:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid the mark numbers are embedded into the icons in the game files, and they dont appear to be in there anywhere on their own. I tried to cut them out with the gimp, but they look terrible! Maybe someone else could do a better job. As an alternative, I'll see if I can find an upload all the missing files with mark numbers already in them. It might take a while, so please bear with me. --Zutty 21:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Wowies, the MK XI Phaser Beam Array looks nice already! Keep up the wonderful job, I hope all items will at some time carry MK XI and XII variants on here. And another wow ... you even updated older items with MK I to X numbers which didn't have them yet, such as "Shield Array". Awesome! ErisTheVorta 16:38, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I set up a test template a long time ago that accomplishes this on a wiki of my own, if anyone wants to look into implementing it here. Test Template Source ps: sorry for bringing up a rather old 'topic' --Lord Trekie 18:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Wowies, I have looked at the site, butt I couldn't see any graphical results of it. What do I need to do to display the image of the code you put in? ErisTheVorta 22:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I set up a test page of it here when I did the template, you should be able to view the source to see what differences exist between mine and the one in use here. --Lord Trekie 23:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

That Looks AWESOME! BrooklynKnight 05:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, meow, indeed! That loox awesum! Can that template be cunverted to this area? :)ErisTheVorta 15:04, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

By the way, the "legendary" icon overlay should also get a special borderline around now, like the purrple one for ultra rare. Then it's purrfect! ErisTheVorta 10:27, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Skin Fixes

Hi all,

I only recently switched from the old Canvendish skin to the new STOfederation skin. I changed over because we are apparently not supposed to use Cavendish any more. I'm not really a fan of the blue-on-blue look, but never mind.

Anyway... since moving to STOfederation I have noted and fixed a number of bugs. There are some issues I'd like to tackle though that are a bit more wide ranging.

Font-size hard coded

There is an issue with the hard-coded CSS file that I cant change from the wiki itself. In the file /skins/stofederation/stofederation.css on line 102 and in stocommon.css line 217 there are CSS definitions for the anchor element that set the font-size. This should be removed, as it breaks many templates and layouts.

Do we have to get curse to fix this, or can a sysop do it?

Fonts

The skin makes many references to the fonts "FuturaBody", "FuturaBodyThin", and "FuturaTitle" which were used in Cavendish. These are embedded fonts that are defined in the file /w/fonts/v2/stylesheet.css. For these to work the font file needs to be @included, but it isn't. Either we are supposed to be using Futura, but someone forgot to include the file, or we aren't supposed to be using it but someone was too lazy to remove all the definitions.

The font-family definitions are inconsistent, but the main set seems to be as follows...

futuratitle,'segoe ui',calibri,verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif

I very strongly feel that we need to pick some more universally accepted fonts to give a common look & feel across different browsers and platforms. At the moment, STOwiki looks different on XP, Vista, OS X, Firefox, IE, Chrome, etc.. due to the choice of fonts, which I think is quite bad.

The easiest way to do this would be to go back to the embedded fonts. I would personally like to reinstate Futura, as it looks much nicer that Segoe UI and is more Trek-ish. I haven't made this change unilaterally though as its quite a big one.

Are others ok for this change to be made?

    :Something needs to be done, I agree.  I cannot even see the writing against the background unless I left-click and move the mouse down the page.

This sounds like the skin is rendering incorrectly for you. It should be appearing as a near-white font against a nearly black background. If this isn't happening, there may be a browser incompatibility I didn't catch during testing. What is it you're seeing, and what browser, version, and operating system/device are you using? — Eyes 21:44, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Logo

Since season 4/5 the STO logo has changed, as seen in the recent wallpaper that Crpytic released.

http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2691

I think we should update the STOwiki logo too. Any objections?

Skin colours

As I said, I really dont like the blue-on-blyue colour scheme. Any objections to me making a fourth vaqriant of the skin with general LCARS colours? Cryptic have already started using a broader LCARS colour palette with the new defiant bridge character selection screen, so I think this can be considered 'sto canon'! I was thinking a black background with a palette of 4-6 colours for elements. Thoughts?

Thanks, and sorry for the massive post! --Zutty 14:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

A more standardized Trek font sounds good to me. I think the logo is fine as is. A secondary LCARS using the 24th century palette (as opposed to the shades-of-blue 25th) would be fine with me. --MatthewM 14:46, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Idea: LCARS color skin/template

i had a thought that colored LCARS skin or a template could work well on STOWiki make it more an third option for players to view it in that setting. it would be interesting to try that. what do you think about that? Superlink1 07:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Tips and Tricks page

Greets:

I'm thinking about the idea of a tips and tricks page. For example someone mentioned in zone chat that you can now keep your data particles as well as your commodities in your bank and still be able to use them. I didn'1t know that.

A page for stuff like that.

Opinions?

thanks --Drmike 01:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I was under the impression these short nice to know things were in Template: DYK? --Dukedom 09:34, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Captain's Log

":"I realize that this probably has little to do with the game itself, but I would love to see a forum page where people can write of their own stories based upon their adventures. I propose a forum called, "Captain's Log." I would enjoy reading in story form of other players adventures and how they handled a situation that should have been so obvious to figure out, yet the solution eluded the most experienced of gamers. I was involved in another MMORPG where a group of people in my alliance (Fleet) wanted to write of our adventures, each adding a chapter based upon things that occurred in the game mixed in with our own writing style, and also based upon what was written by another writer in the previous chapter. That games wiki did not provide a public forum either, so we created a forum group on IMVU. I would also enjoy writing of my exploits in the game in a way that anyone of the population of players in the STO community could read if they so desired. Naturally their would be rules and guidelines, but I believe this would provide insight, entertainment, and perhaps even rekindle the desire to get out there and explore the universe again. I do apologize for not reading the About, Help, & Wiki Guidelines pages before posting, but I did not see that I had until I typed this sentence, so forgive me.

jonbutler2004@yahoo.com aka Rear Admiral Tonaj Cmdr U.S.S. Gallifrey

--Jonbutler2004 03:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Greets:

The powers that be have a policy covering fan created material:

http://www.stowiki.org/STOWiki:Fan_fiction_guidelines

I believe the main forums hosted by STO have their own story subforum as well. That may be a better place for something like this.

Hope this helps --Drmike 23:00, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Simple How-To's for Beginners

I am relatively new to STO and have spent the last two hours looking on this Wiki for answers to some questions. Since I'm new, it may just be my ignorance, so respond accordingly.

The Wiki covers the game play items/logic/storyline fairly well, but what I am not finding is explanations on how to do common things. For instance:

- I am trying to do the mission: "Needs Of The Many" and have come to the place where I'm supposed to 'Deliver the goods to the planet in need.' I have spoken to the Planet Personnel and found what I was supposed to give (10 items) and I have the 10 items, but I don't know how to get it to the planet's surface.

- Is there a way to set your weapons to fire automatically while one maneuvers the spaceship, so you don't have to do one or the other.

I guess what I'm asking for is a "How To" page for Basic keystrokes or menu navigations for non-mission-specific tasks or actions.

Even if there isn't a keyboard/menu driven way of doing something, but it seems like there should be, the answer to what is SUPPOSED to be happening instead. For instance, in my first example, perhaps there is no way to send something to the planet willy nilly, but instead when the player has met certain criteria, a button pops up and lets you beam it down that way.

Having played these types of games before, I know that once one reaches a certain level of expertise it is hard to remember what struggles & frustrations there were at the beginning. I was always sorry I didn't document it, so here I am, not repeating past mistakes.

--05:34, 18 February 2012 (UTC)Jeanjaz (Jawaheyr)

Needs of the Many requires you to complete one generic aid mission in Delta Volanis. You simply have to keep exploring the various systems until you randomly run into one that shows "aid the planet" or some such in your mission info pane (default right hand side of your screen). Approach the planet and you will be able to accept the mission and beam down the supplies. I recall that the dialogue options were somewhat unclear, but there was no penalty if you got something wrong. This could perhaps be better explained in the page for that mission.

As for autofire, just right click your weapon icons on any one of the hotbars you have on screen. A green border will pop up around the icon, after which you just have to activate them once (e.g. spacebar) and they will keep shooting. You can further customize the behavior of autofire weapons somewhere in the game options too (e.g. stop firing upon changing target). I suppose this would be a good candidate for the minimal FAQ we have right now.

In regards to the How To page, perhaps you could help brainstorm a list of issues that should be addressed. I would love to figure out some way to play ground combat efficiently in RPG mode for example. Vyn 06:31, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

No offense to the poster but this really is a shortcoming with the Cryptic folks. How to give an item to another person is a basic instruction that should have been in documentation included with the game. --Drmike 00:20, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Spammers

Greets:

Are we doing any sort of checking against IP addresses with anonymous posters? I run a medium sized shared web host and we run our own antispam solution. I noticed that most of the IP addresses that are being allowed to get by are in our database as well as others online. Seems like most of these are known problem addresses. For example:

[2]

[3]

Not sure what stock Mediawiki uses (We run a fork and use our own inhouse solution) but I'm sure some one some where has looked at the issue.

thanks --Drmike 00:24, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

No, none of the antispam measures we have check IPs against any kind of spam database. I'll look around and see if there's a MediaWiki extension that does this.

It seems too we lost our captcha, as I was just able to edit this page anonymously without being challenged. I'll make sure Curse knows about this in the morning. That could explain the sudden surge in spam edits. — Eyes 08:30, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I forgot. The captcha triggers when an anon tries to add a URL; that's why I didn't challenge me. I'll wait and see if the semi-protection of the community portal talk stops the brunt of it. If not, I'll ask Curse to expand the captcha to trigger on all anon edits. — Eyes 12:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and sent in an email to Curse about the problems. One of the addresses spammed from this morning has been a bad address for over a year and the other one for nearly as long. Others in the past have been similar. I'm not a big fan of captchas as I have problems with reading them and most of them are known to have been machine readable. I'm trying to be polite about this but I would think that a company who's business is centered around wikis would have installed some sort of solution previously such as a freely available IP address blacklist. Considering the recent hack with the flash, I have to question that thought. --Drmike 13:55, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Meh, those recent actions look like they should blockable by our abuse filters. I think Dr Ishmael fixed a similar flaw in the filters on GuildWiki. This doesn't look like it requires Curse's involvement

Asirra is not machine readable, not until somehow figures out how to make computers distinguish cats from dogs, and it's not based on reading garbled text in any way, shape, or form. That's the captcha system we'd use here if it becomes necessary.

Finally, I did a search for wiki extensions that block by known bad IPs. I only found one, and it was a combination of code posted in a web page and some downloadable code. As someone who has done MediaWiki extension programming, I know version compatibility issues are very likely. I'd rather try to modify the defenses we have rather than add another extension that might be likely to break on every upgrade. (It doesn't help that they're changing the log system in MW 1.19 quite a bit too; that seems likely to break this kind of extension.) — Eyes 14:21, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Quick addition: if I had see any kind of sign the extension was being actively maintained, I'd be less dubious about installing it, but as I recall, it wasn't even on http://www.mediawiki.org like most extensions. — Eyes 14:27, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something here but I could have sworn using a blcaklist is a feature that's built in now:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam#Honeypots.2C_DNS_BL.27s_and_HTTP_BL.27s

We use an external solution in our installs because it works with our firewalls so not sure if this is valid or not for your install. Just very frustrating that seems like I spend more time looking for these edits instead of trying to help out where I can.

And I've got to say it but this is something Curse should be providing as it's their service. --Drmike 14:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

By the way, which extension are you looking at? I see a couple different ones with a google search and on the page I linked to. --Drmike 14:57, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Shield Modifier

Hi,

My suggestion is really short. On the pages that tell you about each ship, and different ships classes and everything, right under "Impulse Modifier" I suggest putting "Shield Modifier" So people can see the shield modifier for the different ship classes, knowing that escorts have the weakest shields, cruisers are in the middle, and science ships have the strongest shields. The Shield Modifier for Science Ships is 1.3, Cruisers 1.0, and escorts .9. Thanks :)

--HamRadio18 17:10, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Cardasian Boxes

I don't know about ohers but this cardasians boxes really get with my nerves is not because the boxes is because how often they are sometimes every 15 seconds normally every minuto and it get better fighting with the borg one after another one I pass not one want to pick up and the is hard to see the enemy because a box is on the way the mission is not about every 15 seconds or up to a minute picking boxes is to win against the Borg and other mission Please kindly can you reduce those boxes . I don't know if Imin the right topic but anyway here is as suggestion . Q

Sorry mate but this wiki has nothing to do with the game itself other than trying to be a resource of information about it. If you want the game devs to try and drop the rate on the boxes post on the sto forums =) --Lord Trekie 02:15, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Copy that Roger thanks for the info I was not sure where to go Now I know into next time Live long and prosper

Still have footer problems

The "Star Trek Online content and materials are trademarks..." bit at the bottom of the page is running off to the right in Firefox 10. While this isn't a major problem with PC browsers, it's a pain with my iPod Touch's Safari browser. The whole page gets resized to allow for that run off which gives me a main content column with about 25 characters.

Can that be looked at please?

thanks --Drmike 12:27, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I sent new versions of the skins to Curse that have better footer placement, as long as a few minor CSS changes are made as well. I've been under the impression they're were going to put them in place when they update us to 1.18.1, but for some reason, that still hasn't happened yet. I don't know why. — Eyes 12:57, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

np. Just wanted to mention it. I know we had an issue with it in the past. not sure how many folks view this site in a mobile device. thnaks --Drmike 14:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Making money/ ecs/ dilly/cpoints guides?

I know this is a sore subject with some mmo's as well as help sites so I'm going to ask first. I get bugged a lot ingame about how I make money and dilly and was wondering if I could write up a guide or two on how to do it? And if so either as part of the guides that we have here already or should I do it under my own user pages?

thanks --Drmike 15:11, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

You are more than welcome to start a guide on your own. E.g. Guide:Dilithium Farming. When you feel comfortable with your work, let any of the admin know, so we can include it on the front page. Regards, --RachelGarrett 15:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Been bugged three times since I wrote that. --Drmike 17:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Userboxes

The categories that userboxes add in need to be fixed. Please take a look at my User page and then the Players category page:

http://www.stowiki.org/Category:Players

The URLs don't mash up.

Also would love to see Userboxes for such things like Plays the Exchange for those who spend a lot of time on the Exchange, Dado High Roller for those who play that silly game, Mission player for people who like playing the missions, PvP adict for those...., etc.

Thanks --Drmike 22:41, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks the other way around to me. Category:Engineering Officers and the other two are in a weird limbo, being used for both user pages and some mainspace content. I don't see why we'd want the userboxes to add to those categories and further compound the problem. — Eyes 14:43, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken the __HIDDENCAT__ property can be added to user pages and thus they will not be added to or counted in category lists. --Lord Trekie 15:24, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

It's the other way around. __HIDDENCAT__ is for making the category hidden on the pages it's included on. — Eyes 15:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Ahh sorry, thought that was it. --Lord Trekie 15:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

{{Charinfo}} was the main culprit, being that it was using the same logic as {{NPCinfo}} to decide which profession category to add to. Now charinfo prefixes its category with "Players/" to keep these separate. Now just need to turn the bot loose on the userpages those categories were manually added to. — Eyes 15:55, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I noticed that this user has a female box on her account:

http://www.stowiki.org/User:Darkpsy

Not sure if that wants to be considered or not....

I also noticed on that page we have both Players and Users in the category. Not sure if that's the way it's supposed to be or not. I would think just one instead of both would be better. --Drmike 16:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes. the root {{userbox}} template is designed to let you make custom one-off userboxes. If you want to share your custom creations, Boilerplate:Userbox template and Boilerplate:Userbox template documentation are there to help you get started, and then you can certainly add them to Project:Userbox gallery.

I adapted this from another wiki during a day when I didn't have anything better to do. I wasn't aware of Category:Players at the time and just used the same naming scheme as the source wiki. If someone wants to take the time to unify them, that's fine by me. — Eyes 17:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The Borg attack from 2 different fronts...

I've been trying to do some quick clean up today and noticed that we have both Borg Starships and Borg starships categories. Trying to move an example from either category puts the ship into both categories. I'm missing something and am asking for someone to check please. They just need to be combined. Thanks --Drmike 21:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Assignment chain navigation

With the increasing prevalence of assignment chains, we definitely need a simple, standardized way of navigating them. Here's a few quick ideas I came up with:

• Add chain info to the assignment infobox (pro: at/near top of page; con: have to maintain on each individual assignment article)
  • Contextual: Only show "previous"/"next" links to the immediately consecutive assignments in the chain. (pro: minimal addition of bulk to the infobox, already do this for missions; con: no direct access to complete chain list)
  • Complete: List all assignments in the chain. (pro: provides complete chain list; con: huge addition of bulk)
• Create a navbox for each chain (pro: single template to maintain, also already do this for missions; con: at bottom of page)

It might be possible to handle the "maintenance" through semantic properties, although I've not done anything like that before.

Also, should there be an overview article for each chain? Instead of dumping all of them at Assignment#Chains.

I'd be more than happy to do the work on this as soon as a format is agreed on. Dr ishmael 20:19, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm no expert on Doff-related matter but from my point of view, combining two of your proposals sounds reasonable. I'd suggest to include the Contextual and the Chain navbox. You get the pro of both and it mirrors mission articles (with the prev/next in the box and the list of missions in the nav). --Markonian 21:34, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

That's what I was leaning toward when re-reading my post. Putting the whole chain in the infobox just wouldn't work, especially with how long some of the infoboxes already are.

For the navbox, would we want a single massive navbox for all chains, like Template:Federation episodes? Or one navbox per chain? That was my original idea, and I don't know how a combined navbox would work for chains since (AFAIK) they don't feed into each other the way the episodes do. Dr ishmael 22:29, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Templates are the last great mystery for me on this wiki, so I'm not much of a help. However, you can always modify templates. Thus, you can try one option (e.g. one nav for assignment chain plus a nav which lists the chain title). If you aren't happy with the way it turns out, you can revamp the entire template. And in case there's some trouble, let's look who makes most of the other templates and ask for help. --Markonian 23:09, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm basically the template master over on GuildWiki, so I won't have any trouble building them. I'm more worried about what the STOWiki community wants/expects, since I'm pretty new here. Dr ishmael 23:21, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Here is what I'd like to have. A contextual part in the info box (previous/next). And on the botton of the page a navbar with the whole chain (including unlocked optionals) + links to all other chains. --Dukedom 03:32, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Welp, here's a first draft of the navbox. I don't know anything about the color/style standards here, and I suck at graphic design anyway, so someone else will probably have to help with that. But what we do have is a navbox for all chains (well, all of the ones that were available before this week, and a few of the new ones) with all of them collapsed by default. When used on an assignment article, you give it the name of the chain as the sole parameter, and it sets that specific chain to be displayed.

A couple followups:

• Should each chain have its own summary article? I think they should, so we can reduce the amount of info centralized at Assignment#Chains. These summaries can also mention the repeatable assignments that are unlocked at each point of a chain.
• ...

I know I'd had another thing to mention, but I forgot. Next step is updating the infobox. Dr ishmael 04:16, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) The infobox has been updated, and I've prototyped the changes on the Children's Toys assignments. Time to sit back and wait for feedback. Dr ishmael 20:29, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The chains' navbox well-structured and the show/hide function is neat. Is it possible/reasonable to add a "Show all/Hide all" feature? That is, so you can have a look on all at once instead of clicking "Show" for each. --Markonian 23:18, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no. It seems like the showHideById takes precedence over showHideByClass - when I added a class to each row and created a showHideByClass link, it would only toggle the rows that had already been made visible by the showHideById link. It would require some additions to the JavaScript code to set up a show/hide all link. Dr ishmael 23:39, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Curse site list footer

Hopefully this is just an oversight, but I apologise if it's in any way a touchy subject. :) I was looking over the Curse.com site, and I noticed that STOwiki is in their master (almost alphabetical) list, but it doesn't exist in their site-wide footer, which has most every other wiki they host, out in the open or in the little flyout box, except STO. Brackynews 21:27, 24 March 2012 (UTC) http://www.curse.com/wikis

As an addition to that, we have the only icon that's out of focus on that page. Looks like crap. --Drmike 22:04, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

i would like this to be anser please

i would like to suggest that you could have have an undine brige officer for the game it could be for completing the mission "assimaltion" there are two ideas i had for it for instence

1)partily assmiated undine 2)normal undine

me and my friends would like you to do this as soon as possibele becuse you have had borg science officers but no undine if you could replie as soon as possible it will be good thancks spartan the god

I'm sorry, but STOWiki is not affiliated with Cryptic Studios, and the developers of STO will probably never see a message posted here. Suggestions like this should be posted to the official forums. — Eyes 11:41, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

That actually raises an issue. There's no mention that the Borg Science Bridge Officer Candidate is liberated except for a mention on the Special boff page. Is the science officer liberated? I haven;t gotten that far. I know the cstore engineering one is liberated. --Drmike 12:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Ship Redirects

I've noticed that all Federation ship articles use "U.S.S." rather than "USS". I guess the former is more correct, but I imagine many casual users would be confused when the enter "USS Enterprise-F" and get no results. Perhaps we could have all those ship articles (ex: "U.S.S." [shipname]) have a redirect from "USS [shipname]" to help clear up confusion and make navigation easier. - Mitchz95 02:11, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

STOWIki copyright needs a check

In the footer of each page, the content is held under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. When we review the linked to copyright page, we have Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported. The link for that to wikipedia is currently broken. When you head over to CC's site for that license, one of the conditions for sharing is Attribution which I see no mention on the copyright page about. (Most sites miss that bit when they license something under CC.)

Can someone check on this please? I'd make the edit on the copyright page myself to fix the link but since we have 2 different licenses, and one of them is static in the footer of the theme, not sure which we need to point to.

thanks --Drmike 14:26, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

To confuse things even more, clicking on the "Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2" portion of the footer links to Star Trek Online Wiki:Copyrights page, which doesn't exist; the real copyright page is at STOWiki:Copyrights. This is probably something Curse would have to change. Karika^Communicator 14:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

The copyright link in the footer is configured as $wgRightsPage (article name) and $wgRightsText (display text) in LocalSettings.php, while the icon that displays at the left of the footer is $wgRightsIcon and $wgRightsUrl.

I seem to remember that when GuildWiki moved to Curse, they defaulted those settings to GFDL 1.2, rather than bringing forward our existing CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, and we had to bug them for a month or two to change it back. Possibly that's what happened here, and no one's noticed until now. —Dr Ishmael 15:44, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I remember noticing it when I was a regular editor. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about by the time I was promoted and had contact with Curse. We'll get this sorted out once I know which license is correct (probably the CC license, but I'm asking User:RachelGarrett to make sure).

The linking issue is no doubt left over from when STOWiki was actually a custom namespace rather than the meta namespace. Now the STOWiki namespace is properly a synonym for the Project namespace, but it seems that link hasn't updated for some reason. — Eyes 15:54, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't know, which of these is the correct one. I didn't set up the copyright notices, TerranRich did. However, I think it is plausible to assume that STOWiki:Copyrights is the original license, i.e. [4]. Does that make sense, or can anyone say for sure how the license used to be? Regards, --RachelGarrett 19:57, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I assume you could always ask Branflakes? :> --Dukedom 21:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

The Copyrights page has listed CC BY-SA 3.0 since it was created in 2009, so that would seem to be the correct one. —Dr Ishmael 21:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

This has been noted, and is in the queue to be fixed. Sorry Guys! --Wynthyst 14:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

ads on sto wiki pages...

A quick reminder from your users. IF you are going to post ads on your sto wiki pages:

1. They cannot interfere with page content

2. They must be able to be closed

3. They must not automatically redirect you off the wiki site without prompt.

Refer to this web page dated 4/13/12 ~ 0930 hrs central STD time.

[[http://www.stowiki.org/M.A.C.O._Commando/Special_Reserve_%28Space%29

]]

Thank You

huh? regards --Drmike 15:43, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Future Content Section

I wanted to inquire as to the purpose of this section at STOwiki? Is it in some way necessary to set-up articles for missions or features not yet a part of the Holodeck server? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psia Meese (talk · contr)

The purpose of the page is simply informative. Rather than dig through dev blogs, forum posts, and all of the venues through which Cryptic may announce something, some of our editors compile it here in one convenient place. It does not affect editing of any other article. — Eyes 12:51, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I guess that I'm wondering how the section fits into the overall wiki which is dominantly finalized content as seen on Holodeck? I'm concerned the section title may be misleading. Some of the information as posted is speculative even on a Devs part and subject to change. I suggest relabeling this section, Dev Talk: 'This section reserved to archive thoughts from the STO Dev Team with regard to possible future content.' Key word there being 'possible'.

IMO, notes cross-posted from the STO Tribble forum would be more informative to Holodeck player's for tracking the evolution of missions or game mechanics prior to having been pushed to Holodeck. I'm not confident the section title, Future Content is appropriate here either. But the information would be closer to the what the phrase suggests. IMO, the STOwiki might be better served with the section called, In Testing: 'This section reserved for notes taken from the Tribble Test Shard.' I might be so inclined to help with something like that.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psia Meese (talk · contr)

Key commands .... WHERE...WHAT ???

What are all the other keys in the game. Such as...how to SPLIT a stack of items in the inventory.......ETC ????? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.167.75.218 (talk · contr)

Archive pages need a template?

Maybe the archive pages need a template with a "Do not edit this page! We know where you live!" banner across the top? --Drmike 12:55, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Need it? No. While it wouldn't hurt, this kind of thing often happens from someone not paying attention anyway, moving an archive edit to the right place isn't a big deal, and the issue rarely comes up. The pages can always be protected should that change, which would in effect give them that banner when they try to edit the page. — Eyes 13:08, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Broken images

Greets:

I'm having a problem with user uploaded images on the site. Started yesterday and I was thinking it was just my connection (nordstroms) but also had the same problem at my walk home check (starbucks) and now today here at the library. I took a screenshot and just tried to upload it but got a "File:Missingimages.jpg: The upload directory (public) is missing and could not be created by the webserver." error. Something up? Is it because Zutty came back? :) thanks --Drmike 14:29, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Eeeyup (at the bottom there). —Dr Ishmael 14:31, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Secure login

Greets: Any chance we could beg our Cursed overlords for a secure login on the wiki here? Even a self signed cert would be better than nothing than all.

thanks --Drmike 01:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

A quick search shows there is an extension to serve wiki pages, like the login page, through SSL, so I've sent on a request for secure logins to be set up. — Eyes 11:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I came across a recent discussion about the reported hacking we had here at stowiki and one of the problems mentioned was that the login wasn't sure. have to admit that I don;t even know if the game login is secure come to think about it. Thanks again --Drmike 15:05, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Tips for acquiring Rank III boff abilities

Would it be helpful to add a list to each boff ability page listing easy/inexpensive ways to obtain rank III? For example Viral Matrix III, Attack Pattern Omega III, and Boarding Party III are available from boff candidates from playing/replaying Mission: The Doomsday Device. Depending on ones resources and play style being able to access Rank III abilities from replayable missions and such might be useful information, and searching through missions to see if one gives a reward you want isn't the most enjoyable process. --Sigil(Talk) 20:41, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Just noticed the candidates from replaying offer different abilities... *sad face* >.< --Sigil(Talk) 20:43, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Update the Reman Prototype Set

I wanted to help update the Reman Prototype Space set to include Mark VII versions (VR) of each. I can supply images of the Reman set in my Long Range Retrofit (My main/a Sci ship), my Danube Shuttle or in the free Ody. I'm not sure how I can talk pictures or images of the deflector, shield and impulse cards but if directed I can help. Thanks.

Create account

I cannot Create account here because the frigging CATS are TOO small to see,PLEASE fix this! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.226.181.98 (talk · contr)

If you hover the mouse cursor over the pictures, you should see a larger version. If this isn't happening, please let us know what browser (and version) you're using to help us troubleshoot the problem. Also, if this doesn't work for you, you can send an in-game email to me (@oOeyes) with your desired account name and an email address, and I can create the account for you. (Please also leave a quick on my talk page, because I don't check my in-game email frequently.) The wiki would then send you an email with further instructions. — Eyes 10:35, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Pipe tricks not working correctly because of odd naming structure

Pipe tricks don't work on this wiki because you guys have decided to go for a very odd naming structure.

The problem is that you have inserted a space after the colon, such that if I type: [[Mission: Ancestral Sin|]] it adds a preceding space. This flaw is particularly obvious when I enclose the name of something in quotation marks, as would be standard with mission names, like this: " Ancestral Sin"

To avoid inserting that additional space, I have to type [[Mission:Ancestral Sin|Ancestral Sin]]. In other words, your naming conventions are killing one of the built-in features of the MediaWiki software. And there's no good reason for it. You'll note that this page, STOWiki talk:Suggestion Box, has no intervening space next to the colon. Why should a Mission page? Or an Assignment page?

Hopefully one of the admins has a bot so that you can quickly rename all these pages, and pipe tricking can be restored with a minimum of effort. CzechOut 23:32, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

"STOWiki" is a valid namespace; "Mission" and "Assignment" are not. As far as I know, we can't add new namespaces without assistance from Curse. Unfortunately, the pipe trick code is not that smart and thinks that [[Mission: Ancestral Sin|]] refers to a page entitled " Ancestral Sin" in the (nonexistent) Mission namespace. Karika^Communicator 00:37, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you're arriving at your conclusions. Pipe tricking doesn't have to do with namespaces at all. it simply looks for certain markers, and truncates at them.

Imagine you had the page, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. If you pipe tricked this, you'd get Baton Rouge. There are no namespace considerations there at all. Equally, "Vulcan (planet)" will nicely pipetrick to "Vulcan".

So let's return to the original problem. Here are the two ways this could work, and I'm going to use a monospace font to make this a bit easier to see:

• "Ancestral Sin". This is the correct way, without extra spaces. It's showing us that the pipe tricking functionality is working, but your bad nomenclature is providing a red link.
• " Ancestral Sin". This is wrong — the name of the article shouldn't begin with a space — but we're getting a blue link because you've falsely introduced a preceding space.

See, pipe tricking simply looks for comma or a colon or open parentheses and truncates fairly intelligently. it's nothing to do with namespaces at all. Your nomenclature here absolutely is screwing up a core MediaWiki function. CzechOut 04:28, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

We have {{Mission}} and {{Assignment}} for linking to missions and assignments, and they format the links with curly quotes. Example: {{mission|<Ancestral Sin>}} produces “Ancestral Sin”. Karika^Communicator 12:03, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with the preceding space in the title. MediaWiki is simply not consistent in trimming whitespace from all parameters. For example:

• "[[Mission: Ancestral Sin|Ancestral Sin]]" produces "Ancestral Sin", working exactly as intended.

• "[[ Aegis Technological Research | Aegis Technological Research ]]" produces " Aegis Technological Research ". The first argument, treated as a title, does get its preceding and trailing trimmed, resulting in a valid link. The second argument, treated as raw text, does not.

You may be working from a misunderstanding because nearly all parser functions do trim their arguments, but templates do not, and as the examples show, links do not do so with every parameter. (And note that extension authors writing parser functions have no technical restrictions on them requiring them to do this. Regardless of pipes, we get it all as one untrimmed argument and divide it as we see fit, so it's actually really surprising that the trimming convention is followed so consistently.)

Our naming conventions do cause some headaches, but not with anything this basic. Still, Karika is right to point out the {{mission}} and {{assignment}} templates, which is widely used on the wiki and depending on the space after the colon (and yes, because these are not true namespaces, the space does not get trimmed). So unless you're willing to convince the community to change the conventions and help us in the vast amount of work required to move all of these pages and update the links, please follow the current conventions to avoid confusion among our editors and breaking links.

Guys, I've been editing MediaWiki installations for about a decade, so I'm not under any "newbie misapprehension". I'm talking about the very specific function of the wikipedia:Help:Pipe trick. You're showing me examples that are not pipe tricks. You're showing me pipe switches. A pipe trick is a time-saving feature of the MediaWiki software in which one applies a pipe at the end of a link and the software makes a decision of how to behave in those circumstances. Please go to a sandbox and try this.

• "[[Mission: Ancestral Sin|]]" produces a different result than "[[Mission:Ancestral Sin|]]".

I understand that you may have templates to get around all this, but you wouldn't need the templates if you just named things according to standard MediaWiki conventions. You're defying standard MediaWiki nomenclature, so you're having to write what is in essence a "bug patching" series of templates. (Well, I suppose in fairness {{mission}} does add stylized quotation marks, so that's adding a little something to the mix that's not, strictly, a bug patch.) Still, the point is that your nomenclature largely destroys the use of the standard MediaWiki pipe trick. There's no good reason that you can't have both a working pipe trick functionality and a nifty template.

The actual workload for changing all the page names is surprisingly low, so long as some community member has a bot. I know it seems like a big deal, but it's really not. The whole wiki could be changed over in about a day. CzechOut 18:47, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

p.s. I've created a few pages today that have been to MW "standard" convention, but I gather — after the fact — that you'd rather I not have done that. Sorry to have overstepped the bounds, but if you want to move them back to an "improper" nomenclature, feel free — noting, of course, that these pages have already been linked a little bit. CzechOut

You're not aware of the number of templates that depend on the wiki's naming conventions. I'm also not aware of any community member that has a bot capable of all of the necessary moves, so until the situation changes, we are looking at significant work.

Also, I wouldn't support this just to remove the space. Fixing the pipe trick just isn't enough of a benefit; the fake namespaces themselves need to be removed to deal with the other technical problem we've encountered. Removing the space alone also doesn't make search any more friendly for users not aware of our conventions; ideally, they wouldn't have to type in any kind of "namespace" to go directly to any mainspace page. Unfortunately, the community is not in the habit of setting up those kind of redirects, and this shouldn't be necessary anyway. But we have to consider the human side of the wiki too, and we shouldn't do this without widespread support for the community. — Eyes 06:02, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

starbases and starbase appartments

Hello there,

Since the release of season 6, all fleetmembers can create their own starbase. Since then it's hard to create a new fleet in order to create your own starbase afterwards.

I was wondering if it's possible to buy a fleetcharter in the C-store so everyone has a chance to create a starbase.

A second possibility is for players to buy their own starbase appartment in an existing starbase and the possibility to change the interior or even purchase some items. This way every captain has his own place they can call "home"

Just a thought

Visitable Planets & Bases

Please add a property for all sector blocks, sectors, and star systems to designate which ones contain a visitable planet or starbase (e.g. Risa, Vulcan, Bajor, ESD/Earth, K7, DS9, etc.). The property would denote whether it contains a base visitable by Feds, KDF, or both (Droxana Station, etc). This would allow players to browse and filter searches for only those places that you can beam down to in-game without it necessarily being for a mission.

On the info boxes for each of these worlds, we could then add other properties such as "popular for roleplay," "unique doff missions available," "unique vendors," etc. to help players quickly see what the important reasons to visit that place might be.

If something like this already exists, please let me know, as I was unable to find it. I did find something called "alive planets," but I'm still nit sure what that is useful for. Thanks!

--Seraphantilles 14:49, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Template for Powers

As it stands, ability pages on the Wiki are confusing, long, and mainly empty. There should be a template for abilities, making it easier to gather at-a-glance information.

Proposed template would be as follows: Name: Icon: Class: (Eng, Tac, Sci) Area: (Space or Ground) Type: (Kit, Captain, Set, Console or BOff - May be more than one) Kit/Item/Set: (what grants this power) Cooldown: Effect: (add numerals for each rank if it has ranks) Skills: (what skills will boost this power, if any)

Outside of the template would be details, such as specifics on what the power does, what other abilities are in the kit (if it has one), or a link to the page for the set that grants the power. The page would also contain trivia and the Abilities template that currently lists all Kit/Captain/BOff powers. This setup would make Ability articles much more useful and user-friendly.