Appropedia:Village pump/2021

@Emilio, Sophivorus Is Map broken for other people? It is just a wall of text for me at the moment. --Lonny (talk) 07:15, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lonny Fixed! It was going through some issues so I disabled it temporarily. Hopefully it should work ok now. Sophivorus (talk) 12:14, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sophivorus Great. Thanks! --Lonny (talk) 19:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all and @Sophivorus, I've been experimenting with Template:Wikipedia excerpt and this feels to me like a really useful thing to help us develop location and CAS pages.

It then leads me to wondering if a couple of similar but slightly different templates might be possible?

The first would help develop a section (subtitle) of an Appropedia page by including the intro text from a wikipedia article eg Newham#Education for sustainability could have a further subtitle 'Bow Creek Ecology Park'?

The second would help improve a section (subtitle) of an Appropedia page by including the section (subtitle) text from a wikipedia article? Thanks Philralph (talk) 12:04, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi, I'm glad you're finding the template useful! Your first request seems quite straightforward. Is this what you mean? Or do you mean creating a template that automatically inserts a subtitle before the Wikipedia excerpt? If so, then I think it's actually better to manually insert the subtitle, because subtitles inserted via templates have trouble with the [edit] button and are confusing when editing via the visual editor. As to your second request, it's a bit more complicated but doable, I'll add it to my task list! Sophivorus (talk) 12:28, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Newham#Education for sustainability just perfect! Thanks. Philralph (talk) 14:07, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi, good news! Today I was able to implement your second request: it's now possible to excerpt specific sections of Wikipedia articles using the syntax documented at Template:Wikipedia excerpt#Sections. Hope this helps! Sophivorus (talk) 23:10, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Magic! @Sophivorus. This is going to be so, so useful! Massive thanks. Philralph (talk) 11:32, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi again! I added a couple more features to Template:Wikipedia excerpt: a "paragraphs" parameter to specify how many paragraphs you want, and a "sentences" parameter to specify how many sentences you want. The first may be useful for excerpting more concise introductions, while the second may be useful for excerpting definitions. See the template documentation for some examples. Hope it helps! Sophivorus (talk) 14:33, 27 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Sophivorus, great to have this extra flexibility. Philralph (talk) 12:35, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus & @Emilio, getting some thoughts about this. What do you think of the ideas below? Too ambitious? Too much duplicating what others are already doing? Likely to be copyright problems? Etc?

This would be primarily for location or area pages, or climate action sections of a page.

Initially some fairly simple data to be included, eg

• target date - year
• Carbon reduction target - nature of target eg zero carbon, carbon neutral, etc.
• Organisation - name and website or reference link
• Climate emergency declaration - date of declaration (as exact as available), eg UK dates listed on Declare a climate emergency. There's also cedamia.org, which has a copyright symbol on its homepage, but dates of declaration likely to be ok to use?
• Climate assembly - website or reference link ...List of climate assemblies
• Action plan - website or reference link
• Action plan dates - start and end date
• Action plan published - date
• Climate emergency centre - website or reference link eg UK listing of areas on handbook Climate emergency centre

future development: emissions monitoring data, including time series, as suitable data sources identified, combining with population data and geo-location data?

to answer my own questions: I'd only initially be testing this out for a few, mostly UK pages, so maybe not too ambitious. Use of the infobox on local pages, so in a context of local info which probably no-one else doing, so in that sense at least not really duplication. Climate emergency declarations by their nature a matter of public record, so no reason to expect any copyright problems. No problem at all if this seems an unsuitable time to develop something like this. (forgot to sign earlier post!) Philralph (talk) 15:29, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi! Sorry for not replying earlier, I've been giving some thought to this and did some tests to try to imagine how it may work. However, I don't think I fully grasp what you're thinking of yet, and also there may be things about infoboxes you're not considering yet. I generally dislike writing long answers (I prefer to DO rather than talk) but this one may have to be.

First, I just created Template:Infobox area with most of the parameters you suggested. I think that "action plan published" is too much detail, and "action plan dates" is actually two parameters (start and end), so I skipped those for now, but feel free to add them yourself if you want to or to experiment with the infobox as much as you want. I only added the infobox to Greenwich to test it out and demonstrate it, so no real harm would be done if you play with it! Notice also how Greenwich already appears on the map.

Second, for technical and conventional reasons, which I may explain if requested, it's important that pages with infoboxes have only ONE infobox and on the very top of the page. So infoboxes for specific sections, such as an infobox for "climate action sections", would be problematic (we may however create other templates for such sections). Also, there should be a strict correspondence between the infobox type, and the page type. So for example, organization pages use the organization infobox, device pages use the device infobox, etc. Therefore, the area infobox I created should only go in area pages (and at the very top of them). We could rename the infobox to "location" or "region" if you want, but the point is that other types of entities, such as countries for example, will need their own infobox. Some of your suggested parameters (like "climate emergency centre") didn't seem to apply very well on the country level (am I right?), so that's why I created an area infobox. Creating a country infobox would be a natural next step. What other geographical entities are we dealing with? Cities?

Let me know if this makes sense to you and what are your thoughts about it. Once we agree on these things, I'll be happy to help you create the rest of the infoboxes as well as some user-friendly forms to fill them, cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 14:22, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sophivorus Hi! Thanks for this! Yes, all makes sense to me and I think I'm getting all you say in Second paragraph. At the moment it would seem that areas, cities and countries would be the 3 geographical entities to be dealt with. Not sure at the moment if there'd be much difference between areas and cities at least as far as the climate data is concerned, but I guess you're saying that for other reasons other types of entities should have their own infobox? Yes, you're right about climate emergency centres, for now at least.

I'll get round to some experimenting/playing/testing, then check back with you. Thanks again, cheers! Philralph (talk) 15:59, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus, I've tried out the Template:Infobox area on Greenwich, Surrey and Camden, which I think between them use all of the climate action parameters. I may do a few more, but also it'd be good now, or whenever might be possible, to try a few cities and perhaps also countries. I'd need you to set up the templates for me. Thanks. Philralph (talk) 18:14, 22 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi! I just created the Template:Infobox city. It's basically a copy-paste of the area infobox, changing the word "area" for "city". However, I do expect them to differentiate eventually, but let me know if you think they can be somehow merged. Tomorrow I'll create Template:Infobox country, promise! Kind regards, Sophivorus (talk) 17:06, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi again! I've created the basic Template:Infobox country. It's very similar to the others but without a couple parameters and with an extra parameter called "capital". Again, I expect it to evolve over time. Tomorrow I'll create user-friendly forms to help you easily add and edit the infoboxes! Sophivorus (talk) 16:17, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi yet again! Today I created the Form:Country, Form:Area and Form:City, check them out! You can use them to easily add/edit the infoboxes of countries, areas and cities, respectively. Once a page has its infobox, a convenient "Edit with form" button will appear next to "Edit". Hope it helps! Sophivorus (talk) 13:30, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus, fantastic! I'm sure that'll be a great help. Many thanks! Philralph (talk) 14:39, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi again! As you may have noticed, we're transitioning from "infoboxes" to "databoxes" (compare for example Solar Charged Lawnmower with FiltAirs DIY air filter). For this reason, I just replaced the three infoboxes I created for you before for the new Template:Climate action data. See for example Surrey, Camden, Frome, Greenwich, Manchester, Nottingham and Wales. Also notice the use of Template:Location data to set the location of the pages on the Map. I trust you'll like the new system, which seems to me closer to your original request and has many other advantages. In any case, when we set up our talk with User:Emilio, we can discuss this and other issues in more detail. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 14:08, 11 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An edit has been made to the Ethical consumerism page, which includes both helpful editing and a link added to external links. I can thank the contributor for the helpful edits but I'm aware of the need to be sensitive about anything that might be construed as advertising.

As I remember it may have been suggested for something similar in the past, that a link such as this could be included on the user's page (rather than the article).

I'm also wondering if this could be relevant to, or lead to an opportunity re Appropedia talk:Supporters. Kathy is this something you might have thoughts on? Thanks. Philralph (talk) 11:33, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Phil, I understand and support the idea of having a page with a list of entities like the one in your article. We are not looking to be a marketing or advertising page, but rather a knowledge-sharing website :) Kathy Nativi (talk) 20:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Update, second link reverted today. Message left on User talk:Folk & copied to Talk:Localism. Notice a number of edits over the last week, some of which may be seen as helpful, whereas others might be viewed as inappropriate (have reverted 2 of these, but the rest might need looking at), Philralph (talk) 16:04, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

update: aggressive spamming today by this user, now blocked for 2 weeks. Have reverted CAS pages, but some other pages likely to need attention. Philralph (talk) 09:50, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! --Lonny (talk) 23:57, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph, Lonny I hadn't replied to this, but all changes were reverted. :) Emilio (talk) 01:13, 19 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Emilio, Sophivorus, Philralph Please see new user TomStanton's question at Talk:Agrivoltaics (and his other contributions). --Lonny (talk) 07:10, 27 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, done a short reply to start off at Talk:Agrivoltaics, Philralph (talk) 09:39, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Hopefully Sophivorus or Emilio can also help answer. --Lonny (talk) 19:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On user pages, e.g. User:Tzapilin and User:Rebasbury I am seeing a floating error code (little yellow/orange !) that yields errors like: "english" was not recognized as a supported language code. Also clicking the search property yields ¡No results! Is that being worked on? Thanks, --Lonny (talk) 19:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Lonny Hi! Yes, I'm going through some restructuring of the semantic properties related to languages. Should be fixed by tomorrow. Sophivorus (talk) 22:32, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! And nice work. --Lonny (talk) 21:54, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus, I'm guessing you are the person to ask about this.

Whilst I can see the value of replacing dead links with links to an archived version of a web page, I've been noticing a concerning number of what might be called 'false positives'. By this I mean replacing a link which works fine for me (checked after a replacement) with an archive version which might not work and so be in effect a newly created dead link. I've even seen a recently added (about a month ago) link replaced. I've also see an archived link itself replaced with second archived link in the address (?) which looks like 'overkill' (?)

I've been noticing these false positives for some time, but a couple of recent examples: from Ireland, Biology.ie & Green Sod Ireland & from just one section of Bristol, Bristol#Food activism: Bristol Food Network & Windmill Hill City Farm

Perhaps one of my main concerns is the spread of these (newly created) dead links if dead links script is used too often. I would have thought it shouldn't be necessary to check the same article for dead links more than say once a year, or perhaps even every two years? Of course, the above examples aren't enough of a sample to really see how widespread this problem might be, but I'm a little bit daunted by the thought of having to keep rechecking hundreds of CASwiki pages manually far too often! Philralph (talk) 11:09, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi! Thanks for rising this totally reasonable concern. I've also noticed a few false positives (live links being archived) but through the power of wishful thinking, I hoped they weren't too common. Luckily however, it wouldn't be too difficult at all to enhance the dead links script to recheck archived links and replace them for plain links when responsive! I'm adding this to my task list, so please don't bother with many more manual fixes yet! As to the cause of the false positives, the script waits for a response for a few seconds and if it doesn't get it, it assumes a dead link. Maybe it should wait for longer. There may also be other causes for false positives that I haven't thought of yet. Also, regarding the frequency of the script running, I agree that having it run once a year sounds about right, however we had a problem with an early version of the script that prevented it from finishing, so we had to run it several times in order for it to finish. Anyway, in short, I'll improve the script soon so that it fixes its own misdeeds and once that's done, it shouldn't be necessary to run it again this year. Kind regards, and thanks again for the report! Sophivorus (talk) 12:03, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus, thanks for your reply! I'm happily reassured! Cheers! Philralph (talk) 14:12, 15 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Sophivorus (talk) 13:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all! As you've probably noticed, we just changed the default skin from Vector (the Wikipedia skin) to Poncho, a skin we've been developing, testing and fine-tuning for several months. Poncho features a clean, responsive and modern design, coherent with the default mobile skin (Minerva). It's designed to put content center-stage and to integrate well with portal pages such as GSTC, Solar or FR. We really hope you like it, but please don't hesitate to share any feedback, concerns or issues you may have! Sophivorus (talk) 18:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Sophivorus, love the great new super clean design! Philralph (talk) 08:57, 17 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can you fix it? - Thanks Joshua Pearce (talk) 16:00, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@J.M.Pearce Fixed! Sophivorus (talk) 23:07, 23 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

India community action (recently moved India page), page name not displaying? Philralph (talk) 15:49, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

now sorted, (header had been included under See also) Philralph (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Buen día comunidad. soy nueva en este proceso, alguien me hablo de su pagina pero no supe como usarla. Accidentalmente hice un cambio en el Browse map, cambiando la información introductoria de ese item. por favor alguien podría explicarme como puedo ingresar la información de mi emprendimiento a esta página.

@Re-Usa Ordiri Textil Resuelto, véase Re-Usa Ordiri Textil, ¡gracias! Sophivorus (talk) 13:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While running the dead links script, I noticed a great amount of dead Dropbox and Google Drive links, probably with documentation files that have been shared on Appropedia but lost. Although it's not a great solution, banning these links might be a way to encourage people to share files through more sustainable platforms or to upload to Appropedia. What are your thoughts? —Emilio (talk) 00:58, 20 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Emilio I could add dropbox.com and drive.google.com to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. A friendly warning would probably be better but I don't think this is possible with the current software. A new extension would be needed. Sophivorus (talk) 13:16, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's worth a try. Emilio (talk) 14:36, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done! Sophivorus (talk) 12:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Sophivorus, Emilio Hi, I recently came across the Near You sidebar test on United States. It looks very promising, but I'm thinking...

1. It needs more space
2. Does it need to be near the top of the page?

Re the space, something like the map on El Salvador, eg near full screen width would be better, at least in some cases, depending on the shape of the area?

Re the position on the page, similar listings I've put lower down on some pages: so the logic is stuff about the area of the title, then just before the 'see also' section (of which is a type, though very important type) local communities / (near you), within the larger area, eg South East England#Local communities in South East England (I do quite like the way the gallery is currently displaying), India (States, cities, projects?), etc.

So I'm wondering if a map, including page previews from hovering over the links, would be the best option generally (as standard)? (But still use the location data near top of page?) (I'm still a bit hazy as to why some previews include an image and others don't?)

I can see the usefulness of similar maps for topic and resource pages; not got very far with this yet, but eg recently set up a Ecosystem restoration page, and from search I see that there are probably some projects already on Appropedia that it would be good to link to under a heading like Local Ecosystem Restoration Community Action Projects (examples). What do you think? Happy to chat again about this kind of stuff some time fairly soon if that might seem like a good idea? Philralph (talk) 15:27, 27 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

update, no rush but just wanted to add that United States, failed to load for me today. Background task taking too long? Also last time I looked I'm not sure links to State pages were included anywhere. This can be done via a listing / gallery if it's too problematic to do via a map? Thanks, and just to emphasise, really, no rush! Philralph (talk) 16:43, 14 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Philralph Hi! Sophivorus and I have been discussing this, and we promise to get back to you soon! We can definitely find a time to chat this month, does this work for you? —Emilio (talk) 18:39, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Emilio, Sophivorus Hi, anytime from the 16th would be good for me, Cheers Philralph (talk) 16:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Recently User:PedroK and me started an experiment by renaming all compost bin projects to the following format:

• How to make a <ADJECTIVE> compost bin (<AUTHOR>)

For example:

• How to make a compost bin (CCAT 2008)
• How to make a tumbling compost bin (CCAT 2017)
• How to make a small worm compost bin (Dana)
• How to make a kid-friendly compost bin with jars (Lorelei)

Our reasoning was that most users wanting to make a compost bin will google "how to make a compost bin" (see https://trends.google.com/) so having the projects named otherwise is wasting impact potential. However, we cannot just call all compost bin projects "how to make a compost bin", the software requires they be called differently. Adding the author between parenthesis works well and also helps us quickly identify the projects internally, but why not also add an adjective or two to appeal to users seeking for specific compost bin varieties? And so we arrived to the current convention.

We also did the same with the solar cooker projects. They are now all under observation until December 31 to see if there's actually any traffic increase. If there is, then we would like to rename all other projects in a similar fashion. In the meantime, please feel free to share your thoughts, objections, support, suggestions, etc. Cheers! Sophivorus (talk) 12:46, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We recently realized that Google actually hides pages with similar titles from the same domain, so this naming strategy is actually not useful or even deleterious. Sophivorus (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]