Editing User:Teratornis/Tasks

This page contains notes about some things I have done, am doing, or might like to do on {{SITENAME}}. Initially my focus is on adding features to the site.<ref name="metapedianism">On Wikipedia, users who focus on the internal workings of Wikipedia{{w|WP:EIW}} more than on article{{w|WP:WIAA}} content are [[meta:Metapedianism|metapedians]].</ref> Later I would like to focus on content more than the wiki-techno stuff. But "later" might be a long time, because there is so much wiki-techno stuff.<ref name="help_me">If anyone wants to help, see: [[User:Teratornis/Tasks#Intern tasks]].</ref>

This page is mostly a scratchpad for my own use, so some things here at some times might not make sense to other people. Since the view counter suggests quite a few people are viewing this page, I'm trying to document what I'm doing so anyone else<ref>Well, anyone with some knowledge of [[Wikipedia:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]] internals should be able to understand this page. I try to link most of the jargon terms to pages that define them; those pages are usually on [[Wikipedia]] or another Wikimedia Foundation{{w|Wikimedia Foundation}} site.</ref> can understand it. It you have any questions, corrections, comments, or requests for assistance please leave them on the [[User talk:Teratornis/Tasks|talk page]] for this page, or on my [[User talk:Teratornis|user talk page]].

== Administrative tasks ==

Since April 4, 2011, I'm an [[Appropedia:Administrators|administrator]] on Appropedia ([[Special:ListUsers/Teratornis|verify]]). This section is for notes about things I do on Appropedia as an administrator.

=== Administrator references ===

* [[Appropedia:Administrators]]

Pages to check regularly:

* [[Special:NewPages]] 
* [[Special:RecentChanges]] - look for spammers
* [[Special:BlockList]] - to see what usernames Appropedia's administrators have blocked.

=== Spam fighting ===

14:26, 6 April 2011 (PDT): Appropedia has been getting a steady stream of (automated?) spam attacks. Each day, someone or something creates several new accounts, and each new account typically creates a nonsense page. The nonsense pages follow a consistent pattern. The point of the nonsense seems to be injecting external links, presumably to spam sites. I haven't really checked yet.

Wikipedia usually has the best technology and organization to address seemingly every wiki-related problem. Spam fighting is no exception. ''To-do'': read the pages linked from:
* [[wikipedia:WP:EIW#Spam]], such as:
** [[mw:Manual:Combating spam]]
Presumably, whatever spam attack someone tries against Appropedia, they or someone else probably already tried against Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's technically proficient users have probably devised a countermeasure. Wikipedia (especially the English Wikipedia) is the largest and most attractive target for spammers, because it is the most-viewed wiki, and Wikipedia articles tend to have very high PageRank{{w|PageRank}} in Google search results. Wikipedia is also (probably) the best-defended wiki, which means spammers probably attack other less-viewed wikis after failing to make durable edits on Wikipedia.

Look for other discussion about our spam problem:

* MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist and MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist via the extension - [[mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist]]
* MediaWiki:Titleblacklist and MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist via the extension - [[mw:Extension:Title_Blacklist]]
* [[Appropedia:Anti-spam and anti-vandalism measures]]
* [[mw:Extension:Bad Behavior]]
* [[mw:Extension:AbuseFilter]]
* [[User talk:Lonny#Suggestion for a wiki extension installation]]
* [[mw:Extension:User Merge and Delete]]
* [[Special:ListGroupRights]] - shows the various user permission levels, and (among other things) how the various anti-spam tool permissions allocate to them

14:16, 7 April 2011 (PDT): look at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. Perhaps I can add patterns to block the URLs that the spambot is injecting. The [[Special:Log/delete|deletion log]] reveals a common pattern. Spambot pages display external links with the form:

# A domain name, usually different for every spam page, but always ending in <code>.com</code> for the examples I saw.
# The string: <code>.com/forum/index.php?topic=</code>
# An argument for the <code>topic=</code> parameter, always or usually consisting of a long alphanumeric string, e.g. <code>k9oMjE3fHwxMzAxNTIxNzY3fHwxOTUyfHwoRU5HSU5FKSBNZWRpYV</code>...

The pattern looks consistent enough to block with a regular expression in MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. The extension appears to use [[wikipedia:Perl Compatible Regular Expressions|Perl Compatible Regular Expressions]] (PCRE) syntax. I will have to test the effect of adding a regular expression to the blacklist, by attempting to add a sample of the spambot's URLs to a test page. I'll mention this on [[Appropedia:Village pump#Blacklisting the spam]].

Try using [[Special:LinkSearch]] to see if we have any more of these URLs floating around on Appropedia. Look at [[wikipedia:MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist]]

22:26, 7 April 2011 (PDT): I'm sure that anyone who spams Appropedia has probably spammed lots of other wikis. Thus we can imagine that every spamming attack that we see on Appropedia has also been seen by the administrators of other wikis. Maybe there is a central clearinghouse where wiki administrators can compare notes on how they defeat the various spamming attacks. Look at: [[mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist]].

13:31, 16 April 2011 (PDT): an alternative is to use MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. Probably it would be enough (for now) to block creation of any page with the string "Jobs" in the title. [https://www.appropedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Jobs&fulltext=Search A search on Appropedia for "Jobs"] finds only [[Jobs]] as a redirect to [[Employment]]. Few legitimate Appropedia users would ever seem to need to make a page title containing the word "Jobs". Thus it might be safe to blacklist. I will test this later when I have some time to observe the results. I need to figure out:

* What the user sees when trying to create a page with a blacklisted title pattern.
* Whether log entries show the number of such events.

Appropedia's ordinary users might not understand what is going on when they run afoul of a blacklisted pattern. I'd like to guard against creating unnecessary confusion.

10:13, 17 April 2011 (PDT): the spammer(s) have started using different page titles again, but the common element remains the URL pattern. Since all those URL patterns are similar, there might be a particular forum software package that the spammer targets, to put up the spam payload before going around to hit vulnerable wikis with links to it. Figure out the PCRE pattern that will block these links. Steps:

# Describe in words each component of the pattern.
# Determine the corresponding PCRE syntax.
# Add it to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist.
# Test the new blacklist entry by trying to save an offending URL on a [[User:Teratornis/Sandbox|sandbox page]].
#* If necessary, edit the pattern entry in MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist until it blocks the spam URL.
# Verify that the human user whose legitimate URL gets rejected gets a coherent error message that explains what to do (namely, ask an [[Appropedia:Administrators|administrator]] to add the URL to MediaWiki:Spam-whitelist).

10:33, 23 April 2011 (PDT): see further discussion at [[Appropedia:Village pump#Blacklisting the spam]]. [[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] implemented my suggestions, and his efforts seem to have stopped the creation of more spam pages like the recent batch. However, the spambot seems to be continuing to create new user accounts. See [[Special:Log]]. Make notes about the changes:

* A new entry in MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist:
 <nowiki>.*\.com\/forum\/index\.php\?topic=[a-z0-9]{50,}#TEMPORARY MEASURE AGAINST SPAM ATTACKS OF APRIL 2011. Remove when fundamental security problems are resolved, in case legitimate links fit this pattern.</nowiki>
* A new entry in MediaWiki:Titleblacklist:
 <nowiki>.*Jobs.* <autoconfirmed|casesensitive> # autoconfirmed: only autoconfirmed users are able to create such pages; casesensitive: don't ignore case when checking title for being blacklisted (spammers have specifically been creating "Jobs" pages with capital J).</nowiki>

=== Administrative requests ===

This is a place to list any requests I get from other users, which require administrator privileges to complete.

==== Pending requests ====
None at the moment.

==== Completed requests ====

These are administrative requests I made before I became an administrator. 

Thanks! Done!
* [[User talk:Teratornis#ParserFunctions|Install the ParserFunctions extension]] - installed by [[User:Jason Michael Smithson|Jason Michael Smithson]] on January 9, 2011.
* [[#Enabling subpages in the Template: namespace]] - enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 20, 2011.
* [[#template-documentation style class]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 20, 2011.
* [[#Style classes]] - 01:26, 21 January 2011 (PST): I'm listing the additional style classes I need in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] to make various templates work. Added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.
* [[#NavFrame styles]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 23, 2011.
* [[#Collapsible table styles]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 23, 2011.
* [[#Collapsible tables]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 23, 2011.
* [[#Highlighting the selected reference]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on February 6, 2011.
* [[#Other style classes]] - added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on February 6, 2011.

== To-do ==

This section is a summary list of things to do elsewhere on this page, so I can keep track.

* [[#License templates]] - the existing {{Tl|Copyvio}} template is for articles. We need another template like [[Commons:Template:Copyvio]] which is for media files. Figure out what to call it here. Look at Wikipedia's copyright violation notice templates to see what names they use.
** Port some more of the Creative Commons license templates from [[wikipedia:Category:Creative commons copyright templates]]. 

* [[#Index]] - document my method for using regular expression search and replace with sed{{w|sed}} to convert a list of page names from a category from the [[Special:Export]] page into the wikitext format for an index page.
** Figure out what to do about Appropedia's naming convention. When I index a page that violates the naming convention, I am propagating the violation (therefore teaching people by example not to follow the convention). In an ideal world I would rather not do that. But to avoid this problem I would have to enforce the naming convention by renaming{{w|WP:MOVE}} the page before indexing it. That's not a problem on Wikipedia, where users correct naming convention violations on sight, and there is no argument. But on Appropedia, the ''de facto'' naming convention seems to be rather weak. I'd rather seek consensus to follow the naming convention before I play the enforcer.

* [[#Shortcuts]] - make a shortcut for this page, (Done!) and section shortcuts for every section I might link from an edit summary.{{w|Help:Edit summary}} Update {{Tl|Shortcut}} to conform to the latest Wikipedia version, so it does not require double square brackets around its arguments. Update all transclusions{{w|WP:TRANSCLUDE}} of the template to the new syntax. Create several help pages that are missing on Appropedia, and shortcuts to link to them (see [[#Shortcuts to add]]).

* [[#Intern tasks]] - continue editing the list. Document examples. Refactor the [[ENGR 305 Interns Spring 2011]] page. Port a template like [[wikipedia:Template:User]] to Appropedia. Work out an example of retrieving the descriptive information for an image from Flickr. Port Flickr-related templates to {{SITENAME}} such as {{Tl|Flinfo}}, {{Tl|Flickr free}}, and (maybe) {{Tl|Location}} and {{Tl|Location dec}}. Write a help page: Appropedia:Flickr files (A:FLICKR), like [[commons:Commons:Flickr files]] ([[commons:COM:FLICKR]]).

== Index ==

I contributed to these index pages:

*[[Wikipedia:WP:EIW|Editor's index to Wikipedia]] (a few [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:Editor's index to Wikipedia|design suggestions]] to the primary author;{{w|User:John Broughton}} some editing)
*[[Commons:COM:EIC|Editor's index to Commons]] ([[Wikipedia:User:Teratornis/Notes#Editor's index to Commons|I did most of the editing]] by copying design elements from the Editor's index to Wikipedia)

Indexing a site is an effective (if laborious) way to learn what is on a site. Plus it makes one of the handiest ways to look stuff up. The Editor's index pages on Wikipedia and Commons are useful tools for answering questions on the Help desks of the respective sites, as well as for general reference when editing pages or uploading files. Since {{SITENAME}} is not very large (yet), a single index might contain links to article content as well as project pages and help pages. Wikipedia is too large for an index of this type to cover all the articles, so the Editor's index only covers the internal help pages and project pages of interest to editors, as well as links to external tools. Perhaps the nicest feature of the index is that it groups related pages together, and we can assign shortcut links to particular entries. In this way one can direct another user to all the pages that document a specific feature with one compact link, for example:
*[[Wikipedia:WP:EIW#Search]] - links to pages and external sites relating to searching Wikipedia
*[[Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright]] - links to pages that describe copyright and licensing issues for media on Commons<ref name="copyright">I learned some things about copyright law and how it affects open content projects by compiling the links under [[Commons:COM:EIC#Copyright]] that I might otherwise have taken much longer to discover, since I am not a lawyer.</ref>

I've noticed that {{SITENAME}} has some pages with similar titles and overlapping content that do not always link to each other. An analytical index would group all the similar pages together, like categories do, but I like having everything on one page so I can use <!-- {{keypress}} is not here yet --> <code>Ctrl-F</code> search. An index page can include annotations on its entries, unlike category pages which only list titles. Sometimes a page title is not descriptive enough. Annotations also add keywords and synonyms to make a fatter search targets.

=== Index of Appropedia ===

22:43, 9 January 2011 (PST): I finally got around to starting an Index of Appropedia on my personal offline wiki (see [[mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick]] for the method I use to run it), on which I have installed all the templates, style classes, and other gizmos I need. Once I have implemented those gizmos on Appropedia, I'll copy the index here.

==== Dependencies ====

13:27, 10 January 2011 (PST): list the depencies of the Index of Appropedia as I am currently editing it offline. These are additional pages I will need to port to Appropedia along with the Index, to make it work here.

===== Templates for Index pages =====

13:27, 10 January 2011 (PST): See also the larger [[#Templates]] section below. These are templates I'm using in my prototype index page (my habit is to remain true to the Wikipedia versions as far as possible):

* [[Template:AlphanumericTOC]]{{Tlw|AlphanumericTOC}} (similar to {{Tl|AtoZ}}([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:AtoZ|backlinks]]))
* [[Template:Ambox]]{{Tlw|Ambox}}
** Template:Ambox/core{{Tlw|Ambox/core}}
* Template:Anchor{{Tlw|Anchor}}
* Template:Key press{{Tlw|Key press}}
** Template:Key press/core{{Tlw|Key press/core}}
* [[Template:Mbox]]{{Tlw|Template:Mbox}}
* Template:Namespace detect{{Tlw|Namespace detect}}
* [[Template:Notice]]{{Tlw|Notice}} - was already here, but different than Wikipedia's version. I will make a {{Tl|Notice w}} to be a copy of Wikipedia's version and see how that looks.
* Template:Shortcut{{Tlw|Shortcut}}
** Template:Shortcut compact{{Tlw|Shortcut compact}} - I need this one to avoid the [[#Template:Shortcut compact|double-bullet problem]] on nested list items that have shortcuts.<ref name="double_bullet">See some discussion of the undesirable interaction of the {{Tl|Shortcut}} template with nested list items in: [[wikipedia:Template talk:Shortcut#Double-bullet problem in lists]].</ref>
* Template:Unicode{{Tlw|Unicode}}
* [[Template:W]] - Appropedia's version works slightly differently than [[Commons:Template:W]] but I can adapt to Appropedia's version. The Index of Appropedia should link to Wikipedia pages only sparingly, when important concepts are not yet adequately documented on Appropedia pages. I would prefer to get the most logical w: interwiki link prefix added to Appropedia. That's what I've seen on every other non-Wikipedia wiki I can recall editing on.

I also have a [[Help:Index pages]] page to document the formatting and philosophy of index pages. It has content similar to:

* [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Editor's index to Wikipedia/About]]
* [[Commons:Commons:Editor's index to Commons/About]]

If a site may have more than one index page ([[#Other index pages|and we might]]), it is more efficient to abstract the common documentation to a separate help page, and use the /About subpage of each index page to document any specific instructions. (For example, to describe what belongs on that index page.) The Help page also uses templates, some in common with the Index page, and these additional:

* [[Template:Cite web]]{{Tlw|Cite web}}
** [[Template:Citation/core]]{{Tlw|Citation/core}}
** [[Template:Citation/make link]]{{Tlw|Citation/make link}}
* Template:Reflist{{Tlw|Reflist}}
* Template:Tag{{Tlw|Tag}}
* [[Template:Tl]]{{Tlw|Tl}}
* [[Template:Tlsp]]{{Tlw|Tlsp}}
* [[Template:Tlx]]{{Tlw|Tlx}}
* {{Tl|Start new index page}} - I have this on my offline wiki. I'll port it here eventually. We don't really need it until someone wants to create additional index pages.

12:37, 10 February 2011 (PST): almost all the above links that were red links finally turned blue, i.e. we finally have (I think) all the template dependencies necessary to make high-quality index pages on {{SITENAME}}. So I can start on that next. Indexing Appropedia will probably take me about a month of calendar time.

==== Naming convention ====

20:14, 3 March 2011 (PST): Appropedia users do not consistently follow Appropedia's naming convention, which is basically the same as Wikipedia's naming convention. See:

* [[Appropedia:Policies#Voluntary Guidelines]], item 12: recommends to follow Wikipedia's naming convention, see the following links. The heading of this section itself violates the naming convention.
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Article titles#Article title format]] ([[wikipedia:WP:LOWERCASE]])
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Naming conventions (capitalization)]] ([[wikipedia:WP:NCCAPS]])
** "For page titles, always use lowercase after the first word, and do not capitalize second and subsequent words, unless the title is a proper noun. For multiword page titles, one should leave the second and subsequent words in lowercase unless the title phrase is a proper noun that would always occur capitalized, even in the middle of a sentence."
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Section headings]] ([[wikipedia:WP:MOSHEAD]]) - section headings follow the same rules as page titles

General references:
* [[wikipedia:Capital letter]]
* [[wikipedia:Capitalization]]
** [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capitalization&oldid=202279519#Headings_and_publication_titles Headings and publication titles] - some interesting material in an old revision of the Capitalization article on Wikipedia that someone decided to delete:
<div style="background: #eeeeee; padding: 1em;"><!-- This tag substituted from Template:Divgraystart -->
Advantages for using "sentence case" instead of "title case" in English-language house styles include:
*Sentence case preserves information about proper nouns (e.g., "A nice woman" ''vs'' "A [[wikipedia:Nice|Nice]] woman").
*Sentence case avoids complicated additional rules in style guides regarding which exact form of title case is desired.
*Title case can cause confusion with case-sensitive scientific notation, such as
**variables (''n''-ary, ''N''-ary, or ''N''-Ary vectors?),
**unit symbols (“Precision Voltage Measurements Up To 30 MV” – millivolt or megavolt?).
*While it is relatively easy for computers to convert sentence case into some forms of title case, the converse is extremely difficult, as it would (at least) require an algorithm for recognizing proper nouns. This has made sentence case preferable for bibliographic databases. ([[wikipedia:BibTeX|BibTeX]] is a prominent counter-example of software that tries to automatically convert title case into sentence case, but satisfactory results require substantial manual intervention.)

An advantage of "title case" can be that, with this convention, each title or heading is already capitalized like a proper noun and therefore easily usable and recognizable as the name of a publication or section, although this works only well for short titles. When quoting sentence-case titles, some form of delimiters or emphasis (e.g., quotation marks, italics, [[wikipedia:hyperlink|hyperlink]]) may have to be added to achieve the same effect.
</div>

The inconsistent naming on Appropedia puts me in an uncomfortable position - as I add page titles to the index, I have to match their existing letter case to make the links work. That means the index will propagate their departures from the naming convention. Which could seem as if I am endorsing the departures.

On Wikipedia, this is never an issue. When a page title or section heading deviates from Wikipedia's style, any editor can [[wikipedia:WP:BOLD|boldly]] change it on sight, knowing that all the other experienced editors will support the change. New users quickly learn to follow the convention this way, and that eliminates one more thing to be uncertain about.

On Appropedia, it is less clear whether I should change hundreds of page names as I index them, or just propagate the deviations from the weak standard. This is an example of how weak rules on a wiki impede collaboration and synergy. Having different rules from Wikipedia creates uncertainty for people who learned to edit there.

On Wikipedia, the rules are mostly so well-established that one rarely needs to think about the reasons for them. All those debates played out years ago and are buried somewhere in archived talk pages. Going to a small wiki is like starting over - the rules one takes for granted on Wikipedia are suddenly up for grabs again. Try to find the original justifications for Wikipedia's house style on capitalization.

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)#Why capitalize first word only for titles of articles?]] - a discussion from 2008 that does not really answer the question of why

Digging farther into the past:

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)/Archive 1#Moved from the pump:]] - [[wikipedia:User:Brion VIBBER|Brion Vibber]], Wikimedia Foundation's former Chief Technical Officer, weighs in on the original reason for making the first letter of a title case-insensitive. Namely, so wikilinks will work whether the wikilink appears at the beginning of a sentence (where the first letter of the first word of the title would be capitalized) or later in the sentence (where the first letter would appear in sentence case).
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (capitalization)/Archive 1#Article titles]] - mentions the inline linking justification, dating from 2003 (when Wikipedia was just two years old). 

Apparently the naming convention on Wikipedia was settled early on. That might make it hard to find the original debate on the convention, if there is any. Maybe the only justifications are:

* Any consistent style is better than letting everybody do whatever.
* Sentence case for titles makes them easier to link when they appear in sentences, since you could type a title as you would type the same sequence of words in a sentence, and not have to link to a title in a different title case. 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Article_titles&oldid=335624959 The oldest revision of Wikipedia:Article_titles] (the first draft was in November 2001 by [[wikipedia:User:Larry Sanger]], considered by many the co-founder of Wikipedia) explicitly mentions the inline linking problem, and explains why lowercasing as much of a title as possible works best on a wiki. Titles that you can link to from within a sentence, without having to introduce misleadingly capitalized words, are most in keeping with the wiki philosophy of making everything as quick to edit as possible (the word "wiki"{{w|Wiki}} meaning "quick" after all). On a wiki, titles are not just things we stick on article for people to look at, but they are link targets. We expect people to link to titles. So the titles should be in the form that is easiest to link to, without requiring people to do extra work to create redirects,{{w|Help:Redirect}} or hide the real titles with piped links.{{w|Help:Piped link}} I think piped links came later in the development of MediaWiki; the first revision of the manual page for piped links is from 2004. Thus in the early days of Wikipedia, it might not have been possible to display a link as anything but the page name of the link destination, in its exact case.

Going forward, a reasonable strategy would be to start a discussion on [[Appropedia:Village pump]] about making Appropedia's naming convention stronger. The discussion should include high-volume Appropedia contributors, those who follow and don't follow the naming convention. If the prolific contributors reach consensus to have a strong naming convention, then we can enforce it by moving (renaming) pages currently in violation, and editing section headings that are in violation. The chances of hard feelings or edit wars will be less if the most active contributors reach consensus first. When applying the convention on an existing article, we can link to a shortcut such as A:LOWERCASE from the edit summary{{w|Help:Edit summary}} that will link to the statement of Appropedia's convention.

=== Other index pages ===

==== Separate index pages for Appropedia content and editing help ====

17:00, 10 January 2011 (PST): initially I'm editing a combined index of Appropedia content (articles, portals) and internal pages (in the Appropedia: and Help: namespaces, and some of their talk pages). People who only read Appropedia would be primarily interested in the article content, and would likely be uninterested in the internal pages. People who both read and edit Appropedia would be interested in both. 

Readers typically outnumber editors on a [[Wikipedia:wiki|wiki]] by 100 to 1000 times. Including internal content in an index of Appropedia along with article content would introduce material that would likely be uninteresting (and possibly confusing) to most users of the index. However, initially I won't worry about that, as the number of internal pages on Appropedia is not very large. On larger wikis (such as the English Wikipedia) there are thousands of internal pages, easily enough to justify an index just for them.{{w|WP:EIW}} Perhaps in the future as Appropedia grows, the editing community might decide to split the index into separate index pages for readers and editors.

16:57, 8 February 2011 (PST): I'm still wavering on whether to split the index into separate pages for readers and editors. A combined index will contain lots of self-references{{w|WP:SELFREF}} mixed in with article content. On Wikipedia they frown on such mixing. On Appropedia maybe we aren't as worried about self-references because we might like to encourage most readers to become editors. Even though a wiki is never "finished", one might argue that Wikipedia is closer to maxing out its remit, if we can judge from the astounding throughput of its [[wikipedia:WP:AFD|Articles for deletion]]. Wikipedia's growth has been slowing over the last several years, while the barrier to new article creation seemingly continues to rise, suggesting Wikipedia is getting closer to having all the articles it could potentially have in light of its self-imposed limitations on content.{{w|WP:NOT}}

Appropedia seems to be relatively farther from having all the content it could potentially have. For example, it seems only a small fraction of people doing sustainability-related things in the world are writing about their work here yet.<ref name="no_cincy">To illustrate Appropedia's still-sparse coverage of its topic area, {{Google|site:appropedia.org Cincinnati|searching Appropedia with Google for: Cincinnati}} (the name of my town) produces a paltry eight hits as of February, 2011, and only some of them appear to be about sustainability-related topics in my locale. While Cincinnati is hardly a hotbed of environmental progress, there is enough going on here to write about on Appropedia, and that pattern probably repeats around the world.</ref>

==== Index pages for external content ====

===== Index of sustainability articles on Wikipedia =====

16:57, 8 February 2011 (PST): How about writing an index (on Appropedia) of sustainability articles on Wikipedia?

People who have interests in [[sustainability]] and [[appropriate technology]] (AT) want to find and share information. Some of this information falls within Wikipedia's [[wiktionary:remit#Noun|remit]], being both sufficiently notable (by [[wikipedia:WP:NOTABLE|Wikipedia's definition]]) and encyclopedic.{{w|WP:ENC}} Appropedia's mission has been to focus on the complementary subset of sustainability and AT information which falls outside Wikipedia's remit: procedural (how-to) knowledge,{{w|WP:NOT#HOWTO}} original work,{{w|WP:NOR}} and topics with less notability and/or little or no coverage in reliable, published secondary sources.{{w|WP:RS}} See:
* [[Appropedia:About]]
* [[Appropedia:Appropedia is different from Wikipedia]]
* [[Appropedia:Encyclopedic material]]
* [[Appropedia:Vision and mission]]
* [[Appropedia:What Appropedia is not]]
Not having all possible encyclopedic content about sustainability and AT on Appropedia creates some problems:
* We have a lot of jargon terms with no local pages to define them, so we have to link to Wikipedia a lot.
* Wikipedia can be an inefficient or even unpleasant venue for writing about some topics relevant to Appropedia, for example the climate change articles on Wikipedia have seen extensive editing disputes there, pitting scientific editors against climate change disinformers who know how to game the system.{{w|WP:GAME}} Wikipedia's civility{{w|WP:CIVIL}} policy, for example, enables the factually incorrect side to "win" against the factually correct side, if they can goad someone to say something impolite. (At risk of oversimplification, this played a role in the sanctioning of William Connolley{{w|Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley}} for example.<ref name="suicide_pact">The Constitution may not be a suicide pact,{{w|The Constitution is not a suicide pact}} but in disputes about climate science Wikipedia can sometimes seem to value its rules more than having a habitable planet in the year 2100. The notion of what's actually at stake in the climate change controversy seems to carry no weight in Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee rulings. Regardless of who is "right" in an editing dispute, such disputes are a fantastic waste of time and editing talent that would be better spent on building content.</ref>) Similar disputes have played out on Wikipedia between creationists and evolutionists (i.e., scientists), but in that case enough Wikipedia editors understood the science to more or less drive the creationists off to their own wikis such as CreationWiki and Conservapedia. Fewer Wikipedia editors understand climate science, and more are confused by climate change disinformers as of 2011.
* By not mirroring or forking as much Wikipedia content as we can, we (maybe) make Appropedia somewhat less inviting to Wikipedia editors who share our interests, because there is less on Appropedia which would immediately look familiar to them.
* Sustainability is an enormous topic. Getting a summary view of it can be difficult. Having an index here of Wikipedia's extensive coverage on sustainability topics might make it easier to find gaps in Appropedia's coverage.
* Encyclopedic articles are inherently more collaborative than non-encyclopedic articles. That's because encyclopedic articles merely re-factor previously published content, so anybody who can read can edit them. Non-encyclopedic content (such as: original work; advocacy articles that take a particular point of view;{{w|WP:POV}} and less notable topics known to few people) is probably editable by fewer people. For example, an unpublished appropriate technology project can only be written about by the people who have firsthand knowledge of it. The result is, possibly, that people who never edit encyclopedic content will take longer to learn how to collaborate productively with large numbers of distant strangers, which is what wikis are ideally all about. 

Anyway, despite the occasional difficulties of building content on Wikipedia, a lot of useful encyclopedic content is there. It would be interesting to index all of Wikipedia's content relating to sustainability and AT, using an index page on Appropedia. Why on Appropedia? Because:
* Such an index would be useful to Appropedia readers and editors.
* Writing any sort of page on Wikipedia subjects one to the whims of other Wikipedia editors, some of whom may be at best indifferent to the aims of Appropedia.
** Wikipedia does have a lot of topic index pages,{{w|Special:PrefixIndex/Index of}} but the style they use is simpler and (I believe) less effective than the style of the Editor's index to Wikipedia{{w|WP:EIW}} which we are free to duplicate on Appropedia. Deviating from an established style on Wikipedia, even in the direction of improvement, requires spending time to persuade other editors who do not share our interests. Convincing them would be easier if we have our own deletion-proof page on Appropedia to use as a working demo.
* If we write the index page first on Appropedia, and later someone forks it to Wikipedia, the Wikipedia copy will need to contain an attribution template linking back to Appropedia (to comply with the source attribution requirements of the {{Tl|CC-by-sa-3.0}} [[Appropedia:Copyrights|license]]). This would potentially inform more Wikipedia editors and readers about Appropedia.

== Categories ==

=== Uncategorized pages and categories ===

21:42, 13 January 2011 (PST): Categorize all the uncategorized pages and categories:

* [[Special:UncategorizedPages]]
* [[Special:UncategorizedCategories]]
* [[Appropedia:Categorization]]
* [[:Category:Category needed]]

This should familiarize me with the category structure of Appropedia. Some of the uncategorized pages are stubs, unwiki, possible test pages by new editors, or spammed. Apply the templates: {{Tl|Stub}}, {{Tl|Wikify}}, and/or {{Tl|Delete}} as pages warrant. If no suitable category exists, use {{Tl|catneeded}}.

=== Categories I created ===

17:42, 16 January 2011 (PST): when I create new [[Help:Categories|categories]],{{w|Help:Category}} list them here. In some cases, when Appropedia needs a new category, it also needs one or more new parent categories to connect the new category to the existing category tree. My philosophy is to follow Wikipedia's category scheme where applicable, often with simplifications. Usually Wikipedia has more finely-divided categories than Appropedia needs, due to Wikipedia's much larger size. Small text indicates each existing Appropedia category I subcategorized under.

* <small>[[:Category:Appropedia administration]]</small>
** Category:Redirects
*** Category:Unprintworthy redirects
**** Category:Redirects from shortcuts (the {{Tl|R from shortcut}} template will need these)
*** [[:Category:Soft redirects]] (I edited the already existing {{Tl|Soft redirect}} template to categorize pages into here)
*** Category:Redirects from other templates (the {{Tl|R from other template}} template will need this)
* <small>[[:Category:Templates]]</small>
** [[:Category:Documentation templates]]
** Category:Template documentation
** Category:Utility templates
*** [[:Category:Link templates]]
**** [[:Category:Link templates]]
***** Category:Search templates
****** Category:Google search templates
**** [[:Category:Link templates]]
***** Category:Cross-reference templates
*** Category:Function templates <small>(but note the already existing: [[:Category:Format templates]] and Category:Function templates; maybe put those under Category:Utility templates too)</small>
**** Category:Media templates
***** Category:Graphic templates
**** Category:Image templates
***** Category:Image templates
**** Category:Table of contents templates{{w|Category:Wikipedia table of contents templates}}
**** Category:Typing-aid_templates{{w|Category:Typing-aid_templates}}
*** [[:Category:Meta templates]]{{w|Category:Wikipedia metatemplates}}
**** Category:Namespace manipulation templates{{w|Category:Namespace manipulation templates}}
*** Category:Message box templates
**** Category:File message boxes
** Category:Wikipedia templates
** Category:Templates from Wikimedia Commons
** Category:Templates by namespace{{w|Category:Templates by namespace}}
*** Category:File namespace templates{{w|Category:File namespace templates}}
**** Category:Image copyright templates{{w|Category:Wikipedia Image copyright templates}}
***** Category:Creative commons copyright templates{{w|Category:Creative commons copyright templates}}
***** Category:Public domain copyright templates{{w|Category:Public domain copyright templates}}
****** Category:USGov copyright templates{{w|Category:USGov copyright templates}}
**** Category:File maintenance templates{{w|Category:File maintenance templates}}
*** Category:Talk namespace templates
**** Category:Talk header templates
*** Category:Template namespace templates{{w|Category:Template namespace templates}}
*** Category:Category namespace templates{{w|Category:Category namespace templates}}
** Category:Statistics templates{{w|Category:Statistics templates}}
*** Category:Bar chart templates{{w|Category:Bar chart templates}}
** Category:Redirect templates{{w|Category:Redirect templates}}
* <small>[[:Category:Appropedia maintenance]]</small>
** Category:Cleanup categories
*** Category:Template parameter issues
**** [[:Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters]]
**** Category:Key press template parameter needs fixing
**** Category:Message box parameter needs fixing{{w|Category:Message box parameter needs fixing}}
**** Category:Shortcut box first parameter needs fixing{{w|Category:Shortcut box first parameter needs fixing}}
**** Category:Articles with broken citations{{w|Category:Articles with broken citations}}
** [[:Category:Archived pages]]
* <small>[[:Category:Agriculture]]</small>
* <small>[[:Category:Energy]]</small>
* <small>[[:Category:Sustainability]]</small>
** [[:Category:Sustainable farm energy alternatives]]
* [[:Category:Images]]{{w|Category:Wikipedia images}}
** [[:Category:Free files]]{{w|Category:Free images}}
*** Category:Creative Commons files{{w|Category:Creative Commons images}}
**** Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 files{{w|Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 images}}
**** [[:Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 files]]{{w|Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 images}}
*** [[:Category:Public domain files]]{{w|Category:Public domain images}}
**** Category:PD other reasons{{w|Category:PD other reasons}}
**** Category:Incomplete license{{w|Category:Incomplete license}}
**** Category:User-created public domain files{{w|Category:User-created public domain images}}
**** Category:Copyright holder released public domain files{{w|Category:Copyright holder released public domain images}}
**** Category:Public domain files ineligible for copyright{{w|Category:Public domain images ineligible for copyright}}
**** Category:United States government files{{w|Category:United States government images}}
*** [[:Category:GFDL files]]
*** [[:Category:GPL files]]
*** [[:Category:LGPL files]]
*** Category:Flickr files
** Category:Icons
** Category:Images for cleanup{{w|Category:Images for cleanup}}
*** Category:Images lacking a description{{w|Category:Images for cleanup}}
*** Category:Images lacking an author{{w|Category:Images lacking an author}}
*** Category:Files with unknown source{{w|Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source}}
* <small>[[:Category:Information technology]]</small>
** [[:Category:Television]]

=== Categories for users ===

20:58, 20 January 2011 (PST): examine and inventory Appropedia's categories for users. I see:

* [[:Category:Users by interest]]

It could use some more subcategories. The existing subcategories do not follow a consistent naming scheme, but I won't worry about that, as moving categories can be a nightmare without a bot to do the grunt work of updating all the pages in renamed categories.

* [[:Category:Helpers]] - is uncategorized at the moment. I should try to find all the user categories, and put them into a proper hierarchy so users can find the categories applicable to them.

=== Categories for images ===

15:18, 26 January 2011 (PST): Appropedia does not seem to have a comprehensive category structure for images (more generally: files), or if it exists I have not found it yet. I think there should be a fundamental category for images. There are many [[Special:UncategorizedFiles|uncategorized images]], including [https://www.appropedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=&title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=user&target=Teratornis&namespace=6&year=&month=-1 my several image uploads] (since I was not aware of suitable categories for them). I see these categories for some of Appropedia's images:
* Category:AT Photos
** [[:Category:Arcata marsh files]]
* Category:Useful files <small>(are the rest not useful?)</small>

Search for more:
* {{Google|site:appropedia.org "Category:" photo|Search Appropedia's Category: namespace for: photo}}
* {{Google|site:appropedia.org "Category:" image|Search Appropedia's Category: namespace for: image}}

16:46, 1 February 2011 (PST): [[Special:Statistics]] says Appropedia has 12,600 uploaded files. Category talk:Useful images has some early (2006) discussion about the need for image categories. It seems very little happened as a result, given that hardly any image categories exist. [[:Category:Fundamental]] does not list an image category, although Category:Useful files is a subcategory of [[:Category:User resources]] which does appear in [[:Category:Fundamental]]. I think with more than 12,000 images we can justify a [[:Category:Images]] as a fundamental category. I'll ask on [[Appropedia:Village pump]] since little seems to have occurred since the discussion in 2006.

22:24, 1 February 2011 (PST): as indicated by the red links that turned blue, I created [[:Category:Images]].

== Shortcuts ==

12:12, 15 January 2011 (PST): inventory the shortcuts on Appropedia:

* [[Special:PrefixIndex/A:]]
* [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Shortcut]] - looking through these backlinks reveals H: as another shortcut prefix, and other irregular shortcuts such as [[wn]] which is a shortcut to an article.
* [[Special:PrefixIndex/H:]]

See whether we have lists and categories to keep track of them. Compare to:
* [[Wikipedia:Project:Shortcuts]]
* [[Wikipedia:Category:Redirects from shortcuts]]
* [[Commons:Commons:Shortcuts]]

See whether any other pages need shortcuts and do not yet have them. Well, actually the set of pages that need shortcuts would be most if not all Help: and Project: (Appropedia:) pages that have durable reference value. So, look for all of those pages that do not already have shortcuts.

I am interested in shortcuts because they are essential for communicating rapidly and effectively on a wiki (on talk pages{{w|Help:Talk page}} and in edit summaries{{w|Help:Edit summary}}). See for example the answers to questions on Wikipedia's Help desk.{{w|WP:HD}} Questions there are repetitive, and respondents are able to answer many of them in part with shortcut links. When a relevant help page, guideline, or policy page exists, linking to it is much better than paraphrasing extemporaneously, both to save labor, and to avoid error. Wiki users can collaboratively edit their internal documentation pages to present the clearest and most definitive statements of each rule. Re-writing such rules on the fly each time a situation comes up will often produce inferior results. If someone ''can'' state a principle better than the documentation states it, they should improve the documentation. Always referring to the documentation enables the "ratcheting" property of a wiki, helping to insure that improvements accumulate and continuously "ratchet" the wiki forward. Ignoring the documentation and [[wiktionary:Wing it|winging it]] un-ratchets the wiki backwards, as few people can improvise on the same level as the best current practice.

Make this template to categorize shortcuts on Appropedia:

* {{Tl|R from shortcut}}

Shortcuts I made:

* [[A:SRD]] (to [[Appropedia:Soft redirect]])
* [[A:ADMIN]] (to [[Appropedia:Administrators]])
* H:CREATE (to [[Help:Creating a page]])
* [[A:TQ]] (to [[Appropedia talk:Technical questions]])
* [[A:DEV]] (to [[Appropedia:Site development]])
* [[WN]] (to [[Wikis for sustainable development]]) (to replace the lowercase [[wn]] already existing)
* U:TTASKS, and U:TT (to this page)
* U:TTPORTING (to [[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice]])
and more that I'm not listing here, particularly all-uppercase versions of existing lowercase shortcuts.

12:12, 18 January 2011 (PST): I added a [[Appropedia:Shortcuts#List of shortcuts|list of shortcuts]] to the already existing [[Appropedia:Shortcuts]] guideline page. To-do next: 
# Add all the remaining shortcuts that I can find to the list. Done!
# For each page that has at least one shortcut in lowercase or mixed case, make sure at least one all-uppercase shortcut links to the page. It would be nice to standardize everyone's thinking on all-uppercase shortcut names (to distinguish them from ordinary page names, and to make them more readable when they appear in the small font that the {{Tl|Shortcut}} template uses). Done!
# For each page linked from a shortcut, make sure the {{Tl|Shortcut}} template appears on the page.
# Add the {{Tl|R from shortcut}} template to each shortcut page. Done!
# Subdivide the list of shortcuts by type (as in the list here: [[Commons:Commons:Shortcuts]]). Done!

16:41, 18 January 2011 (PST): I'm almost finished with my first pass through the existing shortcuts. I just have to look at the rest of the [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Shortcut|backlinks]] from {{Tl|Shortcut}} to find other shortcuts with nonstandard formats.

23:13, 18 January 2011 (PST): while doing that, I came across [[Appropedia:Gnome tasks#Shortcuts for Appropedia namespace pages]] which mentions some of the things I just did.

23:16, 18 January 2011 (PST): after I finish inventorying all the existing shortcuts, the next logical step would be to create a shortcut for every page in the Project: and Help: namespaces that has substantial content, and no shortcut to it already.

00:28, 19 February 2011 (PST): find out the status on [[User:Chriswaterguy]]'s task of repairing all the shortcuts he broke by enabling A: as an alias to Appropedia: (the Project: namespace). See: [[User talk:Chriswaterguy#Red links]].

14:21, 9 March 2011 (PST): another problem - the {{Tl|Shortcut}} template here is a copy of an old (2006) version of [[wikipedia:Template:Shortcut]]. The old version requires you to put double square brackets around shortcut links; the new version on Wikipedia requires you not to. I'd like to update {{Tl|Shortcut}} to follow the new style, but that will require updating all transclusions of it on {{SITENAME}}. That will be tedious, but no worse than many other [[Appropedia:Gnome tasks|gnome tasks]] I have done or will do.

16:28, 5 April 2011 (PDT): create the documentation subpage first: Template:Shortcut/doc. Then go through the transclusions{{w|WP:TRANSCLUDE}} in [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Shortcut]] and remove the now-unnecessary double square brackets from all existing instances of {{Tl|Shortcut}}.

=== Shortcuts to add ===

01:15, 4 April 2011 (PDT): when I edit on Appropedia, I like to add shortcut links in my edit summaries to help pages that explain aspects of what I did. I do this routinely on Wikipedia. Edit a list of the most common style violations I correct on Wikipedia and the shortcuts to cite when correcting them. It would be nice to have corresponding shortcuts on Appropedia. Initially they could even target a page that just summarizes and links to the corresponding Wikipedia manual pages, before we write proper manual pages for them on Appropedia. Make a list of the shortcuts I routinely use on Wikipedia, but aren't here yet.

* [[wikipedia:WP:LOWERCASE|WP:LOWERCASE]], [[wikipedia:WP:MOSHEAD|WP:MOSHEAD]], [[wikipedia:WP:CAPS|WP:CAPS]] - links to sections describing Wikipedia's naming convention as it involves capitalization (of article titles and section headings).
* [[wikipedia:WP:REFPUNCT|WP:REFPUNCT]] - how to arrange footnote references with sentence punctuation.
* [[wikipedia:WP:LAYOUT|WP:LAYOUT]] - Wikipedia's guide to article layout.
* [[wikipedia:WP:LEAD|WP:LEAD]] - the lead section of an article: what it is, and how to write it.
* [[wikipedia:WP:LINK|WP:LINK]] - documents the various kinds of links on a MediaWiki wiki.
* [[wikipedia:WP:WIKIFY|WP:WIKIFY]] - links to a WikiProject page that defines the basic process of wikifying (see: [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Glossary#Wikify]]). To "wikify" an article means to edit it so it looks as if it was written by someone who read the friendly manuals.
* [[wikipedia:WP:TRANSCLUDE|WP:TRANSCLUDE]] - defines the verb "transclude" which is one way to display a [[wikipedia:Help:Template|template]].
* [[wikipedia:WP:SUBST|WP:SUBST]] - defines another way to display a template.

In general, when editor ''A'' writes something on a wiki, and editor ''B'' comes along later and edits it to conform to the wiki's guidelines or policies, editor ''A'' was probably not aware of whatever guideline or policy he or she unknowingly violated. This can make editor ''B'''s edit hard for editor ''A'' to figure out. Leaving an [[wikipedia:Help:Edit summary|edit summary]] that links to the manual page that explains the edit is therefore an important way for editor ''B'' help editor ''A'' self-educate.<ref name="newbie">When I was a new user on Wikipedia, an important part my of learning was to look in [[wikipedia:Help:History|page histories]] to see what other users did to my edits. To understand what they were doing, I tried to look up the relevant manual sections. Since most editors neglect to provide links in their edit summaries, looking up the manuals they were merely alluding to was unnecessarily difficult for me. I determined not to inflict such unnecessary effort on other wiki users.</ref>

== Wrapper pages ==

21:35, 16 July 2011 (PDT): Quick definition: a wrapper page is a page on {{SITENAME}} combining the features of: 
* A dictionary definition - the page briefly defines its topic, and possibly its relevance to {{SITENAME}}
* A [[Help:Soft redirect|soft redirect]] - the page links to one or more detailed pages elsewhere (such as Wikipedia)
* A [[Wikipedia:Stub|stub]] - {{SITENAME}} users may choose to expand the page into a real article in the future, but this is not the original intent of the person who creates the wrapper page

See [[User talk:Chriswaterguy#Porting articles from Wikipedia]] for some discussion of the problems that wrapper pages might address, and [[User talk:Chriswaterguy#Whether and how to distinguish wrapper pages from soft redirects]] for discussion about that. 

{{SITENAME}} has a problem with [[Help:Redlinks|red links]],{{w|WP:RED}} namely that we have a lot of them (which further implies that {{SITENAME}} is still early in its development, that is we have only done a small fraction of the editing we would need to do to adequately cover our chosen subject area). [[Special:WantedPages]] shows thousands of page titles that appear as red links on {{SITENAME}}. Many of these red links are to page titles that exist on Wikipedia but not here. For example there are thousands of topics from science, engineering, geography, and other topics that underlie sustainability and appropriate technology, but are not directly part of them. We are unlikely, for example, to write articles defining all units of measurement that articles on other topics might mention. On Wikipedia, one of the most valuable features is the enormous number of general knowledge topics that have articles. Thus you can write about almost anything, and put useful [[wikipedia:Help:Link|links]] on most of the jargon terms in the article. On {{SITENAME}} we end up with lots of red links if we do that, pointing to articles that may never exist here. The {{SITENAME}} community is not large enough to write a general knowledge encyclopedia that duplicates as much of Wikipedia's coverage as our primary topics rest upon.

The purpose of a red link on a wiki is to encourage other users to create articles. But many of the red linked topics might never have articles on Appropedia because they aren't topics that many Appropedia editors would be interested in writing about.

There are several options, each with pros and cons:
* Just leave red links languishing forever. That's what we seem to be doing by default.
** Pros: no labor cost.
** Cons: vast numbers of red links are ugly and demotivating to prospective editors. They indicate a wiki that is neglected. People want to edit on a thriving wiki, not a wiki where they have to do everything by themselves.
* Remove the red links and let people look topics up on their own.
** Pros: low labor cost.
** Cons: if a term is important and unfamiliar enough to cause many people to look it up, someone will undoubtedly try to link it again. That's the point of a wiki, to have links on anything that isn't immediately understandable from context.
* Replace the red links with [[wikipedia:Help:Interwiki linking|interwiki links]] to Wikipedia articles.
** Pros: low labor cost, particularly if we do what most other non-Wikipedia wikis do and implement a compact <code>w:</code> interwiki link prefix to Wikipedia (instead of the more verbose <code>[[wikipedia:]]</code> prefix we have now). 
** Cons: send people to Wikipedia, and maybe they don't come back. Plus we lose any control over presentation. The Wikipedia article on a topic might not have the structure most suitable for people who approach that topic from the standpoint of sustainability or appropriate technology. 
* Create articles quickly by copying their content from Wikipedia.
** Pros: has the potential to give us some high quality content for much less labor than writing it from scratch ourselves.
** Cons: 
*** Copying slabs of text verbatim from Wikipedia causes Google to reduce our [[wikipedia:PageRank|PageRank]]. (I'm not sure what the exact impacts would be - it sounds bad, but how bad is it?)
*** Even though porting articles from Wikipedia is easier than writing from scratch, porting can still be a lot of work. A Wikipedia article may contain dozens of links to other articles on Wikipedia that we don't have, so by fixing one red link we might introduce dozens more. Wikipedia articles may use templates we don't have, belong to categories we don't have, etc. Little by little we could end up having to port all of Wikipedia here, since it is all internally connected.
*** A Wikipedia article may contain much more information about a topic than is really relevant to {{SITENAME}}, and figuring out how to edit it down imposes more work.
* Create wrapper pages on Appropedia.
** Pros: fairly low labor cost. Might not damage our PageRank. Allows for future expansion into real articles if someone gets motivated. Provides a quick local definition of a jargon term, with a link to the corresponding Wikipedia article for users who need more information.
** Cons: labor cost is not zero. We need to create thousands of wrapper pages for all our red links that correspond to articles on Wikipedia. This might take five to ten minutes for each one, once someone knows what to do.

To-do: make the pages:

* Help:Wrapper page (H:WRAP)
* Category:Wrapper pages
* {{Tl|Wrapper page}}
* some example wrapper pages to illustrate the concept

23:24, 18 July 2011 (PDT): differences between wrapper pages, stubs, and soft redirects:

* A stub is a short article in need of expansion. A user creates a stub specifically to solicit contributions from other editors. 
** {{SITENAME}} has a [[:Category:Stubs]] and a {{Tl|Stub}} template, but no Appropedia:Stub page analogous to [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Stub]]. <small>(I could create Appropedia:Stub as a wrapper page, then.)</small>
* A soft redirect is a short article that links to information about its topic on an external site. The original intent of the person who creates a soft redirect is that {{SITENAME}} will never have an article about that topic, as it is unsuitable for inclusion here. Thus it is not a request for contributions from other editors.
** {{SITENAME}} has a [[:Category:Soft redirects]], a {{Tl|Soft redirect}} template, and a [[Help:Soft redirect]] page.

A wrapper page falls somewhere between a stub and a soft redirect. It is on a topic that might be suitable for inclusion in {{SITENAME}} as a real article, or as a project or help page, but is likely to be on a generic topic or foundational topic that is already well-covered on a site like Wikipedia. Thus to create a real article on the topic here might be a waste of resources that could be better spent writing about topics that other sites ignore or exclude. For example, on {{SITENAME}} we might write whole articles about particular applications of a generic technology, such as the compost or gray water scheme of a particular site. These particular applications might be insufficiently notable for Wikipedia, which might have generic articles about composting and gray water. Those probably are not the best examples because we already have real articles for them.

== Articles that probably should be Help: or Project: pages ==

16:37, 18 January 2011 (PST): while roaming around Appropedia, I'm finding some pages that are (probably) not in the most appropriate namespace. I'll try to get a ruling on whether to move these.

* [[Red links]] - by analogy with [[Wikipedia:Project:Red link]], I'd prefer this as [[Appropedia:Red link]] (or the plural version if we like that trailing 's').
* [[A:Trau dich]] - German language version of [[Appropedia:Be bold!]], but with a title masquerading as a [[Appropedia:Shortcuts|shortcut]]. The page is not a shortcut, but an actual content page suitable for the Project: (Appropedia:) namespace.
* [[Sois courageux]] - French language version of [[Appropedia:Be bold!]]. The page also displays the shortcut [[A:BOLD]] which links to the English version, rather than the French version. It looks like namespaces and shortcuts confused both the German and French translators.
* [[Droits d'auteur]] - French language version of [[Appropedia:Copyrights]].
* [[Interwiki map]] - should be a Help: or Project: page. Compare to [[Wikipedia:Help:Interwiki linking]], but see [[meta:Interwiki map]]. Metawikipedia is a site entirely dedicated to Wikimedia Foundation projects, so its article space corresponds to the project space on Wikipedia.

17:01, 24 January 2011 (PST): [[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] approves of [[User_talk:Chriswaterguy#Red_links|moving these]] to the Appropedia: namespace. I'll move them sometime after he restores the shortcuts having A: prefixes that turned into red links.

* [[Wikipedia articles, categories and WikiProjects]] - another one I ran across.

== Templates ==
{{further|[[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice]]}}
21:38, 9 January 2011 (PST): import some templates{{w|Help:Template}} from [[Wikipedia]]. Some of these are necessary for the [[#Index|Index]], while others are just too cool to live without. Some templates are necessary to simplify porting article content from Wikipedia (for example, when an article uses Wikipedia's popular citation templates,{{w|WP:CITET}} navigation templates,{{w|WP:NAVBOX}} etc.). It's hard for users to port articles from Wikipedia when the result is a mess of red links{{w|WP:RED}} that can't easily be fixed without some complex template importing.

Even though I am only importing a small subset of Wikipedia's vast template collection, this is still a complicated task. Just one more reason why [[Making a successful new wiki is hard]].

=== Wanted templates ===

00:21, 28 January 2011 (PST): who needs horror films when you can browse through:

* [[Special:WantedTemplates]]

Appropedia users have copied-and-pasted a lot of pages from other wikis (especially from Wikipedia) which were using templates on their original wikis. Templates that are not here. <small>Every time you make a red link, God kills a kitten.</small>

=== Template documentation templates ===
Done!

21:38, 9 January 2011 (PST): Some time after the founding of {{SITENAME}}, Wikipedia largely adopted a new style for documenting templates on /doc subpages.{{w|WP:DOC}} Porting the necessary components to {{SITENAME}} would simplify porting other templates from Wikipedia. There are advantages to documenting templates on subpages:
* The documentation wikitext is easier to distinguish from the template code.
* The page histories{{w|Help:History}} are separate, making it easier to tell when someone is editing the actual template or just the documentation.
* Template transclusion{{w|WP:TRANSCLUDE}} might be slightly faster, since the MediaWiki parser does not have to read through the documentation every time.

The templates are:

* [[Template:Documentation]] ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation}}
** [[Template:Documentation/doc]] ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation/doc|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation/doc}}
** Template:Documentation/preload ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation/preload|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation/preload}}
* [[Template:Documentation subpage]] ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation subpage|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation subpage}}
** [[Template:Documentation subpage/doc]] ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation subpage/doc|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation subpage/doc}}
* Template:Documentation/docname ([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Documentation/docname|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Documentation/docname}}

The backlinks to the above templates show some earlier attempts by other users to port templates from Wikipedia that use documentation subpages. These attempts did not work, but they will work when I get the template documentation templates working on Appropedia. 

From my previous experience with porting the template documentation templates to other MediaWiki wikis, I am aware of two pre-requisites: a CSS style class must be in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]], and the Template: namespace{{w|Help:Namespace}} must allow subpages. 

22:04, 20 January 2011 (PST): [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] installed the prerequisites. I ported the template documentation templates to {{SITENAME}}, cleaned up some interwiki links that broke, and now they seem to work. That means on {{SITENAME}} we can use Wikipedia-style fancy template documentation. This will make Wikipedia templates easier to port here, since we can preserve the subpage documentation structure.

23:45, 20 January 2011 (PST): there is one little problem. Clicking the edit link to create a new /doc subpage for a template, when the /doc subpage does not already exist, opens a blank edit window instead the window being pre-filled with some boilerplate text. I think I had that problem on another wiki where I did this port. 22:00, 23 January 2011 (PST): Ah, I missed Template:Documentation/preload; adding it now.

==== Enabling subpages in the Template: namespace ====
:''Done! [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] did this on January 20, 2011.''

The MediaWiki default setting is not to have subpages there. See if any subpages are there now:

* [[Special:PrefixIndex/Template:]]

[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] tried to make one here (suggesting that he sees the value of implementing the template documentation machinery here):

* Template:Olpc bundle/doc

but that is not a true subpage at the moment, as indicated by its lack of an automatic link to the parent page at the top of the subpage. I will ask for help from someone who has shell access to the {{SITENAME}} server:

* [[Appropedia:Village pump#Template documentation templates]]

According to my notes from doing this on another wiki, I need someone to add this code to [[mw:Manual:LocalSettings.php|LocalSettings.php]]:

 /** Which namespaces should support subpages?
  * See Language.php for a list of namespaces.
  */
 [[mw:Manual:$wgNamespacesWithSubpages|$wgNamespacesWithSubpages]] = array(
        [...]
        '''NS_TEMPLATE       => true,'''
        '''NS_TEMPLATE_TALK  => true,'''
        [...]
 );

==== template-documentation style class ====
:''Done! [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] did this on January 20, 2011.''

The template documentation templates also need a <code>template-documentation</code> style class in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]. It's not there as of 22:21, 9 January 2011 (PST). The code to add is (from [[wikipedia:MediaWiki:Common.css]]):

 /* For template documentation */
 .template-documentation {
     clear: both;
     margin: 1em 0 0 0;
     border: 1px solid #aaa; 
     background-color: #ecfcf4; 
     padding: 1em;
 }

==== Other style classes ====
Done! ''added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 6, 2011.''

15:18, 31 January 2011 (PST): I overlooked a couple more style classes that the {{Tl|Documentation}} template needs in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]], from this code snippet:

 <nowiki><div id="template_doc_page_transcluded" class="dablink plainlinks">{{</nowiki>

The CSS code we need is:

 <nowiki>/* Hatnotes and disambiguation notices */
.rellink,
.dablink {
    font-style: italic;
    padding-left: 2em;
    margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
.rellink i,
.dablink i {
    font-style: normal;
}</nowiki>

=== External link templates ===

These generate links to external sites.

==== Search templates ====

* [[Template:Google]]{{Tlw|Google}} - creates a link to Google search
* Template:Google custom{{Tlw|Google custom}} - creates a link to Google custom search to search all or part of a specified Web site
** <small>23:17, 20 January 2011 (PST): To-do: edit the documentation examples to show searching on Appropedia rather than Wikipedia.</small>
* Template:Google Wikipedia{{Tlw|Google Wikipedia}} - creates a link to search Wikipedia with Google
* Template:Google Appropedia - not on Wikipedia, a template to search all of Appropedia that Google can see, similar to {{Tl|Google Wikipedia}}
* Template:Appropedia searches - not on Wikipedia, but similar to [[Wikipedia:Template:Help desk searches]], based on [[Wikipedia:Template:Navbox]], contains Google custom search links to Appropedia namespaces
** I believe that template needs [[#navbox style classes]] to display correctly.
* Template:Google templates{{Tlw|Google templates}} - displays a list of Google-related templates, to display in the See also sections of their documentation pages
* Template:Flickr free{{Tlw|Flickr free}} - searches Flickr{{w|Flickr}} for freely licensed images

===== Repair Template:Google custom =====

13:03, 14 August 2011 (PDT): Google seems to have changed something on their end that broke my original version of {{Tl|Google custom}} everywhere (here, on Wikipedia, etc.). It stopped working recently with a strange and apparently misleading error message:

<div style="background: #eeeeee; padding: 1em;"><!-- This tag substituted from Template:Divgraystart -->We're sorry...

... but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
See [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?&&answer=86640 Google Help] for more information.
</div>

Fortunately another Wikipedia user found the solution and told me about it. To-do: correct all other instances of similar templates that need the same correction.

* [[wikipedia:User talk:Teratornis#Google custom is broken]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Teratornis&oldid=444426998#Google_custom_is_broken permanent link])
* [[wikipedia:Template talk:Google custom#Broken link]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Google_custom&oldid=444463900#Broken_link permanent link])
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Searching for forum contributions in Wikipedia forum throws goggle error message]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&oldid=444837918#Searching_for_forum_contributions_in_Wikipedia_forum_throws_goggle_error_message permanent link]) 
** [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 93#Searching for forum contributions in Wikipedia forum throws goggle error message]]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AGoogle_custom&action=historysubmit&diff=444463841&oldid=388886679 the diff showing the repair]:
** Change this: <nowiki>http://www.google.com/</nowiki>'''custom'''?domains=...
** to this: <nowiki>http://www.google.com/</nowiki>'''search'''?domains=...

Apply this change to:
* {{Tl|Google custom}} Done!
* {{Tl|Google Appropedia}} Done!
* {{Tl|Google Wikipedia}} Done!
The {{Tl|Appropedia searches}} template should not require any changes because it transcludes {{Tl|Google custom}} to create its search links.

==== Translation templates ====

* Template:Google translation{{Tlw|Google translation}} - creates a link to Google Translate, to translate a specified Web page to a specified language
* Template:Translate Appropedia - not on Wikipedia, but analogous to [[Wikipedia:Template:Translate Wikipedia]] which machine-translates articles from the various language Wikipedias

==== Other external links ====

* [[Template:YouTube]]{{Tlw|YouTube}} - links to a video on YouTube

An alternative method is to display videos on Appropedia via [[mw:Extension:Widgets]]. See Widget:YouTube and for example [[:Category:Queens Applied Sustainability Group#Current Projects]]. Widgets are probably better when you want to display one or only a few videos on a page. Links with the YouTube template would be better (or at least more compact) if you want to link to many videos on a page.

* {{Tl|Flinfo}} ([[commons:Template:Flinfo]]) - calls [[commons:User:Flominator|User:Flominator]]'s tool to retrieve information from a photo on Flickr and put it into an {{Tl|Information}} template

=== Messagebox templates ===

23:54, 6 February 2011 (PST): these come in handy for lots of things:

* [[Template:Mbox]]{{Tlw|Mbox}}
* [[Template:Ambox]]{{Tlw|Ambox}}
** Template:Ambox/core{{Tlw|Ambox/core}}
* [[Template:Ombox]]{{Tlw|Ombox}}
** Template:Ombox/core{{Tlw|Ombox/core}}
* [[Template:Tmbox]]{{Tlw|Tmbox}}
** Template:Tmbox/core{{Tlw|Tmbox/core}}
* [[Template:Imbox]]{{Tlw|Imbox}}
* [[Template:Cmbox]]{{Tlw|Cmbox}}
* Template:Mbox templates{{Tlw|Mbox templates}}
* Template:Mbox templates see also{{Tlw|Mbox templates see also}}
* Category:Message box parameter needs fixing{{w|Category:Message box parameter needs fixing}}

Somewhat annoyingly, several messagebox templates want to use the same icon under different filenames:

* [[:File:Cmbox notice.png]]{{w|File:Cmbox notice.png}}
* [[:File:Ambox notice.png]]{{w|File:Ambox notice.png}}
* [[:File:Imbox notice.png]]{{w|File:Imbox notice.png}}

Other dependences, most of which I had already ported here:

* {{Tl|Tl}}
* {{Tl|Tn}}
* {{Tl|Tlc}} - this was already here, but does not work the way [[wikipedia:Template:Tlc]] works, which interferes with template porting. See if I can move that template to another name and port the Wikipedia version here.
* {{Tl|Tlf}}
* {{Tl|Tlsp}}
* {{Tl|Tlw}}
* {{Tl|Name}}

Look at [[Help:Notices]] and try to integrate the documentation about the existing notice boxes with these Wikipedia-style message boxes. I'm not going to change the kazillion existing notice boxes.

==== Template:Essay ====

{{further|[[Appropedia:Village pump#Changing another person's project page]]}}
13:38, 1 November 2011 (PDT): this template would come in handy for marking pages as containing essays. 

* {{Tl|Essay}}{{Tlw|Essay}}
** Template:Essay/doc{{Tlw|Essay/doc}}

{{SITENAME}} has some pages that do not adequately differentiate between the various types of assertions:

* Generally accepted facts (e.g., the height of [[wikipedia:Mount Everest|Mount Everest]]). 
* Facts generally accepted by the scientific community but rejected by one or more groups outside of science (e.g., [[wikipedia:Scientific opinion on climate change|Scientific opinion on climate change]], [[wikipedia:Evolution|Evolution]]).
* Assertions generally accepted by the {{SITENAME}} community.
* Assertions for which principled disagreement exists within some relevant community (e.g., within science, within the environmental movement, or within the {{SITENAME}} community).
* Assertions which are mere statements of faith, without adequate supporting evidence (e.g., the supernatural claims of religions, parapsychology, alternative medicine, etc.).

Wikipedia avoids the problem in article space via its [[wikipedia:WP:NEUTRAL|neutral point of view]] policy. When a [[wikipedia:WP:CONTROVERSY|topic is controversial]], Wikipedia mentions and attributes the notable points of view on the topic, without giving [[wikipedia:WP:UNDUE|undue weight]] to [[wikipedia:WP:FRINGE|fringe views]]. 

On {{SITENAME}} many if not most users are trying in some sense to change the world, or at least to change some part of it, for example by eliminating poverty, eliminating the human caused portion of climate change, protecting ecosystems, etc. {{SITENAME}}'s mission itself, and the personal missions of many contributors, are advocacy efforts to some degree. On Wikipedia, [[wikipedia:WP:ADVOCACY|advocacy is for the most part forbidden]] (except advocating in favor of Wikipedia, in some appropriate locations such as project space). 

I'm thinking {{SITENAME}}'s [[Special:PrefixIndex/User:|user space]] could be a suitable outlet for many of the opinion pieces that currently exist in the article space. For example, I want to write some [[wikipedia:WP:SYNTHESIS|synthetic]]<ref name="synthesis">Wikipedia defines a "[[wikipedia:WP:SYNTHESIS|synthesis]]" as a collection of individual reliably-sourced claims that combine to advance a position not taken by any of the individual sources.</ref> material relating to the Keystone XL pipeline; namely, about what would actually have to happen to stop the pipeline extension from being built. I happen to think the ongoing protests against the pipeline are unlikely to be effective because they do not change the market fundamentals that are behind the push to build the pipeline. Until the environmental movement finds a way to change the fundamentals, it will not stop the pipeline using the current tactic of staging high-profile protests with small numbers of protesters, who often get arrested.

Note that the existing (short) Keystone XL pipeline article is already an opinion piece, using unquantified rhetoric from the protest movement ("dirty", "dangerous"). While the pipeline will undoubtedly have some effects on the environment (as do all existing oil pipelines), the article would benefit by quantifying the impacts and explaining the alternatives. Projects do not get built in a vacuum; oil companies want to build the pipeline because demand for its products exists. How much is this demand, who is demanding it, why are they demanding it, and what would have to change if the pipeline does not get built?

=== Navigation templates ===

See [[Wikipedia:WP:NAVBOX]] for information about these templates. 

* {{Tl|Navbox}}{{Tlw|Navbox}} - the Wikipedia version requires HTML Tidy{{w|HTML Tidy}} to be running on the wiki; see [[wikipedia:Template talk:Navbox]] for instructions on how to port this template from Wikipedia to a local wiki such as {{SITENAME}}. Basically you port from [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki/Template:Navbox]], a portable version that does not depend on HTML Tidy.
** {{Tl|Navbar}}, {{Tl|Tnavbar}}{{Tlw|Navbar}} - the portable version is [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki/Template:Navbar]]; TNavbar is a redirect{{w|WP:REDIRECT}} to the canonical Navbar.
** {{Tl|Transclude}}{{Tlw|Transclude}} - a supporting template that {{Tl|Navbox}} needs.

There are also [[#navbox style classes]] and collapsible table code to port. 00:24, 24 January 2011 (PST): [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] has added all the necessary code to [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] and [[MediaWiki:Common.js]], so the show/hide feature works. See for example the upper right corner of {{Tl|Appropedia searches}} which is based on {{Tl|Navbox}}.

01:11, 26 January 2011 (PST): list some groups of related pages that might benefit from navigation templates:

* Appropedia's Help pages. See:
** [[:Category:Appropedia help]]
** [[Special:PrefixIndex/Help:]]
** [[Appropedia:Shortcuts#List of shortcuts]]
* Appropedia's policy and guideline pages. 
* Appropedia's maintenance and to-do pages.
* Topic areas such as renewable energy, composting, climate change, etc. Basically anything that has a populated category can probably benefit from a navigation template to add to related articles.

=== Citation templates ===
Done! <small>However, I did not port over complete copies of all the citation template documentation subpages. Instead I just linked to the documentation on Wikipedia. That would be a good task for an intern. Also, I did not port the Harvard reference templates yet; another good job for an intern.</small>

23:26, 10 January 2011 (PST): Citation templates{{w|WP:CITET}} are common in Wikipedia articles. They provide several benefits over bare references.<ref>One benefit of citation templates that I like is the <code>archiveurl</code> field, which lets you specify a rot-proof{{w|link rot}} archived link of any page on a Web archive like [[Wikipedia:WebCite|WebCite]]. For example, see [[Help:Index_pages#cite_note-Leise2002-0|this reference]].</ref> Not having the basic set of citation templates on {{SITENAME}} makes it hard to port articles from Wikipedia to here, as many of the footnotes will break. 

* {{Tl|Cite web}}{{Tlw|Cite web}}
** {{Tl|Cite web/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite web/doc}}
** {{Tl|Citeweb}}<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Citeweb|backlinks]])</sup>{{Tlw|Citeweb}} - a redirect to {{Tl|Cite web}} that some pages here were trying to use
* {{Tl|Citation}}<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Citation|backlinks]])</sup>{{Tlw|Citation}} (the version currently on {{SITENAME}} needs a separate documentation subpage, and is broken due to lack of functional sub-templates); see: [[wikipedia:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Citation]] for sub-templates, which I list below:
** {{Tl|Citation/doc}}{{Tlw|Citation/doc}}
** {{Tl|Citation/core}}{{Tlw|Citation/core}}
*** {{Tl|Citation/core/doc}}{{Tlw|Citation/core/doc}}
*** {{Tl|Citation/identifier}}{{Tlw|Citation/identifier}} - there is no /doc subpage for this template
**** {{Tl|Hide in print}}{{Tlw|Hide in print}}
***** {{Tl|Hide in print/doc}}{{Tlw|Hide in print/doc}}
**** {{Tl|Only in print}}{{Tlw|Only in print}}
***** {{Tl|Only in print/doc}}{{Tlw|Only in print/doc}}
*** {{Tl|Citation/make link}}{{Tlw|Citation/make link}}
**** {{Tl|Citation/make link/doc}}{{Tlw|Citation/make link/doc}}
** Category:Cleanup categories{{w|Category:Wikipedia cleanup categories}}
*** Category:Template parameter issues{{w|Category:Wikipedia template parameter issues}}
**** [[:Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters]]{{w|Category:Pages containing cite templates with deprecated parameters}}
** [[:Category:Citation templates]] - This was already on {{SITENAME}}
* {{Tl|Citation error}}{{Tlw|Citation error}}
** {{Tl|Citation error/doc}}{{Tlw|Citation error/doc}}
** {{Tl|Namespace detect showall}}{{Tlw|Namespace detect showall}}
* {{Tl|Cite book}}([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite book|backlinks]]){{Tlw|Cite book}} - the version already on {{SITENAME}} had problems, I fixed it
** {{Tl|Cite book/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite book/doc}}
* {{Tl|Cite journal}}{{Tlw|Cite journal}}
** {{Tl|Cite journal/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite journal/doc}}
** {{Tl|Cite paper}} (redirect to {{Tl|Cite journal}})
* {{Tl|Cite news}}{{Tlw|Cite news}}
** {{Tl|Cite news/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite news/doc}}
* {{Tl|Cite press release}}{{Tlw|Cite press release}}
** {{Tl|Cite press release/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite press release/doc}}
* {{Tl|Cite conference}}{{Tlw|Cite conference}}
** {{Tl|Cite conference/doc}}{{Tlw|Cite conference/doc}}
* {{Tl|Reflist}}{{Tlw|Reflist}} - the template is already here, but is not the Wikipedia version

11:21, 11 January 2011 (PST): [[User:J.M.Pearce|J.M.Pearce]] adds [[Template_talk:Cite_book#Thank_you|a data point]] supporting my conjecture that the community needs these templates.

21:46, 27 January 2011 (PST): time to lock horns with these templates. 22:33, 27 January 2011 (PST): a quick test to see if the {{Tl|Citation}} template stack works here yet:
* <small>{{Citation
  |first=Christy
  |last=Smith
  |publisher=Duke Energy
  |title=GoGreen Indiana update letter
  |place=Plainfield, Indiana
  |date=2009-02-17
}}</small>
It seems to work. 22:40, 27 January 2011 (PST): a test of {{Tl|Cite book}}:
* <small>{{Cite book
  |url=http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html
  |chapterurl=http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/here-docs.html
  |title=Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
  |chapter=Chapter 19. Here Documents
  |first=Mendel 
  |last=Cooper
  |date=2010-03-17
  |accessdate=2011-01-06
}}</small>
22:56, 27 January 2011 (PST): a test of {{Tl|Cite web}}:
* <small>{{Cite web
  |url=http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/about/environment/calculator/assumptions.pdf
  |title=Carbon Footprint Calculator Assumptions
  |format=PDF
  |accessdate=2009-10-13
  |publisher=Pacific Gas and Electric Company
}}</small>
23:06, 27 January 2011 (PST): unlike most things I've done here previously, that seemed to go without a hitch. I guess I am starting to accumulate enough CSS styles, base templates, etc. to make porting complex templates from Wikipedia less painful. At least these citation templates. Anyway, I have not tested these templates hard yet. I could examine the backlinks to see if the attempts by other Appropedia users to use citation templates are working now (before they were all broken, or red links{{w|WP:RED}}).

I see several copy-and-paste articles from Wikipedia that were trying to use citation templates. Some are working better now (for example, Globaloria (from Wikipedia)#References). Others want templates I have not ported yet; for example, Theories of poverty (from Wikipedia) is using Harvard references, which needs additional templates.

23:38, 27 January 2011 (PST): I added {{Tl|Cite conference}} which enables all the citations in Development communication (from Wikipedia)#References to display correctly, save for a lot of wikilinks that became red links on Appropedia.

=== Template:Reflist ===
Done!

19:00, 23 January 2011 (PST): {{Tl|Reflist}}<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Reflist|backlinks]])</sup> <strike>is</strike> was already here, but it <strike>is</strike> was a simplified version that does not work like the Wikipedia version (see User talk:KVDP#refs). Because many pages currently use {{Tl|Reflist}}, I will copy the Wikipedia version to a test version first, {{Tl|Reflist w}}, just in case something explodes on my first attempt. Do the usual grind through the dependencies ritual:

* <strike>[[Template:Reflist w]]{{w|Template:Reflist}}</strike> - after I tested this and everyone agreed, I moved it to {{Tl|Reflist}}, and requested deletion.
** Template:Reflist/doc{{w|Template:Reflist/doc}}
** Template:Para{{w|Template:Para}}
*** Template:Para/doc{{w|Template:Para/doc}} 
** Template:Tag{{w|Template:Tag}}
*** Template:Tag/doc{{w|Template:Tag/doc}}
** [[Template:Tlx]]{{w|Template:Tlx}}
*** [[Template:Tlx]]{{w|Template:Tlx}}
** Template:Colors
*** Template:Colors/doc
15:22, 27 January 2011 (PST): These two templates are necessary for bibliographic-style references:
* Template:Refbegin<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Refbegin|backlinks]])</sup>{{w|Template:Refbegin}}
* Template:Refend<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Refend|backlinks]])</sup>{{w|Template:Refend}}
A (very) few pages are trying to use them, most likely because the pages contain article content copied-and-pasted from [[Wikipedia]]. I may port these templates to Appropedia after I port the [[#Citation templates]].

In the meantime, since {{Tl|Reflist w}} seems to work now for footnote references, and for grouped references, I will copy it over the existing (old version) {{Tl|Reflist}} after I notify the [[Appropedia:Village pump]].

15:17, 17 February 2011 (PST): put a {{Tl|Delete}} template on {{Tl|Reflist w}}<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Reflist w|backlinks]])</sup> because I no longer need it. I checked its backlinks and I'm pretty sure deleting it won't cause any problems.

==== Grouped references bug ====
Solved!

23:20, 24 January 2011 (PST): {{Tl|Reflist w}} works in its basic mode (see the [[#Notes and references]] section below for a live test), but errors appear on the template documentation page which tries to illustrate a more complex mode using grouped references (see Template:Reflist w#List-defined references). That might be interesting to debug.

16:06, 25 January 2011 (PST): other wikis that have ported copies of Template:Reflist show similar bugs. See for example the same section on these wikis:

* [[Google:"Template:Reflist" "List-defined references"]] - look for the same section on other wikis where an error occurs on {{SITENAME}}
** [http://web.archive.org/web/20160305095634/http://modelingwiki.com/index.php?title=template:reflist Modeling Wiki] has the section with no error ([http://web.archive.org/web/20160305035513/http://modelingwiki.com/index.php?title=mediawiki:common.css MediaWiki:Common.css])
** [http://nycwiki.org/wiki/Template:Reflist#List-defined_references NYCwiki] has an error, but not the same as the error on Appropedia ([http://nycwiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css MediaWiki:Common.css])
* [[Google:"no text was provided for refs named fontsize"]] - look for the exact text of the error message that appears on Appropedia
** [http://conmebol.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Reflist#List-defined_references a Wikia wiki] with what appears to be the exact same error ([http://conmebol.wikia.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.css MediaWiki:Common.css])
Presumably the different behaviors result from differences in the setup on these wikis. Maybe I can figure out the differences that matter. Presumably {{SITENAME}} is lacking some dependency for Template:Reflist, such as a MediaWiki extension, style class(es), JavaScript, the version of MediaWiki or an extension, etc. Or maybe Template:Reflist has the ugly dependency on HTML Tidy that makes the canonical version of [[wikipedia:Template:Navbox]] unportable. I wish there was a cross-wiki diff tool that would list all the differences between the setup of any two wikis. I could try asking on these talk pages:
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transwiki]]
* [[wikipedia:Template talk:Reflist]]

15:25, 26 January 2011 (PST): [[wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Transwiki#Reflist]] says (only) that Template:Reflist "requires some CSS from MediaWiki:Common.css". Try to figure out what CSS.

16:37, 26 January 2011 (PST): my working hypothesis (i.e. pipe dream) is that grouped references break when [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] is missing some style classes. I'm adding links to that page on the various wikis above that have or don't have these errors. Supporting this hypothesis, the MediaWiki:Common.css page for the error-free site above is long and may be a recent full copy of [[wikipedia:MediaWiki:Common.css]], while the pages on the two wikis with grouped reference errors are much shorter. Maybe the sites where grouped references break are missing the necessary style classes. Maybe that's the entire problem. Could it be that simple?

It would be nice to have an example consisting of just wikitext, with all templates, parser functions, and magic words expanded. See what I get by plugging the error-prone template example into [[wikipedia:Special:ExpandTemplates]]. The example code:

 <nowiki>This is reference 1.<ref name="refname1" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 2.<ref name="refname2" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 3.<ref name="refname3" group="groupname"/>

{{References|group="groupname"<ref name="refname1" group="groupname">content1</ref>
<ref name="refname2" group="groupname">content2</ref>
<ref name="refname3" group="groupname">content3</ref>
}}</nowiki>

expands on Wikipedia to:

 <nowiki>This is reference 1.<ref name="refname1" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 2.<ref name="refname2" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 3.<ref name="refname3" group="groupname"/>

<div class="reflist references-small " style="">
<references group="groupname"><ref name="refname1" group="groupname">content1</ref>
<ref name="refname2" group="groupname">content2</ref>
<ref name="refname3" group="groupname">content3</ref></references></div>
</nowiki>

Which renders as:

This is reference 1.<ref name="refname1" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 2.<ref name="refname2" group="groupname"/>
This is reference 3.<ref name="refname3" group="groupname"/>

<div class="reflist references-small " style="">
<references group="groupname"><ref name="refname1" group="groupname">content1</ref>
<ref name="refname2" group="groupname">content2</ref>
<ref name="refname3" group="groupname">content3</ref></references></div>

Oddly, the example works here when I expand the templates on Wikipedia first. The raw template call breaks on Template:Reflist w#List-defined references. That suggests the template expansion is different here. I tried [[wikipedia:WP:SUBST|substituting]] the {{Tl|Reflist w}} in [[User:Teratornis/Sandbox]], and the error did not occur. That's when I realized the example in Template:Reflist w#List-defined references wasn't even using {{Tl|Reflist w}}; it was using the old {{Tl|Reflist}} because I copied the documentation page from Wikipedia and I did not update all the template references in it to match the different template name I am (temporarily) using here. [[wikipedia:File:Facepalm.svg|Face-palm time]].<ref name=face_palm>For anyone reading along, I just illustrated a classic lapse in situation awareness{{w|Situation awareness}} there.</ref> After I updated the documentation to use the actual template it is trying to illustrate, the mysterious error message went away. 

Now that I'm actually paying attention to the documentation page, I see that it lists the CSS classes the template needs:

* Template:Reflist w#Supporting CSS

Check that list against what we have now in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]. I'll do that later.

==== Highlighting the selected reference ====
Done! ''added by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 6, 2011.'' <small>Test it in your browser by clicking the footnote number at the end of this sentence.<ref name="highlight_test">Depending on what Web browser you are using, you should see this footnote highlighted if you got here by clicking its corresponding reference number. Clicking the up-arrow to the left of this footnote should send you back to the footnote number, and highlight it.</ref></small>

15:22, 31 January 2011 (PST): figure out how Wikipedia does this. Search:

* {{Google Wikipedia|how does Wikipedia highlight the selected reference?}}

Which finds the Fragment identifier{{w|Fragment identifier#Examples}} article on Wikipedia (possibly a self-reference{{w|WP:SELFREF}}), which says:

* "The appearance of the identified element can also be changed through the <code>:target</code> CSS pseudoclass; Wikipedia uses this to highlight the selected reference."

Further clues:

* [[mw:Extension:Cite]]
** [[mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php#Customization]]
** [[mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php#Set references to use ^ and letters like Wikipedia]]
** [[mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php#Set reference and reference number highlighting like Wikipedia]]

I did some tests on my offline wiki, and adding this code to [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] enables reference highlighting:

 <nowiki>/* Highlight clicked reference in blue to help navigation */
ol.references > li:target,
sup.reference:target,
span.citation:target { 
    background-color: #DEF;
}
 
/* Ensure refs in table headers and the like aren't bold or italic */
sup.reference {
    font-weight: normal;
    font-style: normal;
}
 
/* Styling for citations */
span.citation, cite {
    font-style: normal;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}
</nowiki>

To stay somewhat consistent with Wikipedia's version, the above code chunk could go immediately after this chunk which is already in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]:

 <nowiki>/* Make the list of references in [[Template:Reflist]] smaller */
.references-small { 
    font-size: 90%;
}</nowiki>

Note that the latest version of [[wikipedia:MediaWiki:Common.css]] has some slightly different code which does not work on my offline wiki. I had to use CSS code from their slightly older version. Wikipedia always runs the latest version of MediaWiki and all the extensions, so maybe when Appropedia upgrades its version of MediaWiki we'll have to update the CSS code for reference highlighting to match what Wikipedia is running now.

=== Location map templates ===

=== Infobox templates ===

21:38, 9 January 2011 (PST): a few are here already:

* Category:Infobox templates

=== Cross reference templates ===

16:34, 22 February 2011 (PST): a couple of useful templates were not here yet; port them:

* {{Tl|Further}}{{Tlw|Further}}
** {{Tl|Rellink}}{{Tlw|Rellink}}
* {{Tl|See also}}{{Tlw|See also}}
* {{Tl|Main}}{{Tlw|Main}} - already here, but give it a documentation subpage, and categorize it.

=== License templates ===

17:30, 19 January 2011 (PST): [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] [[User talk:Teratornis#Thanks and Image Rights|called my attention]] to license templates, which I forgot to list here. For example, port this to Appropedia:

* {{Tl|Cc-by-sa-3.0}}{{w|Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0}} (and see [[Commons:Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0]])

22:05, 31 January 2011 (PST): analysis: the English Wikipedia and MediaWiki Commons have many of the same license templates, or at least corresponding templates with the same name, but the templates on the two sites have very different template code. The main functional difference of which I am aware is that the templates on Commons have support for multiple languages. I have not studied how that works yet; it looks complicated. (See for example: [[Commons:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0]] for the multi-lingual sub-templates.) Thus the first question is whether we would want Wikipedia-style or Commons-style license templates on Appropedia. Multi-lingual templates would be helpful on Appropedia, since Appropedia is trying to be multi-lingual, much like Commons. However, that would probably be biting off a lot more than I am prepared to chew, and would probably involve decisions I am not in a position to make unilaterally. Thus my first inclination would be to port the simpler Wikipedia templates. I will port them to my offline wiki to test them, then port them here.

[[Special:Upload]] lists these license templates that [[Special:WantedTemplates]] indicates people have tried to use so far:

* {{Tl|CC-by-sa-3.0}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:CC-by-sa-3.0 |backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|CC-by-sa-3.0}}
* {{Tl|PD}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:PD|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|PD-because}}
* {{Tl|GFDL}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:GFDL|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|GFDL}}
* {{Tl|GPL}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:GPL|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|GPL}}
* {{Tl|LGPL}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:LGPL|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|LGPL}}
* {{Tl|CopyrightByWikimedia}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:CopyrightByWikimedia|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|Non-free Wikimedia logo}} - do we actually need this? Appropedia cannot legally display anything that is copyright by Wikimedia.
* {{Tl|Unknown}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Unknown|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|Unknown}} - see the existing {{Tl|Unclear copyright}}

There is also a presumably license template with no Wikipedia counterpart:

* {{Tl|Demotechphoto}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Demotechphoto|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|Demotechphoto}} - I did not find anything on the [http://demotech.org/ Demotech site] about conditions for re-using their content. Presumably they must be cool with {{Tl|CC-by-sa-3.0}} if they allow {{SITENAME}} to re-publish their material. 21:23, 9 February 2011 (PST): I stumbled across the (way-too-generally named) Porting pages page, which is really only about porting Demotech pages. That might shed some insight. I suspect nobody at Demotech is a lawyer.

I'll start with this template:

* {{Tl|CC-by-sa-3.0}}{{Tlw|Cc-by-sa-3.0}}
** {{Tl|cc-by-sa-3.0}}<ref name="deleted">See the earlier [https://www.appropedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Template%3ACc-by-sa-3.0 deletion log] for {{Tl|cc-by-sa-3.0}} - it looked like too difficult a porting job previously. But we ported it now.</ref> - make this a redirect to the above template, to match the name that is on Wikipedia
** {{Tl|File other}}{{Tlw|File other}}
*** Category:Namespace manipulation templates
*** Category:File namespace templates
** {{Tl|Imbox}}{{Tlw|Imbox}}
*** [[:File:Imbox notice.png]]{{w|File:Imbox notice.png}}
** [[:Category:Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 files]]
** [[:File:CC_some_rights_reserved.svg]]{{w|File:CC_some_rights_reserved.svg}}
*** [[:File:CC SomeRightsReserved.png]]{{w|File:CC SomeRightsReserved.png}}
** [[:File:Cc-by new white.svg]]{{w|File:Cc-by new white.svg}}
*** [[:File:Cc-by white.png]]{{w|File:Cc-by white.png}}
** [[:File:Cc-sa white.svg]]{{w|File:Cc-sa white.svg}}
*** [[:File:Cc-sa white.png]]{{w|File:Cc-sa white.png}}

I only need the PNG images if the SVG versions won't work here.

22:33, 1 February 2011 (PST): my attempt to upload [[:File:CC some rights reserved.svg]] blew some serious chunks, so I'm going with the shabby but more reliable PNG versions. Specifically, the preview on the file page does not display (just some alarming error messages instead), but [[Media:CC some rights reserved.svg|the non-thumbnailed image is visible]].

16:44, 2 February 2011 (PST): port another one:

* {{Tl|GFDL}}{{Tlw|GFDL}}
** [[:File:Heckert GNU white.svg]] - [[commons:File:Heckert GNU white.svg]]
*** [[:File:The GNU logo.png]] - [[commons:File:The GNU logo.png]]
** [[:Category:GFDL files]]{{w|Category:GFDL images}}

That was easier than {{Tl|CC-by-sa-3.0}} since they share some [[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice#Dependencies|dependencies]]. I'll try to port the rest of the needed license templates later tonight. Then look at [[Special:WantedTemplates]] again to see what other license templates people have tried to use here. There are hundreds of such templates on Wikipedia and Commons, which users may have expected to be here.

* {{Tl|GPL}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:GPL|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|GPL}}
** [[:Category:GPL files]] - [[wikipedia:Category:GPL images]]
* {{Tl|LGPL}}<sup>[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:LGPL|backlinks]],</sup>{{Tlw|LGPL}}
** [[:Category:LGPL files]] - [[wikipedia:Category:LGPL images]]
* {{Tl|Unknown}} (no counterpart on Wikipedia or Commons, as those sites usually just delete images with unknown licensing)
** [[:File:Ambox warning pn.svg]] - [[commons:File:Ambox warning pn.svg]] (a nice warning symbol)
*** [[:File:Achtung.png]] - [[commons:File:Achtung.png]]

18:00, 7 March 2011 (PST): Other Creative Commons license templates - there are lots of version numbers and so on. Copy a comprehensive subset of them from Wikipedia.
* {{Tl|CC-by-sa-2.0}}{{Tlw|CC-by-sa-2.0}}

===== Public domain license templates =====

16:41, 3 February 2011 (PST): these are not straightforward. A file is not merely in the public domain; it is the public domain for some reason. The reason must be evident on the file page to verify the file's public domain status. On Wikipedia and Commons there are many public domain license templates:

* [[wikipedia:Category:Public domain copyright templates]]
* [[commons:Category:PD license tags]] <small>(Ugh, note the synonym disease between the two sites)</small>

See the deprecated [[commons:Template:PD]] which lists other templates a person should use instead. That raises the question of how many public domain license (copyright) templates I want to import to {{SITENAME}}. I cannot really answer that question myself. The old-school [[commons:Template:PD]] [http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3APD&action=historysubmit&diff=10597725&oldid=10076199 became deprecated in 2008]. Maybe {{SITENAME}} is small enough that we don't yet need to worry about whatever problem caused Commons to deprecate the template. On Wikipedia, [[wikipedia:Template:PD]] does not exist as a distinct template now; it is a redirect to [[wikipedia:Template:PD-because]], which requires the uploader to list a reason for the file's PD status.

00:27, 5 February 2011 (PST): I will make a starter set of public domain license templates; Appropedia users can [[wikipedia:Category:Public domain copyright templates|copy more from Wikipedia]] if necessary.

* {{Tl|PD}}{{Tlw|PD-because}} (for files in the public domain for any reason none of the other templates specify)
** [[:File:PD-icon.svg]] - [[commons:File:PD-icon.svg]]
*** [[:File:PD-icon.png]] - [[commons:File:PD-icon.png]]
*{{tl|PD-USGov}}{{tlw|PD-USGov}} (for work by the U.S. federal government)
** [[:File:US-GreatSeal-Obverse.svg]] - [[wikipedia:File:US-GreatSeal-Obverse.svg]]
*** [[:File:USSeal.png]] - [[commons:File:USSeal.png]]

*{{tl|PD-old}}{{Tlw|PD-old}} (for works out of copyright where the author has been dead for over 70 years), 
*{{tl|PD-Art}}{{Tlw|PD-Art}} (for photos of old paintings and art out of copyright), 
*{{tl|PD-ineligible}}{{Tlw|PD-ineligible}} (for trivial work{{w|Threshold of originality}}), 
*{{tl|PD-self}}{{Tlw|PD-self}} (if the uploader and creator releases the rights), 
*{{tlsp|PD-user|''user''}}{{Tlw|PD-user}} (if another user released his/her rights), or {{tl|Copyrighted free use}}. 
*{{tlsp|PD-author|''Author's name''}}{{Tlw|PD-author}} - for works released into the public domain by non-Appropedia users.
*If the work is PD for another reason, check the [[Commons:Copyright_tags#Public_domain|copyright tag page]] or use {{tlsp|PD-because|''reason''}}.{{Tlw|PD-because}}

11:42, 16 August 2011 (PDT): [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Free_media&namespace=10&hideredirs=1&hidelinks=1&limit=500 all of the free-media license templates] on the English Wikipedia [[wikipedia:WP:TRANSCLUDE|transclude]] the template [[wikipedia:Template:Free media]] which categorizes all the file pages containing those license templates into [[wikipedia:Category:All free media]]. I did not initially port that template to {{Tl|Free media}} but I might. If I do then I will add it to all the free media templates on {{SITENAME}}.

===== Template:Information =====
Done! <small>With getting the template to work. By no means done with applying it to 12,000+ Appropedia images.</small>

12:55, 5 February 2011 (PST): port one of the following very similar templates to {{SITENAME}}:

* {{Tl|Information}} - [[wikipedia:Template:Information]] - [[commons:Template:Information]]

This template cleanly organizes the essential source and descriptive information for a media file (usually an image). The majority of well-formatted File: namespace pages on Wikipedia and Commons use it; the exceptions are usually uploads by less-experienced users that the experienced users have not cleaned up yet. Having {{Tl|Information}} here will make it simpler to copy images from Wikipedia and Commons. 

The Wikipedia version is probably an easier porting source, because it is English only. The Commons version has more complex dependencies to support multiple languages. In the long run, {{SITENAME}} might want to implement something like Commons' support for multiple languages, but that is too hard for me to do alone right now. Maybe when {{SITENAME}} is ten times bigger, which would imply ten times more users with an interest in difficult porting jobs like that.

20:14, 6 February 2011 (PST): I ported {{Tl|Information}} to my offline wiki. I had to re-code some conditional table syntax to make the "Other versions" row work on wikis that are not running HTML Tidy.{{w|HTML Tidy}} See:

* [[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice#Other external software]]
* [[wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki#Special templates]]
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki/Template:Information]] - I donated my version so other people can port it to their wikis
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Conditional tables]]

Plow through the dependency stack on {{SITENAME}}:

* {{Tl|Information}}
** {{Tl|Description missing}}{{Tlw|Description missing}}
*** [[:File:Edit-clear.svg]]{{w|File:Edit-clear.svg}}
**** [[:File:Broom icon.png]] - [[Commons:File:Broom icon.png]]
*** Category:File maintenance templates{{w|Category:File maintenance templates}}
*** Category:Images for cleanup{{w|Category:Images for cleanup}}
**** Category:Images lacking a description{{w|Category:Images for cleanup}}
**** Category:Images lacking an author{{w|Category:Images lacking an author}}
**** Category:Files with unknown source{{w|Category:Wikipedia files with unknown source}}
*** {{Tl|((}}{{Tlw|((}}
*** {{Tl|))}}{{Tlw|))}}
**** {{Tl|Auxiliary template common notice}}{{Tlw|Auxiliary template common notice}}
***** {{Tl|Tlf}}{{Tlw|Tlf}}

The {{Tl|Information}} template displays a link: [[Commons:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia|Reusing this file]] to: [[Commons:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia]]. The equivalent page on {{SITENAME}} is [[Appropedia:Copyrights]]. I updated the link in {{Tl|Information}}.

16:45, 7 February 2011 (PST): I'm about halfway through editing my image uploads to use {{Tl|Information}}. That cleans up the image pages rather nicely. Unfortunately, some of the source image pages on Wikipedia and Commons do not use their corresponding information templates, which is rather annoying because then I have to manually edit the information from random formats.

=== Babel boxes ===

12:44, 31 March 2011 (PDT): [[User:Curtbeckmann|CurtB]] wants them. See: [[User talk:Chriswaterguy#Language fluency box templates for user pages]]. Not too surprisingly, these templates turn out to be very complex on the English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons:

* [[wikipedia:Babel]]
* [[wikipedia:Template:Babel]]
* [[commons:Template:User en]]
* [[commons:Template:Babel field]]
* [[commons:Template:Babel field N]]

Porting a minimal set of these templates to Appropedia would be difficult, not least because the templates for various languages display some text in those languages. A person who only speaks one or a few of the languages would have to manipulate chunks of text he or she cannot read.

=== Hatnotes ===

22:35, 16 July 2011 (PDT): consider inventorying and organizing {{SITENAME}}'s [[wikipedia:WP:HATNOTE|hatnote]] templates. We have ported some from Wikipedia.

* {{Tl|Main}}
* {{Tl|See also}}
* {{Tl|Cat main}}
* [[wikipedia:Template:Hatnote templates documentation]]
* [[wikipedia:WP:HATNOTE]] - we could use a corresponding wrapper page, to possibly expand into a real project page, [[Appropedia:Hatnote]] ([[A:HAT]]).

=== Miscellaneous templates ===

==== Template:Tlw ====
Done!

23:36, 9 January 2011 (PST): since I will be porting some templates from Wikipedia, consider making a [[Template:Tlw]] (like [[Wikipedia:Template:Tlw]]) to make them easier to list on this page.
13:32, 10 January 2011 (PST): on reflection, I decided to make the template, and make it function like Appropedia's {{Tl|W}}, so I can compactly link to template pages on Wikipedia while displaying a superscript W character. The reason to make a separate template is to avoid having to type the Template: prefix every time, if used {{Tl|W}}.

==== Template:Key press ====
Done!

22:21, 23 January 2011 (PST): enable {{Tl|Key press}} and its subpage templates and other dependencies.
* Template:Key press{{w|Template:Key press}}
* Template:Keypress - a redirect to the above template
** Template:Key press/doc{{w|Template:Key press/doc}}
** Template:Key press/core{{w|Template:Key press/core}}
*** Template:Key press/core/doc{{w|Template:Key press/core/doc}}
** [[Template:Clear]]{{w|Template:Clear}}
** Template:Unicode{{w|Template:Unicode}}
*** Template:Unicode/doc{{w|Template:Unicode/doc}}
** Category:Graphic templates
** Category:Key press template parameter needs fixing
Test the {{Tl|Key press}} template:
* Try searching this page with {{key press|[[wikipedia:Control key|Ctrl]]|F}} or {{key press|[[wikipedia:Command key|{{unicode|&#x2318;}}]]|F}} in your Web browser.
It seems to work.

==== Template:Done ====

21:44, 25 January 2011 (PST): it would be nice to have a {{Tl|Done}} template. This makes it easy to visually scan a discussion page or a notes page and see which items are done. The template needs a [[:File:GreenCheck.png]] (copy from [[wikipedia:File:GreenCheck.png]]). The [[wikipedia:Template:Done]] is highly abstracted, with many dependencies, but we don't need them on Appropedia unless we want to duplicate Wikipedia's whole range of graphical marker templates. For now I'll create a cut-down version of the template as a one-off.

I made the template, so this task is: Done!

==== Template:Catmore ====
Done!

00:51, 28 January 2011 (PST): while looking through the horror of [[Special:WantedTemplates]], I saw that some pages were trying to use {{Tl|Catmore}}, so I ported it here from Wikipedia.

==== WikiProject Transwiki templates ====

16:25, 26 January 2011 (PST): [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki]] focuses on how to export content from the English Wikipedia to other wikis running the MediaWiki software, especially wikis like Appropedia that are not projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The WikiProject [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki#Templates|lists some templates]] that are useful on other wikis. Port the missing relevant ones to Appropedia.

*Template:! – Vital for most other templates to work. Recommend full protection when used on other wikis.
*Template:!! – Vital for most other templates to work. Recommend full protection when used on other wikis.
*[[Template:-]] – Not as vital, but still highly used.
*Template:·
*Template:•
*Template:Ndash
*Template:Mdash
*Template:Nowrap
*Template:Nowraplinks – Needs the "nowraplinks" class in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] to work.
*[[Template:Main]]
*[[Template:Tl]]
*[[Template:Tlx]]
*[[Template:Unsigned]]
*[[Template:Warning]]

Other templates appear in the documentation subpages of some templates from Wikipedia, so porting these makes other templates easier to port:

*{{Tl|Error}}{{Tlw|Error}}
*{{Tl|Tlsp}}{{Tlw|Tlsp}}

More auxiliary templates:

*Template:!-{{Tlw|!-}} (needed for the portable version of {{Tl|Information}})

==== Template:Talk header ====
Done!

17:39, 3 February 2011 (PST): this template is nice to put at the top of a talk page, to inform new [[MediaWiki]] users of the somewhat idiosyncratic discussion method on MediaWiki wikis. 

* {{Tl|Talk header}}{{Tlw|Talk header}}
** Category:Templates by namespace
*** Category:Talk namespace templates
**** Category:Talk header templates

12:47, 5 February 2011 (PST): to-do: style the table borders to be darker. Just now they are very faint. 

00:02, 20 February 2011 (PST): Initially I ported from an older Wikipedia version that I had customized to be more stand-alone. I will try porting from the latest Wikipedia version{{Tlw|Talk header}} which requires some CSS and templates that I recently ported to {{SITENAME}}, so it can run here now. The new version needs yet another template:
* {{Tl|Pagetype}}{{Tlw|Pagetype}}

==== Template:Tocright ====
Done!

13:29, 6 February 2011 (PST): {{Tl|Tocright}}<sup>([[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Tocright|backlinks]]),</sup>{{Tlw|TOC right}} is already here, but it is a copy of an old (2006) version from Wikipedia, which lacks the code for limiting the table of contents depth.{{w|Help:Section#Limiting the depth of the TOC}} [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] [https://www.appropedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3ACommon.css&action=historysubmit&diff=160167&oldid=160106 added the necessary CSS code] to [[MediaWiki:Common.css]], so the <code>limit=</code> parameter in {{Tl|Tocright}} should work as soon as I update the template. This template is in wide use, so an error would screw up a lot of pages. It might be prudent to test it in a sandbox, but I think I'll just roll the dice and edit the live version. 14:19, 6 February 2011 (PST): it seems to work. [[Humboldt County organizations working on energy issues]] now shows a reduced TOC depth. The updated template needs a new category:
* Category:Table of contents templates{{w|Category:Wikipedia table of contents templates}}
I found some other existing templates to add to that category.

==== Template:Tlc and Template:Cl ====

16:02, 9 February 2011 (PST): {{Tl|Tlc}} was already here, but it is not the same as [[wikipedia:Template:Tlc]], which stands for '''T'''emplate '''l'''ist '''c'''ode. The Appropedia version is for listing category link syntax. Thus it should be {{Tl|Cl}} instead (by analogy to {{Tl|Tl}} for listing template links). In fact there is a [[wikipedia:Template:Cl]] that functions the way {{Tl|Tlc}} currently does. Many Wikipedia template documentation subpages use the Tlc template to illustrate template usage. Having an non-conventional Tlc template here makes template porting difficult. This is not difficult to correct, as there are only about 150 [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Tlc|backlinks to change]]. Port the conventional template here:

* {{Tl|Cl}}{{Tlw|Cl}}

22:14, 9 February 2011 (PST): I changed most of the existing transclusions of {{Tl|Tlc}} to use {{Tl|Cl}} instead. Using a template to avoid typing <code><nowiki>[[:Category:...]]</nowiki></code> is something I have pretty much never seen before. I can't recall offhand ever seeing anybody do that on Wikipedia, and I've seen an awful lot of category references there. Anyway, the vast majority of {{Tl|Tlc}} transclusions are by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] and [[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]]. Most of the transclusions look to have been hand-edited, but [[Appropedia:Service learning pageview statistics]] might be bot-generated. In which case I will need to persuade the bot maintainer to update the bot to generate {{Tl|Cl}} usages instead. At least {{Tl|Cl}} is one character shorter.

Also test the template: <code><nowiki>{{subst:Appropedia:Content Initiatives/launch template|Test substitution}}</nowiki></code> in my [[User:Teratornis/Sandbox]] to make sure I did not break it by changing it to use {{Tl|Cl}}. 22:17, 9 February 2011 (PST): when I previewed the substitution, the category link came through all right.

I won't change {{Tl|Tlc}} until I found out whether Lonny or Chris have the template burned into anything I did not see. They've been using it since 2005 or so, so it could be part of something I cannot change.

==== Template:Quote ====

16:07, 11 February 2011 (PST): {{Tl|Quote}} is here already. Test it:

{{quote|Be the change you want to see in the world.|Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi|[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi Wikiquote]}}
[[Interwiki map]] does not list wikiquote: as an interwiki link prefix on {{SITENAME}}, hence the red link{{w|WP:RED}} on Gandhi's name if I try to interwiki link it. Otherwise, the template works. [[wikipedia:Template:Quote]] is a little fancier, but works about the same. I won't update the {{SITENAME}} version of the template just now. The Wikipedia version is in this category:

*Category:Quotation templates{{w|Category:Quotation templates}}

==== Template:Undent ====
Done!

00:41, 19 February 2011 (PST): it would be nice to have {{Tl|Undent}}{{Tlw|Undent}} to use when undenting the next entry in a heavily indented discussion thread on a talk page.{{w|WP:TALKPAGE}} So I ported it here.

==== Template:Convert ====

01:43, 8 March 2011 (PST): Wikipedia has a wonderful template for converting units (length, mass, temperature, energy, power, volume, etc.). I would love to have this template on {{SITENAME}}. But it has one of the most ridiculously complex dependency chains of any template on Wikipedia, with hundreds of sub-templates to handle the various unit conversions. Porting it would be difficult, unless maybe I can find a way to copy the whole mess with a single export file. 

* {{Tl|Convert}}{{Tlw|Convert}}<sup>,[[Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Convert|backlinks]]</sup>

The backlinks show that a few articles are trying to use it. Given the technical topic matter of many articles on {{SITENAME}}, many more articles could surely use it. Look for non-Wikipedia wikis that have ported it:

* [[Google:"This template shows measurement quantities as primary and converted secondary units" -site:en.wikipedia.org]]

I don't see any successful ports of this template to non-Wikimedia wikis. Several wikis have attempted ports, but the documentation subpages are full of red links due to missing sub-templates. 

* [[wikipedia:Template:Convert/FAQ]] - is about usage, says nothing about porting.
* [[wikipedia:Template talk:Convert]] - has a lot of discussion about this template. Read more of it before I try anything.
** [[wikipedia:Template talk:Convert#Porting Convert to other-language wikipedias]] (this will probably archive soon into: [[wikipedia:Template talk:Convert/Archive February 2011#Porting Convert to other-language wikipedias]]) - [[wikipedia:User:Wikid77]] seems to be the expert on this template. He mentions that it is possible to export simpler versions of the template with fewer sub-templates.

16:23, 10 March 2011 (PST): I left a request for more information on Wikid77's user talk page:
* [[wikipedia:User talk:Wikid77#WikiProject Transwiki]] ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Wikid77&oldid=418216422#WikiProject_Transwiki permanent link], to survive archiving)

==== Attribution templates ====

16:22, 8 March 2011 (PST): Category:Attribution templates already had several templates. I also needed {{Tl|Attrib Commons}} (to attribute the source of {{Tl|Flinfo}} to [[wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons|Wikimedia Commons]]) so I made one. The template is similar to {{Tl|Attrib wikipedia}}. There are also redirects that with names I find more readable: {{Tl|From Commons}} and {{Tl|From Wikipedia}}.


==== Template:Shortcut compact ====

{{Further|[[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice#Other external software]]}}
11:12, 4 April 2011 (PDT): I had some difficulty porting {{Tl|Shortcut compact}}{{Tlw|Shortcut compact}} from Wikipedia. The version currently on {{SITENAME}} works correctly in "normal" use (such as in this section), but is vulnerable to a problem that I do not know how to correct, with the privileges that are available to me. The following is a summary of the problem as I understand it, for reference in case someone else elicits the problem.

{{Tl|Shortcut compact}} exists primarily to display boxes containing shortcut links (i.e., shortcut boxes) in list items, with each shortcut box fitting within the vertical space of its list item. The usual {{Tl|Shortcut}} template works best for displaying a shortcut box at the top of a page or section, outside of lists. The Wikipedia version of {{Tl|Shortcut}} is not fully compatible with [[wikipedia:Help:List#|wikitext lists]], in particular list sub-items, because it inserts intervening newline characters that cause the next list item to start a new list. If the next list item is a sub-item, it will display multiple bullet characters (in an unordered list) or begin renumbering from 1 (in an ordered list). For example, here is an unordered wikitext list with a <nowiki>{{Shortcut|U:TTASKS}}</nowiki> on the first sub-item:

* A list item
** The first list subitem 
*** The first sub-sub-item
*** The second sub-sub-item

The sub-sub-item previously displayed<ref name="shortcut_bullets">On April 5, 2011 I updated {{Tl|Shortcut}} to use Wikipedia's newer template code, less some lines of code that were inserting automatic anchors that we don't need on Appropedia. These changes eliminated the multiple-bullet problem I previously displayed on this page.</ref> three bullet characters, evidently because the template previously inserted newline characters ahead of it, causing the [[MediaWiki]] parser to interpret it as a new list beginning with a sub-sub-item.<ref name="subitem_behavior">One might ask why MediaWiki displays an orphaned list sub-sub-item with three bullet characters to the left of it, instead of just displaying it normally.</ref>

The workaround on Wikipedia is to use {{Tl|Shortcut compact}} instead. This inserts a shortcut box consisting of an HTML table rather than a wikitext table. The HTML table fits entirely on one line of code, without inserting extra newlines, and is compatible with wikitext lists:

* A list item
** The first list subitem 
*** The first sub-sub-item
*** The second sub-sub-item

Problem solved, right? Unfortunately, not in every possible instance of the template. HTML table code can cause problems when it appears within the scope of a [[mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions|parser function]] on a MediaWiki wiki that is not running [[wikipedia:HTML Tidy|HTML Tidy]]. (That includes most non-[[wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] wikis, including {{SITENAME}}.) The only example I have found so far is on the documentation subpage of {{Tl|Shortcut compact}}. See the [[wikipedia:Template:Shortcut compact#Examples|working examples on Wikipedia]]. Similar examples display correctly on this page:

{| class="wikitable"
! Code
! Result
|-
| 
<pre>* A list item
* Another list item
** A subitem 
** Learning: 
*** A subsubitem about learning
*** Another subsubitem
</pre>
|
* A list item
* Another list item
** A subitem 
** Learning: 
*** A subsubitem about learning
*** Another subsubitem
|}

but they do not display correctly when the {{Tl|Documentation}} template [[wikipedia:WP:TRANSCLUDE|transcludes]] the template documentation subpage onto the {{Tl|Shortcut compact}} template page. I suspect this may be due to the {{tl|Documentation}} template wrapping the whole documentation subpage inside a parser function. The error manifests as a <code><nowiki></div></nowiki></code> tag that the MediaWiki parser displays as text (i.e. "eats") rather than passing it through to the output HTML for the page.<ref name="shortcut_div_bug">This produces odd visual results on my personal offline wiki, shoving the search and navigation boxes on the left side of the page down below the bottom of the body text on the template page.</ref> On Wikimedia Foundation wikis such as Wikipedia, the servers are running HTML Tidy which avoids this problem. Most other wikis are not running HTML Tidy, and installing it is probably difficult.

One workaround is to replace the HTML table code in {{tl|Shortcut compact}} with the equivalent wikitext table code (using the {{Tl|!}} template to encode the pipe characters in the table). That fixes the <code><nowiki></div></nowiki></code> tag problem, making {{tl|Shortcut}} compatible with being inside a parser function, but it re-introduces the double-bullet problem. Since the main point of having {{Tl|Shortcut compact}} is to display shortcuts from list items, it seems better to use HTML table code and warn the user against trying to use the template wrapped inside other complex templates.

16:09, 11 April 2011 (PDT): and just to make this entire section even more confusing, on April 5, 2011 I updated {{Tl|Shortcut}} to use the latest code from Wikipedia, less some code we don't need which inserts automatic anchors. Since the latest Wikipedia version of the template uses HTML table code to display the shortcut box, that fixed the multiple-bullet problem which motivated the use of {{Tl|Shortcut compact}}. However, {{Tl|Shortcut compact}} still works better with lists because the shortcut box fits on a single line, allowing successive lines to display their own shortcut boxes without crowding.


==== Template:Bar box ====

14:59, 13 July 2011 (PDT): [[User:KVDP]] asked me to port {{Tl|Bar box}} from the [[wikipedia:English Wikipedia|English Wikipedia]] to {{SITENAME}}. I tested the port first on my offline personal wiki and found no particular problems. It's a straightforward copy of all the dependencies.

* {{Tl|Bar box}} [[wikipedia:Template:Bar box]]
** Template:Bar box/doc · [[wikipedia:Template:Bar box/doc]]
** {{Tl|Bar percent}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Bar percent]]
*** Template:Bar percent/doc <small>(no counterpart on Wikipedia)</small>
** {{Tl|Bar percent 2}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Bar percent 2]]
*** Template:Bar percent 2/doc <small>(no counterpart on Wikipedia)</small>
** {{Tl|Bar pixel}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Bar pixel]]
*** Template:Bar pixel/doc <small>(no counterpart on Wikipedia)</small>
** {{Tl|Template other}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Template other]]
*** Template:Template other/doc · [[wikipedia:Template:Template other/doc]]
** {{Tl|Tl2}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Tl2]]
*** Template:Tl2/doc · [[wikipedia:Template:Tl2/doc]]
** {{Tl|-}} · [[wikipedia:Template:-]]
*** Template:-/doc · [[wikipedia:Template:-/doc]]
*** {{Tl|Lts}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Lts]]
**** Template:Lts/doc · [[wikipedia:Template:Lts/doc]]
*** {{Tl|Wrapper}} · [[wikipedia:Template:Wrapper]]
**** Template:Wrapper/doc <small>(no counterpart on Wikipedia)</small>
* Categories:
** Category:Graphic templates · [[wikipedia:Category:Graphic templates]]
** Category:Statistics templates · [[wikipedia:Category:Statistics templates]]
*** Category:Bar chart templates · [[wikipedia:Category:Bar chart templates]]
** Category:Column templates · [[wikipedia:Category:Column templates]]
* CSS classes: <code>barbox</code> - evidently this is not needed in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]
23:57, 15 July 2011 (PDT): the port succeeded; here is an example showing my domestic carbon footprint from natural gas since 1999:
{{bar box
|title=Carbon footprint from natural gas
|titlebar=#DDD
|left1=Year
|right1=kg CO<sub>2</sub>
|width=600px
{{bar pixel|1999|gray|260||2,605}}
{{bar pixel|2000|gray|160||1,604}}
{{bar pixel|2001|gray|109||1,092}}
{{bar pixel|2002|gray|55|| 555}}
{{bar pixel|2003|gray|55|| 555}}
{{bar pixel|2004|gray|36|| 360}}
{{bar pixel|2005|gray|21|| 207}}
{{bar pixel|2006|gray|21|| 207}}
{{bar pixel|2007|gray|38|| 378}}
{{bar pixel|2008|gray|26|| 262}}
{{bar pixel|2009|gray|25|| 250}}
{{bar pixel|2010|gray|13|| 128}}
|caption=The residential customer learned to live mostly without heat in winter.
}}


==== Template:Mergeto ====

[[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] reported a problem with {{Tl|Mergeto}}:{{Tlw|Merge to}}

* [[User talk:Teratornis#Talk links in templates]]
* [[Appropedia:Sandbox#Mergeto bug]] - where [[User:Chriswaterguy|Chriswaterguy]] tested it, and I can run a further test.

The current version of {{Tl|Mergeto}} looks like an old port from Wikipedia. I could port the latest version to {{SITENAME}}. That might be simpler than trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with the existing copy.

I tried [[wikipedia:WP:SUBST|substituting]] <nowiki>{{mergeto|Help:Editing}}</nowiki> so I can see the resulting wikitext:
<pre>
:''It has been suggested that this page or section be [[Help:Merging pages|merged]] into ''[[Help:Editing|Help:Editing]]''. ([[{{NAMESPACE}} talk:Help:Editing|Discuss]]).</pre>

The problem looks easy to fix: the Wikipedia version of the template has a named parameter (<code>discuss</code>) for the discussion page. If you don't specify it, the template constructs a link for you. The {{SITENAME}} version lacks this parameter, so there is no way to override the template's attempt to generate a link to the discussion page if you don't like what it does.

The Wikipedia version allows up to twenty page names for the merge-to destinations. I cannot imagine an instance where that would be useful. How does it make sense to merge a given page or section into more than one page or section? I looked on [[wikipedia:Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Merge to]] but I did not find any examples of the template currently on Wikipedia that specify more than one page for the merge-to destination. Evidently that feature is obscure. I will ask on [[wikipedia:Template talk:Merge to]]. This might be a relic from one of the other merge templates that someone copied and pasted in. For example, there is a [[wikipedia:Template:Merge from]] which could more understandably take multiple page or section names to merge into the current page.

The support for merge lists appeared [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Merge_to&diff=prev&oldid=311558279 with this diff]. Evidently it was from merging another template into this template, [[wikipedia:Template:mergeto-multiple]]. See the backlinks at [[wikipedia:Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Mergeto-multiple]] to try to track down what that template was about. Also read [[wikipedia:WP:MERGE]] to see if it talks about merging to multiple destination pages.

== Interwiki link prefixes ==
{{Further|[[Interwiki map]]}}
17:13, 22 February 2011 (PST): we are missing a few that I would like to have: wikisource:, [[wikiquote:]], and [[w:]] (short for [[wikipedia:]]; the short form is especially useful for edit summaries{{w|Help:Edit summary}}). <small>To-do: link to my various discussions elsewhere about these.</small>

== Style classes ==

01:10, 21 January 2011 (PST): while I'm porting templates to Appropedia, some of them don't work right initially because they refer to style classes that are not yet in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]. Note them here so I can ask [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] to add them.

=== navbox style classes ===

Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.''
 <nowiki>/* Default skin for navigation boxes */
table.navbox {            /* Navbox container style */
  border: 1px solid #aaa;
  width: 100%; 
  margin: auto;
  clear: both;
  font-size: 88%;
  text-align: center;
  padding: 1px;
}
table.navbox + table.navbox {  /* Single pixel border between adjacent navboxes */
  margin-top: -1px;            /* (doesn't work for IE6, but that's okay)       */
}
.navbox-title,
.navbox-abovebelow,
table.navbox th {
  text-align: center;      /* Title and above/below styles */
  padding-left: 1em;
  padding-right: 1em;
}
.navbox-group {            /* Group style */
  white-space: nowrap;
  text-align: right;
  font-weight: bold;
  padding-left: 1em;
  padding-right: 1em;
}
.navbox, .navbox-subgroup {
  background: #fdfdfd;     /* Background color */
}
.navbox-list {
  border-color: #fdfdfd;   /* Must match background color */
}
.navbox-title,
table.navbox th {
  background: #ccccff;     /* Level 1 color */
}
.navbox-abovebelow,
.navbox-group,
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-title {
  background: #ddddff;     /* Level 2 color */
}
.navbox-subgroup .navbox-group, .navbox-subgroup .navbox-abovebelow {
  background: #e6e6ff;     /* Level 3 color */
}
.navbox-even {
  background: #f7f7f7;     /* Even row striping */
}
.navbox-odd {
  background: transparent; /* Odd row striping */
}
 
.collapseButton {          /* 'show'/'hide' buttons created dynamically */
    float: right;          /* by the CollapsibleTables javascript in    */
    font-weight: normal;   /* [[MediaWiki:Common.js]]are styled here    */
    text-align: right;     /* so they can be customised.                */
    width: auto;
}
.navbox .collapseButton {  /* In navboxes, the show/hide button balances */
    width: 6em;            /* the vde links from [[Template:Tnavbar]],   */
}                          /* so they need to be the same width.         */
 
@media print {
    .navbox {
        display: none;
    }
}</nowiki>

=== infobox style classes ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.''
 <nowiki>/* Infobox template style */
.infobox {
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    background-color: #f9f9f9;
    color: black;
    margin: 0.5em 0 0.5em 1em;
    padding: 0.2em;
    float: right;
    clear: right;
}
.infobox td,
.infobox th {
    vertical-align: top;
}
.infobox caption {
    font-size: larger;
}
.infobox.bordered {
    border-collapse: collapse;
}
.infobox.bordered td,
.infobox.bordered th {
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
}
.infobox.bordered .borderless td,
.infobox.bordered .borderless th {
    border: 0;
}
 
.infobox.sisterproject {
    width: 20em;
    font-size: 90%;
}
 
.infobox.standard-talk {
    border: 1px solid #c0c090;
    background-color: #f8eaba;
}
.infobox.standard-talk.bordered td,
.infobox.standard-talk.bordered th {
    border: 1px solid #c0c090;
}
 
/* styles for bordered infobox with merged rows */
.infobox.bordered .mergedtoprow td,
.infobox.bordered .mergedtoprow th {
    border: 0;
    border-top: 1px solid #aaa;
    border-right: 1px solid #aaa;
}
 
.infobox.bordered .mergedrow td,
.infobox.bordered .mergedrow th {
    border: 0;
    border-right: 1px solid #aaa;
}
 
/* Styles for geography infoboxes, eg countries,
   country subdivisions, cities, etc.            */
.infobox.geography {
    text-align: left;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    line-height: 1.2em; 
    font-size: 90%;
}
 
.infobox.geography  td,
.infobox.geography  th {
    border-top: solid 1px #aaa;
    padding: 0.4em 0.6em 0.4em 0.6em;
}
.infobox.geography .mergedtoprow td,
.infobox.geography .mergedtoprow th {
    border-top: solid 1px #aaa;
    padding: 0.4em 0.6em 0.2em 0.6em;
}
 
.infobox.geography .mergedrow td,
.infobox.geography .mergedrow th {
    border: 0;
    padding: 0 0.6em 0.2em 0.6em;
}
 
.infobox.geography .mergedbottomrow td,
.infobox.geography .mergedbottomrow th {
    border-top: 0;
    border-bottom: solid 1px #aaa;
    padding: 0 0.6em 0.4em 0.6em;
}
 
.infobox.geography .maptable td,
.infobox.geography .maptable th {
    border: 0;
    padding: 0;
}</nowiki>

=== messagebox style classes ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.'' 

{{Tl|Documentation subpage}} and the standard Wikipedia message box templates need these. I'm not sure how many of these we will use, but it's easier just to copy all of them to [[MediaWiki:Common.css]], than to nickel and dime them all as you go.

 <nowiki>/* Messagebox templates */

.messagebox {
   border: 1px solid #aaa;
   background-color: #f9f9f9;
   width: 80%;
   margin: 0 auto 1em auto;
   padding: .2em;
}
.messagebox.merge {
   border: 1px solid #c0b8cc;
   background-color: #f0e5ff;
   text-align: center;
}
.messagebox.cleanup {
   border: 1px solid #9f9fff;
   background-color: #efefff;
   text-align: center;
}
.messagebox.standard-talk {
   border: 1px solid #c0c090;
   background-color: #f8eaba;
}
.messagebox.standard-talk-blue {
   border: 1px solid #d0e5f5;
   background-color: #F8F8F8;
}
.messagebox.nested-talk {
   border: 1px solid #c0c090;
   background-color: #f8eaba;
   width: 100%;
   margin: 2px 4px 2px 4px;
}
.messagebox.small {
    width: 238px;
    font-size: 85%;
    float: right;
    clear: both;
    margin: 0 0 1em 1em;
    line-height: 1.25em; 
}
.messagebox.small-talk {
    width: 238px;
    font-size: 85%;
    float: right;
    clear: both;
    margin: 0 0 1em 1em;
    line-height: 1.25em; 
    background: #F8EABA;
}
 
/* Cell sizes for ambox/tmbox/imbox/cmbox/ombox/fmbox/dmbox message boxes */
th.mbox-text, td.mbox-text {     /* The message body cell(s) */
    border: none; 
    padding: 0.25em 0.9em;       /* 0.9em left/right */
    width: 100%;    /* Make all mboxes the same width regardless of text length */
}
td.mbox-image {                  /* The left image cell */
    border: none; 
    padding: 2px 0 2px 0.9em;    /* 0.9em left, 0px right */
    text-align: center; 
}
td.mbox-imageright {             /* The right image cell */
    border: none;
    padding: 2px 0.9em 2px 0;    /* 0px left, 0.9em right */
    text-align: center; 
}
td.mbox-empty-cell {         /* An empty narrow cell */
    border: none;
    padding: 0px;
    width: 1px;
}
 
/* Article message box styles */
table.ambox {
    margin: 0px 10%;   /* 10% = Will not overlap with other elements */
    border: 1px solid #aaa; 
    border-left: 10px solid #1e90ff;    /* Default "notice" blue */
    background: #fbfbfb; 
}
table.ambox + table.ambox {   /* Single border between stacked boxes. */
    margin-top: -1px;
}
.ambox th.mbox-text, 
.ambox td.mbox-text {            /* The message body cell(s) */
    padding: 0.25em 0.5em;       /* 0.5em left/right */
}
.ambox td.mbox-image {           /* The left image cell */
    padding: 2px 0 2px 0.5em;    /* 0.5em left, 0px right */
}
.ambox td.mbox-imageright {      /* The right image cell */
    padding: 2px 0.5em 2px 0;    /* 0px left, 0.5em right */
}
 
table.ambox-notice {
    border-left: 10px solid #1e90ff;    /* Blue */
}
table.ambox-speedy {
    border-left: 10px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
    background: #fee;                   /* Pink */
}
table.ambox-delete {
    border-left: 10px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
}
table.ambox-content {
    border-left: 10px solid #f28500;    /* Orange */
}
table.ambox-style {
    border-left: 10px solid #f4c430;    /* Yellow */
}
table.ambox-move {
    border-left: 10px solid #9932cc;    /* Purple */
}
table.ambox-protection {
    border-left: 10px solid #bba;       /* Gray-gold */
}
 
/* Image message box styles */
table.imbox {
    margin: 4px 10%; 
    border-collapse: collapse; 
    border: 3px solid #1e90ff;    /* Default "notice" blue */
    background: #fbfbfb;
}
.imbox .mbox-text .imbox {    /* For imboxes inside imbox-text cells. */
    margin: 0 -0.5em;    /* 0.9 - 0.5 = 0.4em left/right. */
}
.mbox-inside .imbox {    /* For imboxes inside other templates. */
    margin: 4px;
}
 
table.imbox-notice {
    border: 3px solid #1e90ff;    /* Blue */
}
table.imbox-speedy {
    border: 3px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
    background: #fee;             /* Pink */
}
table.imbox-delete {
    border: 3px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
}
table.imbox-content {
    border: 3px solid #f28500;    /* Orange */
}
table.imbox-style {
    border: 3px solid #f4c430;    /* Yellow */
}
table.imbox-move {
    border: 3px solid #9932cc;    /* Purple */
}
table.imbox-protection {
    border: 3px solid #bba;       /* Gray-gold */
}
table.imbox-license {
    border: 3px solid #88a;       /* Dark gray */
    background: #f7f8ff;          /* Light gray */
}
table.imbox-featured {
    border: 3px solid #cba135;    /* Brown-gold */
}
 
/* Category message box styles */
table.cmbox {
    margin: 3px 10%;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    border: 1px solid #aaa; 
    background: #DFE8FF;    /* Default "notice" blue */
}
 
table.cmbox-notice {
    background: #D8E8FF;    /* Blue */
}
table.cmbox-speedy {
    margin-top: 4px;
    margin-bottom: 4px;
    border: 4px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
    background: #FFDBDB;          /* Pink */
}
table.cmbox-delete {
    background: #FFDBDB;    /* Red */
}
table.cmbox-content {
    background: #FFE7CE;    /* Orange */
}
table.cmbox-style {
    background: #FFF9DB;    /* Yellow */
}
table.cmbox-move {
    background: #E4D8FF;    /* Purple */
}
table.cmbox-protection {
    background: #EFEFE1;    /* Gray-gold */
}
 
/* Other pages message box styles */
table.ombox {
    margin: 4px 10%; 
    border-collapse: collapse; 
    border: 1px solid #aaa;       /* Default "notice" gray */
    background: #f9f9f9;
}
 
table.ombox-notice {
    border: 1px solid #aaa;       /* Gray */
}
table.ombox-speedy {
    border: 2px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
    background: #fee;             /* Pink */
}
table.ombox-delete {
    border: 2px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
}
table.ombox-content {
    border: 1px solid #f28500;    /* Orange */
}
table.ombox-style {
    border: 1px solid #f4c430;    /* Yellow */
}
table.ombox-move {
    border: 1px solid #9932cc;    /* Purple */
}
table.ombox-protection {
    border: 2px solid #bba;       /* Gray-gold */
}
 
/* Talk page message box styles */
table.tmbox {
    margin: 4px 10%;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    border: 1px solid #c0c090;    /* Default "notice" gray-brown */
    background: #f8eaba;
}
.mediawiki .mbox-inside .tmbox { /* For tmboxes inside other templates. The "mediawiki" */
    margin: 2px 0;               /* class ensures that this declaration overrides other */
    width: 100%;  /* For Safari and Opera */     /* styles (including mbox-small above) */
}
.mbox-inside .tmbox.mbox-small { /* "small" tmboxes should not be small when  */
    line-height: 1.5em;          /* also "nested", so reset styles that are   */   
    font-size: 100%;             /* set in "mbox-small" above.                */
}
 
table.tmbox-speedy {
    border: 2px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
    background: #fee;             /* Pink */
}
table.tmbox-delete {
    border: 2px solid #b22222;    /* Red */
}
table.tmbox-content {
    border: 2px solid #f28500;    /* Orange */
}
table.tmbox-style {
    border: 2px solid #f4c430;    /* Yellow */
}
table.tmbox-move {
    border: 2px solid #9932cc;    /* Purple */
}
table.tmbox-protection,
table.tmbox-notice {
    border: 1px solid #c0c090;    /* Gray-brown */
}
 
/* Disambig and set index box styles */
table.dmbox {
    clear: both; 
    margin: 0.9em 1em; 
    border-top: 1px solid #ccc; 
    border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; 
    background: transparent;
}
 
/* Footer and header message box styles */
table.fmbox {
    clear: both;
    margin: 0.2em 0;
    width: 100%;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    background: #f9f9f9;     /* Default "system" gray */
}
table.fmbox-system {
    background: #f9f9f9;
}
table.fmbox-warning {
    border: 1px solid #bb7070;  /* Dark pink */
    background: #ffdbdb;        /* Pink */
}
table.fmbox-editnotice {
    background: transparent;
}
/* Div based "warning" style fmbox messages. */
div.mw-warning-with-logexcerpt,
div.mw-lag-warn-high,
div.mw-cascadeprotectedwarning,
div#mw-protect-cascadeon {
    clear: both;
    margin: 0.2em 0;
    border: 1px solid #bb7070;
    background: #ffdbdb;
    padding: 0.25em 0.9em;
}
/* Div based "system" style fmbox messages. 
   Used in [[MediaWiki:Readonly lag]]. */
div.mw-lag-warn-normal,
div.fmbox-system {
    clear: both;
    margin: 0.2em 0;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    background: #f9f9f9;
    padding: 0.25em 0.9em;
}
 
/* These mbox-small classes must be placed after all other 
   ambox/tmbox/ombox etc classes. "body.mediawiki" is so 
   they override "table.ambox + table.ambox" above. */
body.mediawiki table.mbox-small {   /* For the "small=yes" option. */
    clear: right;
    float: right;
    margin: 4px 0 4px 1em;
    width: 238px;
    font-size: 88%;
    line-height: 1.25em;
}
body.mediawiki table.mbox-small-left {   /* For the "small=left" option. */
    margin: 4px 1em 4px 0;
    width: 238px;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    font-size: 88%;
    line-height: 1.25em;
}
</nowiki>

=== reflist style class ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.'' 

This is not absolutely necessary, but it would cause {{Tl|Reflist}} to look more like it does on Wikipedia (i.e., with smaller text). I like that, because it helps to distinguish the References section from the rest of an article.

 <nowiki>/* Make the list of references in [[Template:Reflist]] smaller */
.references-small { 
    font-size: 90%;
}</nowiki>

=== Styles for Template:Keypress ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 21, 2011.'' 

{{Tl|Keypress}}{{w|Template:Keypress}} needs these style classes to work.

 <nowiki>/* Support for Template:IPA, Template:Unicode and Template:Polytonic.
   The second declarations reset the styles for all browsers except
   IE6, which chokes on the empty comment tags. Please copy any changes
   to [[Template:IPA fonts]] and [[Template:Unicode fonts]].
*/
.IPA {
    font-family: "Charis SIL", "Doulos SIL", Gentium, GentiumAlt,
                 "DejaVu Sans", Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic",
                 "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode",
                 "Chrysanthi Unicode";
    font-family /**/: inherit;
}
.Unicode {
    font-family: Code2000, Code2001, "Free Serif", "TITUS Cyberbit Basic",
                 "Doulos SIL", "Chrysanthi Unicode", "Bitstream Cyberbit",
                 "Bitstream CyberBase", Thryomanes, Gentium, GentiumAlt,
                 "Lucida Grande", "Free Sans", "Arial Unicode MS",
                 "Microsoft Sans Serif", "Lucida Sans Unicode";
    font-family /**/: inherit;
}
.polytonic {
    font-family: "Athena Unicode", Gentium, "Palatino Linotype",
                 "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode",
                 "Lucida Grande", Code2000; 
    font-family /**/: inherit;
}
</nowiki>

=== NavFrame styles ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 24, 2011.''

19:56, 23 January 2011 (PST): these may be necessary for the show/hide links on {{Tl|Navbox}} templates to work. See [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:NavFrame]].

 <nowiki>/* Standard Navigationsleisten, aka box hiding thingy
   from .de.  Documentation at [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]]. */
div.NavFrame {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 4px;
    border: 1px solid #aaa;
    text-align: center;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    font-size: 95%;
}
div.NavFrame + div.NavFrame {
    border-top-style: none;
    border-top-style: hidden;
}
div.NavPic {
    background-color: #fff;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 2px;
    float: left;
}
div.NavFrame div.NavHead {
    height: 1.6em;
    font-weight: bold;
    background-color: #ccf;
    position: relative;
}
div.NavFrame p,
div.NavFrame div.NavContent,
div.NavFrame div.NavContent p {
    font-size: 100%;
}
div.NavEnd {
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    line-height: 1px;
    clear: both;
}
a.NavToggle {
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    right: 3px;
    font-weight: normal;
    font-size: 90%;
}
</nowiki>

=== Collapsible table styles ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 24, 2011.''

21:16, 23 January 2011 (PST): these are necessary to add to [[MediaWiki:Common.css]] for the show/hide links on {{Tl|Navbox}} templates to work. See [[mw:Manual:Collapsible tables#Common.css]].

 <nowiki>table.collapsed tr.collapsable {
	display: none;
}
 
.collapseButton {		/* 'show'/'hide' buttons created dynamically by the		*/
	float: right;		/* CollapsibleTables JavaScript in [[MediaWiki:Common.js]] */
	font-weight: normal;	/* are styled here so they can be customised.		  */
	text-align: right;
	width: auto;
}</nowiki>

However, <code>.collapseButton</code> is already in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]], so the only addition here is:

 <nowiki>table.collapsed tr.collapsable {
	display: none;
}</nowiki>

== JavaScript ==

=== Collapsible tables ===
Done! ''Enabled by [[User:Lonny|Lonny]] on January 24, 2011.''

19:59, 23 January 2011 (PST): the following code needs to be in [[MediaWiki:Common.js]] to enable the show/hide feature of {{Tl|Navbox}} templates to work. See [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:NavFrame]] and [[mw:Manual:Collapsible tables]]. The following JavaScript chunk comes from the latter reference.

 <nowiki>/** Collapsible tables *********************************************************
 *
 *  Description: Allows tables to be collapsed, showing only the header. See
 *			   http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Collapsible_tables.
 *  Maintainers: [[en:User:R. Koot]]
 */
 
var autoCollapse = 2;
var collapseCaption = 'hide';
var expandCaption = 'show';
 
function collapseTable( tableIndex ) {
	var Button = document.getElementById( 'collapseButton' + tableIndex );
	var Table = document.getElementById( 'collapsibleTable' + tableIndex );
 
	if ( !Table || !Button ) {
		return false;
	}
 
	var Rows = Table.rows;
 
	if ( Button.firstChild.data == collapseCaption ) {
		for ( var i = 1; i < Rows.length; i++ ) {
			Rows[i].style.display = 'none';
		}
		Button.firstChild.data = expandCaption;
	} else {
		for ( var i = 1; i < Rows.length; i++ ) {
			Rows[i].style.display = Rows[0].style.display;
		}
		Button.firstChild.data = collapseCaption;
	}
}
 
function createCollapseButtons() {
	var tableIndex = 0;
	var NavigationBoxes = new Object();
	var Tables = document.getElementsByTagName( 'table' );
 
	for ( var i = 0; i < Tables.length; i++ ) {
		if ( hasClass( Tables[i], 'collapsible' ) ) {
 
			/* only add button and increment count if there is a header row to work with */
			var HeaderRow = Tables[i].getElementsByTagName( 'tr' )[0];
			if ( !HeaderRow ) {
				continue;
			}
			var Header = HeaderRow.getElementsByTagName( 'th' )[0];
			if ( !Header ) {
				continue;
			}
 
			NavigationBoxes[tableIndex] = Tables[i];
			Tables[i].setAttribute( 'id', 'collapsibleTable' + tableIndex );
 
			var Button = document.createElement( 'span' );
			var ButtonLink = document.createElement( 'a' );
			var ButtonText = document.createTextNode( collapseCaption );
 
			Button.className = 'collapseButton'; // Styles are declared in [[MediaWiki:Common.css]]
 
			ButtonLink.style.color = Header.style.color;
			ButtonLink.setAttribute( 'id', 'collapseButton' + tableIndex );
			ButtonLink.setAttribute( 'href', "javascript:collapseTable(" + tableIndex + ");" );
			ButtonLink.appendChild( ButtonText );
 
			Button.appendChild( document.createTextNode( '[' ) );
			Button.appendChild( ButtonLink );
			Button.appendChild( document.createTextNode( ']' ) );
 
			Header.insertBefore( Button, Header.childNodes[0] );
			tableIndex++;
		}
	}
 
	for ( var i = 0;  i < tableIndex; i++ ) {
		if ( hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], 'collapsed' ) || ( tableIndex >= autoCollapse && hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], 'autocollapse' ) ) ) {
			collapseTable( i );
		} else if ( hasClass( NavigationBoxes[i], 'innercollapse' ) ) {
			var element = NavigationBoxes[i];
			while ( element = element.parentNode ) {
				if ( hasClass( element, 'outercollapse' ) ) {
					collapseTable( i );
					break;
				}
			}
		}
	}
}
 
addOnloadHook( createCollapseButtons );
 
/** Test if an element has a certain class **************************************
 *
 * Description: Uses regular expressions and caching for better performance.
 * Maintainers: [[User:Mike Dillon]], [[User:R. Koot]], [[User:SG]]
 */
 
var hasClass = ( function() {
	var reCache = {};
	return function( element, className ) {
		return ( reCache[className] ? reCache[className] : ( reCache[className] = new RegExp( "(?:\\s|^)" + className + "(?:\\s|$)" ) ) ).test( element.className );
	};
})();
</nowiki>

== Glossary ==

11:37, 11 January 2011 (PST): Appropedia seems to have no comprehensive Glossary article. Several articles contain subject-specific glossaries. [[Renewable Energy Dictionary]] is pretty large. A comprehensive Glossary for the whole site could be useful. I'll look at that after I slog through the Index and template projects. For background, see:
* [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Glossaries]]

== Intern tasks ==

23:59, 27 January 2011 (PST): [[Appropedia:Gnome tasks]] has a red link{{w|WP:RED}} to: [[Appropedia:Suggestions for intern tasks]]. I might create that page if no one else does first. For the time being when I get an idea for an [[Appropedia:Internships|intern task]], I will list it here. The order of tasks is intentional: I put the easiest and/or the most fundamental tasks first. If you are new to wiki editing, the key is to start with something simple that you can master quickly, to get a sense of immediate accomplishment. When that type of task starts to get boring, move on to a harder task.

* I'd be happy to delegate everything on this entire page to interns. If you are an intern or want to be, and you see anything I'm doing that you'd like to try, [[User talk:Teratornis|let me know]] and we'll work out how to split our efforts. Just because I have not listed a task here yet does not mean I would not be happy to let someone else have fun with it. Get your gnome on!

* A synonym for "gnome task" is "grunt work". Building a wiki gives new meaning to words like tedium, minutiae, and painstaking. The final result can be kind of glamorous, but building it is not. It takes a certain kind of orderly, determined mind to build a wiki, and the average person probably does not have this type of mind. We need average people to add their knowledge to the wiki, but most of them are unlikely to understand and maintain the overall structure. Only our gnomes can do that.

* While you're plowing through the tedium, look for things to automate. If a task is structured and regular enough, maybe we can program a bot{{w|WP:EIW#BOT}} program to do it. Maybe a template{{w|Help:Template}} would help. Progress on a wiki consists of identifying tasks, inventing procedures to solve them, doing the procedures by hand for a while, adjusting our procedures to make them more efficient, and eventually automating them.

=== Make your own user subpage for notes and links ===

15:18, 22 February 2011 (PST): wiki editing is too complicated for just [[wiktionary:wing_it|winging it]], but that is what some people try to do. Winging it is fine if you are doing something simple and obvious, such as correcting typographical errors in articles. If a task requires research, planning, coordinating with other people, or more than one session to complete, protect your sanity by taking notes. For example, read this entire page of notes, and try to imagine doing everything I did, or hope to do, without writing any of it down. I couldn't keep track of this much complexity without writing it down. Unless you are a ''lot'' smarter than I am, you probably couldn't either. Then try forgetting about this page entirely, and try to reconstruct what I did only by looking at [[Special:Contributions/Teratornis|my contributions]]. Taking notes might be the only way to do anything complicated on a wiki, and the only efficient way to let other editors figure out what you did. 

If you are an intern, you should take notes. Start a subpage of your user page. Make it like this one. Describe your general plan. Link to every online resource you are learning from. Add sections for each particular task. Describe your thinking process as you figure things out. When you get an idea that you don't have time to pursue immediately, write it down so you or someone else can come back to it later. Date your entries with five tildes (<code><nowiki>~~~~~</nowiki></code>).{{w|Help:Editing shortcuts}} Mark sections with the {{Tl|Done}} template when you finish them.

Your user space is for helping you contribute more effective to the community. Use it. If I were grading your intern work, I would count the quality of your notes equally with the quality of your actual work. Future batches of interns will get productive faster if they can study the notes of earlier interns, whose work they will be extending.

An intern project will also have its own shared project pages. Use them to collaborate with other project members. Use your user pages to document the evolution of your own learning and doing.

=== Correct typos ===

15:43, 22 February 2011 (PST): a wiki is a type of Web site that is editable by its users, requiring no special software beyond the user's Web browser. This easy accessibility means the quality of contributions can be very uneven. Some articles will contain typographical errors. Browse around and correct them. [[Special:RecentChanges]] is one place to catch typos while they are fresh. You can also search for common misspellings{{w|Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings}} with {{Tl|Google Appropedia}}. For example:

* {{Google|site:appropedia.org miniscule}}
* {{Google|site:appropedia.org abundence}}

If you are feeling particularly ambitious, try porting [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings]] to {{SITENAME}}, its subpages, and its supporting templates. That will help other interns and gnomes to search for typos on the site.

=== Image maintenance ===


15:50, 6 February 2011 (PST): [[Special:Statistics]] says {{SITENAME}} has over 12,000 images. 

* Add the appropriate copyright (license) template to each image page.
* Add the {{Tl|Information}}{{w|Template:Information}} template to each image page. Fill out the fields, and ask the uploaders to supply any missing or un-guessable information.
** See for example [[:File:Broom icon.png]], the first image page on Appropedia to use the {{Tl|Information}} template. Compare to [[commons:File:Broom icon.png]] from which we copied.
* Create a category structure comprehensive enough for all our images (starting at the fundamental [[:Category:Images]]), and categorize all the [[Special:UncategorizedFiles|uncategorized images]]. 
** Note that adding a copyright template to an image page categorizes the page accordingly (e.g., [[:Category:GFDL files]]), but this is not a topical categorization (i.e. categories based on what the images depict), which we need in addition to categories by image license.
* Port more public domain copyright templates from [[wikipedia:Category:Public domain copyright templates|Wikipedia]] and/or [[commons:Category:PD license tags|Commons]]. Ditto for the [[wikipedia:Category:Creative commons copyright templates|Creative Commons license templates]], etc.
* Create pages that list the copyright templates available on {{SITENAME}} (see [[commons:COM:EIC#Ctags]]), like these pages:
** [[commons:Commons:Copyright tags]]
** [[commons:Commons:Image copyright tags visual]]
** [[commons:Commons:Creative Commons copyright tags]]
** [[commons:Category:PD-USGov license tags]]

==== Examples ====

12:40, 20 February 2011 (PST): I will add examples to this section that illustrate how to properly format various types of image pages. Once a person learns how to format any particular type of image, he or she can search for similar images on {{SITENAME}} and format them similarly.

===== Images from Flickr =====


Images from [[wikipedia:Flickr|Flickr]] that have free licenses are suitable to copy to {{SITENAME}}. We can borrow from the methods that Wikimedia Commons{{w|Wikimedia Commons}} users have worked out to do this. [[Commons:User:Teratornis/Flickr examples|A tool I have used over there]] is called flinfo. <small>To-do: document how to use this tool and use the results on {{SITENAME}}.</small>

* [[:File:Food dryer.jpg]] - an example image page whose formatting we can improve; the basic image information is all there, or can be retrieved, and put into an {{Tl|Information}} template.

Steps:

<ol><!-- Use an HTML ordered list so we can insert blocks of text without restarting the step numbers
         from 1 again, as would happen with a wikitext ordered list (using # characters for list items). -->
<li>The [[:File:Food dryer.jpg]] page says the image is from Flickr and gives an external link to image page there. </li>
<li>Extract the Flickr ID from the URL: <nowiki>http://www.flickr.com/photos/graibeard/'''3688823709'''/sizes/m/in/photostream/</nowiki></li>
<li>Put the Flickr ID into the {{Tl|Flinfo}} template to generate the URL to run the Flinfo tool to retrieve the image information:</li>
* <nowiki>{{Flinfo|3688823709}}</nowiki> gives: {{Flinfo|3688823709}}
<li>The output from Flinfo is:</li>
 <nowiki>{{Information
|Description=Excalibur Drying Jerusalem Artichokes
|Source=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/graibeard/3688823709/ ExcaliburDryingJerArtichokes-8487]
|Date=2009-07-05 17:14
|Author=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/8393288@N04 Glenn] from Melbourne, Australia
|Permission=
|other_versions=
}}
{{Location dec|-37.896462|145.050258|source:Flickr}}

=={{int:license-header}}==
{{cc-by-sa-2.0}}
{{flickrreview}}

{{subst:unc}}</nowiki>
<li>Edit the output down by removing references to things that apply to [[wikipedia:Wikimedia Commons|Wikimedia Commons]] and not to {{SITENAME}}. (Eventually someone may port the very useful {{Tl|Location dec}} template here, from [[commons:Template:Location dec]], so we can geocode our photographs with latitude, longitude coordinates for the image locations.)</li>
<nowiki>{{Information
|Description=Excalibur Drying Jerusalem Artichokes
|Source=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/graibeard/3688823709/ ExcaliburDryingJerArtichokes-8487]
|Date=2009-07-05 17:14
|Author=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/8393288@N04 Glenn] from Melbourne, Australia
|Permission={{cc-by-sa-2.0}}
|other_versions=
}}
<!-- For possible future use: {{Location dec|-37.896462|145.050258|source:Flickr}} -->
</nowiki>
<li>Edit the {{Tl|Information}} template into the [[:File:Food dryer.jpg]] image page.</li>
</ol>

=== Navigation templates ===

16:04, 22 February 2011 (PST): create navigation templates for sets of related articles, project pages, or help pages. Often these can reflect the structure of [[Help:Categories|categories]]. Use the {{Tl|Navbox}}{{Tlw|Navbox}} template as your base template. See for example {{Tl|Appropedia searches}} (which does not link to articles, but to Google search links on various parts of Appropedia). References:

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Navigation templates]]
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates]]

After you create a {{Tl|Navbox}}-style navigation template, add it to the bottom of each article or page it links to.

<small>To-do: create a navigation template that links to articles or help pages, and use that as an example.</small>

=== Shortcut maintenance ===

16:04, 22 February 2011 (PST): read [[Appropedia:Shortcuts]]. When you understand what shortcuts are and why we need them, scan all of Appropedia's Help: and Project: (Appropedia:) pages:
* [[Special:PrefixIndex/Appropedia:]]
* [[Special:PrefixIndex/Help:]]
For all such pages that lack the {{Tl|Shortcut}} template, and could benefit from it, add the template, and create a shortcut for the page. Add {{Tl|R from shortcut}} to the shortcut when you create it, for example the [[A:SC]] shortcut contains this wikitext:

 <nowiki>#redirect [[Appropedia:Shortcuts]]
</nowiki>

Add each new shortcut to the table in [[Appropedia:Shortcuts#List of shortcuts|list of shortcuts]].

=== Salvage articles deleted from Wikipedia ===

19:15, 29 January 2011 (PST): Wikipedia deletes thousands of articles. This happens in part because Wikipedia's design makes it easy and inviting to create new articles, without first requiring an editor to have any idea that Wikipedia has lengthy and complex rules that limit the topics suitable for articles. The result is that lots of people optimistically create articles on Wikipedia, only to fall victim to Wikipedia's deletionists. See:

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]] - where articles on Wikipedia go to die.
* [[wikipedia:Deletionpedia]] - [http://deletionpedia.dbatley.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page Deletionpedia] is an archive of about 62,786 pages which Wikipedia deleted during just part of 2008.
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?]] - a frequently asked question on Wikipedia, often from bewildered editors who took the bait to start articles, without knowing that Wikipedia has a thriving deletion industry.
* [[wikipedia:Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia]] - an interesting article that fails to mention what I think is the most salient point in the deletionism/inclusionism debate: the massive ergonomic failure of Wikipedia to inform new users that Wikipedia deletes thousands of articles for hundreds of different reasons.

Some of Wikipedia's deleted articles are on topics suitable for {{SITENAME}}. Search for them:{{w|Template:Search subpages link}}<ref name="search_afd">{{Tl|Google custom}} does not search Wikipedia's Articles for deletion very well because Wikipedia's <code>[http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt robots.txt]</code> excludes these pages from search engine spiders.{{w|Web crawler}} Therefore I might port [[wikipedia:Template:Search subpages link]] to Appropedia so I can document these searches more elegantly.</ref>

* {{google|site:en.wikipedia.org "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion"|Search Wikipedia:Articles for deletion}}
* http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=sustainable+prefix:Wikipedia%3AArticles+for+deletion&fulltext=Search

More pages relevant to article salvage:

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:XfD today]] - The current day's deletion nominations. 
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting]] - a WikiProject that maintains lists of articles for deletion discussions sorted by topic. 
** [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Environment]] - the only topic I see that directly relates to Appropedia; some others might relate peripherally.

<small>To-do: write more details about porting article content from Wikipedia, such as: adding the {{Tl|From Wikipedia}} template, or better yet we need a {{Tl|Deleted from Wikipedia}} template; wikifying the content; categorizing a new article; contacting the jilted Wikipedia editors and inviting them to come home to Appropedia.</small>

== Global warming denial FAQ ==

21:38, 9 January 2011 (PST): {{SITENAME}} might not be an appropriate platform for this content. However, given the following:
* As of 2011, there is no binding global agreement to cap the maximum amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that humans will add to the atmosphere, and neither is there anywhere near the level of voluntary action to stop burning fossil fuels that would be necessary in the absence of an agreement. Given the slow pace of climate negotiations, the obstructive efforts of climate change disinformers, not to mention everyone's addiction to the goods and services made affordable by fossil fuels, no one can even predict when a sufficiently robust global climate agreement might be attainable.
* Humans remain firmly on a business-as-usual trajectory to burn essentially all the Earth's recoverable fossil fuels within a century or two.
* This could result in atmospheric carbon dioxide rising to a concentration of 750 ppm or higher by 2100, and continuing to rise thereafter.
* The resulting degree of global warming and ocean acidification could be catastrophic for many of the world's peoples, with disproportionate harm inflicted on poor people living in the tropics and subtropics.
Failure to cap humanity's greenhouse gas emissions could negate most of the efforts falling under the traditional definition of [[appropriate technology]]. Therefore one might argue that eliminating fossil fuel combustion altogether, or preventing the products of fossil fuel combustion from ever reaching the atmosphere, is a necessary condition for enabling other technologies to be "appropriate". 

One of the main barriers to eliminating fossil fuel combustion is the widespread disbelief or misunderstanding of the facts of climate science. Much of the confusion is the result of an orchestrated disinformation campaign funded by fossil fuel interests and free market think tanks. They have proven thus far to be much better at public relations than the scientific community. It is not enough for scientists to report their results in the scientific literature. Someone (either scientists, or someone else) must respond to the specific arguments (memes, tropes) originating from climate change disinformers and circulating endlessly on the Web and in conservative media.

It might be interesting to wikify content similar to what is on these pages:

* [http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s11b.htm Answers to Global Warming Skeptics: a list of questions with links to many other sites]
* [http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/ How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming]
* [http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/09/rebutting-climate-science-disinformer-talking-points-in-a-single-line/ Rebutting climate science disinformer talking points in a single line]
* [http://www.skepticalscience.com/ Skeptical Science]
** {{Cite web 
  |url=http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
  |title=Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says
}} - one line format
** {{Cite web
  |url=http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=taxonomy
  |title=Skeptic Arguments sorted by taxonomy
}} - I really like this, it shows the structure of climate change denial. Note how contradictory the various arguments are, as if climate change deniers are simply casting about for any pretext to justify burning the rest of the Earth's recoverable fossil fuels about as quickly as possible.
This would let the content benefit from collaborative editing, as well as the superior MediaWiki feature set (links, shortcuts, etc.). In general, when one encounters global warming deniers on discussion sites, they rehash well-worn and thoroughly-debunked arguments - as if they believe the world's leading scientific societies which endorse the IPCC's claims wouldn't have thought of the obvious questions. It would be efficient to answer these repetitive questions with shortcut links. That won't convince any deniers, but it might persuade the rational but uninformed.

The vast majority of people where I live (midwestern US) behave as if they do not believe global warming is a threat. That is, I haven't seen many people who have achieved or are seriously working toward personal [[Wikipedia:carbon footprint|carbon footprint]] reductions of 90% or more. Which is what everybody needs to do to limit the global temperature increase to 2&deg;C or less.

* [https://climatedenial.org/ Climate Change Denial] - a blog by George Marshall, exploring the psychology of climate change denial and the response to climate change by various groups of people.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOsl5-AUTv4 The Ingenious Ways We Avoid Believing in Climate Change, Part 1]

== See also ==
*[[User:Teratornis/Template porting: theory and practice]]

== Notes and references ==
<references />

==External links==

* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates]] - compares three of the major navigation aids on a wiki
* [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Transwiki]] - a WikiProject for helping with the transwiki process outside of the Wikimedia family
* [[wikipedia:WP:EIW#MediaWiki]] - links to many pages about MediaWiki, from the Editor's index to Wikipedia
''<small>none so far</small>''

{{Appropedia searches}}

{{Page data
|shortcut = U:TT, U:TTASKS
}}