LGPedia:Lucy's Balcony/archive2

This is the archive of discussions from Lucy's Balcony that are no longer active or have been resolved. To revive an old issue, please start a new thread at Lucy's Balcony.

Bottom indexes

We all like bottom indexes, right? At template talk:Bree's religion we have a prototype sitting around for the religion pages. My only concern with the Bree's religion index is that I don't understand what "related videos" means. Do we want to implement a bottom index for other types of pages as well? --JayHenry 23:01, 26 February 2007 (CST)

I ♥ bottom indexes. Last time I tampered with the one for Bree's religion, I took out the "Related videos" thing altogether. I think we should leave it that way unless someone proposes a good way of determining what a "Related video" is and how that would be useful. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)

In addition to a "thumbs up" on the bottom indexes, I'd like to say that while I think naming related videos is a good idea, it probably should be done in the body of the page. Rather than vaguely saying "Video X had some info on subject Y," which is what the "related video" concept meant to me, the article should outright say, "In video X, Bree said that her parents were always talking about subject Y." --Brucker 10:00, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Agreed. If it's related, then the article should mention it. I can see how we could use it with location pages -- you wouldn't call it related, but you would say the location appears in: Motel Pool, Breakfast In Bed, etc. Let's go ahead and implement the religion bottom index. --JayHenry 11:19, 27 February 2007 (CST)

hehe, thanks for adding the semicolon to my ♥ and nice work putting the template back on the religion-related pages. OwenIsCool 15:10, 27 February 2007 (CST)

In thinking about a bottom index for locations I tried to create a list of all the locations. Does anyone have input on the two proposed lists? --JayHenry 11:37, 2 March 2007 (CST)

Puzzles

I'd like to always include puzzles in the "Recent Developments" column. Good idea? It could be a way to increase visibility like OIC was talking about at Talk:Miss Me? puzzle. --JayHenry 23:11, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Good idea! I second. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)

i third, i know im not a admin, but i contrbute as much as i can. --TJ Marsh 01:22, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I like the idea, but just a thought: If a new puzzle comes up within the context of the latest video, the puzzle should be listed below the latest video just so the video is at the top of the list. For instance, the latest puzzle is fine, but it we had listed the "semiotics" puzzle, it should have been below Jonas Sucks. Just my opinion. --Brucker 10:03, 27 February 2007 (CST)

OIC also suggested somewhere that we could use Template:Init with puzzles and possibly all events. I'm wondering though -- puzzles don't lend themselves well to dates; they're not really events. Should we create a separate main page template for puzzles?--JayHenry 00:16, 28 February 2007 (CST)

We'd probably be ok just using the date that the puzzle was "posted" (via video, message, wherever it started). And even though the template is called "event", it looked fine when it was used for the puzzle. Maybe we could just add the Init and perhaps link to the forum thread, and keep them optional? If that's complicating things too much, we could just make a separate template. It shouldn't be too difficult since they're similar. I just care about adding Init, and perhaps the forum thread; it doesn't matter so much to me how we get there. OwenIsCool 19:51, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Bots

This might be way out of our league here, but has anyone thought about creating a bot for LGPedia? It could do things like add Template:Tag to all the articles in Category:YouTube tags, make renaming categories easier, and other tedious tasks. I have some programming experience, but I'm not sure what programming language would be needed to make a bot. Does anyone know or are there any thoughts on the idea?--Jonpro 23:06, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Creating a bot is way out of my league. Hell, I'm proud when my templates don't explode upon first use. Here's the wikipedia guide to bots: [1]. I can authorize a bot if somebody else can program one. --JayHenry 23:14, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Having a bot for certain tasks might be nice. I was under the impression that you could "borrow" bots from Wikipedia... as in, use their source code somehow. It's so way out of my league though that even if I were given the code for the bot, I wouldn't even know what to do with it, or how to run it. Hm... I should start making friends at Wikipedia. OwenIsCool 23:24, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Thanks for the link, Jay. I did some researching, and it appears that OwenIsCool is right. I'm going to try to get a bot set up using the 'python wikipediabot'. I'm still not sure exactly how to do it, but I'm working on it. I'll go ahead an create an account because it seems like that's one of the first steps to getting it to work. The username is User:LGBot.--Jonpro 23:55, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Sounds cool! Keep us posted. Once we've tested it, and if we're sure it's not going to malfunction, then I can authorize it as a bot. The advantage of officially making it a bot is that its edits won't automatically show up in recent changes -- that way if you edit 500 video tags it won't flood recent changes. The disadvantage, is also that its edits won't automatically show up, but we can see them by clicking on (show bots) or by checking: Special:Contributions/LGBot. --JayHenry 00:40, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

Ok, cool. Just to make sure, the language code for this wiki is 'en', right? I haven't gotten everything to work yet and want to make sure that's not the problem.--Jonpro 12:05, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

This may not look impressive, but I finally got the bot to work with this edit. I'm going to try to test it out in a few other ways to make sure everything is working correctly.--Jonpro 15:00, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

Ok, I think the bot is working fine now. I had it run through some of the video transcripts and replace ''(whatever)'' with (''whatever''). I have to verify every change before it makes the edit, so it is unlikely to "go out of control" and start making crazy or unproductive edits. Other than that, are there any suggestions for more testing that should be done before this can really be put to use?--Jonpro 16:00, 14 March 2007 (CDT)

Cast and crew template?

Would a cast and crew template be a good idea? We could have picture, name, birthday, role in series, first appearance/credit and a link to the newly organized production credits. I was thinking it should look like Template:Person, but I'm not crazy about the person template. Perhaps a snazzier "person" template and a new Template:Crew? --JayHenry 22:50, 26 February 2007 (CST)

Yep the Person template could use a little TLC, huh? How would the Crew template be different from a Person template? If it's not too different, perhaps adding a couple of fields to the "snazzed up" person template would do the trick. OwenIsCool 00:02, 27 February 2007 (CST)

I whipped up a potential look for a new character template. If people like, I could adapt it to real people too. The preliminary version is here at Template talk:Test. It looks best in Firefox. --JayHenry 17:30, 5 March 2007 (CST)

I put up a first draft of the crew template at Template:Crew. A test run of it is in place on the Mesh Flinders and the Jackson Davis pages. Input, as always, much appreciated. --JayHenry 12:35, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Looks goo to me!-BRUCKER (Home/Talk/Contribs) 16:04, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Sidebar

I was thinking of changing the sidebar a bit. My proposal is to break out another "community" section:

lg15 links the same.
navigation
- Main Page
- List of Videos
- AphidPedia
- Recent Changes
- Random page
Community
- Welcome
- Community Portal
- Lucy's Balcony
- Help

Any other ideas? Does that seem like a good idea? --JayHenry 17:32, 5 March 2007 (CST)

Maybe Caping lg15? other then, it would look great. --TJ Marsh 18:40, 5 March 2007 (CST)

I'm sorry, what does "Caping lg15" mean? --JayHenry 10:41, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Capitalizing, perhaps?--Jonpro 14:34, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Ah, so it says LG15 links instead? Good idea! I agree! --JayHenry 14:37, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Yeah, all of them should be capitalized, I think. Those options look good to me, Jay. -BRUCKER (Home/Talk/Contribs) 18:04, 6 March 2007 (CST)

Well, it turns out that the small capitalization is hardwired into the MediaWiki software. It can't be fixed from MediaWiki:Sidebar. Perhaps there's another way to do it, but if so, I don't know how and I don't feel like tooling around all night at MediaWiki.org for the answer. --JayHenry 21:42, 6 March 2007 (CST)

New admin -- Jonpro

I'm pleased to announce that Jonpro has been appointed the newest administrator on the LGPedia. Jonpro has been a reliable contributor to the LGPedia since first arriving in November. He's undertaken the massive task of organizing the YouTube tags on all the LG videos, on top of hundreds of edits fixing pages, keeping our style consistent and keeping things categorized. Congrats, Jonpro. --JayHenry 13:56, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Thanks JayHenry, and I hope I can be a help to everyone. I'm new to this admin thing, but I'm sure I'll catch on :) --Jonpro 15:32, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Kongrats man! --TJ Marsh 18:36, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Template:Tag

What do others think? Would a template like this be helpful? I'm not very good with wording and such, so that might need to be improved, but what do people think of the general idea? Basically, it would be put on every YouTube tag page and |disambig would be added for pages that are also disambiguation pages.--Jonpro 20:15, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

I think it's what we should have done when we first made the tags link 5 months ago. I def like it, but won't it take forever to swap out? I feel bad asking anyone to do that. How many tags are there? 400? More? --JayHenry 20:18, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

At least that many. I wouldn't mind pitching in though, and if we can get a few more volunteers, it really won't take that long. Anyone up for some tedious work?--Jonpro 20:37, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Hmm... I just thought of one other thing, not sure if it matters. But I think these will all become "articles." That raises two issues: 1) anybody using randompage will get a tag about half the time and 2) it will say that we have over 1,000 articles. Unless anyone knows away around that. Just a thought, i don't really see it as a reason not to go ahead with it. --JayHenry 20:50, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, good point. No solution for #1, but I don't think #2 will be a problem. I'm guessing they'll be part of the "articles that aren't really articles" (stubs, redirects, etc). Not sure, but that's my guess.--Jonpro 20:57, 13 March 2007 (CDT)

The party guests

So as of Uncle Dan and Uncle Dan (D-Bone Remix), we have like 10 new characters. Most of these now have their own articles, which consist of one or two sentences saying that they were at the party. This is bad form... perhaps we could have a page called "party guests" and list them there with short descriptions? Then we could just make their character names a redirect to the party guests page. If one of the characters turns out to have a larger role, we can move their info to a separate page. OwenIsCool 16:44, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

I actually think starting off with a picture would be a great help. I'm having trouble putting faces to the character names.--Immortal1 16:56, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

I got a few pictures up on a few of the pages. -BRUCKER (Home/Talk/Contribs) 18:43, 16 March 2007 (CDT)

costs of a site like this

Just wondering how you guys are doing on donations and what it costs to run a site like this?

Traveling around, doing videos about basic or not so basic life situations sounds like a blast!!

Any hints of how to get started?

thanks! 12.27.187.199 19:03, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Tasks

What do people think of having a page to list tasks that need to be done on the LGPedia? For example, right now there are lots of images in Category:Images of fans and spinoffs that could be subcategorized to make them easier to find. While I could just do this myself, if I don't have the time (or don't want to spend the time), are there other people who are just looking for things to do? Sometimes I think it can be a little unclear what needs to be done on the LGPedia, so having a place that lists things might be helpful. People could add things they want done to the list (maybe these should be verified that they actually should be done) and then when the task is complete it can be removed from the list. Any thoughts?--Jonpro 21:41, 11 April 2007 (CDT)

Hey look, we have a Community Portal. What do you know--I kind of forgot about that. It doesn't look like it's being used that much though, or at least it's not being updated very much. Hmmmm.--Jonpro 23:09, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I made LGPedia:Tasks. I guess we'll just see if this works or not. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this.--Jonpro 23:37, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

I like what you did with LGPedia tasks. You're right, a lot of times there are editors at the LGPedia that aren't sure how to contribute. They either don't do much, or they create other random (though perhaps less needed) work. The Community Portal was supposed to help with that, but you're right, it's not used much. Perhaps something that should be added to tasks or community portal is pages that need to be updated frequently, such as character pages. I don't just means in terms of "last appearance" but as to the content of the article. OwenIsCool 23:40, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Vloggers

I've been cleaning up wanted pages and noticed a lot of them are the bloggers Bree mentioned on her early videos. Since they were influences on Bree and also used to gain popularity, I think they should have some sort of joint article. I'd like to start it, but not sure if the already existing "Vlog" or perhaps a new "Vlogging influences of lonelygirl15" or some similar name would be a better place for it?

• Phunck! 17:00, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Taken care of, more or less. I should have done that a long time ago. --Brucker 17:51, 28 February 2007 (CST)

Well, first, I think it's a good idea for an article, Phuncknasty. I could help out. Thewinekone and paytotheorderofofof2 had real articles attached, btw. But, more importantly, I think we need to figure out what we're doing with tags. A lot of the wanted pages are tags. We don't really seem to have a clear policy on where tags should direct or even what videos should have tags. Phuncknasty redirected Lonesome and October to LonesomeOctober but since they were tags on a Tachyon video, OIC suggested this might not be a good redirect. But since we don't really have a clear policy, it's causing some confusion and lots of broken pages.--JayHenry 17:59, 28 February 2007 (CST)

I agree that the tags are sometimes confusing. Maybe we should ask Jonpro because it looks to me like he's the tag master. He has "the vision." I think I'll start work on a vloggers article at Vlogging influences of lonelygirl15, and if you guys want to move it, that's totally fine with me. And I also had another good (I think!) idea... how about a page on Jonas's movie references. I saw the four-letter words page and I thought it'd be cool to have a similar list with short entries of all the times Jonas mentions a movie. Who knows, maybe it adds up to something or maybe it will just be a fun list. But for now, I'm going to start doing research for a vlogging article.

• Phunck! 10:05, 1 March 2007 (CST)

Thanks, Phuncknasty. I think the current policy for official LG15 videos is to put them in Category:YouTube tags and redirect them there if it does not have a page or there is no more logical place to redirect. I was thinking that perhaps instead of this each YouTube tag page could contain a list of which videos have that tag. Doing this manually would be a pain, though, and it would have to be updated for each new video. If there was a way to do it with a template or something that would be ideal. If not, I think the current set-up is fine as well.

For other (non-canon) videos, I see no reason for a category containing their tags, but I see the problem with the broken links. I think the obvious way to fix this is to only have a tag link if a page of that name already exists. The video What's in the Box/Bree & Daniel Update - NBR 3 is a good example, as it links to pages like Bree and danielbeast since they already exist, but not "charlie" and "horus" since they don't. If a useful redirect of page could be made of either one of those, then the tag would be changed to link there.

As far as where to redirect them, I think using disambiguation techniques is the best idea. If a word is clearly ambiguous, make a disambig page for it. Otherwise, simply add a disambig line at the top of the page to link to what the user might be looking for. If a template or something could be made to list the videos that contain a certain tag, then users "searching by tag" so to speak could look at that and find the video they're looking for. Sorry about the long post. Hope this helps.--Jonpro 10:27, 1 March 2007 (CST)

As I hinted at above, I don't think the tags on unofficial videos deserve links in general. If there is a page that's pertinent to the tag, then sure, link there. Sometimes, it might not be a link to what the tags says; for instance, the "house" tag on Where Is Jonas? - NBR 6 should probably be linked to Jonas's house if linked at all, instead of to house, where it currently links. On the other hand, the "squrrel" link probably ought to be dropped. That's my view on the matter of fan video tag linking. -BRUCKER (Home/Talk/Contribs) 17:04, 1 March 2007 (CST)

I agree with Brucker on "un-linking" those fanvid tags that don't pertain to any particular article. OwenIsCool 19:53, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Recent vandalism

I've noticed that there have been a number of vandalism edits from various IP addresses that simply remove a large portion of content from a page. Here are some examples: 1 2 3 4 5 6. Anyway, I think everyone gets the idea. Does anyone know what could be the cause of this? It's not like all the vandalism is coming from one IP address so we can't just block it.--Jonpro 00:04, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, really the only way to deal with vandalism is to revert it when it happens and to block offenders. However, I do notice a similarity between all these addresses. They're all anonymous--a WhoIs lookup provides the country, but is unable to process any abuse reports. These addresses are originating from Mexico and Asia, from ISP's that don't release user information. This is just a shot in the dark, but it could all be the same person coming back through proxies. If this is the case, they should get tired of the molasses-slow internet speed that they must be putting up with, and it will all stop when they do. Then again, OIC is not psychic... this is for entertainment purposes only. ;) OwenIsCool 01:02, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Ok, well this latest streak was weird. Several IPs and a couple of nonsense account names each blanked one page, but not completely. I banned each for a month since they might not be connected, but I think they are. Should we go back and ban them indefinitely? I'm not sure what's up with the recent wave... might be a vandalbot. I haven't had the change to look up the IPs. OwenIsCool 08:32, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Spam wave

Yikes, any thoughts on how to stop something like that from happening again? --JayHenry 11:06, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

And here I was about to ask you that. :-x

OwenIsCool 11:15, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

As far as I know there's not even a way to temporarily stop IP addresses from making edits. --JayHenry 11:18, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

We could look into this. I think we'd need to get TWJaniak to come back and install it because we can't get into the MediaWiki configuration settings. --JayHenry 11:29, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Hm, that might be helpful... so what that blacklist does is prevent edits containing those domains from being done? I guess BK could install it, he's the new Buka, isn't he? OwenIsCool 11:36, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Sounds like a good idea to me. I've encountered this editing Wikipedia when I tried to add a link that was apparently on the blacklist. It just gives you a message saying that the link is on the blacklist and you'll have to remove it before saving.--Jonpro 11:41, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Blacklisting links will be halpful, but I don't expect that it will completly solve the problem, my guess it that this was an attack from the fish taco guy, and he will just comeup with a new form of vandalism, I think he's more focused on vandalizing , than getting clicks. Also I checked the location of those IP Adresses using | Geobytes IP locator and they were comming from all over the world, so this guy has a major proxy network or know some other way to spoof IPs -misty 11:57, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

I think you're grossly overestimating that guy, misty. Using the web through proxies is really easy to do, he wouldn't have his own "proxy network" or anything like that. This spam was definitely from someone else's spambot, but I guess it doesn't matter who it was anyway, just whether we can find an easy way to control it. OwenIsCool 13:05, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

well if you think it was a bot, then maybe CAPTCHA verification will help, I think wikipedia uses something like that. And even though everyone disagrees, I still think logins should be required -misty 13:23, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

I moved yesterday's discussion into its own thread. I think we had even more spam this last wave. I was at the computer until very late (studying for finals) and I kept checking periodically. I reverted one spam thingie, but went to sleep soon thereafter and then it started for real! The same thing happened the night before! grrrr! Anyway, I think the blacklisting isn't going to work so well. If you look at the links posted by the spammer, the domains are harmless! There's Harvard (harvard.edu), Stanford (stanford.edu), John Hopkins (jhu.edu), U South Florida (usf.edu), Central Michigan U (cmich.edu), plus a few random domains, like forumhosting.org, jubiiblog.de, blogdiario.com, blogspot.com and more universities. Interestingly, if you click them, you do get redirected to a Samsung ringtone page like the link label said, it just gets routed through the Harvard Computing Society's website or whatever the REAL link is.
Instead of blacklisting, I think what Misty suggested (CAPTCHA) will be more effective for us. That, or find another MediaWiki add-on that lets us limit the amount of external links posted in one edit. I can handle the inconvenience of posting one at a time. In the meantime, perhaps we should limit anonymous IPs from editing. Less time wasted blocking them, more time to figure out what to do about it. At this point, spammers make more edits than other well-meaning anonymous users. I'm just suggesting it as a temporary thing while we figure out how to control this intelligently. Whether it's simple to implement, I don't know.
OwenIsCool 11:06, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Some (hopefully) helpful links. WikiMedia anti-spam features covers CAPTCHA, blacklisting, proxy blocking, and lockdown (blocking anonymous users). I think proxy blocking might be a good option. MediaWiki ConfirmEdit extension (captcha), asks you to enter verification codes when inserting external links. OwenIsCool 11:17, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

PS: I went through all the edits, Jonpro, and it looks like you got them all. *whew* another morning at the wiki...

I can't figure out how to install these. Can anyone make sense of these extensions? --JayHenry 11:55, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, Confirm Edit seems like it would be a good idea to me. By default it uses Captcha on new accounts and external links and that won't be too big of a hassle. As for installing it, the instructions don't look too difficult, but I don't know much about that sort of thing so I'm kind of lost. I'm assuming we would need one of the site administrators or something to install it. The way I see it, the sooner we get this done the better. This spammer is getting really annoying.--Jonpro 12:15, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

I'll PM Broken Kid and see if he has the access. If we add captcha and the spam blacklist that should shut the spam down... if it's a human spammer we're just going to have to hope he gets bored. --JayHenry 12:27, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I've read through the mediawiki manual and I understand how to install it. It looks very simple. And there's no reason we can't go through and block almost all those sites he lists. On real wikipedia you wouldn't want to block links to Harvard.edu -- but there's no reason we need them here. We just need someone with FTP access to the site. Hopefully BK will get back to me soon and we'll be able to get it up later tonight. --JayHenry 18:50, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Mmmkay well... I still haven't heard from BK. I hate to leave things like this overnight, but I don't know what else to do... I'll e-mail Miles tomorrow if I haven't yet heard from BK. --JayHenry 23:10, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

How about that temporary (overnight) lockdown? I think all you need to do is use the User Rights permission stuff. I don't have access to that though, so I don't know how it works. Maybe it's not as easy as I think it is. OwenIsCool 23:21, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

We can't do the temporary lockdown either. It's an installation setting. The only thing I can do with regards to user rights is make people admins or bots. We could make the LGBot an admin and then have it go through and protect everything (or at least, I assume the pythonwikipediabots can do that). But, the spammer has the ability to create new pages, so it's not a very useful fix. We can't protect every possible page. --JayHenry 00:25, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

ah ok. we'll just have to hold out until someone with installation privileges comes to the rescue. we can wait, the spam is controllable, it's just annoying as heck. OwenIsCool 00:46, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Le sigh. Just when we thought the spamming was easing off... Maybe it kicks in on the weekends when less people are editing. I blocked a few spammers throughout the night, it looks like if you "nip it in the bud", it stops, waits, and then tries again like 30min. later. Otherwise it just keeps going. rawr, want lgpedia anti-spambot extensions. OwenIsCool 17:05, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually, what you want is simple FTP access. If anybody had just added "ringtones" to $wgSpamRegex right after the first bot attacked, all the others would have been unable to post - the entire wave would have bounced right off the editing page.

Sure, it'd still have stressed the server, but at least we wouldn't have had to clean up afterwards...

~ Renegade (talk | contribs) 18:01, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Excluding YouTube tags from Random pages

Is it posible to Exclude YouTube tags from the Random pages link,i noticed that half the time when i click on random pages i get a Youtube tag. I think it would be more interesting if it only took you to real articles. -misty 19:31, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Oh oh I'm with you there! If it's possible, my vote on this would be YES! --Zoey 20:23, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to do this. --JayHenry 15:59, 27 April 2007 (CDT)

How about if we get rid of all the YouTube tag pages or combine them into one page -misty 16:04, 27 April 2007 (CDT)

I've been thinking about this recently and it does seem kind of silly to have a bunch of pages whose only content is the "tag" box. One possible solution is to make the "tag" pages with an associated page redirect pages, but instead of replacing {{tag|page=PAGENAME}} with #REDIRECT PAGENAME, we could incorporate the redirect in the {{tag}} template. This way, the box would still be on the pages, but you would only see it if you click on the "(Redirected from PAGENAME)" link after being redirected. That would save everyone from having to click on the associated page link, and I think it would keep Category:YouTube tags working fine. I'm not sure if it would fix the "Random Page" problem, but it might. Hopefully this makes sense. Any thoughts?--Jonpro 19:22, 28 April 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and try this out. We'll see if it works.--Jonpro 15:07, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, it didn't work so I changed it back to how it was. Does anyone know if what I'm trying to do is possible?--Jonpro 16:10, 29 April 2007 (CDT)

Ok I found a couple things that can help http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Special_page and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_namespaces. What you need to do, is put all the youtube tags in a custom namespace -misty 20:11, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

That's way more trouble than it's worth. We'd have to redirect every tag in every video with a piped link [[Tag:Purple|purple]]. Plus adding a custom namespace isn't something that we can just snap our fingers and do. We have to get FTP access from Miles and then reinstall the wiki. Totally not worth it just so people don't have to hit the random page button twice. --JayHenry 23:03, 30 April 2007 (CDT)

Ok I think this will work without creating a new namespace. I did a little experimenting, by clicking random page dozens of times. I noticed that anything in subpage doesn't come up (e.g. List_of_Lonelygirl15_videos/redesign). So I think if we were to move all the tags to a subpage of YouTube_tags (e.g. people to YouTube_tags/people) , and modified the template to use the new location, then it would work. The bot could move all the pages, (but I think it can't leave a redirect in the old location for this to work). -misty 14:32, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the random page button will get subpages too. Less than 1 percent of our pages are subs, so you'd expect to get one once out of every hundred random pages. --JayHenry 15:23, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

Well something needs to be done, I've gotten 15 youtube tags in a row. Why do we have Youtube tags anyway? -misty 21:40, 1 May 2007 (CDT)

At this point, I'm wondering if we should just do away with most of the YouTube tag stuff. I think that we might be able to apply our policy for fan videos to official videos. What I mean is that we could only make a tag a link if a page already exists. The way I see it, the point of a link is to find out more information about whatever you're clicking on. If I'm on the page for Quitting The Sauce and I click on [[sleep]], it will take me to a page that is esentially useless to me. I could click on "what links here" but even that doesn't seem very useful. Also, if it's a page like Bree, it won't be easy to sort out the videos in that list anyway. We also run into problems like help which should redirect to Help:Contents but is also a tag. Then of course there's the "random page" problem that started this discussion. Anyway, enough with the problems. Here's what I'm proposing:

Change most (if not all) of the tag pages with an "associated page" to redirect pages. (The bot can handle this rather easily.)
Delete the tag pages that contain only {{tag}} and remove links to those pages on the video pages.
Keep Category:YouTube tags (perhaps rename it), but have it include only tags that have pages, such as Bree, Drunk, etc.
Keep Template:tag, but perhaps modify it to fit with the new structure.
Keep all of the strange tag pages that still seem worthy of a page, and delete or redirect the rest.

With this system, if I'm on the page for Quitting The Sauce, I'll notice that [[sleep]] is "grayed out", so I won't have to waste the time clicking on it hoping to find more information. If I click on alcohol, however, I'll be taken straight to the drunk page where I can read about something alcohol related, which was the whole point I clicked on the link. As far as the amount of work involved to do all this, the hardest part would be #2, which will probably take a lot of time. I should be able to get the bot to help out somewhat, but I'm not sure how much. Anyway, what does everyone think of this idea? Is it worth it? Improvements and suggestions are also much appreciated.--Jonpro 14:27, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

I like this new approach very much, Jonpro. We started keeping a record of YouTube tags in the earlier days when it was thought that there would be special significance behind them, but over time it became clear that it was kind of a waste of time. Most things that need to be linked to will be mentioned in the notes anyway. If a certain tag is so irrelevant that it doesn't even have a related page, we shouldn't bother giving it a link. I almost want to just completely do away with tags, but that would be too extreme and I like your approach better. OwenIsCool 15:01, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

I don' think it's too extreme, but I also like the new approach -misty 19:19, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

Okay, perhaps it is just me, but I happen to really like being able to see which videos have used which tags, and etc. I do get that the tag pages are causing a lot of problems though, and I agree that it wouldn't be horrible if they were gone :P Can people other than admins delete pages? As always, I'm happy to help out in any way I can, so let me know if you need deleting help (as you said this would be the most troublesome part). --Zoey 23:22, 3 May 2007 (CDT)

Actually it wouldn't be too difficult to delete the pages, if the bot can scan the pages for the {{delete|youtube tag}} and delete the pages it's found on. Then the rest of us can just put the delete template on the tag pages without needing Admin privileges. -misty 00:55, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Zoey, sorry but only admins can delete pages. And yes, the bot does have a "delete" script which would actually use my account to delete the pages. The simplest way it works is just by deleting all the pages in a category. And I'm thinking now that Template:tag doesn't seem very useful anyway, so maybe that can go too. The one thing the bot won't be able to do is tell the difference between a page that contains only {{tag}} on it and a page which has other content too. So, here's a sequence of steps that I think should work:

Have the bot change all the pages with {{tag|page=PAGENAME}} to #REDIRECT [[PAGENAME]].
Remove all instances of {{tag}} from pages that have other content as well (e.g. Bree, Daniel, Lonelygirl15). This would include strange tag pages.
At this point only pages that have only {{tag}} on them will be left in Category:YouTube tags. So, I can run the "delete" script on pages in that category.

Steps 1 and 2 can really be done simultaneously, but step 3 can't be done until steps 1 and 2 are complete. Sound like a plan? I can run the script to do the redirects tonight if this sounds good.--Jonpro 15:33, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Sounds good to me -misty 23:03, 4 May 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I'll go ahead and start changing the ones that need to be into redirects and removing {{tag}} from pages with other content.--Jonpro 13:31, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

The redirects have been created and content pages have had {{tag}} removed. Next, if everything thinks it's a good idea, I'll change everything so it uses {{tags}} then delete all the other tag pages.--Jonpro 15:56, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

is this a bot task or a manual task? if it needs to be done by hand, I'll work forward on the official List of Videos, someone else can start with the fanfic videos -misty 16:25, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

It's a bot task actually. I just wanted to make sure it sounded like a good idea. I guess I'll go ahead and run the bot script.--Jonpro 16:39, 5 May 2007 (CDT)

Thank you Jonpro, you did a great job. Everything seems to be working great. Maybe we can archive this topic.-misty 00:10, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

One more thing before archiving. I managed to convert most of the video pages to using {{tags}} with the bot, but I ran into a few problems so I couldn't get them all. If anyone sees any pages where it's not being used, it shouldn't be too much work to convert it. Other than that, I think this is pretty much resolved.--Jonpro 11:43, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

Okey, I manually went through all the Category:Videos and added the tag template where it was missing and fixed up the pages it was messed up on. I could have missed a few, but I'm pretty sure I got them all. I even did the LG422 videos even though I still don't think they should be transcribed at all.. xP. So um, yes. Hopefully this works out better! --Zoey 15:23, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

I double checked your work, and if you missed any, then I missed the same ones. -misty 18:40, 6 May 2007 (CDT)

Performance issues

I've noticed that the use of alot of templates or included page, can have a big effect on the loading of pages. This can really be seen on list of videos page. does anyone know something that can be be done to improve the performance. -misty 15:31, 12 April 2007 (CDT)

Well, I don't think it's templates or transclusion that's causing the problems on List of Lonelygirl15 videos. No matter how it's organized, with templates or not, the page is simply enormous -- more than 7 times bigger than the Main Page. Other than dumping the videxpand template or really reducing the number of images (or shrinking the size of the actual image files?) there's little we can do. --JayHenry 10:31, 13 April 2007 (CDT)

Fate of AphidPedia?

Now that OpAphid is no longer, official. should there still be an AphidPedia section or should it be downgraded to Catagory:OpAphid and removed from the left menu? -misty 02:32, 14 April 2007 (CDT)

We can still keep the OpAphid page, I'm sure. We have pages for other non-canon/non-official ARGs. I don't really know the structure of all the OpAphid pages, but we might want to remove the link from the left menu. I'm not really sure on that. The pages definitely need to be updated to indicate that OpAphid is no longer the official ARG if that hasn't been done yet.--Jonpro 21:43, 15 April 2007 (CDT)

Oh, I missed this conversation. I just came here to ask the same question. I don't think we should delete OpAphid from the Wiki, but we should be sure to note that it is no longer official. And I think we should take it off the sidebar, although if anyone has a good reason it should stay I would listen. --JayHenry 11:25, 17 April 2007 (CDT) 11:15, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

I wasn't suggesting getting rid of OPAphid, I was just wondering if it was still apropriate to call it AphidPedia, or if that should just be merged into the OpAphid article and not be so prominent. When it was the official ARG it made sense for it to have it's own main section, but now it's just another part of the of the extended Breniverse. -misty 10:31, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

I guess my vote would be to keep the AphidPedia -- it's still a good index for the material -- but move it off the sidebar and probably off the Main Page too. --JayHenry 14:19, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

I went ahead and removed it from the sidebar and the main page. I didn't make any mention of the scandal, because I think it's best to just move on. We really need some new stuff to add to the main page. Maybe links to pages about all these new girls?? --JayHenry 10:55, 19 April 2007 (CDT)

Distribution for LonelyGirl

I'm interested in talking with someone at LGPedia about additional distribution of Lonely Girl. Can someone please advise me who to contact? I can be reached at lannick@licensinganimal.com Thanks for your help.

Here at the LGPedia we're all just volunteers. We can't help you unfortunately. You need to contact "The Creators" of the series. You can send them a private message at the forum. Good luck! --JayHenry 15:17, 25 April 2007 (CDT)

Special:Wantedpages cleanup

I've started going through Special:Wantedpages, and I'm trying to eliminate references to deleted pages (or pages that don't really need to be created). I'm adding nowiki tags or removing the brackets, where non existent pages are referenced in talk pages, and adding redirects where appropriate to existing pages. Hopefully soon that list will only contain pages that really should be created. anyone else who wants to help it would be appreciated. -misty 02:03, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

Also PLEASE clean up any references that are on your own user pages, talk pages, sandboxes, etc. If everyone does that it will make the job a lot easier. -misty 02:10, 13 May 2007 (CDT)

FYI about the spamming

I've contacted Broken Kid. It turns out that there is now a Web site guy and he's been notified. I didn't even know there was a Web site guy (hence the red link!), and he hasn't contacted me yet, to either give someone temporary FTP access or to ask what sites need blacklisted. Apparently things are a bit hectic because MM&G are/were recently in London laying the groundwork for Kate. --JayHenry 22:09, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

I noticed that we have a new spambot check in place :) Now we can see if its a bot or a person spamming-misty 23:38, 7 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, at some point someone installed the ConfirmEdit extension. Nobody ever identified themselves as this mysterious Web site guy, but it's up and running. Did we have any incidents last night? It's only sorta annoying. There should be some way to set up a "whitelist" or, a list of sites that it won't ask the question for. This should include lonelygirl15.com, revver.com, youtube.com, IMDB.com, wikipedia.com -- can anyone think of other sites that should definitely be on that list? --JayHenry 08:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Perhaps myspace.com? Other than that, I don't know of any. And how does this confirm edit thing work exactly?--Jonpro 08:53, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

The feature doesn't apply to admin or bot accounts, I believe. When adding an external link it asks you a quick math problem -- "what is 11 - 6?" for example -- and apparently the bots don't know how to parse this. Has the spammer struck since last night? If this isn't sufficient deterrent I think we'll want to disable this and try the blacklist instead. --JayHenry 09:13, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

This is the last spam edit we've had, so I don't know when this was installed, but it might be working. Then again, the spam bot seems to be pretty sporadic, so I guess we'll just have to bide our time for a little bit to see if it comes back.--Jonpro 09:28, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

It doesn't seem to have a whitest of trusted URL's, but I could modify it to have one. -misty 10:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Wait, really? I thought only Web site guy could make the modifications. How do we add the sites mentioned above to the whitelist? Can anybody think of any other sites that should definitely be whitelisted? --JayHenry 15:45, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

Well, I can modify the script, but the web guy (or anyone with ftp access) will have to upload it. I just need the list of sites we want included. -misty 16:33, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

whitelist

Gotcha -- the whitelist feature is built into MediaWiki, so we can just give him a list of the sites and it's simple. I think we need to whitelist

lonelygirl15.com
lg15.com
youtube.com
wikipedia.org
hymnofone.org
myspace.com
revver.com
imdb.com
bebo.com

Can we think of any others? I'll make the request early tomorrow to give people time to think of other sites. --JayHenry 16:38, 8 May 2007 (CDT)

that list looks pretty much complete. I looked at ConfirmEdit.php and it doesn't use any global whitelist from the rest of MediaWiki. Instead you need to Hard code the white list, as a Regex, assigned to the variable $wgCaptchaWhitelist. on line 145. For the list above it would be:

$wgCaptchaWhitelist = '#^https?://([a-z0-9-]+\\.)?(lonelygirl15|lg15|hymnofone|wikimedia|wikipedia|youtube|revver|myspace|imdb|bebo)\.?(com|org|net)/#i';

--Misty 18:11, May 8, 2007 (CDT)

Any word on when the whitelist will be implemented? Has the web guy seen the instructions above? -misty 17:15, 19 May 2007 (CDT)

trusted users

Is it possible to create a group for trusted users (perhaps people who have over 200 unreverted edits), and give them exemption from ConfirmEdit and the ability to edit protected pages? -misty 22:00, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

Anybody with an account should be able to edit any of the protected pages. As for ConfirmEdit, I think our best bet is to get the Web site guy to add the Whitelist. --JayHenry 11:23, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

This isn't true, I was not able to edit Glenn Rubenstein, until the protection was taken off. Any word when the whitelist will be implemented? ConfirmEdit challenges are fine for occasional edits, but when you are doing a bunch of edits in a row it gets annoying. -misty 14:01, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

Let me explain. There are two levels of protection; protection and sysops only. Even if we created a new class they wouldn't be able to edit sysop only pages. The only time we protect anything to sysop level is when nobody should be editing it, as was the case with Glenn Rubenstein. You already can edit any page that's under regular protection, which is what I meant. I'll send an e-mail about the whitelist this afternoon. --JayHenry 14:54, 14 May 2007 (CDT)

New admins!

In case people don't know, Zoey and Psmith were recently made admins on the LGPedia. Congratulations to both of them and a big thank you for all of their hard work.--Jonpro 13:26, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Just don't let the power go to your heads :P Just kidding. Congratulations to both of you ----misty 15:28, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

Yay thanks! And oh look, I get to be Snow White!! -blinks- Are any other admins female? Whoa.. strange. --Zoey 19:43, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

I guess it doesn't say who's who in the picture of OIC, Brucker and I. But apparently two of us are female. --JayHenry 21:53, 10 May 2007 (CDT)

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