User talk:RichardF/Intro

New Vector skin, and "move" tab

I'm liking the current state of Vector. I'd strongly prefer "move" to be one of the main tabs, rather than hidden away, but overall, your version of Vector is much better looking than current default, and has a bit of adifferent feel to Wikipedia. Not sure if there's anything else we need before going live with it - I'll ping Lonny. --Chriswaterguy 23:01, 1 February 2012 (PST)

As far as I can tell, the Vector extension that Tahnok mentioned at Village Pump is necessary to uncollapse the move tab and get the search box (upper-right corner) to look cuter. Old browsers just don't look as fancy, e.g., no shadows, but they still work. The changeover could happen any time. It just would be fewer visible default skin changes if the Vector extension were added and tested first. --RichardF 09:38, 2 February 2012 (PST)
Thanks for looking into this. I'll ask Danny B (wikipedia:cz:User:Danny B.) how he would do it, and CC you on the email. --Chriswaterguy 16:08, 3 February 2012 (PST)
Jason has been having problems getting the social media links (facebook and google +) and google translate to work on vector. Richard, do you have any ideas on how to do it. Chris, can you ask Danny B? It would be great to do it using the common.js like they did here, and include google translate and a style that matches our skin. thanks, --Lonny 00:12, 6 February 2012 (PST)
Danny fixed the "Move" tab! I have no idea about the social media stuff. Oh, Danny?... :-) --RichardF 05:39, 6 February 2012 (PST)

Thanks Danny for fixing the Move tab! I'm also in favor of some other changes - once we have screenshots we could ask people on A:VP & social media what they think:

  • Having the Watch and Delete in the open. I guess I personally prefer clutter at the top to relying on the drop-down menu - I'd be happy to see the menu kept, but with clear options/instructions for someone like me.
  • Removing "Read" as it's a duplicate of one of the tabs on the left. (Perhaps there is a good reason for it, and I'm sure it's been discussed at length on Wikipedia, but no time to check that now.)
  • Having the drop-down menu marked as "Tools" or something like that. The current inverted triangle doesn't catch the eye at all.

I'll also ask Danny B. to give his opinion here on these suggestions. Not meaning to rush you - this just seemed like the best place to put down my thoughts. --Chriswaterguy 21:47, 20 February 2012 (PST)

Another minor skin issue (just putting it here so they're all together): The new skin displays a link to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html but with the display text "CC-BY-SA" - this needs to be removed. It's actually in the current default skin's source code as well, but doesn't display for some reason. --Chriswaterguy 08:43, 29 February 2012 (PST)

When I log out, I see the "CC-BY-SA" link on the extreme left side of the footer. --RichardF 13:50, 2 March 2012 (PST)
Well spotted. Does anyone know what causes that? --Chriswaterguy 00:23, 3 March 2012 (PST)
I think this is defined in this bit of css code: div id="f-copyrightico"
I don't know how to access the css, files but this should be easy to change. What do you want it to say? Joeturner 02:13, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
My understanding is that an image, like the ones for MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki, is missing. I don't know what it looks like or where to find it. --RichardF 05:16, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
You mean like this? http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/2.0/uk/88x31.png from here http://creativecommons.org/choose/ Joeturner 05:22, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know what the "SA" means in "CC-BY-SA" and that link is differnet than the one for it (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html). --RichardF 05:27, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
According to Appropedia:Copyrights, "Unless otherwise specified, all material is under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 (CC-BY-SA-3.0)." I still can't find an image that would fit that little box. Maybe that's why it's empty.  :-) --RichardF 13:05, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Found it! CC licenses CC-BY-SA image Now, the next thing I don't know is where to put it. It's not in the skins. I think it's in the main code somewhere. Joe, are you willing to ask Lonny or someone who knows about such things to track it down?  :-) --RichardF 13:17, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
well, I'm reasonably sure it is in the css. If I can find the css files, I can probably find it. Joeturner 13:20, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Are you referring to MediaWiki:Common.css? If not, I'm stumped. --RichardF 13:24, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
it should be in the folder in which the wiki lives, unlikely to be a page of the wiki. The code says it is in the file /skins/monobook/main.css. I'll ask Lonny. Joeturner 13:37, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Okay, sounds like a plan. Thanks! --RichardF 13:42, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Phew. I think I fixed it from within the localsettings (with this simple missing code $wgRightsIcon = "{$wgStylePath}/common/images/cc-by-sa.png";). Please let me know if it doesn't fix it for you. Thanks, --Lonny 20:13, 13 March 2013 (PDT)
Woo-Hoo!!! Now, everything is perfect on this site!!! So, when did you say you were going to convert over to a new version with just a few bugs left to fix?  ;-) --RichardF 20:29, 13 March 2013 (PDT)
Ha! I hear you. I promise to let you know when the dev site is ready for QA testing! Thanks, --Lonny 20:32, 13 March 2013 (PDT)

Sanitation portal

Hope you've had a great new year.

Kili & I have been talking (in the recent A:Appropedia Jam and here) with User:Joeturner, who's keen to do something with sanitation info on Appropedia. Would you be interested in using your wiki magic at some point to create a Portal:Sanitation or a Portal:WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene)? (Very long term we could aim to have both, but one would be great for now.)

I think Joe would be able to offer suggestions if you had questions about content or structure, and of course I'm happy to help as well. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 22:16, 26 January 2013 (PST)

Hi Chris. See Talk:WASH#Working WASH outline for my take on this discussion. :-) RichardF 18:43, 9 February 2013 (PST)

Announcements and horizontal line

I've squeezed in two announcements at Welcome_to_Appropedia/Announcements - see if you think that works.

I couldn't figure out how to elegantly separate the two announcements though - I used a horizontal line, but wanted to make it a partial width, centerd divider - maybe a thin grey line. I reckon you probably have an idea though :) --Chriswaterguy 20:58, 20 February 2013 (PST)

Hi. Those divs are always goofy, but I "tricked" it into making a 90% centered, divider line by putting it inside the centered section above it. RichardF 19:50, 21 February 2013 (PST)

That's excellent - thank you. --Chriswaterguy 04:15, 25 February 2013 (PST)

Portal:Permaculture

Hi RichardF,

I started Portal:Permaculture as a series of links for now - we'll be getting some steady traffic to that site starting in a week or so (prominent link from Permies.com/forums) so I wanted to have something useful there.

If you're inspired to work your magic sometime, that would be cool. We don't have a lot of permaculture info just yet, but we're working on importing a dump from an old permaculture wiki (a hundred pages or so).

And of course all those other topics that I linked are relevant to permaculture - so it could reuse a bunch of the highlighted content from the other portals that I listed there on Portal:Permaculture.

On a related note, this one could be moved to energy and/or permaculture - currently in transport: Portal:Transport/Selected project/4. --Chriswaterguy 04:15, 25 February 2013 (PST)

Hi Chris, As you've noticed, I'm really not much of a contributor these days and I don't expect that to be changing in the foreseeable future. I'll do what I can on weekends, but it might take a while. --RichardF 07:49, 25 February 2013 (PST)
The basic structure is in place. Please let me know what other content you want added. --RichardF 15:15, 2 March 2013 (PST)

Praise

Good work. Gold star. Joeturner 08:04, 8 March 2013 (PST)

Thanks. And thanks for pointing me in the right direction!  :-) --RichardF 08:14, 8 March 2013 (PST)

random code

The code you originally posted had two extra }} - the code you most recently put on Chris' talk page was missing them, and, I think, is correct. Joeturner 12:34, 8 March 2013 (PST)

That's fine. It probably was sloppy copying the first time. I confirmed the next copy in a sandbox. --RichardF 14:13, 8 March 2013 (PST)

FWD book

Sorry, my mistake. I can't identify things from that book. Joeturner 09:57, 11 March 2013 (PDT)

Yeah, the easiest way to check for them is with Book:The Future We Deserve. Release the cat/article herding bot!!! :-) --RichardF 10:01, 11 March 2013 (PDT)
Also note that all the pages have {{TheFWD_header}}. Which is currently a blank header (I think for previous printing purposes maybe), but could also have the category in the template. Thanks, --Lonny 20:11, 13 March 2013 (PDT)
Apparently not. When I looked at older versions, the template only contained Category:Navigation templates. It's a good thing Joe was on the case...as usual! :-) --RichardF 20:38, 13 March 2013 (PDT)
Oops... I meant we could add the category to it. But either way, glad that Joe was on the case! Thanks, --Lonny 20:41, 13 March 2013 (PDT)
Yeah, maybe we shouldn't tell Joe that part quite yet. ;-) --RichardF 20:43, 13 March 2013 (PDT)

Daily News

Do you understand how User555's page will work? It seems to be something which will generate new pages for every day of the year. Is that really what we want? Is the election of the Pope really suitable material for a page on Appropedia? Maybe I'm missing a whole chunk of understanding about how this is going to work.. Joeturner 09:38, 15 March 2013 (PDT)

I think he's trying to copy some version of Wikipedia:Portal:Current events. I see no real value for that here. --RichardF 09:51, 15 March 2013 (PDT)
I agree, it looks like it will only generate many pages of worthless content, and it isn't even clear that there wouldn't need to be someone manually adding pages. I strongly suggest User555 should stop doing this immediately. Joeturner 09:55, 15 March 2013 (PDT)
Given the "be bold" culture here, I see that as being above my pay grade. If you want to discuss it with Lonny, I'm fine with that. I certainly will oppose any implementation of it outside of the incubator. --RichardF 10:00, 15 March 2013 (PDT)
Thanks guys. Agreed that this doesn't show any prospect of being useful. I've asked User555 to stop adding templates and pages from Wikipedia until we understand what the purpose is. A:BOLD is why I wasn't more adamant, sooner, but if it's creating work for others without adding value (or without a serious effort to explain to confused Appropedians what's going on), it needs to stop. --Chriswaterguy 01:52, 20 March 2013 (PDT)

Wiki blog

After struggling to blog, I now think a "Wiki blog" is probably the appropriate technology for sharing announcements and ideas on Appropedia :-).

I'm thinking of something that:

  • looks a bit like the Wikimedia Foundation blog (although that's actually WordPress)
  • is modeled, in terms of templates, transcluded posts, comments, subpage tree structure etc, on the Wikipedia Signpost. The actual presentation of it as a periodical is very nice, but we could revisit that model later, if we have enough content.
  • is located at Appropedia:Blog

Thoughts? This should be much easier than portals, but your wiki fu would still be of tremendous assistance :-).

I don't have any posts yet, but I was just working on a draft. Future drafts could go under Appropedia:Blog/Drafts, to encourage collaborative editing. --Chriswaterguy 02:03, 20 March 2013 (PDT)

I'm not particularly familiar with the structural differences between wikis and blogs, so I'm sure Wikipedia Signpost would be the best model to emulate. Who knows how much infrastructure we would have to import and maintain manually, but I'm sure there would be a ramp up needed. We also would have to transition a feed here and there (maybe 2 ;-) and figure out how to best automatically (if possible) keep them up to date. Other than that... sure, why not?! --RichardF 10:13, 20 March 2013 (PDT) :-)
Also, can you say a little more about why you believe the blog isn't working and why switching to a wiki blog will fix it? --RichardF 19:26, 21 March 2013 (PDT)
I think the point is the collaborative effort on Wikipedia Signpost is not easily replicated on the Appropedia blog, which is more like a single person's writing that others discuss. I'm not sure it helps so much to think of signpost as a blog, it is more like a newspaper which is editable. Joeturner 02:01, 22 March 2013 (PDT)
I agree the Signpost is a newspaper rather than a blog. My question to Chris more pointedly is about what does he want, a newspaper or a blog? Beyond that, we've had a number of discussions around community and somehow expanding the functionality of our topical discussions beyond the capabilities of Appropedia discussion pages like the Village Pump.
Beyond the "wiki blog (newspaper?)" model, Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Community portal really is the top-level model for community building on a wiki that also happens to include a newspaper. So, again, my question back to Chris boils down to is the current blog situation that much of a technical issue or really more of an intent and design issue? :-) --RichardF 14:24, 22 March 2013 (PDT)

Thanks for the replies, fellas.

Richard: "My question to Chris more pointedly is about what does he want, a newspaper or a blog?"

A newspaper is a more interesting model, I think - a newspaper model can include blog-style pieces, but also gives space for news bites. A newspaper/zine could also be sent out as an email newsletter.

But my main concern is how to make this a shared effort. Even if (hypothetically) we wanted the blog format, I'd rather move it to the wiki. As Joe touched on, our blog software isn't the right tool for collaborative effort like this - a blog must be overseen by someone (or some limited group of people) and expresses their point of view. I'd rather open it up because (a) I think we can do better with a community effort to make an engaging publication, and (b) I want to allow the awesomeness of Appropedians to shine more easily.

So - technically, I think the Wikipedia Signpost is pretty good. Not as nice to navigate as a blog, perhaps, so we could think about whether we want an alternative way of viewing the articles, that presents them in a blog-style format. Some usability testing is called for - see how people find navigating the Wikipedia Signpost.

Does that make sense? --Chriswaterguy 01:47, 7 April 2013 (PDT)

Okay, thanks. That give me a better idea about intent, which I don't find surprising. ;-) My next question gets more to design - features and elements. Do you have any particular elements you do or don't want from the Signpost / Community portal design? --RichardF 05:05, 7 April 2013 (PDT)

"This should be much easier than portals..." -- Chris

Actually, the more I look at The Signpost, the more complex it gets. It's a periodical with topical departments. Structurally, it has lots of technically interwoven elements. Administratively, it has lots of managers and contributors. I really don't see anything on Appropedia that could keep up with this design. Can you say a little bit more about what you actually want to implement here? --RichardF 17:25, 7 April 2013 (PDT)
Errr... busy getting ready for a trip. Will need to think on this. Briefly: I don't think it needs to be particularly complex. Maybe each edition could be one page, linking to a number of articles. Those articles might be semi-protected, with transcluded comments (like the Signpost). --Chriswaterguy 06:40, 9 April 2013 (PDT)
Here's the one-page Signpost. Here's a single Signpost article. Even at its simplest, implementing a wiki blog/newsletter still poses lots of design questions. To me, the most critical questions revolve around how much content about what topics should be generated how frequently? Given answers to questions like those, I expect we can adapt whatever Signpost structural elements remain relevant to our purposes. --RichardF 08:42, 9 April 2013 (PDT)

I just stumbled across the EcoReality Newsletter from Jan Steinman's page. Somehow, every page there has a "Share your opinion" section at the bottom! :-) --RichardF 09:40, 17 April 2013 (PDT)

new cats?

This is possibly a silly question, but I'll ask it anyway. I don't understand the value of the categories created by your list pages. For example, do we really need both Category:Agricultural_soil_science and Category:Soil_science? Some of these cats only have your list pages in them.. Joeturner 10:58, 27 March 2013 (PDT)

Hi. Those lists are part of serveral approaches I've used in attempts to clean up the Appropedia hi-level classification system over the years. You can see several possible ways various systems are related at User:RichardF#Contents. On those lists, the categories come from Wikipedia. I often use that structure to test for and link categories here. Your examples probably are overkill here. My aim is to strengthen Appropedia's faceted classification system so that readers can more easily find articles from multiple and relevent perspectives. If you want to get rid of one of those categories (Category:Agricultural_soil_science), that's fine with me. However, I prefer to keep at least one. --RichardF 11:14, 27 March 2013 (PDT)
I'd keep the Soil Science cat and lose the other too. There are a good number of pages which should be in it. I was just giving this as an example, however. Joeturner 11:33, 27 March 2013 (PDT)
Works for me. Combine as you see fit. :-) --RichardF 12:11, 27 March 2013 (PDT)

glossaries

Can you work your wiki magic on Fruits? I think we could essentially park the vast majority of fruit, vegetable, herb and other things in glossaries, there are a few useful pages but the majority can be just a line in a glossary. Fruits might be a good place to start because the info is already arranged in glossary format, just needs wiki-links plus a line about each one. Joeturner 08:14, 18 April 2013 (PDT)

Yes. Sure, there's a start. Let the cleanup begin! :-) --RichardF 08:41, 18 April 2013 (PDT)
Just me, or should that page be called fruit rather than fruits? Joeturner 08:44, 18 April 2013 (PDT)
Template:? That's a big debate Chris and others keep having. I prefer the Wikipedia singular page style. For some reason, which I don't get, others around here prefer plurals. --RichardF 08:49, 18 April 2013 (PDT)
After further review, Fruits actually is from Wikipedia:List of fruits. Maybe that's why the "Fruits" article is a list. :-) --RichardF 16:43, 18 April 2013 (PDT)

cleanup AT Sourcebook

Here's another source of lots of small-content pages: AT Sourcebook. A bibliography was started, but this appears to have mostly been about creating pages with single lines of text. Seems to me they could all be on a single page bibliography and delete a lot of pages. Not entirely sure of the best way to do this, but can't be so difficult, can it? Joeturner

What I would do is move the related site pages to subpages under section subpages. The subpages then can be categorized as Category:AT Sourcebook subpages. That way, the pages can be managed at multiple levels - Sourcebook, section, page - and it's clear they are part of a larger Sourcebook article structure. That's the basic way I manage Portal subpages. --RichardF 11:15, 19 April 2013 (PDT)
Expanded sections are at AT Sourcebook/Local Self-Reliance and AT Sourcebook/Forestry. --RichardF 19:46, 19 April 2013 (PDT)
AT Sourcebook/Local Self-Reliance shows an example with two long pages with intro transcluded. AT Sourcebook/Forestry shows an example with virtually every entry transcluded, most of them short. All of the short pages probably could be put only in the section subpage. They still should be linked from the main page to show more info is available. Something like <span id="reference name"></span> should be used on the subpage to make the main page link work. --RichardF 07:32, 20 April 2013 (PDT)
I just tested the id method and it works.
That means we could move short content to a section subpage, link to its id from the main page and delete the original page (after bypassing any redirects, changing links). Longer pages (except original) still could be moved to subpages with only the basics transcluded to the section subpages. --RichardF 07:44, 20 April 2013 (PDT)

Next question: Is this thing worth all the effort?! :-) --RichardF 07:49, 20 April 2013 (PDT)

After trying both transcluding and copying references to section subpages, my answer is it's woth it only if each reference is moved to its own subpage and then transcluded to its section subpage. Otherwise, the subpage will be virtually unreadable and uneditable. The three-level system used in portals seems to be the best approach to use here as well. It still will be a lot of work. --RichardF 08:26, 20 April 2013 (PDT)
Thanks Richard and Joe - I've long wondered how to handle these bibliographic pages, and I really like the subpage structure as a solution.
Thanks. Until I hear otherwise, I'll assume this is the preferred structural design for bibliographies - a three-level, portal-like transcluded page hierarchy. Are there any other "main" pages that alos should use this type of structure? --RichardF 07:17, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
If there's a desire to delete some of these pages, Joshua Pearce needs to be in that discussion. I'm undecided whether deletion is the best approach.
I'll contact Josh if I continue to work on it. As noted below, I don't consider all moved pages to be redirectworthy. ;-) I also would recommend to Josh we design a layout page like we do for portal sections. That would make adding more citations much easier and more consistent. --RichardF 07:17, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
Another thought - if someone wants to edit a page with transclusions in it, how can we guide them? Instructions in hidden comments perhaps, but that's a clunky hack.
One approach would be to use a variant of {{list subpages}} - it could be made to look better, but it only shows the page title. A version could be made to include the actual pages - somewhat like you're doing now. Question is, would that make for simpler code on the page, so that an editor can see what's going on?
These pages are very much like portal sections. Those types of guidelines could be added to talk pages. This structure also has a design element used in a new glossary structure, like at Glossary of sustainability terms. Linking to a specific item that is not a heading can be accomplished withthe use of the id tag. I offer some basic guidance about that at Talk:Glossary of sustainability terms#Linking directly to glossary terms with the id tag. --RichardF 07:17, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
Anyhoo, it's looking good - thanks. --Chriswaterguy 00:38, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
Woo-Hoo!  :-) If you really want to go crazy over all of this type of stuff, I'm the one who designed the basic contents navigation page structure currently on Wikipedia. Whe you go to Wikipedia:Portal:Contents, you see to rows of navbars across the top. The first row is a group navigation pages by type. The second row is a group of navigation pages by topic. The layouts for these pages are at Wikipedia:Portal:Contents/Types layout and Wikipedia:Portal:Contents/Topics layout. We're starting to organize two more types of contents pages, glossaries and bibliographies. We already have a number of portals. I've ported over various versions of lists. Is there much interest in doing the work it would take to add any more of these types of infrastructure? --RichardF 07:17, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
I'm not sure I've totally followed what Richard said above, but it sounds like a lot of work to me to do properly - and I'm not sure whether we have really answered the question of whether it is really worth the effort (in this or in similar cases). From what I understand above, the number of individual pages remains the same, but with an additional page with them merged together. I don't really understand why we can't just cut'n'paste the content into separate sections of a smaller number of pages. Surely the end result would be a smaller number than what you're suggesting above, Richard? Joeturner 07:11, 25 April 2013 (PDT)

Redirects

Re Appropedia:Public domain content on Appropedia - thanks for moving it. For the redirect, what are your thoughts on a guideline? I generally only suppress them when moving an poor quality page out of mainspace to the incubator or userspace. I don't know how likely it is that someone has the page bookmarked, but that's one factor. A redirect also helps search engines deliver people to the new place.

I'm probably worrying too much about details... --Chriswaterguy 00:26, 25 April 2013 (PDT)

Hi, I expected you to comment on this. :-) What I do is check the "What links here" list. if it's empty, I don't redirect. If it's short, I change the source links and don't redirect. I haven't been checking the watching users note, e.g., "[4 watching users]" for my user page. It seems spiders will find the new page just as easily as they found the old page, which I consider better. Obviously, my personal preference is to streamline the clutter and noise in Appropedia. I find redirects annoying and prefer to keep them to a minimum. If others want more, I'll stop doing what I described above. --RichardF 06:27, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
I didn't understand what Richard was saying when he suggested this before, but I now agree. Having lots of redirects seems to me to be a bit pointless (other than for pages which people are actually working on and/or kept for a short period to aid those who want to refer to them), given that they are just pages without content. Really old pages don't seem to me to have a need for redirects, given that the search engines and the Appropredia search box are going to list the content if someone is looking for it. Joeturner 07:17, 25 April 2013 (PDT)
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