User talk:RichardF: Difference between revisions

Welcome

Hi Richard,

Great work at KivaPedia. It is a fantastic project, with a nice homepage, for a very important organization. Let me know if you have any questions here at Appropedia (although I think you know Chriswaterguy and he can answer your questions as well). --Lonny 12:03, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

Thanks, Lonnie. Very impressive wiki here too! :-) I just "met" Chris today when he commented on the Wikipedia version of a Sustainable development Portal. Regards, RichardF 12:19, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

Excellent. Well I am glad that we have meet now. There is good size community of actively engaged Appropedia members (both on and off the wiki), please let us know if you have any ideas for collaboration. Our goal is to support, by being a living library, organisations and individuals engaged in sustainability. We would love to help support Kiva.

Your impressive abilities with wiki software (based upon your work at wikipedia and kivapedia) are a fantastic resource as well, please let us know if you have any advice. I have added Kivapedia to our interwiki library. By tomorrow the code [[Kivapedia:Kiva_Friends]] should create a link to http://www.kivapedia.org/index.php/Kiva_Friends. Thank you, --Lonny 12:53, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

Cool! I'm just a "supporter," rather than a "doer," like many folks here appear to be. The NBC Today Show will be doing a story on Kiva "real soon now" (don't know exactly when), but national coverage like that makes things real interesting over there. No specific suggestions right now. Feel free to offer any you have in mind. RichardF 14:40, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

Response

I left partial response to your comments at User talk:Lonny# Kiva, Kivapedia and microfinance. Will discuss some more after the conference is over. --Chriswaterguy · talk 21:15, 1 August 2007 (PDT)

Thanks, I replied here too. RichardF 05:02, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Solar navbar

Hi Richard:

I noticed that you have recently added the Solar Topics navbar to the "Heliostats" and the "Smart Windows" pages in Appropedia. I tend to take a proprietary interest in those pages, since I wrote almost all of their text. It's nice to see them getting wider circulation.

There are a couple of other pages to which you might like to do the same thing: "Focus-balanced paraboloid", and "Sun Related Calculations". (The latter is a page that I just added today.) I thought of trying to do it myself, but editing navbars looks tricky, and I don't want to mess anything up.

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes.

DOwenWilliams 14:32, 18 May 2011 (PDT) David Williams

Hi David. Yes, I have a lot a practice with navboxes at Wikipedia, so I thought I would try helping out with adding some here. I see you put a lot of work into the Heliostats and the Smart windows articles. I added Focus-balanced paraboloid and Sun Related Calculations to the template and pages. Let me know if you have any questions and/or suggestions about navboxes. You also could comment at Appropedia talk:Village pump#Topical navboxes. Regards, RichardF 16:44, 18 May 2011 (PDT)

I've only just encountered them, so I'll wait until I've got a feel for them before I ask any questions. They do look useful. Later... DOwenWilliams 17:54, 18 May 2011 (PDT)David Williams

Iframe widget

Before adding the Iframe widget, I wanted to get feedback on security concerns, here. It's a very appealing feature, but does raise some questions about how we monitor its use.

Sorry about that. I expect there aren't many widgets that would raise concerns... but we do try to be very careful around security. --Chriswaterguy 13:06, 19 May 2011 (PDT)

I understand. The only time I've used frames like this is on a secure SharePoint website that only trusted users could edit. Let me know what you decide. --RichardF 13:34, 19 May 2011 (PDT)

There may be a way, using this or another tool, to transclude only from certain sites (and only admins or maybe bureaucrats could edit the list of approved sites). I'll add that as a task on BM. I'm sure we'll get there, and we have more tech help now, but there's a bit of a queue. Thanks --Chriswaterguy 22:01, 22 May 2011 (PDT)

Okay, thanks!  :-) RichardF 05:13, 23 May 2011 (PDT)

Namespace shortcuts

To explain what I was up to with my "A talk:VP" experiment... We've got "A:" as a shortcut to "Appropedia:" in the wiki's settings (LocalSettings.php). I've added a task to add some more - see details of the suggestion. From past experience, anything created manually now with those shortcuts will have to be deleted later. (Just a little more work, no biggie, but just so you know.)

Really appreciate all your work and input lately. --Chriswaterguy 21:28, 23 May 2011 (PDT)

Thanks for the FYI. It reminds me of wikipedia:Template:Shortcut. Thanks for letting play along!  ;-) --RichardF 05:22, 24 May 2011 (PDT)

fancy search and replace

I sometimes use my bot to do search and replace using regex (regular expressions) - not sure if you're familiar with that, but very handy. And it's possible to do it without a bot, by pasting into http://www.myregextester.com/

Just noticed all the [[foo]]{{w|}} in User:RichardF/Green living - I'll do some work now on adding the parameters -> [[foo]]{{w|foo}}. --Chriswaterguy 08:39, 29 May 2011 (PDT)

Done - I must be getting the hang of regex :) --Chriswaterguy 08:48, 29 May 2011 (PDT)

Cool! Thanks! I haven't used that, but I get the drift. I'll have to try it out. One question, when you did [[foo]]{{w|foo}}, did you check for [[foo|bar]]{{w|}} to make [[foo|bar]]{{w|foo}}? :-) --RichardF 10:00, 29 May 2011 (PDT)

Another question, can regex find and get rid of red links? I decided, I'm going to try that style.

• red [[foo]]{{w|foo}} --> foo{{w|foo}}

--RichardF 10:05, 29 May 2011 (PDT)

I checked the following item ( environment^W) in the History section and it worked fine, so I guess it's not a big deal regardless.

• 1972 Donella Meadows^W wrote the international bestseller The Limits to Growth^W, which reported on a study of long-term global trends in population^W, economics^W and the environment^W.

You also can see why I'm all for getting rid of the red links. The interwiki links mark what's available in a much more elegant way. --RichardF 10:35, 29 May 2011 (PDT)

Okay, I'm stumped. Can you show me an example of the regex you used?  :-) RichardF 10:25, 30 May 2011 (PDT)

Hmmm, maybe this will work...

Source:

[[1foo]] la la la [[bar]] [[foo bar]] [[foo|bar]]

Search:

\[\[(.+?)]]

Replace:

\0{{w|\1}}

Result:

[[1foo]]{{w|1foo}} la la la [[bar]]{{w|bar}} [[foo bar]]{{w|foo bar}} [[foo|bar]]{{w|foo|bar}}

--RichardF 12:44, 30 May 2011 (PDT)

I tried this out on User:RichardF/Appropriate technology. The only obvious fixes I saw were removing the additions from the image and file links. Is this worth adding to the live article? What about red links? --RichardF 13:00, 30 May 2011 (PDT)

Another issue is the placement of the "s" on a pluralized link, it comes after the interwiki link. --RichardF 07:41, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

Here's the regex I used to clean up (unpipe) the piped interwiki links at Green living.

source

{{w|foo}} {{w|Foo}} {{w|foo bar}} {{w|foo_bar}} {{w|foo-bar}} {{w|foo (bar)}} la la la {{w|foo|foo}} {{w|Foo|Foo}} {{w|foo bar|foo}} {{w|foo_bar|foo_bar}} {{w|foo-bar|foo-bar}} {{w|foo (bar)|foo}}

search

({{w\|)([\w\s\-\(\)]+)(\|)([\w\s\-\(\)]+)(}})

replace

\1\2\5

result

{{w|foo}} {{w|Foo}} {{w|foo bar}} {{w|foo_bar}} {{w|foo-bar}} {{w|foo (bar)}} la la la {{w|foo}} {{w|Foo}} {{w|foo bar}} {{w|foo_bar}} {{w|foo-bar}} {{w|foo (bar)}}

--RichardF 19:51, 30 May 2011 (PDT)

I updated and reran the above regex to catch hyphenated words. --RichardF 07:26, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

---

Okay. Here's a version that seems to handle most situations in one pass. It ignores images and files, puts a pluralized "s" in the right place, ignores interwiki links already there, and throws out piped text for the interwiki links, maybe!  ;-)

Source

[[Image:foo]] [[image:foo]] [[File:foo]] [[file:foo]] [[foo]] [[foo]]{{w|foo}} [[Foo]] [[foo bar]] [[foo bar]]s [[foo_bar]] [[foo-bar]] [[foo (bar)]] la la la [[foo|foo]] [[foo|foo]]{{w|foo}} [[Foo|Foo]] [[foo bar|foo]] [[foo bar|foos]] [[foo bar|foo]]s [[foo_bar|foo_bar]] [[foo-bar|foo-bar]] [[foo (bar)|foo]]

Search

(\[\[)([\w\s\-\(\)]+)(\|)*([\w\s\-\(\)]*)(\]\]s|\]\])({{w\|([\w\s\-\(\)]+)(}}))*

Replace

\1\2\3\4\5{{w|\2}}

Result

[[Image:foo]] [[image:foo]] [[File:foo]] [[file:foo]] [[foo]]{{w|foo}} [[foo]]{{w|foo}} [[Foo]]{{w|Foo}} [[foo bar]]{{w|foo bar}} [[foo bar]]s{{w|foo bar}} [[foo_bar]]{{w|foo_bar}} [[foo-bar]]{{w|foo-bar}} [[foo (bar)]]{{w|foo (bar)}} la la la [[foo|foo]]{{w|foo}} [[foo|foo]]{{w|foo}} [[Foo|Foo]]{{w|Foo}} [[foo bar|foo]]{{w|foo bar}} [[foo bar|foos]]{{w|foo bar}} [[foo bar|foo]]s{{w|foo bar}} [[foo_bar|foo_bar]]{{w|foo_bar}} [[foo-bar|foo-bar]]{{w|foo-bar}} [[foo (bar)|foo]]{{w|foo (bar)}}

--RichardF 14:00, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

Oops! Sorry, should have given you the code - I often feel like I dump too many tech details on people, and I was overcorrecting.

In this case, for adding arguments to the incomplete {{w|}} tags, I used the search string \[\[(.*?)]]{{w\|}} and replace string [[\1]]{{w|\1}}.

I can explain if you want :). E.g.:

• .*? is a non-greedy match for any string. Non-greedy (aka lazy) means it takes the shortest string possible before matching the following characters. (A "?" after an asterisk changes it from greedy to non-greedy.)
• The \1 matches the first term in brackets in the search string.

To not use the pluralized s... it might be easiest to remove them manually, as it requires checking for cases where the s is part of the non-plural word, and where the plural has an extra -es (e.g.wrench -> wrenches... but horses -> horse, so matching s or es with "(s|es)?" is a problem too). But if you want to do it:

search string \[\[(.*?)s?]]{{w\|}} and replace string [[\1]]{{w|\1}} - the s after a regular character (or string in brackets) makes it optional.

"can regex find and get rid of red links" - no, as there's nothing in the text to tell you (or the search and replace engine) which is a red link. I'm sure there's a bot that could do it by looking at the HTML or looking up a list of existing articles... but actually if it's a link to an article that should be on Appropedia but isn't yet, then it's ok (good, even) to leave it as a redlink, which is an invitation to contribute "). So I wouldn't worry too much about that, but removing links to things is good if they probably won't have an article on Appropedia any time soon.

Hope that all made sense! --Chriswaterguy 09:09, 1 June 2011 (PDT)

Thanks. I'm getting a better feel for regex after I got a few searches to actually work. I have a good understanding of transformation grammar, so a lot of what I focus on is learning the grammar and syntax when I try to "trick" a new tool into doing my bidding. ;-) I forgot about the "es" thing. I didn't notice any of those in the articles I checked. Searching "(\]\]es|\]\]s|\]\])" might do the trick in the code I used.

As far as red links go, I'm not a big fan of them anywhere, as I commented in Interwiki links to ported Wikipedia content. For example, look at all the red links in the Appropriate technology article you ported over about a year ago. I'm not seeing the red links as being inviting. I see them more as suggesting the site is underdeveloped, with lots of "broken" links. The thing I like about the {{w}} interwiki link is it offers more information now and serves as a placeholder for another article that could be started here, or not. In the meantime, reading the article here feels a lot more "normal" compared to any other Internet reading experience, at least to me.  :-) --RichardF 09:46, 1 June 2011 (PDT)

Oh, and another thing... ;-) I also like the approach at Appropriate technology#See also, and suggested pages to create. That's the only place I would keep red links. By explicitly putting "suggested pages to create" for an article there as red links, the message is clear enough for a to-do list and the overall reading experience is not dimished by lots of red links "jumping out" at readers (me ;-). --RichardF 09:58, 1 June 2011 (PDT)

lending a hand?

Hiya,

I'm wondering if you need a hand with any of the vital article project you are taking on. --Tahnok 08:35, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

I must!  ;-) I'm pretty new around here and don't have a good feel for how much editors (besides Chriswaterguy) get involved in wiki-wide projects. Any comments from you at the village pump certainly would be appreciated.

I've been going from the assumption that the Sidebar is the framework of choice. I see it having three basic facets: perspective - AT & GL, topic - all that stuff, and activities - projects & orgs. (for want of better terms). I started working with Chris on the two top perspective artices at User:RichardF/Appropriate technology and user:RichardF/Green living. Green living is set up with all the Sidebar topical and activity headings. After I get the go-ahead to move them to main space, we can use those two articles as our test platforms for organizing all the other content.

I'm thinking that would be a good way for folks to see how the guts of the project can play out. From that point we also can work on the background structures that help organize and present the content. How's that?  ;-) --RichardF 12:44, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

I just made the two perspective pages go live. If your're interested, you could start adding projects and organizations to each of the topic sections of Green living. I commented out each list subsection at the end of each topic section until some content shows up.  :-o --RichardF 13:36, 31 May 2011 (PDT)

zombie work

Hey Richard - I've been doing a lot, but not really with much mental capacity for thinking about the category scheme till now - I just had a look and replied. Hope it's constructive, but if not I'll just blame the time of night/morning. ;-).

Will be interested in your take on the portals, linked from the sidebar,as mentioned on A:VP. --Chriswaterguy 12:23, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

Thanks, I'll take a look. I have a lot of stuff going lately too, so I have more interest than time right now.  ;-) --RichardF 13:03, 15 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi Richard,

I just wanted to notify you of my proposals of the categorisation; see here Most of these haven't been adopted, and I never pushed into it/did it myself as there seemed to be some disagreement from others. However, if you look trough them I think that some of these will nevertheless may be useful or perhaps it allows you to implement a bit more structure into the categorytree. KVDP 02:15, 17 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi KVDP, thanks for the link! I'll admit, I don't go back and read much of the historical discussions here. ;-) I like the idea of seeing how your suggestions fit in to the more recent discussions. I hope you get a chance to highlight some of your key points in those discussions. My personal wikipreference is to use faceted classification systems - multiple ways to think about and find stuff. I work as a professional evaluator, and something we often do is divide our work into two basic categories - characterizations (descriptions) and appraisals (judgements based on values). When I look at the two basic themed articles here, I see Green (sustainabile) living as being mainly descriptive (something can be described in terms of how sustainable it is), and Appropriate technology as being mainly a set of appraisals about whether some technology should or should not be employed. Right off the bat, that says to me a complementary set of faceted categories applies to Appropedia. Another thing I like to do is create a corresponding set of contents navigation pages that reflect the key facets of the high level category systems. That's why I keep pointing to the Wikipedia:Portal:Contents pages. They let people find stuff different ways, depending on how they are interesting in browsing for interesting articles at the time. I hope this give you a better idea of where I'm coming from on all this category stuff, and I look forward to working with you in the future! :-) Regards, RichardF 07:01, 17 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi Richard,

I actually rather keep out of the discussions and leave the categorisation to others, I'm mostly focusing on making some articles/article content better for now. I looked trough the fundamental categorytree again, and from the revisions, I see that I worked on it back in december 2009 (see here. Here you can see how I categorised it back in the day. Basically, I pulled allot of categories apart and made categories focusing on practicality. Then, I made subcategories under these (ie Energy --> energy production (or rather energy harvesting), energy storage & use, ...).

For instance:

• You mention above the category "Green living"; however since this is Appropedia (wiki on appropriate technology), such a category can't actually exist since appropriate technology is allready ecological/green in approach; it's not mainstream technology.

• Category:Food & agriculture (renamed to "food production") -->production of staple crops and production of supplemental crops category needs adding (eg as certain foods as fruit, etc... can't be used to form the core of the system and are only needed to provide additional substances as fibres, certain minerals, and also some vitamins (B,C, ...)

• Category:Construction and materials -->add subcategory on construction of sleeping rooms, construction of communal rooms (eg dining area, ...)

Category:Health and safety -->rename to Category:Healthcare; add subcategory sanitation (which is also a method to stay healthy; also see sanitation in the broader meaning eg as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation; hereby including eg personal hygiene) Add subcategory Medication, Vaccination, ...

KVDP 02:10, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi KVDP. I understand where you're your coming from. I'm not an expert in appropriate technology, so I'm also not going to say this or that category should stay or go. I'm coming more from a reader's perspective. I just want to make sense of what's here, which is tough right now. I know how to arrange stuff, but I'm not going to get much into what that stuff should be be. I'll leave that to you all. --RichardF 07:46, 18 June 2011 (PDT)

Test portal

I looked at your test portal - really interesting. I like how the selected pages display, and the overall layout is good.

One thought is that the feeds aren't essential, and might be better replaced with several links to Appropedia pages, showing some of the range of pages within the category.

Re "Things you can do" - knowing that this will take maintenance, and a very tiny proportion of people would act on this, can we make this simpler? Some of those items, e.g. "expert attention," could possibly work better if we get Semantic MediaWiki working, as we might be able to list pages in an intersection of categories, e.g. in both "Category:Appropriate technology," and "Category:Pages needing expert attention." I'd be inclined to remove "spam" in any case (not so much a topic-specific issue?) and maybe just stick to listing some stubs and wanted pages. What do you think?

My aesthetic preference is for thinner borders, but I'm open - I'll be interested to see how others feel.

Btw, if that page doesn't require any features that are only on the dev wiki, you could do it in your userspace here, and then other people can see it (and we can point them at it without worrying about people getting confused between the sites). Thanks for all the work! --Chriswaterguy 10:11, 28 June 2011 (PDT)

Hi, My first intention was to get all the mechanincs working and then include all the elements from the current portal. I took a few design liberties, but most everything is changeable easy enough. There was a list of pages I could put in a box. I thought only about five of them were worth "selecting," with both pictures and words. I didn't call them articles because some pages were categories and others were galleries. One box I didn't add I thought would be nice was "Selected picture," because I didn't see any basis for selecting them, and Highlighted projects probably overlaps quite a bit. The Things you can do section is just a srtaight copy from Wikipedia to show the range of possibilities. Lines can be commented out or deleted easy enough. I also used that box for the invite to edit. What I really haven't noticed around here is some sort of counterpart to editorial "Approprojects" whose members could decide on the What you can do activities. I've added all the infrastructure here already. I would have to copy over the subpages and then I could set something up here. My standing question has become, would anyone (else) care enough to comment? --RichardF 10:37, 28 June 2011 (PDT)

Cool, thanks for setting up User:RichardF/Portal/Appropriate_technology. Hopefully there'll be feedback from others too, and in a few days we can post to the community list & elsewhere.

Approprojects as in Wikipedia's Wikiprojects? We do have a:Initiatives, which are a little different... In terms of projects focused on editing particular areas, I think when we have much more activity in general, such projects could becomes self-sustaining. Having the discussions as subforums on an Appropedia wiki forum might help.

Feel free to experiment, and I hope I'm wrong... but if things do turn out quiet, don't be discouraged. It just may not be the right time yet. --Chriswaterguy 00:38, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

I don't see editing groups here and I'm not an article writer, so I'll just take some guesses here and there and let others fix things as time goes by. I'll wait for you to take the next step. --RichardF 05:47, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

Category tree for topic pages?

This is just an idea for something to try out...

I was thinking about having a template for the bottom of topic pages, to display the pages in the topic's category using a Categorytree. It's now possible to show the categorytree in a template - see Appropedia:Sandbox #Testing categorytree in template/transclusion. See Extension:CategoryTree - The {{#categorytree}} parser function for more details.

This is a bit like the older practice here of having topic info on the category pages, but this way it keeps the namespaces for their own purposes, which I prefer.

I've experimented with the idea already at Aid and development workers and Resources for aid and development workers, which are very bare of content, but at least point to relevant pages.

Anyway, thought it might be something you'd like to experiment with - maybe put it in a simple box and think about how and where to display it best on a topic page. Thanks. --Chriswaterguy 10:06, 28 June 2011 (PDT)

Heh - I remember now, I started to try this at {{topic bottom}} but quickly gave up as we didn't have the parser function working yet. --Chriswaterguy 10:29, 28 June 2011 (PDT)

I'm a bit of a "purist" when it comes to mixing article and category page stuff. That's what portals are for!  :-) I prefer infoboxes and navboxes in article space for editorial control. Wikicategories tend to be a mess conceptually. The CategoryTree mode doesn't seem to work right to me. Pages and All give the same result. For some reason, the version here doesn't count categories and pages the next level down either. I still like the article cloud idea for showing the popularity of articles, rather than adding them to the cattree list. I would put that in a portal too.  :-) RichardF 10:49, 28 June 2011 (PDT)

Okay, two interesting portal ideas there:

• Have some sort of article cloud in the portal. (Having the subtopics/pages clickable within the cloud implies having a cloud extension, which is still in the development queue.)
• Make a cloud using Wordle, place it on the Portal talk page, and use it to inform choices about pages to highlight.

That begs the question though - is there a way to make a popularity based cloud within a category?

A categorytree solution (for topic pages and portals) has the advantage of being much quicker and more uniform. My inclination is to have a categorytree solution as the standard initial response, and let that be supplemented or replaced by more thought-out responses on a case-by-case basis. --Chriswaterguy 00:22, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

The MediaWiki cloud extensions let you filter by category, so that's the most functional use of a cloud. CategoryTrees in articles with articles listed seems a bit unwieldy to me. They're even a bit tough in portals because the list goes straight down. I still think the best automated answer is an article cloud extension. --RichardF 05:53, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

My latest suggestion is to just dump PortalSpace portals and put them on the category page. That's the inclination here anyway, so why not just go with it?! Here's an example at Category:Appropriate technology. --RichardF 10:14, 29 June 2011 (PDT)

Category edit

I was confused by your edit to the Appropriate technology category page - I thought we were keeping category pages as categories, rather than portals? So that "mixed" content would make sense at Portal:Appropriate technology.

Minor info re category sorting - [[Category:Appropriate technology|*]] works in keeping the page sorted at the top in the category - but it also works with just a space, i.e. [[Category:Appropriate technology| ]] - and that avoids having a visible "*" as a header. (I knew it was something like this, but I only just figured out the details.) Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 12:41, 1 July 2011 (PDT)

I tried the category version of a portal because I thought you were trying to add detailed page information about the category in the portal. If you want to mix portally stuff and category stuff on the same page, then my thinking is the most comprehensive way to do that is in category space. CategoryTree functions are fine for categories but are subpar for pages IMHO. In that arrangement, I would redirect the main portal page to the category page. I finally figured out how to fix {{Random portal component}}, so everything else can stay in portal space without losing any functionality. That can't be said for categories. Only category pages can include the full range of category displays. It just depends what people here want. I've tried to show my best guess of what's wanted here. Since you're the only one who seems to care, just go ahead and do with it what you want. --RichardF 15:32, 1 July 2011 (PDT)

Ah, ok. Still, seems like a major change in direction, so I'll revert it for now until we get some more clarity and/or consensus. I do really like the direction of your new portal design, though, so I'd like to look at using that for "Portal:" pages.

My thinking about category space is that it's dedicated to displaying the category structure, so it should focus on that with just a dash of descriptive content and navigational enhancements. I had the impression that this was also your thinking, but I understand you're trying to figure out my thinking, too.

Re CategoryTree functions, in what sense do you think they're subpar on non-category pages? I'd always seen them as offering category-based navigation and display for non-category pages, since category pages already offer this.

Re being "the only one who seems to care" - a lot of the problem here, IMO, is that we have inadequate communication tools, and the Village Pump discussion is pretty clunky. It doesn't make it easy for busy people, or people who have lots of other distractions (which is pretty much all of us, these days.) That's why I'm really keen to get a wiki-based forum set up, as it's much easier and more pleasant to navigate and follow. Anyway, we haven't really pinged other people about this yet, though, so I'll do that on the Appropedia community mailing list, pointing them to User:RichardF/Portal/Appropriate technology.

Thanks for all your work. I know the rate of progress is often slow, but I'm hoping to see a lot more participation and significant site development by the end of this year. That will be exciting. --Chriswaterguy 21:39, 1 July 2011 (PDT)

All points taken, so I'll just comment on CategoryTree. My impression was that you were trying to find a way to have a comprehensive display of article lists for a category. CT only displays vertically. It also seems to have a limit on how many articles it will show. That can get extremely unbalanced in a portal box for large topics. Obviously, the category space show all pages, even if more than 200 are there. It just depends on how comprehensive and automatic and stylish you want category boxes to be in portals. --RichardF 07:13, 2 July 2011 (PDT)

Yes, the vertical display is an issue for portals, as it could interferes with the neat layout of the portal, especially if it's very long. But it doesn't have to be followed strictly - if there is a very large number of pages, then a categorytree showing just subcategories would be better, plus a listing of a selection of pages. If it's a smaller category, then showing all the pages makes sense to me, but either way would be fine. If even the list of subcategories is extremely long, then probably the category needs to be reorganized.

I still don't understand the need for the categorytree on category pages - I've removed that from a few category pages.

Re "how comprehensive and automatic and stylish" - I'd say functionality and usability come first, but we should make it look good as far as we can. I think the draft portal is looking good now. --Chriswaterguy 12:18, 3 July 2011 (PDT)

I added categorytrees to categories with more than 200 pages, making it otherwise impossible to see all subcategories on one page. --RichardF 16:38, 3 July 2011 (PDT)

Ah, that makes sense.

There's a bug in MediaWiki that I think is fixed in the next point release, making subcategories display better. The other thing that will help is getting pages into the right subcategories. There's a lot of pages to edit, but a bot can help with that. Don't know if you're interested in bot work? Takes a certain kind of "wikignome" personality I think, so I won't feel rejected if you say no :-).

Anyway, we'll work out these details as we go... --Chriswaterguy 12:22, 13 July 2011 (PDT)

I really don't have the resources (I have dial-up) or inclination for bot work. If you haven't guessed yet, I'm really more interested in big-picture design work, e.g., an Appropedia Outline of water.  ;-) --RichardF 12:38, 13 July 2011 (PDT)

I thought you might not be inclined - no problem. (I suspect your dial-up is faster than my Indonesian "broadband" though - I rejoice when it gets over 10 kbps!) The Outline is on my list of near-term projects... --Chriswaterguy 03:26, 15 July 2011 (PDT)

Nice disambigs

Template:Portal box Hey nice work on the disambiguation pages, like solar. --Chriswaterguy 00:01, 19 July 2011 (PDT)

Thanks. I also added a link to the portal with the new {{Portal box}} template.

Also, thanks for the sitenotice update. FYI - Portal:Green living is listed twice in the navbar, and "Water" goes to the category. Could it be changed to Portal:Water? (That one's new too. ;-) --RichardF 06:21, 19 July 2011 (PDT)

File author?

Hi Richard - I've been trying to figure out how to make the uploading process clearer, and I just noticed your file, File:Polyculture.JPG. That has "Source: Own work / Author: Carla Antonini" - if it's your work, what does author mean? Also, how clear does the upload process seem to you? Thanks --Chriswaterguy 15:27, 23 July 2011 (PDT)

Maybe it should say "Own work of author:". I just copied the credit that was there. Should there be some version of the {{attrib wikipedia}} template for files? When I do a picture on a Wikipedia portal, I call it "Credit:" like at Wikipedia:Portal:Sustainable development/Selected picture. --RichardF 18:18, 23 July 2011 (PDT)

Wow!

You've done some amazing work with the Portals. They really make the subjects seem more manageable! --07:41, 31 July 2011 (PDT)

Thanks. I've had a lot of practice at Wikipedia. After I get Transport running, I'll probably tak a portal break for a while, maybe... ;-) --RichardF 10:40, 31 July 2011 (PDT)

New look for galleries

The new look for galleries is great! --Lonny 12:39, 11 September 2011 (PDT)

PS have you seen anything that would work well for how to's, such as Barrel O' Fun Worm Bin Instructions? --Lonny 12:39, 11 September 2011 (PDT)

Thanks. I've been trying some different gallery image sizes with the pages at Category:AT Photos.

For tables, I suggested a new "approtable" class at User talk:Chriswaterguy#Approtable class. I updated Barrel O' Fun Worm Bin Instructions to show what it could look like. Is that what you were thinking about? --RichardF 13:12, 11 September 2011 (PDT)

Great. For the how to table, I was thinking something more like a gallery tag that makes something that looks like that table (so it would be much easier for novice editors). --Lonny 13:29, 11 September 2011 (PDT)

Okay. I'll play around with it as my next "project."  ;-) --RichardF

Hi RichardF - I'm liking the how to tables, as well as the galleries - thanks!

I've replied at User talk:Chriswaterguy#Approtable class plans? --Chriswaterguy 00:47, 25 September 2011 (PDT)

Okay, thanks. --RichardF 05:58, 25 September 2011 (PDT)

Adminship

You've been nominated! I hope you're ok with that.

Since you're a prospective admin, with the deleting powers that brings, I'll mention something that I intended to mention a while back. This rollback that you did is right (content in the wrong place) but you identified it as spam. If you look closely, the references to permaculture and such things suggest it's a genuine Appropedia-type person, just confused.

That case turned out well, anyway. I noticed it at the time, so I left a note on their talk page, and they added the info as a new page. By coincidence, I happened to see a discussion by that user on a forum (Permies.com) - they seemed happy with how it turned out. Anyway, I'll boil that down to an abstract principle and add it to a page of A:Guidelines for administrators, which seems overdue.

Sorry to digress. As mentioned at the nomination, we appreciate your work and it would be great to have you as admin. --Chriswaterguy 12:24, 24 October 2011 (PDT)

Thanks. As you pointed out, roll-back always can be rolled back too!  ;-) --RichardF 18:50, 24 October 2011 (PDT)

Hi Richard,

Welcome to adminship. Thank you for all that you do for Appropedia. This adminship provides comes with just a few more tools, just as blocking spammy, abusive, users and editing a few blocked pages. Please let us know if you have any questions.

With appreciation, --Lonny 23:45, 12 December 2011 (PST)

Thanks, especially for starting Appropedia!  :-) --RichardF 05:04, 13 December 2011 (PST)

Greywater portal?

Hi Richard,

If you're in the mood for creating another one of those snazzy portals, Portal:Greywater could be a good one to work on. It's a reasonably sized category - Category:Greywater - and something that a lot of appropriate technology and permaculture people are interested in.

If you're busy, let me know, and I'll see what else we can do. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 19:33, 16 November 2011 (PST)

Hi. Work has been real busy lately, but I should have some time to get it started over the Thanksgiving weekend. Let me know if you're interested in anything specific (articles, projects, pics, etc.) to be included. ;-) --RichardF 09:03, 18 November 2011 (PST)

I see you've been busy! I've been busy myself, but I've noticed you in RecentChanges. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 08:17, 25 November 2011 (PST)

Yup. You can see the basic layout at my sandbox. After I add a few more selected articles, I'll switch it over. One thing I did was treat this as a Water subportal by including some of the higher level content from there. Feel free to remove/add content from those lower boxes. --RichardF 09:23, 25 November 2011 (PST)

. Portal:Greywater now uses the portal box style. --RichardF 08:26, 26 November 2011 (PST)

Nice work, thanks! I'll spread the word. --Chriswaterguy 05:09, 27 November 2011 (PST)

pv project tag.

Replied on my talk page re my boo-boo with {{pv project}}. Would appreciate your input on the look and functionality. Needs to be unobtrusive, if we want to put it at the top of people's project pages.

Tag. I'm going to bed :-). --Chriswaterguy 09:04, 5 December 2011 (PST)

REplied there. --RichardF 09:44, 5 December 2011 (PST)

Formatting issue with box footer?

Love the quote idea - but there's a formatting issue with comments following there. A problem with the quote box, or with Welcome to Appropedia/box-footer‎‎, not finishing cleanly? Have to run now - will leave you with it.

Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 20:55, 15 December 2011 (PST)

Not quite. The column widths were set like portals to be at a total width of 99% to avoid a horizontal scroll bar in some cases. The "I" in your reply was skinny enough to squeeze in between the left-right floating columns, just where it was told to go! ;-) I added a 1% right margin to the left column to take care of it...for now! :-) --RichardF 05:58, 16 December 2011 (PST)

internal error - reply

Replied to your comment - Your user page. --Chriswaterguy 20:24, 17 December 2011 (PST)

Announcements section

I was looking today at our much improved main page, and realized my eyes still glaze a little at the announcements section. Lots of text and it doesn't immediately parse into separate announcements. It's competing with a lot of other content on the page, so it's good if it's easy for the eye to grab.

How about, say, one main announcement, then others in regular sized font underneath, or in bullet points on the right? Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 05:27, 18 December 2011 (PST)

Lonny asked me to get rid of the bullet list in the original layout. I tried a smaller font size with separator stars after the first announcement. Feel free to mess with it. --RichardF 07:17, 18 December 2011 (PST)

AbuseFilter shutdown method - just in case

Hi Richard,

I want to make sure that admins know how to shut down a problematic AbuseFilter, in case someone contacts you:

All activity by the AbuseFilter is logged at Special:AbuseLog. That will show (for example) that User:JohnDoe triggered filter 3, and you can view the attempted edit. An admin can also click through to the filter and change the settings so it doesn't "Block". It can be left on "Log," though, so we can analyze what's going wrong.

Hopefully that won't be needed though.

Thanks, and have a good break... I won't be online a lot over Christmas-New Year, but I look forward to more site-hacking with you in 2012. --Chriswaterguy 20:35, 22 December 2011 (PST)

Thanks. Enjoy your time off!  :-) --RichardF 06:25, 23 December 2011 (PST)

Blanking & deleting

Re spam on talk pages - if the page has nothing in its history but spam (generally when a page has been recently created by a spammer) we generally delete them. Blanking is another option, but my concern is that the "Discussion" tab turns blue and it looks like there's an actual discussion there, when there isn't. Not a hard and fast rule, just a preference, and maybe there are arguments for blanking that I've missed...

And if the spammers keep coming back to a page, we can always semi-protect it.

Glad to come back to civilization and see the great work you're doing on the skin - I really like it! Replying re skin on my talk page. --Chriswaterguy 18:27, 5 January 2012 (PST)

Okay on the deleting. I wasn't sure of the preferred method, so I did the least severe. I'll delete in the future. I still think anon spammers should just be unable to post in the first place. ;-) I'm trying the Vector adjustments and adding shadows everywhere. Once Lonny goes with a pallete I'll test more with different browsers, since CSS3 has different implementations, if at all. --RichardF 18:44, 5 January 2012 (PST)

Yeah, gotta get our tech team happening... my job on that front is to get some new ads out for "mini-internships" (an easy first step for people interesting in interning). At the moment things like anon edit settings are all under Lonny's control and he has too much on his plate. Team Appropedia are go! (Sorry, Thunderbirds flashback.)

Even with the standard Wikipedia coloring, the Vector skin is much nicer looking... I'll be interested to see it with different palettes. The tweaking helps add individuality as well - I haven't examined in depth, but I've noticed the shadows. Thanks again. --Chriswaterguy 06:58, 9 January 2012 (PST)

Okay, I'm basically on standby with any more stylistic changes. I've done about all I can in terms of guessing what other people want. Another issue is all browsers (e.g., old Microsoft) don't support the new CSS stuff (like box-shadow). At least I know how to make my skin change colors! ;-o --RichardF 07:25, 9 January 2012 (PST)

As long as it doesn't fail badly in the old browsers - if certain flourishes don't show up, no problem. --Chriswaterguy 23:01, 1 February 2012 (PST)

New Vector skin, and "move" tab

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

As far as I can tell, the Vector extension that Tahnok mentioned at Village Pump is necessary to uncollapse the move tab and get the search box (upper-right corner) to look cuter. Old browsers just don't look as fancy, e.g., no shadows, but they still work. The changeover could happen any time. It just would be fewer visible default skin changes if the Vector extension were added and tested first. --RichardF 09:38, 2 February 2012 (PST)

Thanks for looking into this. I'll ask Danny B (wikipedia:cz:User:Danny B.) how he would do it, and CC you on the email. --Chriswaterguy 16:08, 3 February 2012 (PST)

Jason has been having problems getting the social media links (facebook and google +) and google translate to work on vector. Richard, do you have any ideas on how to do it. Chris, can you ask Danny B? It would be great to do it using the common.js like they did here, and include google translate and a style that matches our skin. thanks, --Lonny 00:12, 6 February 2012 (PST)

Danny fixed the "Move" tab! I have no idea about the social media stuff. Oh, Danny?... :-) --RichardF 05:39, 6 February 2012 (PST)

Portal:Service learning

I gave tours of Appropedia to two academics today, and your work on the front page and portals played a huge role in making a positive impression. One of them quickly decided to do a class assignment on Appropedia, after browsing for a few minutes. (And he lectures in soils and grains, two areas where we have little content - great stuff.)

Now, I've realized we need a better intro to service learning on Appropedia, particularly for academics. I've made an attempt at Appropedia:Service learning to give examples of what's been done already, and to give an idea of the benefits of participating. However, it's not very engaging, and I wondered if you had time, at some stage, to work some of your magic on Portal:Service learning? I'm happy to help with details, and we can consult Joshua and Lonny as well.

No particular deadline, but if we have that, I'll start doing more promotion of our service learning programs. Thanks! --Chriswaterguy 23:17, 1 February 2012 (PST)

Sure. Another "hook" Lonny mentioned he wants to expand for academic types is Appropedia:Books. That could be another selling point to course instructors - using and producing them. The portal would be a good place to feature them. ;-) --RichardF 09:46, 2 February 2012 (PST)

Great idea - that makes the portal a lot more interesting. --Chriswaterguy 04:34, 3 February 2012 (PST)

Curious template link effect

I just figured out that the factbox at the bottom of A:VP is created by the code:

{{tl|:Welcome to Appropedia/Selected quote}}

Not sure why - but thought I'd ask since you have the template skills. We could swap it for

<nowiki>{{</nowiki>:[[Welcome to Appropedia/Selected quote]]<nowiki>}}</nowiki>

but there may be a more elegant solution. But don't let this request distract you from more important things.

I've been offline a lot, but planning to get a bunch of strategic stuff done over the next week... I see that the Vector skin now has the Move tab in full view - nice. --Chriswaterguy 09:40, 15 February 2012 (PST)

I have been/will be offline myself for a while too. I'll add it to the list. --RichardF 18:32, 15 February 2012 (PST)

Thanks for the tips

Hi Richard, Thanks for the tips, I'll try to take them on board, I just get lazy about internal links when it's my contributor page on a wiki. I will also try to add categories but I don't know them very well on this wiki yet, so I err on the side of caution of not adding the wrong one! Anyway, thanks for noticing my hopefully helpful tinkering, I'll be trying to spend more time here but, eh, life is so busy. :) Felicity