User talk:Darjamvan

Welcome to Shifti!

As to your preference for Ubuntu, here's a nice bit of a surprise for you - the server Shifti lives on is running the KDE based version of Ubuntu (called Kubuntu) - the "Edgy Eft" (6.10) release. My personal laptop is running Kubuntu Feisty, and my just ordered laptop is going to come with Feisty pre-installed as well.

Anyway... I noticed that you uploaded a story and then deleted it. I'm hoping that it was simply a case of "I've changed my mind" and not caused by some other source. In any event, Shifti is always looking for new contributors and new content. While me and Bryan might be lagging a bit behind in terms of our reading and updating of our favorites lists (ShadowWolfs Pack and Bryan's picks) its more of because RL has interfered than anything else.

Editing help is always available and if you are looking for feedback you can always stick the <comments/> tag at the end of the page to add a way for people to easily add comments to the 'Talk' page for the story. — ShadowWolf 12:08, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Well...

Concerning my story... um...

I made a mistake on the title of the page, and when I went to rename the link to the page, it created a new page. So I copied the story and tags over to that page and decided to place a different story into the old stories page by using the Move Page feature. The Help files are honestly a little confusing.

As for Ubuntu/Kubuntu...

Occasionally, Signal 15 is received when I have too many tabs open on Firefox, and it immediately shuts down my computer without confirmation or warning. I lose any unsaved data that I may have been working on. It's been pretty annoying these past few weeks. And it did this on both Ubuntu and Kubuntu both... so I went back to using Ubuntu. *shrugs*

Don't worry about making mistakes at this point. Wiki has its own unique issues. We'll keep things neat and organized until you've learned the ropes. I highly recommend the Help:Templates page for some useful formatting tweaks. And if you can tell use what's confusing about the Help pages, we can work to clarify them.--Buck 15:50, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

When one moves a page to a new title, a "redirect" is created from the old title to the new title so that any existing links to the old title will still work correctly. Redirects take up negligible server resources so having a new page be created like that every time a move is done isn't a big deal, no need to worry about it. And as Jon says, the help pages are open to editing as well. If you find something on one that's confusing, or that's simply omitted, feel free to ask questions about it on the associated talk pages and I'll try to solve whatever problems I can. There's extensive help pages on general MediaWiki editing over at [1] and it's public domain so bits can be freely imported into Shifti's help pages. Bryan 19:19, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Transformations Anonymous

Hi. I'm a little confused what's going on here. You've created both a Category for it, and its own normal page? If this is going to be a setting, it should probably be just a Category. --Buck 15:43, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Re: Confused

It's like this, Buck...

According to the Help files on posting your stories, it says that in order to create a new story, simply create a link on your existing user page and it will make a new page for the story to be edited. But if the story is to be part of a series, then the help files say that you should make the link on the user page go to a page that all of the stories in that series will stem from, which is why it appears that there is a normal page for it.

But then, the Help files say that in order to get your story listed into the proper 'quick links' section, Categories for example, that you have to place a (category:TITLE) link at the bottom of your story page, which creates a NEW Category page that AGAIN must be edited, therefore, it appears on the site that there is two of these pages.

As I said before, the Help files are not very clear on this AND if you think you're confused over it, then you should try to use the Help files as-is, posting exactly as it says, and you, too, will get the same results that I am getting. It simply makes no sense in the way it is written.

When ShadowWolf deleted my normal page for the TFA stemming page the first time, it screwed up the link leading to that page on the user page, and the Help files go on to say that it is the user's responsibility to make sure that all links lead exactly where you intend them to lead. And because it became ShadowWolf's fault for deleting that page, it should have also became his responsibility to make sure the User Page link led to the actual page that he intended the link to lead to. Because he did not update that link, I had to remake the page, because the Help files said that it was my responsibility to do it.

You people really should re-read over your own Help files. It isn't very clear at all. And THAT is why you're confused, Buck.

Unfortunately the wiki-style for creating new pages is not really intuitive. I'll have a look at the Help page for that and see if I can't find a way to explain the process better. You seem angry, and I'm sorry that we weren't too clear on this. We also need to be clearer on how categorization works. You don't need to create a whole new category for the your story, with your story title. You use the preexisting [[Category:Story]] to get it listed in the general Story page.

What I saw going on was both a Category page and a normal page. The normal page was thus not needed.

BD, we need to improve our tutorials on this. We need a step-by-step howto for newbies. Does Wikipedia already have such a guide that we can adapt for Shifti?. --Buck 21:57, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

There's a category help page at [2], a page on starting new pages at [3], a page at [4] on page names, and so forth - see the link I posted a few sections up for a table of contents for Wikimedia's help page collection. The main problem I forsee is that these help pages might be too extensive; since Shifti is a small enough wiki that a handful of administrators can take care of all the complicated maintenance stuff a lot of the material here would just serve to further confuse brand new editors. Bryan 22:44, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

I've just done some rereading of the help pages and I think you may be reading more "strictness" into things than was intended. There aren't really any assigned responsibilities on Shifti, aside I suppose from administrators making prompt responses to deletion requests. The bit on categorization is indeed unclear, but it's also explicitly optional. There are no guidelines that suggest authors need to create pages for story universes, though on the other hand I agree that the pages you did create were deleted too quickly - there's really no harm in having them exist alongside categories. We'll be slower to delete stuff in the future.

I did a little editing of some of the help pages while I was checking these things out, but evidently there's still more that needs doing. We'll keep working on it, please continue to provide input into what's confusing or seems contradictory. Bryan 22:44, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

This is what I read when searching through all of the help files and the Move Page feature...

Using the form below will rename a page, moving all of its history to the new name. The old title will become a redirect page to the new title. Links to the old page title will not be changed; be sure to check for double or broken redirects. You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go.

Note that the page will not be moved if there is already a page at the new title, unless it is empty or a redirect and has no past edit history. This means that you can rename a page back to where it was just renamed from if you make a mistake, and you cannot overwrite an existing page.

WARNING! This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page; please be sure you understand the consequences of this before proceeding.

...Now if you think I was reading more "strictness" into things, then apparently you forgot that this was written on one of your own pages. See where it says that it is the user is responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go? --Riptide the Rat 22:55, 27 September 2007 (EDT)