User:Aichon/Archive 2013

Aichon:Talk Archive 2013

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Aichon

ˈīˌkän :Talk Archive 2013

Announcement: I'm no longer active. My talk page is still your best bet to get in touch. —Aichon— 04:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

This is an archive. Don't post here.

If you have anything you'd like to add to one of these conversations, then go to my talk page, reference the relevant conversation from here, and post your comments there. This page should not be edited by others. These are all messages I've filed away. They shouldn't be changed or added to, since the contexts of the situations have been lost, forgotten, or could simply be remembered differently by the involved parties. I'd prefer to start any of these conversations fresh, if they must come up again.

Archives: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | To do

Self bans

Never recorded them before. think we should go back and add them all? --Rosslessness 23:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I was going off of Matthewfarenheit's and SA's, both of which are recorded on A/VD. What others are there? I'm not even aware of any off the top of my head. If it's not too much work, then yeah, I would go back and record them, that way no one assumes something incorrect later. —Aichon— 23:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Me, several times, grims, technically I think as part of the coup, a handful of sysops. It's not a lot, I have a sneaking suspicion a couple of demotions came with such requests. There's not a lot, it's digging them up. Can we make bob do it? --Rosslessness 23:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hmm...well, I don't know about temporary self-requested bans, such as the ones I know you've requested in the past. I was more thinking of permabans that have been requested. The temporary variety will handle themselves after awhile, whereas the perma ones needs some sort of action to take place in order for them to be overturned, so having a paper trail helps. And Bob can't exactly do it unless he has access to A/VD, which he doesn't want for another few months. —Aichon— 00:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Your wish is my command. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 02:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Mine wasn't a self ban, I was banned due to misconduct you sillies.--SA 00:03, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Didn't you delete everything? --Rosslessness 00:05, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

You also requested a permaban. The misconduct thing was only a six-month ban. Your old account was actually unblocked back in March 2011 after you apparently requested to come back to DDR or one of the other sysops. —Aichon— 00:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I requested a perma as my misconduct punishment. Its called context, silly! You guys settled on the six month thing. :| I was able to start editing again because I moved and therefor had a new IP address to fuck about with, I never requested to be unbanned. It just happened like that :D --SA 00:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't around for it, but see this. Block log confirms you were unblocked that day. As for punishment, there's a policy against sysops enforcing their own punishment, so your request had no bearing on the decision for what punishment to enact. We just figured you didn't want to deal with the wiki any more. :P —Aichon— 00:30, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, lol, that you created your SA account and then told someone you wanted to come back is the reason why your old one was unbanned. You even commented on it at the time. —Aichon— 00:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I never requested a self ban, I requested a perma ban as my punishment. You guys settled on a sixer+self ban though. And I, as stated, got mad at Thad and decided to edit again. Not my fault you guys left an opening!--SA 00:39, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's anyone's fault that you did something we were hoping you'd do. :D —Aichon— 00:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, I'm pretty sure DDR just unblocked everything since I said I was back. I dunno. Important thing is I still maintain that the "self ban" was actually a misconduct ban!--SA 00:50, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Pfft, whatever. That's not a valid request, so it could only be treated as a self-request. Obvious. Wikilaw 101 stuff. —Aichon— 03:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Before he was talking about having forgotten the password. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 05:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

A bunch of the cases I found are ambiguous. From the demotions archive all I could find was this which you guys mentioned above, and a discussion of a possible ban with this request by Ross. Is this equivalent to a self-ban? And I'm assuming we're not counting Generaloberst repeatedly reporting himself to A/VB as an attempted self-ban.

Here are the (largely) unambiguous ones I've got from A/VB: Thad, Axe, Poodle, TripleU, Axe, Poodle, more Poodle, Ross, WanYao, Janus Abernathy, DDR, Thekooks.

Also, I never realized how totally crazy some of the A/VB archives are. Personal favorite. And how inconsistent the formatting is. Why did we switch from having the navbar at the top to the bottom in January 2010? And that we only started using {{v}} in December of 2009. Looking through ones before that was a hundred times more difficult. I'm only as far back as January 2008, since the lists get longer and longer and more and more disheveled as you go back in time. Will get to the rest later tonight. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 02:36, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The VB archives are some of the funnest times in the wiki's history, along with A/M. You will enjoy reading some of those cases :D --SA 02:43, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Bob, if you keep this up, your name will become a verb synonymous with "being way too thorough". Then again, I suppose I've been accused of that in the past as well...

And yeah, the archives are kinda insane to go through, but if you think they're bad, try to make sense of A/VD records from the early days. That's why my ongoing project of linkifying A/VD is such a start-and-stop affair that manages to hit a snag every time I go through more than about a dozen users. And I'm even outright staying away from some of them for the time being, since they're so convoluted. —Aichon— 03:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Remainder: Hagnat and Hagnat again. Brizth. Gold Blade's case is weird. DarkStar2374383 and Wanker are both self-reporters. Also, maybe this? Hard to discern. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 05:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Wathe is an alt of the 3pwv(3 page wiki vandal) who was a prolific vandal back in the day and liked to point out and claim credit for his actions. He was reporting himself for his ego but had actually committed tons of vandal edits, per normal. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 09:01, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Haha, wasn't hagnat a/m'd for those? A ZOMBIE ANT 03:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

yip

unpromote him immediately --Rosslessness 10:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Mis

We should really do something about his bid. --Rosslessness 19:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I literally hit the + on your talk page to post something when I saw my talk page had been edited. Whad'ya have in mind? —Aichon— 19:22, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Maybe an old, old wooden ship from the civil war era? --Rosslessness 19:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused. Which civil war are we talking about? American? Spanish? Something else? —Aichon— 19:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I was giving the situation the level of seriousness I thought it deserved. American. --Rosslessness 19:30, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, contrary to what you may think, Americans don't all keep Civil War era ships in their backyard, so I do not have one I can provide for this situation. —Aichon— 19:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. There's only so far you can go in urban dead without turning up Ron Burgundy --Rosslessness 19:57, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't a fan of the movie, and the player predates me, so I miss a lot of references. —Aichon— 20:01, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

So, seriously, what are your thoughts? —Aichon— 20:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Fails the important criteria of level of contribution. Cute, but not that cute. --Rosslessness 20:31, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, despite the overwhelming levels of support he's receiving (most of which is either joking or clearly assuming that his bid is a joke), as well as the check that he assures me is in the mail, I'm leaning towards a "no" on this one. He's actually not too far off on his activity, but I'd want to see it up a bit higher. If his activity picked up a bit more, or he was clearly serious about it and had had increased activity recently, or even if this was just a re-eval after one of his terms, that would be different, but this is none of those. —Aichon— 20:41, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

An excellent summary. --Rosslessness 20:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Also, can you explain how you define his activity as "not too far off"? Because I think it's terrible? --Rosslessness 21:09, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

He has around 250 edits in the last six months, which is about halfway there. I'm willing to give a bit of extra leeway to former sysops who have a good record and left on good terms. —Aichon— 21:17, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, fair enough, I frame the question "How long has he taken to make 500 edits?", which gives the slightly more concerning answer of "Summer 2011". --Rosslessness 21:21, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed that as well, but he's had increased activity in the last year, though not enough to get to a point where I'd be okay with a promotion. —Aichon— 21:23, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Twice this week I've found unexpected interpretations of udwiki criteria. I'm obviously too set in my ways. --Rosslessness 22:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Meh, the deletions thing was a brainfart by me. Should've made more sense to me at the time. You're not too old just yet. <3 --Shortround }.{ My Contributions 22:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

And the contributions thing is just different ways of viewing it. Whereas you view it as, "How far back do I have to go to see 500 contributions?", I view it as, "How many contributions did they have in the last six months?" Both are valid, but I think my way is less susceptible to weirdness that can occur when someone comes back from inactivity. As for the deletions thing, that tallying you did made things a breeze to double-check. It's easy to understand why you did that as you did, and I certainly don't blame you for it, since I'm pretty sure I have seen people do it that way in the past. Nonetheless, it's one of those things where even if it might be standard operating procedure, it needs to be fixed (and I'm not saying it is SOP, just that that wouldn't be an excuse to keep it as it is). —Aichon— 22:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

hate you guys :( 23:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

<3 u —Aichon— 23:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Question

You know when you got all demoted and stuff? Do you think you did more useful wiki stuff without buttons? --Rosslessness 19:37, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, no, but I'd say that was more a factor of my inactivity and lack of interest than my lack of buttons, especially so since my inactivity and lack of interest were the reasons I requested a demotion in the first place. We should also consider my contributions in 2012 both before and after I was re-promoted, but whether I had the buttons or not, I'm hard-pressed to come up with much useful wiki stuff that I've actually done. I chip in on discussions here or there, but I don't feel like I can point to anything and say, "I was a major part in making that happen." If anything, I feel like I've been getting in the way of actual progress in a few different places by some of the newcomers, which is not something I want to be doing.

I will say that I think it's easier to keep yourself occupied with busywork if you have the buttons, just because there are a few extra jobs available to you. Whether that means cleaning up bots or sorting out stuff on A/VD, there's always something to do as a sysop. That said, very little of it is actually necessary on a day-to-day basis. Most of the day-to-day tasks we have can be accomplished in under 2 minutes by just one member of the team. —Aichon— 21:04, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, busy work is the issue I think. The thing is I feel it is a responsibility of the badge. Damn. There's so much I want to get on with here. --Rosslessness 22:17, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Its like Aichon said, there's not much going on that require buttons. You could pretty much ignore all of whatever comes up and just go on with projects you would rather be doing. Grunt work will still get done. Just use the buttons when they are needed. That's pretty much how I handled things prior to my demotion. The demotion itself didn't really do much to motivate me. Whatever motivation I had for doing things came on its own and was actually rather short lived. I worked on Project Timeline but as you can see, its a long way from complete. ~ _{23:57, 15 January 2013 (UTC)}

The hurry the fuck up and finish it >:I --SA 13:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

3 days to go! As a confirmation I won't seek re-election. --Rosslessness 22:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. like bummer man.--User:Sexualharrison23:57, 18 January 2013

Why do you hate me...? :( --Shortround }.{ My Contributions 00:13, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, lol. Consider yourself lucky. I copy/pasted that entire list from the A/M archives. It was never intended to be comprehensive. Your lack of a presence there is a very good thing for you. :P —Aichon— 00:30, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

2013 SA section

—Aichon— 22:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

la boule courte

The community review looks clear-cut. The large activity gap in October/November is something to be wary of, but I'd still be in favour of chaining him for 8 more months. -- Spiderzed█ 17:56, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Make it so. —Aichon— 18:07, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

my own damn section!

hey aich, i'm about to move to another city and will be with out of interwebs for a bit. do you know of any good "away from wiki" templates?--User:Sexualharrison18:44, 7 February 2013

Afraid I'm not aware of any. Hey, all of you WikiJaguars, you guys got anything? —Aichon— 19:06, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I know only of this one: Template:LessActive. There are also Template:Inactive and Template:SysopHiatus, but they are of any use for ops only. -- Spiderzed█ 19:18, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I knew about the sysop ones, but I did not know about {{LessActive}}. Good call. —Aichon— 19:27, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

There are other templates you can find on Project Sleep. --Labla 20:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Hah

Now there you are, concerned about I might not disagree enough with you on administrative stuff -- Spiderzed█ 18:50, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure, we disagree on some things as regular users, such as how we should vote on policies, but when we're acting as sysops, such as in the A/VB and A/M cases, we were in total agreement. Only Karek suggested some disagreement in the A/VB case. ;) —Aichon— 19:05, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

UDWiki:Administration/Sysop_Archives/Vista/2006-07-01_Bureaucrat_Promotion

Lots of strikethrough? --Rosslessness 22:56, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it was there to begin with. I thought about trying to figure out where it was supposed to end, but then I got fed up and decided that I'll just leave it archived as it is. —Aichon— 22:57, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of archives, you gonna dive in with this stuff at some point? —Aichon— 23:04, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Once I work it out. Think ive fixed it. --Rosslessness 23:11, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Mmm...I don't think so. Both of those first two comments are by Cyberbob, and he did strikeouts and different signatures on his other Vouches/Againsts as well. Reverting for now since I'm fairly confident he didn't vote twice under one heading. As for the A/M cases you linked, that looks right. You just need to move the existing pages to those locations and add the breadcrumb template at the top (see other examples of A/M cases I've done already), and in the case of the 2010 one, split it into two pages, one for each case. —Aichon— 02:13, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

The Herd

Thanks for giving me the chance to fix my recruitment advert. Does it look better now?--BeatMyAces 21:26, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Yup, looks good! I went ahead and moved TheHerd/Recruit to The Herd/Recruit so that it's underneath your main The Herd page. And you're very welcome. :) —Aichon— 21:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Link underline color

You may have noticed that I recently created a recruitment ad for my group, the MTT. I've figured out (thanks to some spying on other group ads, including the SoC) how to do most things, but I was wondering if there was a way to change the underline color on hovered links, which appear blue, or purple for visited pages, whatever the color of the linked text. I'm trying to get my whole ad to be black and white, but the little purple lines appear, so I decided to come to you as one of the more code-savvy wikizens. Thanks so much! Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 06:00, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Quickfix: Just underline the links, as I did on the Cobra page. The underline in the default link color depending on browser settings won't appear then. -- Spiderzed█ 06:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, Spider's way is better and way more obvious. I must be tired. —Aichon— 06:30, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm...there's not exactly a great way to do it, but in putzing around a bit, it looks like setting a span to have a display property of inline-block with a border on the bottom seems to do the trick, at least inasmuch as it hides the usual underline and allows you to specify your own, though the line is always visible and is offset a bit further than the usual one is. —Aichon— 06:28, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you! I'll try underlining and see if that satisfies me ;) Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 10:08, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Demo14

that`s one nice table you got there...

it would be a shame if something...

happened...

to it :3 --hagnat 00:38, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Eh, it was like an hour and a half's work, only a third of which was spent making the table itself, since I was using a text editor and a lot of copy/paste + find/replace. Makes the work go quickly. Also, if you know anything about those early 'ops, I'd love to hear anything you have, since tracking down the sysops that were promoted before A/PM was in place is a task I don't know how to handle. —Aichon— 01:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

You should be able to check their individual user rights logs, if I'm not mistaken (purges may have made that a pipe dream though, fucking Stalin Kevan). Checking the old moderator pages should throw up enough names to work with. 01:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

In most cases the user rights logs seem to work and are intact all the way back to 2005, but at least with Katthew, it's showing a promotion, but no later demotion, yet her rights are clearly set to that of a regular user. Also, I suspect I'm simply unaware of many of the early sysops, which means I can't check for them since I don't know who I'd be checking for. For instance, I'd have never thought to look for Katthew if I hadn't heard mention of her being a sysop at one point. —Aichon— 01:33, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Add a star in every month i got a misconbitration :D --hagnat 02:02, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Log files don't get purged, Kevan intentionally leaves them. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 04:31, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it looks like some must've been purged, since there's no record of Katthew being demoted in the user rights logs. —Aichon— 06:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I made a fairly comprehensive list for the Grimmies a couple of years ago. I think you're only missing LeakyBocks, though I didn't do a thorough comparison.

Your table starts in Aug '05 but the wiki didn't go live until that September. Is that because there are logs predating September 7th? BTW, LeakyBocks was apparently the first promoted user, before even Kevan or Urbandead. It was suggested he was tech support and probably Kevan's friend that help him set up the wiki. No idea when he was demoted. Probably when that Truly Inactive Sysops policy passed. ~ _{05:54, 15 March 2013 (UTC)}

Honestly, I just copy/pasted a few cells for 2005 and didn't count them until later, so it was laziness on my part that it starts in August. As for LeakyBlocks, his promotion was on the 6th of September, so that pushes things a day ahead of where you thought, and he was promoted by Urbandead about 2 hours before Kevan was. He was demoted in May 2008 by Kevan, presumably because everyone else had forgotten about him and he didn't need his powers any longer. —Aichon— 06:07, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

You might find some discussion about katthe promotion in the talk:Main Page history from the earlier days of the wiki... good luck on the dig hunt :) --hagnat 01:10, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, since I'm guessing Gnome is lurking, thanks for pointing out the error. After staring at numbers for so long, they all kinda run together sometimes. —Aichon— 06:08, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

IRC

I saw your edit summary. I actually don't know how IRC works - whenever I try to go to the website everyone mentions (irc.nexuswar.com) I only see a black screen with a jagged green circle on it. Can you explain it to me? Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 15:19, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Sure. To start from the very beginning, you need an IRC client if you want to connect to an IRC server. There's a browser-based client called Mibbit that's rather popular around here. If you want a native client for Mac or Windows, I can strongly recommend Colloquy for Mac, and I can halfheartedly recommend IceChat for Windows.

Once you're logged onto the server, you'll need to join a channel (i.e. basically a chat room) on that server by either typing in "/join #channelname" or using your client to join it some other way. Wiki stuff is in the #udwiki channel these days (though historically #urbandeadwiki was the "official" channel for awhile), and you should be able to find channels for pretty much any major group in the game (e.g. #soc, #mob, #rrf, #philosophe, etc., though #philosophe is password protected).

When you're in a channel, you should be able to see everyone else who has also joined that channel and is currently in it. Unfortunately, at least with UD, it's likely that many of them will not be at their computers at that time, since most of us leave our clients logged in 24/7, even when we're away. As a result, the channels aren't exactly hotbeds of conversation where people are talking all the time. Instead, people tend to just sit in there until a conversation starts, at which point they'll join in.

If you need to talk to someone, you can either PM them via IRC (usually just click, double-click, or right-click on their name, depending on your client) to engage in a one-on-one discussion with them, or you can simply say their name in a channel they're in. Saying someone's screenname will "ping" that person, generally by either flashing the window or making a sound on their end. As such, it's common courtesy to only ping them once then to stay online for a few hours to give them a chance to respond. Leaving a small message so that they know what it's related to is also a nice thing to do.

Now, with all of that out of the way, if you want to keep things super simple, the easy way to get you started is to have you simply follow this link to Mibbit, choose a username, and log in (that link will automatically log you onto the nexuswar server in the #udwiki channel). BAM! Done. —Aichon— 16:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm on IRC via Mibbit, but I'm not sure how to change my profile info? You can answer here or there if you're on. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 17:22, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I tend to be on in the evening to late evening for U.S. Central, unless someone says something here that prompts me to get on during the workday (or if there's some drama exploding, in which case I'll hop on to get real-time updates and coordinate with others to handle it). As for profile info, if you're using Mibbit, I'm not sure that you can change it, but it shouldn't be important anyway, so long as folks know who you are based on your screen name. Most of the regulars on there also register their screen names so that they're locked to them, though I don't remember the syntax of the commands for doing so off the top of my head (I believe the relevant commands are "register" and "identify" when you're talking with the Nickserv user, though you can PM Nickserv and type "help" to get more info on the commands). —Aichon— 17:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Ok cool. I will try to be online for as much of today/this evening as I can. Thanks! Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 17:45, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Regarding 'crats and nominations

So, folks on IRC mentioned that it looks bad for a 'crat to nominate someone, and it's something I've been mulling over for a few hours now (after being a teaching assistant for three semesters on a senior-level engineering ethics class that had 650+ students a semester, these sorts of questions get stuck in my head). And because it's a topic that's worth discussing with others and is relevant to stuff happening here, I'd like to go through my after-the-fact thoughts and see if anyone has something to add.

To start with the necessary context, the choice I'm questioning was whether or not I should have posted the nomination for Bob. Clearly, I chose to do so, and I think the main complaints against what I did are as follows:

1. It's a conflict of interest for me to process a nomination that I created.
2. It's bad for appearances if I undermine my facade of impartiality by stating my opinion.

I think we can all understand those easily enough, and I also think we can likely agree that they're true. Yes, it is a conflict of interest, and yes, I did destroy any chance I had at appearing impartial in this matter. From there, the main questions I see are "what's expected of me?", "will I be able to fulfill it?", and "assuming my choice was morally right, was it the best choice?". Put differently, "did I act ethically?" and "did I make the best choice?"

As a 'crat, I have a responsibility to rule fairly on each nomination, but clearly no 'crat is entirely devoid of thought or opinion (despite signs to the contrary :P), and the community is aware of this fact. What we, the community, do is choose the people who we think are most capable of putting aside their personal opinions and judging fairly when the time comes. As such, the measure of impartiality is not that I am devoid of opinion, but rather that I am capable of separating myself from my opinions to the degree expected of me when the time comes. The danger that conflicts of interest pose is that they can make it more difficult to find that separation.

Related to that, one of the first things they'll teach you in any ethics class is that conflicts of interest, in and of themselves, are not unethical. What makes them a problem is a failure to disclose them to the people in charge, particularly when you stand to gain something. But when we look at this case, we can see that I stand to gain absolutely nothing from having posted the nomination myself. As such, I'm under no pressure to judge any differently than I would have if someone else had posted the nomination, nor should it make it any more difficult for me to separate myself from my personal opinions later, which was the concern voiced in the last paragraph.

That said, we still have the issue of disclosing my conflict of interest to a person in charge. The reason that's important is because other people may perceive deceit or wrongdoing where none exists if full disclosure does not take place, and so a person in charge needs to have a chance to relieve you of duty in cases where the conflict is problematic. While I effectively engaged in full disclosure when I signed the nomination, we don't have anyone in a position of authority over the 'crats, other than the community itself (which is incapable of taking immediate and effective action), which means that it can still taste a bit like something is wrong. Even so, the fact that my judgment is not being impacted renders that point mostly moot, though clearly it would be better if there were someone higher up who could choose to either relieve me of duty or leave me on as a result of my having posted the nomination.

In some ways, it's ironic that while both being open or remaining silent will not impact a 'crat's judgment, being open about their opinions would create an appearance of wrongdoing, where remaining silent on the matter would not.

Anyway, in this case, I think it's safe to say that my judgment will not be impacted by my having posted the nomination, nor will have I have any problems meeting the expectations that have been set before me as a result of posting it. As such, I think we can say that it was an ethically permissible choice that I made. Of course, that doesn't mean it was the best choice, which was the last of those questions above.

But that's a whole other essay (no, really, it is...I had some of it typed up, but this was already ridiculous enough). —Aichon— 05:53, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

If a crat nominates someone, it's down to the other crat to make the call. Simple, tidy and not-a-brick-of-words. 05:56, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Not a good idea. Sysop nominations work with vetoes. By removing me, you're eliminating one of the vetoes, which throws things pretty far in Bob's favor. That's definitely not a fair way to handle things. —Aichon— 07:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The way I see it, if one crat nominates someone they're throwing the ball to the other crat to say "I'm in favour, either veto this or don't", which is basically how it works already, only this way the intention of one crat is known that little bit sooner. It's really not a new issue that needs explaining. 21:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree with that, though the question is whether or not the public nature of throwing the ball to the other 'crat changes things at all. It's an appearances issue, basically. —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Which is why the wiki needed 3 crats, to break ties and avoid conflicts of interest with one member. But it doesn't really matter now since only 20 people care about the wiki and half of them are running it.--THE Godfather of Яesensitized, Anime Sucks ^{Yalk | W! U! WMM| CC CPFOAS LOE ZHU | Яezzens} 08:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

If anything, a third 'crat would make things worse without solving a single problem you've cited. Again, 'crats function with vetoes, not votes, so as long as a single 'crat objects, the promotion doesn't take place. As such, there's no such thing as a tie, and if one 'crat has a conflict of interest that causes him to favor a candidate, the other 'crat is still just as capable as ever of vetoing the promotion. Similarly, if a 'crat has a grudge against a candidate, adding a third 'crat won't help avoid that problem in the slightest. All that adding a third 'crat does is add more delay since more people would need to be consulted. —Aichon— 15:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I think if a third 'crat were added, it would have to go with a provision that two 'crats can overrule the third, moving it from a veto to a vote system. (I personally don't support that, as I think the sysop team as a whole is the one which should be concerned with voting situations.) Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 15:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Dude, you're never going to veto somebody you nominated anyway, so it's completely irrelevant. All you nominating somebody does is say that you're content that they're a good enough candidate and aren't going to veto them. If you change your mind in the process of the bid then the fact that you originally nominated them is completely irrelevant. If you were never going to change your mind anyway then it doesn't matter because you wouldn't have vetoed anyway. This is in no way a big deal and crats should feel free to do whatever they want.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 20:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm with you on the irrelevancy topic, which was more or less what I concluded in the wall of text above. The followup topic is whether or not nominating is the best choice to take. I.e. Is the fact that it's known by many to be irrelevant sufficient to outweigh the concerns that the 'crat will appear more partial by having stated their opinion so publicly? —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm still processing most of that, but I think I'm of the belief that full disclosure occurred when you posted the nomination, because that indicated that you had a biased stance. To take a counterpoint example, in Peralta's bid last year, you revealed after the bid had been withdrawn that you were in favor of Peralta's elevation to sysophood (in the post "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly"). While I don't doubt that your personal opinion in that case had no bearing on how you would have processed it had the nomination not been withdrawn, I think it could be argued that by not revealing your personal preference you were not giving the community full disclosure. So I guess I'm saying that I think you did the right thing in nominating me, because if you hadn't, your strong bias would have gone undiscovered until the end (or not at all). I don't know; it's really late at night.

That aside, I do think I would prefer if SZ processed the bid, to avoid a kerfuffle among the community. I would still expect you to add your input, as I think you can still make a good judgement call about which way the community is pointing, if not necessarily about how you yourself are pointing. I guess that's what I vote for when I vote for a bureaucrat; someone who can be a successful barometer of the community, while minimizing the influences of his own biases. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 06:58, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, disclosure was unnecessary there since there was no reason for there to be a perception of wrongdoing on my part (i.e. no conflicts of interest). Unless you want to make an argument that transparency is always necessary, disclosure for its own sake is not always desirable. Besides which, even if you do think that disclosure is good for its own sake, I could have done it in a different way that didn't lead to a conflict of interest, such as by letting someone else nominate you and then merely vouch for you afterwards. That would have meant no conflict of interest while still having full disclosure. Would that have been a better way to handle things? I think so, though I don't (yet) regret having done what I did. —Aichon— 07:38, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Mayhaps. I am the kind of person who thinks transparency is pretty much always necessary. That's because I think that everyone is always biased, and it's better if everyone knows everyone's biases to the best extent possible, unless there's a specific reason to conceal them. Maybe creating an atmosphere of impartiality around the bureaucrats is worth that, I don't know. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 07:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

And that's exactly the question I was getting at. I don't share your belief that transparency is always necessary, particularly when it comes to personal opinions, but I am a regular user who wants to be able to express his opinions freely. It may be selfish of me to seek to do so if it comes at the cost of maintaining the appropriate atmosphere around the 'crats, but that's precisely what I wanted to explore as a topic. —Aichon— 15:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

And second to my first comment, you get more transparency when crats can propose them, because either: (1) The crat is willing to change their mind based on community opinion in which case it doesn't matter because they'll go against their initial support if the candidate is bad or (2) The crat isn't. If this is the case then it's much better to know that (i.e. you get more transparency) than if somebody else nominates the candidate, the crat is secretly biased, was always going to support them and you just never find that out. More transparency if crats can do more. Simples.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 20:45, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Quite true. I suppose that begs the question of whether or not the transparency is worth sacrificing the appearance of impartiality. —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

shut the fuck up it's fine. only morons and trolls would question your intentions.--User:Sexualharrison21:13, 19 March 2013

lol, this wasn't a defense. This was me thinking through the moral ramifications of my choice and then suggesting that it may not have been the best choice to make. —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Right. To throw in my thoughts, I generally agree with Aichon, but on a personal level I never would nominate as a sitting crat. I'd go to their talk page and discuss the idea and try and steer opinion, but I prefer self nomination. That's why I love Thad. --Rosslessness 21:22, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

You're the only one I know who prefers self-nomination. Everyone else either doesn't care or prefers that others nominate. And I definitely can respect choosing to not nominate as a personal choice. —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

For me it shows two things; firstly that you're thick skinned enough to put yourself to public vote, and secondly that you've got a real desire to do the job. Also, without self nomination we would never have had xela's bid. It's my favourite by miles. --Rosslessness 21:39, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, regarding Bob, you'll be happy to know that he planned to self-nominate, and only didn't because I asked if I could do it instead. :P —Aichon— 21:55, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

That's true. I also think I'm slightly in favor of self-nomination as well, if only because it allows a user to time things so they fit best with his/her life outside UDWiki (I know, some people have those, right?) But I'm cool with whatever - since a significant part of the community disagrees with self-noms, I agreed to have Aichon nominate me instead. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 23:44, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

As a quick note to everyone, this was simply a thought experiment that I thought was worth some discussion. I'm not trying to offer a defense for what I did, nor am I attempting to justify it. I'm simply attempting to work through what it means, and have invited all of you along for roller coaster in my brain. :P —Aichon— 21:34, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

What the fuck is this? Crats make their decisions based on their assessment of the community feedback. Someone in support of a sysop candidate can still veto a bid and vice versa. What a dumb thing to say. I didn't read anything from the above, but of the 2 and a half sentences I did, I think it's the most ridiculous conversation I've ever heard. Harrison is right. Now stop brooding everyone for god's sake A ZOMBIE ANT 22:36, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm tl:dr'ing that, so apologies if this is already said. By voice your opinion, you are actually giving your justification for the decision prior to the voting (vetoing) allowing disagreeing users to specifically address your reasoning. In this case, I don't see that being an issue, but in others it could actually assist the community if there are strong feelings against the candidate or if the community feels you are unduly giving credit. I'd rather the crats give their opinion before making it a final decision every time rather than the secret discussion that can ignore votes. --_K 22:47, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Had never thought of that, good point. transparency = good A ZOMBIE ANT 07:12, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Brooding? Not really. When I'm brooding, I'm not having fun. I started this conversation because it was a fun one for me to think through, and I wanted to open it up to others. —Aichon— 15:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Vote or Comment in Suggestion 20130325?

You have not written "Keep" in front of your comment in the keep section of the Voice Recognition/Radio suggestion. Were you voting or were you just commenting? Lpha 21:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I was voting. You don't actually need to write "Keep", "Kill", "Spam", or "Dupe", so long as you place your vote in the appropriate section and provide some form of justification (and even the justification thing isn't ever enforced). —Aichon— 21:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, don't forget to add your signature to your vote. —Aichon— 21:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Borrowed Several of your Templates

Sorry, but i borrowed several of the templates you were using. Lpha 21:41, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

You're very welcome to borrow them, though you may want to borrow the originals, rather than the custom ones I made to match my page. ;)

For reference, here are the originals for the ones you borrowed:

• {{American}}
• {{Grammar}}
• {{Zerg}}

The colors are a bit different, but they use less code, which is rather nice when you need to edit your page. —Aichon— 21:47, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

I changed what was written on them. Lpha 21:51, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Ah, that you did. Disregard my suggestion then. :) —Aichon— 22:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

MOB locator

I'm about to try to update this (the suburb). I will probably break it. So, forewarning. --_K 21:43, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

If I broke it, I didn't break it bad. Though I now notice the suburb map doesn't have 'the update this if you have more current information', so maybe I shouldn't have done that. --_K 21:52, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

What's missing? I don't see anything broken, though you should also add an announcement about our new location. ;) —Aichon— 22:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, to keep the theme up I need to steal the coloring for your MOB sig and make a pete sig... and learn how to do a sig other than with the button. --_K 22:05, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I just copy/paste mine, or else type it in manually each time, since that's almost the only place I ever use that sig. —Aichon— 22:09, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Yeah I just stole your code and added in my name/user page. Figured out the 'just time' thing after a couple of tries. Thanks. --_K 22:16, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

The five tildes? Sorry, didn't realize you were looking for that, otherwise I would've told you. —Aichon— 22:42, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Also, stealing my code for that is very fine. I stole mine from an old version that FLZombie used and then modified it a tiny bit to match the exact MOB color when we redid the locator a few months back. —Aichon— 22:44, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Not a problem, I had never used anything other than the button, so copying your work made it much easier, that was just the only trial and error part. As for your code, I figured you wouldn't mind and I wanted to preserve the page style. I'll probably pester you about something else before too long. --_K 01:40, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Nothing to do with the locator... But the strike teams section on the MOB main page still says four teams. I'm not completely sure that was unintentional, but thought it might have been. I'll defer making the change in case there is a reason I don't know. --_K 15:34, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to change it. I'm sure it was an oversight from when BLF was removed. —Aichon— 05:31, 31 March 2013 (BST)

(:

No problems at all. I thought about joining Philosophe Knights at one point. Too much thinking for me to RP such a title, as I tend to over think things anyway and getting into philosophy constantly would give me a headache. Anyways, no hard feelings. I'm always open to ideas from your group if you wanted to collaborate something. CyberOpposition 04:11, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Anticlimax

Watching Special:Statistics after a sig change isn't as exciting as you made it seem. I want my $7 back. ~ _{01:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)}

Wait wait are the sig image size rules gone? 04:06, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Not last I checked. I reverted his change, since I can only assume it was an accident. —Aichon— 04:17, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Damn. Was gonna go buck daft there. 04:29, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Hmm. That's weird. Looks fine on my end. Let me try again. ~ _{04:30, 1 April 2013 (UTC)}

The issue is that the new image was huge, so it made your sig take up something like 400px. Fix that and it'll be fine, but I don't need to be seeing gigantic images for sigs all over pages. :P —Aichon— 04:32, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Annnnd, still doing it. Change your sig if you want to use that image, maybe? Enforce a size limit on it. —Aichon— 04:33, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Try clearing your cache, maybe? ~ _{04:33, 1 April 2013 (UTC)}

Huge rabbit is huge still. It's not a cache issue, since it should be showing up that large, given that the image itself is that large and you aren't setting it to show up smaller anywhere. —Aichon— 04:36, 1 April 2013 (BST)

No I'm pretty sure its a chaching issue. ~ _{04:40, 1 April 2013 (UTC)}

You're right. When I closed out my browser completely, I'm unable to see the images at all (I just see my desktop image on my computer!). Must be a caching issue. —Aichon— 04:42, 1 April 2013 (BST)

It looks like a tiny bunny to me, well within sig limits. Are you sure it is not on your end? -MHSstaff 04:49, 1 April 2013 (BST)

I think you broke it Aichon. Now it is like a million pixels large or something. -MHSstaff 04:55, 1 April 2013 (BST)

I'm sure it's me. After all, I reverted everything to how it was a few hours ago, and it's been broken for years... ¬_¬ —Aichon— 04:59, 1 April 2013 (BST)

I think I finally fixed it. How's this? 05:00, 1 April 2013 (BST)

*sigh* —Aichon— 05:02, 1 April 2013 (BST)

Looks fine on my end. The large images were messing everything up. Thanks for fixing it. -MHSstaff 05:04, 1 April 2013 (BST)

I'd like your opinion...

I'm putting this on your page because I'd love your opinion. I'm daring to do this publicly because I'd like to see what other folks think too - but I'm hoping for thoughtful, non-dismissive answers. I tend to see the official channels as rife with that brand of contribution.

So, something Kirsty said on her SysOp 'application' made me think about how well the wiki is tied to the game, and it made me remember that for a decent period of time way back when I first started that I didn't get it at all, what was here, how the meta game worked, and even that there was more than "What the percentage likelihood to find a genny in a mall hardware store is..."

That, and as I came back last fall, I was amazed at how balkanized everything had become. How in order to figure out what's going on at the moment, I visit 10 or so group forums every day, FAR AWAY from what is really supposed to be the centralized resource for information about the game.

It occurs to me that maybe the front page is due for a revision? Something that has a slightly more sexy and comprehensible GUI? go HERE for group information, go HERE for guides of all kinds, go HERE for gameplay information, a what's happening that actually corresponds to shit happening in the game? "The MOB's eating West Grayside. The Philosophe Knights continue to hunt Team Zombie Hardcore. The Late Night TV Crue are killing all the SysOps they can find... Axe Hack is making another obvious alt and trying to get into groups undetected... etc.?

That - and I'm not sure this is even possible now that Kevan's ditched - but maybe the log-in screen of the game itself needs a box touting the wiki a bit more, rather than just a button saying 'wiki'? "HEY YOU! There's another whole component of this game that goes way beyond what you see when you log your guy in! Go to the wiki to find a group, to read about coordinated stuff people are doing, yadda yadda?" Something that drives traffic here, where they'll find something simple and comprehensible, and then get sucked in the way I was to the human side of this and at just how amazingly clever people can be in this game?"

Further, then maybe there needs to be a campaign that asks active groups to at least update their pages with some kind of 'recent activity' once a month? So it's not necessary to go to all those forums?

I'm probably dreaming, and my specific ideas might suck for a host of great reasons - but overall, aren't there things we might try to reverse the slow decline here?

Thanks for listening.-- 15:54, 5 April 2013 (BST)

I definitely agree that the main page needs a redesign, and focusing around the sort of stuff that you're talking about would be a great idea. It's actually a topic that we've talked about quite a bit and that pretty much everyone agrees is necessary. Unfortunately, no one has put together a mockup for a new design that A) we can all agree on, and B) that will actually function correctly. I put together something a few months back that we all pretty much agreed would be a step up from what we have now, but we discovered at the last minute that the menu bar across the top is broken for everyone using the default theme, ever since the last wiki software somehow broke the way that the CSS is included in themes.

As for the login screen, that's out of our control entirely, I'm afraid. And regarding having more in-game updates on the main page, I'm actually in agreement that stuff like that would be useful, but the problem is that it (as you might imagine) gets extremely sticky when you start to give preferential treatment to groups just because they're more well-known or whatever than other groups. With various groups being inactive and active, oftentimes from one week to the next, it's almost impossible to keep updated, and that's assuming that the groups even want their whereabouts on the front page at all. That said, I think that I'd actually be in favor of having a box with extremely short (<10 words, say) status updates from any groups that show up on the stats page and that get deleted automatically after a month or something. We need to get over ourselves and start doing what's best for the community-at-large that isn't a part of the wiki community, which is something we've had problems doing. —Aichon— 18:36, 5 April 2013 (BST)

A snapshot of stats to put on the main page would be pretty sweet. It could be bot updated or, lacking that gnome'd weekly or so. I'll make myself available for main page reboot discussion if it resurfaces. Not sure if we'll get the css/theme problems fixed. Has anyone ping'd Kevan about that? Maybe there's a testbed wiki somewhere that stuff can be worked out and give a step-by-step method of fixing those issues. ~ _{18:59, 5 April 2013 (UTC)}

Afraid not on that last point. Something outright broke, so without having a copy of this wiki that we could attempt to fix, I'm not sure how we'd be able to use a second wiki to help us here. And I'm not sure that anyone has pinged him, though I kinda doubt he'd respond even if we did on a topic like this. Anyway, I'm game for reopening these discussions as well with some ideas that are a bigger departure from what we currently have. One of the complaints with my design was that it didn't have something on the left side to visually balance out the right, but status updates from groups in a box down the left side could do just that for it. —Aichon— 19:09, 5 April 2013 (BST)

The discussions Aichon mentions are here and here, and the technical issues with Aichon's proposal are discussed here. They're an interesting read and give a good idea of why nothing happened last time this topic came up despite largely having consensus. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 19:09, 5 April 2013 (BST)

Perhaps a help group for new groups could be formed, similar to Project Welcome. Something to help the numerous Crit 2 group pages blossom into nice group pages and maybe an introduction to metagaming. Or just a collection of resources for new folks trying to form groups. I know there are some guides out there but it could be that they're being passed over/not seen. ~ _{19:45, 5 April 2013 (UTC)}

Wow! Of course you guys have worked on this. I want to read up on everything Bob posted, then I'll come back. Thanks!-- 21:59, 5 April 2013 (BST)

If you guys are worried about preferential group treatment for in-game updates on the wiki, you can always word it to be anonymous. "A mob of zombies ransacked Caiger Mall last night", or something like that. Little, quick, sentence-long news blurbs on the main page, so to speak. (People who really know what's going would probably still know what and who the updates pertain to, though.) It might also be worthwhile to have some sort of centralized active group page, if you wanting to quickly know what groups are up to. I don't know. Also, we could give the CP something to do. But I'm not sure that we'd ever use it much, without really needing to. And one more also... I do have ideas for another main page, although I don't have the time to create anything right now. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:25, 6 April 2013 (BST)

This is mostly what makes people not want to update or read these things. It's better to have flavor, just no recruiting or falsification. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 06:30, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Is there any chance we could have a "first day on the wiki" guide like the one for the game on the main page? Maybe divided into a sections for game information and wiki information, just make it links to useful information and brief descriptions of what you'll find. I don't know if that would help the main page, but it would help me. --_K 22:36, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Hmmmm... I'll see if I can mock something up. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 23:21, 6 April 2013 (BST)

If you do, I got some thoughts on content, just not sure how to go about making a public discussion type page or if it even should be on the front end... --_K 02:23, 7 April 2013 (BST)

Whip together some text. Even if you don't pretty it up, if you put down some ideas for the text that are useful, we can run with those. Coming up with useful stuff to put on the front page was a major problem before. —Aichon— 05:46, 7 April 2013 (BST)

There was a time not long ago where we tried to redesign the main page. All that happened was nothing got changed, except the community sections you seem to value (and I worked prettye hard to put on the main page) being pushed further down the screen where no one would read them. Merry Christmas A ZOMBIE ANT 14:01, 7 April 2013 (BST)

A Question

Is Sexualharrison allowed to vote kill on my suggestion because "fuck you"? Lpha 15:25, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Suggestion votes need only justification, and even that is often waived as justification is easy to produce. There is effectively no check for the validity of the justification, as a.) sys-ops are not moderators and b.) civility is no requirement on UDWiki (such a policy has been shot down). tl;dr: Yes, Harrison is allowed to. -- Spiderzed█ 16:17, 6 April 2013 (BST)

There's actually the inane/invalid vote clause, if you look under voting rules. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 17:10, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Yes, and it states: Votes that do not have reasoning behind them are invalid. You MUST justify your vote. "Because fuck you" may be poor form, but is some sort of reasoning/justification and thus formally sufficient. -- Spiderzed█ 17:19, 6 April 2013 (BST)

You have to look down a little further. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 17:35, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Is this regarding the "inane vote removed" example? Because, while possibly rude, Harrison's vote isn't "inane" - it was caused by a conversation on his talk page. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 20:17, 6 April 2013 (BST)

Am I mistaken or are suggestions at this point exercises in futility because Kevan's not updating the game?-- 21:25, 6 April 2013 (BST)

You're not mistaken. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:22, 6 April 2013 (BST)

I kind of view the suggestions system as a mini-game or side quest or something. Its fun for some. Some take it way more seriously than they should and others (like me) completely just completely ignore it. ~ _{23:04, 6 April 2013 (UTC)}

finally some drama. and where is SA when I need him? i think i stole that one from him. --User:Sexualharrison00:56, 7 April 2013

Allowed to? Sure. Is it valid? Honestly, I don't know, and I wasn't planning to try and sort it out unless it would actually make a difference in the outcome of the vote. Also, I'm surprised no one has mentioned the troll vote clause in the Suggestions' rules, since that's a sysop power that applies in this case, and it allows sysops to act as moderators in situations such as these, which is extremely odd. Of course, that rule hasn't been used in years, and with good reason. —Aichon— 05:45, 7 April 2013 (BST)

Answer: No, he can't. But nothing will happen unless a sysop strikes it, which they most likely won't. (also: the rules say sysops can strike troll votes, the word inane isn't codified in the rules anywhere, only the suggestion). A ZOMBIE ANT 14:05, 7 April 2013 (BST)

You'd be suprised how unproblematic this was when I used it, or other sysops, even a Vista, even a direct precedent (if one cares about precedents here). I even got away with it on Iscariot (although I think there was an associated vandal case). You have people who don't care about their vote, who get their vote struck; thus they don't care and there wasn't any problem. (Exception, Iscariot. But Iscariot is Iscariot.) Any molehills here aren't mountains. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 14:32, 7 April 2013 (BST)

Yep, pretty much. Get some teeth, ops! A ZOMBIE ANT 08:28, 8 April 2013 (BST)

ah more arm chair syoping. too bad you have no say whatsoever anymore. aww.--User:Sexualharrison08:31, 8 April 2013

Just looking to watch more drama bud, as you wanted yourself. don't get all shitty with me busta A ZOMBIE ANT 15:11, 8 April 2013 (BST)

but I love pooping all over your years of hard work here on UDWIKI fucknuts.--User:Sexualharrison12:51, 9 April 2013

If you'll notice, he did give a justification in his original vote, to wit: "Meh", which translates to "this is a bland and uninspiring suggestion, and I could either vote keep or kill, so don't give me any shit about my vote, or it may change".
Or were those just the voices in my head? -- boxy 10:32, 8 April 2013 (BST)

which was my point exactly.--User:Sexualharrison15:01, 8 April 2013

--User:Sexualharrison16:24, 8 April 2013

In the end though, isn't the definition of "Troll" a society generated norm? A benchmark reliant on a moving target of zeitgeist? If I say that I find Sexualharrison's vote within bounds, appropriate and entertaining, am I not pulling the pole in the opposite direction of it being justifiably called a troll vote in our community? Assuming so, I found it within bounds, appropriate and entertaining.-- 20:18, 9 April 2013 (BST)

Wasn't talking to you

Was talking to the sysop team as an entity and anybody who backed both decisions i.e. Karek, Boxy, Rev, Spiderzed, Rosslessness, etc.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 03:27, 10 April 2013 (BST)

By the way, having looked at the list of current sysops, you are literally the only one who I actually trust to be reasonable. <3 --Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 03:31, 10 April 2013 (BST)

...

I hope you can understand why I thought you were talking to me, since I was the one that voiced the "sysops are not moderators" reasoning which you seemed to be responding to. Even with having thought that, however, you're still cool in my book. —Aichon— 03:39, 10 April 2013 (BST)

Yeah, sorry, those were separate statements, apologies for the confusion. What I was getting at is that sysops aren't obliged to never moderate or be political, they should do whatever helps the wiki run most efficiently. In some cases, that requires moderating content. (I.e. to be an effective administrator it is also sometimes necessary to be a moderator.)--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 04:15, 10 April 2013 (BST)

No problem, and I can agree with that. If the need arises, sysops have a higher responsibility to do what's best for the wiki, even if it means overstepping their bounds and being taken to A/M. But moderating other users should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances that warrant such an activity, and should instead be left to the users themselves on a regular basis, particularly in the case of personal disputes, which are best resolved through dialog between the involved parties. When Lpha placed "Keep" before our votes without our permission, that was rightly excused as the newbie mistake it was. But his deciding to press the issue with Harrison and disregard what we told him about it being unnecessary, just so that he could see the Keep votes neatly lined up, created a problem entirely of his own making. Of course, a normal person, newbie or not, would either shrug it off or seek to address it with the other party, either of which would be acceptable outcomes.

Instead, rather than shrugging it off or talking with Harrison to resolve the issue he had created, his first resort was to ask me whether or not Harrison was breaking any rules. Who does that? And when he found out that there was a rule Harrison might be breaking, he went to another sysop and asked him to deal with Harrison. Newbie or not, it's poor form to drag others into a personal disagreement so that they can beat up your opponent, rather than dealing with it yourself, and even more so if you later try to pit those people against each other by bringing in another when the first one doesn't go along with your plan.

So, not only is he trying to use a rule that I believe should be erased (I'm not assigning him any fault for that since he couldn't have known; I'm simply explaining my reluctance to use it), he's also made himself extremely unsympathetic by demonstrating poor form and doing anything but being willing to handle the problem himself. Thus, even if I did support the use of the rule, I'd be unlikely to exercise my discretion in using it here, since I believe that he created the justification that Harrison is using and now has a responsibility to handle it himself. That has nothing to do with him being a newbie or folks looking out for a clique of long-timers. It's because he didn't act like a decent person should have acted (neither did SH, for that matter, but I'm not making any moves to support SH either, instead just choosing to let them sort it out among themselves). —Aichon— 06:44, 10 April 2013 (BST)

Fair enough, sounds reasonable.--Yonnua Koponen ^{Talk ! Contribs} 11:34, 10 April 2013 (BST)

I still can't believe all this crap over a meaningless suggestions vote. --User:Sexualharrison06:57, 10 April 2013

Would it be the wiki if it wasn't? Part of the charm of this place is its ability to crush souls under meaningless issues. —Aichon— 07:18, 10 April 2013 (BST)

really looking forward to what boxy has to say. think he will keep going down the line syops or get the hint?--User:Sexualharrison23:53, 10 April 2013

No clue at this point. He has quite awhile before the suggestion closes, so he could still go pretty far. —Aichon— 00:35, 11 April 2013 (BST)

Cycling Misfiled Suggestions

It is good that you have decided to stick around, as Kirsty's bid isn't something I'd want to be stuck with on my own for weeks. Clearly fails in significant activity as a criteria. Prior interest in maintaining the community has some efforts connected with it. Some users are against it based on these shortcomings, but we have also several serious vouches by established users. Thoughts? -- Spiderzed█ 01:54, 13 April 2013 (BST)

That actually factored into my decision to stay, since I didn't think it would be fair to stick you with this. As for my thoughts, my take on it is that while there are a decent number of vouches from members of the community, the general sentiment seems to be fairly ambivalent with quite a bit of incredulity being expressed. Some of that might have been exacerbated by the bid being posted on April 1st, which is unfortunate, but the end result is that I can't help but get the sense that promoting Kirsty now would be like picking a piece of fruit before it was ready. If Kirsty had a history of maintaining the wiki actively, I'd still go forward with the promotion in a heartbeat, but without that history, it's hard to say if this current activity is a phase or if it's a trend that will last. As such, I think that a, "Not right now" is in order, with an indication that he's on the right track and will almost certainly have it if he keeps doing what he's doing and tries again this summer. I sincerely mean that. —Aichon— 02:56, 13 April 2013 (BST)

In contested cases like this, I think "Not yet, this is what you can do to improve the odds" is indeed the right answer. As for the housework until the next bid, this is what I would give on the way:

• Ramp up contributions in order to remedy the significant activity problem.
• Ramp up janitorial work, like categorising images or tracking down scheduled deletions like missed talk pages, unused templates etc.
• Improve procedural knowledge. I'm not an op who is obsessed with precedent, but glaring mistakes like filing Misconduct against the whole team (which historically has always failed because no one was able to vote) are a thing that should be avoided.

Got anything to add? -- Spiderzed█ 16:33, 13 April 2013 (BST)

I actually want to chime in with few things of note.

• We need to fill out the sysops team, we're down to 7, one of which is asking for a demotion, one of which was recently refused a demotion, and two of which don't really do any sysop functions. That effectively leaves us with a team of 3, 4 while Ross is still around.
• Kirsty has shown he/she is willing to voice an alternative view to most of the team and that is a positive thing as it furthers discussion.
• Vapor's seems to be the most weighty against, and it's unexplained. The others are laregely due not to a fault of the user's but due to them being unsure if Kirsty wasn't the job. 2 out of 4 actually with 1 being Harrison who doesn't like the user and 1 being Vapor who is unexplained.

Generally we'd call this bid a very good one for someone looking for promotion. When the worst thing we can say is we don't know if they really want to be sysop, well the bid itself answers that when it's self filed and we have enough venues available should Kirsty not actually want the position. We now have A/RE if Kirsty proves to be inactive, and the balance of the sysop team right now is weighty with experience so any potential damage is extremely limited. Don't refuse this on the basis of it being contested though, it's really not. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 18:20, 13 April 2013 (BST)

Officially, the number of sys-ops plays no role in the decision. Inofficially, I am aware of us running out of suitable candidates, which is why I look relatively favourable at this application - just 2 or 3 years ago, an applicant like Kirsty would likely have been instantly shot down. That being said, I still don't see Kirsty as being at the point where she is ready, nor do I see a clear-cut indication by the community in favour of the bid. (As for Harrison, he's running with Kirsty in CK and has been for a long time running with her in Cobra, so personal dislike is one of the last motives I would suspect behind the against.) -- Spiderzed█ 18:40, 13 April 2013 (BST)

There's a more clear cut consensus here than most of the sysops we've promoted have gotten and the team size needs most certainly should play a role in the decision when there's so few viable candidates. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 18:49, 13 April 2013 (BST)

I know that I'm not refusing on the basis that it's contested. As we all know, these candidacies are not determined by votes, so as I'm looking through the people that expressed opinions, I'm looking at the reasons they provided, and what I'm seeing is that while there is some support, it's not particularly strong except on the point that Kirsty has a unique opinion to offer. Since that's only one out of the many things we expect in a candidate, and I haven't personally seen evidence of proficiency in those other areas. I feel that the decision is an obvious one, and I'm actually surprised that you disagree.

As for needing more sysops, as Spider said, that doesn't play into the decision, but even if it did, I disagree quite a bit. As I've said elsewhere, I don't think the wiki needs many active sysops in order to function, and that's even more true today than when I wrote that a few years back (with no snark and no sarcasm, I'm actually curious why you think we need more). The idea that we should promote people first and ask questions later using A/RE or A/M is a poor rational to use, especially so when the candidate's strength is in helping with drama, which is something we've been having less and less of in recent years. And regarding the number of sysops we have, my demotion request was withdrawn prior to your posting here, and I don't plan to request one again until about the time that Kirsty will be ready for a promotion if he stays on track, meaning that everything should work out just fine by your measure. —Aichon— 19:01, 13 April 2013 (BST)

Just shoot him down now. Especially given his rather lackluster initial approach to his own bid, it would be interesting to see how he would deal with a rejection. If he keeps on going the way he's going now, he'll be fine in a month or two. --Thadeous Oakley Talk 19:15, 13 April 2013 (BST)

I actually see Karek's point about declining sysop numbers. While the wiki may not need a bunch of sysops, it does need a few to be active at any time. If there are only, say, 2-3 active sysops, it's very easy for the stars to align and all to have rl happenings at the same time, leaving the wiki not only defenseless but also causing delays in cycling, cleanup, etc., which is a big flag to new users that the wiki is in decline.

There are also certain governance mechanics which break down under a certain number of active sysops. I don't think I have to mention the looming decline in eligible and willing Bureaucrat candidates; but there's also the fact that if there are only a few active sysops, VB, misconduct, and other rulings can get more and more lopsided due to choices being made by fewer and fewer people. In my estimation, having around 7 sysops, with 3-4 active, is roughly a functional minimum for a wiki of this size, scope and activity level. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 19:37, 13 April 2013 (BST)

Let me restate: I agree that the wiki needs a certain number of sysops active. Where I disagree is that we should use that as a factor in our decision (at least for now, though that may change later in the wiki's future) and that it's actually a major concern at the moment. As with Bob, I agree that 3-4 active sysops is the sweet spot for a wiki with our current size and activity, and I'd say that we have six out of the seven current sysops actively contributing when drama comes up, and about 3-4 of them actively handling janitorial tasks as they come up. —Aichon— 19:47, 13 April 2013 (BST)

Ok, I see that. I would say that if sysop numbers/activity do decrease further later on, though, then it should become a factor at that point. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 19:49, 13 April 2013 (BST)

The issue you're describing goes beyond the current promotion candidate discussion. Fewer dedicated and active sysops is just a direct cause of a declining (meta)game and wiki community, there aren't any easy solutions to this. (editconf) --Thadeous Oakley Talk 19:51, 13 April 2013 (BST)

When and where did I say i didn't like kristy? just wondering?--User:Sexualharrison01:50, 18 April 2013

I think he's referring to your Against statement on her bid. He never said you didn't like her. And to answer your question, 23:42, 5 April 2013 at A/PM#Kirsty Cotton. —Aichon— 04:47, 18 April 2013 (BST)

1 being Harrison who doesn't like the user

Said by Karek

--User:Sexualharrison05:08, 18 April 2013

While i think you are fun to play with I just don't think you have what it takes to be a sysop on this wiki. sorry Against--User:Sexualharrison05:10, 18 April 2013

Said by Sexualharrison

--User:Sexualharrison05:11, 18 April 2013

I just looked at Spider's comment since that's who you were replying to. Clearly your Against vote didn't express dislike. —Aichon— 05:13, 18 April 2013 (BST)

I was indeed referring to this meant for the position not personally. I don't value the objection from a weight standpoint because it's providing an imprecise objection. I was going beyond simply 'they don't count 'cause who cares about surety' to addressing what the objections actually added to provide for assessing the candidate. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 07:06, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Obviously personal objections from an interaction standpoint are actually worth consideration, just not not feeling someone is up for it in general. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 07:08, 18 April 2013 (BST)

...you are being deliberately as confusing and vague as possible. Whole lot of fancy words for covering up for the fact you falsely paraphrased another user to suit your own arguments. I'd let it go unmentioned if it weren't one of your more annoying and consistent habits, one that has been brought up in the past before. Just stop it. --Thadeous Oakley Talk 11:06, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Re-adding my suggestion

I was just wondering if i can re-add my suggestion again to the current suggestions list hopefully passing it on to peer reviewed.....--PayneTrain^(NWO/FU) 12:42, 15 April 2013 (BST)

If you re-add it without making any changes, everyone will respond by voting that it's a duplicate of your previous one. Even if you make changes, they'll need to be significant enough to keep people from considering it a duplicate suggestion. So, basically, I wouldn't try it if I were in your shoes, since it won't get you anywhere. That ship has sailed, and it's gone as far as it will. —Aichon— 15:16, 15 April 2013 (BST)

How you do this?

I'm just wondering, how do you make your signature? I can see how you type it in to make it show up, with the User:Aichon/Signature, but how do you actually make it? Jebidijed 4:08 PM April 15th, 2013 (AEST)

Well, when I type it in, I actually just type in four tildes (~~~~) and the wiki automatically makes that my signature (five tildes does just a timestamp with no signature). As for how I made it what it is, the wiki has a few help pages over the topic that were how I learned to do it. Take a look at them and let me know if you run into any issues. —Aichon— 21:18, 15 April 2013 (BST)

Thanks! :D By the way, do you know if Petrosjko is still playing the game? Barely anyone sees him anymore. -- Jebidijed 8:06 AM April 16th 2013 (AEST)

The original Papa? As far as I know he isn't playing any more, but I can't say that with any certainty at all (I've never met him, personally), so you should probably check with folks in the RRF for more info, since I'm not too aware of the stuff that goes on with them.

Also, as a quick aside, make sure you use the tildes that I described to post your signature. Doing so uses the same timezone for all of us (specifically, the timezone where the wiki is located), that way its' easier to keep track of who posted before who. If you start using Australian times, it makes it makes it possible for it to appear at a glance like you responded to someone before they posted. —Aichon— 15:20, 16 April 2013 (BST)

Userscripts.

Hello again!

Reformatted the hard drives on my current computer and unfortunately had to reinstall your UD userscripts. Oddly enough, they won't install. I click install, it seems to start the add-on install command, but instead dumps me at the userscript coding page. Currently running Firefox v20.0.1 and none of the other add-ons I have installed should conflict. Any ideas? -- TheBardofOld 06:18, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Hmm...not sure, honestly. Have you checked in Greasemonkey to see if they're actually getting installed? Go to Tools > Add-ons > User Scripts and see if they're listed there. If not, since it sounds like you have Greasemonkey installed, my first guess would be that you have an outdated version of Greasemonkey for some reason (it's on v1.8 right now), but that seems unlikely. I just updated my Greasemonkey and Firefox to test stuff out, and it seems to be working fine for me. Is it all of my scripts that do it, or just some? And can you double-check that you're running the latest Greasemonkey? Also, if you right-click on one of the Install links, can you select a View User Script Source option? If so, select it and see if there's a yellow bar across the top of the page that offers to install it for you, then see if you're able to use that. —Aichon— 14:11, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Derp alert. I forgot to install Greasemonkey.

Doi. -- TheBardofOld 15:13, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Lol, yeah, I thought of starting with that question, but I checked, and it didn't give me the add-on install prompt like what you're talking about, so I figured you had to have it installed. Anyway, glad you got it worked out. :) —Aichon— 15:23, 18 April 2013 (BST)

PK member pages

The one all you... PKivors use. Care if I do some modification to make it more generic and then present it as a user page template, I'll reference you as the original? I'd be happy to give you final say over when it's different enough from the PK version. Also, where is it? :P --_K 18:46, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Template:Philosophe Knights. As far as stealing code and mangling it goes, that is a time-honoured tradition on this wiki. 98% of it was built that way. -- Spiderzed█ 19:04, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Yeah, {{Philosophe Knights}} is the generic Knights' template I made ages ago (VI copied it from my userspace and made a few tweaks, hence why my name isn't in the page's history), and I'd be fine with you taking it and making changes. After all, its design was inspired by one made by Sirens, if memory serves, and that design has been reused for a number of major groups in the game, as well as loads of users. —Aichon— 19:47, 18 April 2013 (BST)

Suburb Group Listings

Is this edit ok? Can a user remove a large number of groups from a suburb listing without it a) being part of a GSGM or b) being justified by, i.e. a report on group numbers in the suburb? Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 00:11, 20 April 2013 (BST)

There's nothing against locals culling inactive groups. In fact, that's the preferred behavior. How they determine that is up to them, and if it turns out that they acted in bad faith, that's what we have A/VB for. In cases where it's clear that the group is active or that someone has a conflict of interest, I'll generally look into it (as I did in this case), but none of the removed groups seemed to indicate activity in that suburb at the moment (assuming they were active at all), so I figured I'd leave it to them to re-add themselves or complain about the removal. —Aichon— 06:58, 20 April 2013 (BST)

Ok, cool. I guessed as much, but just wanted to check. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 07:02, 20 April 2013 (BST)

Hi

Are you an Ay-con, an Aych-on, or an Aichon? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 23:02, 21 April 2013 (BST)

He says it's like "icon", but the rest of us know it's like "acorn" because we're sensible. 23:07, 21 April 2013 (BST)

Pretty much what he said. The "Ai" is pronounced like "eye" and the "chon" is pronounced like "con" (notably, NOT like "KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHN!!"). Enunciation is on the first syllable. So, that makes me an Aichon, if I have to pick one of the three choices. —Aichon— 00:52, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Okay, so acorn then. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:04, 22 April 2013 (BST)

I do answer to that as well. I even have it set up to ping me on IRC since enough people use it to refer to me. —Aichon— 01:06, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Do you answer to everything using your signature code, —Acorn—? If I called you, say, —Banana—? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:12, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Visually, I key off on the "A" in it when I'm looking for it. So, Banana wouldn't grab my attention, while Acorn actually probably would have. —Aichon— 01:15, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Ah, I see, nice to know, —A banana—. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:16, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Strangely, that doesn't work for me. I suspect it's because the shape of the word changed too much when you inserted the space. —Aichon— 01:18, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Alright, apricot. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:22, 22 April 2013 (BST)

Testing: —Apricot—...yeah, that'd probably get my attention or at a glance would make me think it was my own, although the dangling part of the P breaks the illusion a bit. —Aichon— 01:30, 22 April 2013 (BST)

—Testicles—, —one, two, — —testicles—. —Aren't you— —worried about— —assholes— —like me— —using this?— 23:13, 29 April 2013 (BST)

Not particularly. Seeing how creatively people could use it was kinda the point in adding that into it in the first place, and I was fully aware that it would be turned against me. That's the fun of it, I think. ;) —Aichon— 23:48, 29 April 2013 (BST)

—Read— —Sweet— —how others— —strove—
—Till we— —are stouter—
—What they— —renounced—
—Till we— —are less afraid—
—How many times they— —bore the faithful witness—
—Till we— —are helped—
—As if a Kingdom— —cared!—

—Read then— —of faith—
—That shone above the fagot—
—Clear strains of Hymn
The River could not drown—
—Brave names of Men—
—And Celestial Women—
—Passed out— —of Record
Into— —Renown!— [1]

Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 00:41, 30 April 2013 (BST)

UDNET

So, I went to UD Net and found... lots of advertisements, lots and lots of advertisements. Is UDNET not active anymore? -.- 04:23, 23 April 2013 (BST)

The profile database still seems to be up, as is the Rogue's Gallery. Is there another "UDNET" I should have known about? If so, I'm unaware of it. —Aichon— 04:28, 23 April 2013 (BST)

If you mean forums.urbandead.net then yeah, its been taken over completely by spambots. Mods can't keep up. There might be an active thread or two behind closed doors, but I doubt its much. RG is in its death throws, too. The whole site is just massively borked. ~ _{05:30, 23 April 2013 (UTC)}

That answers my question, thanks -.- 16:37, 23 April 2013 (BST)

a) Throes. You mean death throes.
b) Even the Mona Lisa's falling apart.
ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 11:08, 4 May 2013 (BST)

OMGOMGOMG

I accidentally did something to the suggestion portal and don't know how to fix it :X -.- 03:57, 4 May 2013 (BST)

Looks like you got it sorted out. Long story short, don't edit the line that says you should edit below that line. It looks like you were replacing (perhaps automatically via some sort of automatic text replacement?) the "--" with a "—" in that line. Since that line is an HTML comment, removing the -- caused it to behave as if the comment never ended, meaning that the rest of the page was treated as being in the HTML comment. I.e. It was hidden from view. —Aichon— 10:32, 4 May 2013 (BST)

If in doubt, revert or undo will usually fix all but the most egregious of fuck-ups. One of the best features of a wiki. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 11:10, 4 May 2013 (BST)

Also, that's why you should always preview your changes first, rather than saving immediately. —Aichon— 16:33, 4 May 2013 (BST)

My suggestion

i just wanted to know if i could re-add my Radio Recognition suggestion to the voting section? PayneTrain^(NWO/FU) 17:27, 4 May 2013 (BST)

My previous answer to this question still applies. :P —Aichon— 17:41, 4 May 2013 (BST)

I don't remember asking this to you before...hmmm....thanks anyway for then and nowPayneTrain^(NWO/FU) 18:13, 4 May 2013 (BST)

No prob. :) —Aichon— 04:21, 5 May 2013 (BST)

Suggestions

I just wanna know if that one guy can add his suggestion again. 01:37, 6 May 2013 (BST)

Third time's the charm, amirite? —Aichon— 01:40, 6 May 2013 (BST)

Question

Can I place a question I have about suggestions here? 01:45, 6 May 2013 (BST)

Only once. —Aichon— 05:06, 6 May 2013 (BST)

Protecting cycled suggestions

Do you want to share any amount of copper money on Ross' RE, or should I take it to the new crat tomorrow? -- Spiderzed█ 18:28, 10 May 2013 (BST)

Best that you handle it, since I'm on the way out the door of Bureaucracy. —Aichon— 18:37, 10 May 2013 (BST)

...

aichon. i would like to discuss with you. please go to here. tinyurl.com/pggchat. i wait for you! --Anja Arnheim 00:20, 13 May 2013 (BST)

For posterity, the issue was a minor one with image caching that was pretty easily addressed. Also, tinyurl.com/pggchat is just a link to Mibbit for #PGG on the NexusWar IRC, for everyone else's reference. —Aichon— 00:48, 13 May 2013 (BST)

Something else

Edit my talk whenever you're about. --Rosslessness 16:56, 21 May 2013 (BST)

I responded to your e-mail a second time with more information, since we keep missing each other. —Aichon— 21:02, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Random selection

Hi, you wouldn't happen to know how I could make a template select a random item from a list every day, would you? PB&J 20:24, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Random? No. A different one each day in a cycle? Quite possible. We do something like that with {{SimpleFACycle}} for the Featured Articles on the main page of the wiki, though it changes them out weekly, rather than daily, and you have to set up the cycle in advance. —Aichon— 21:01, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Well, a preset cycle should be quite enough, and I think weekly should be sufficient for my purposes. Thanks, I'll look into it! PB&J 21:06, 22 May 2013 (BST)

You can modify that weekly one to be daily by just swapping out the weekly magic word at the top for a daily one. —Aichon— 21:07, 22 May 2013 (BST)

I know, but contrary to the first thing I set up on the wiki, I'm going to try and keep the scale of this project manageable... for now. PB&J 21:10, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Sorry for bothering you again, but I've been out of wiki-editing for longer than I care to admit: how do I pull info like status, comment, etc. from the building statuses again? PB&J 21:51, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Basically, you make your own template to grab the parts you want. For instance, you should check the code for {{TRP Status}} to see how it grabs each of the variables it uses from a danger report in order to do something like this: ▋ The Latrobe Building (21,28)

Note that you're actually including the danger report itself, but that you pass it the template you want it to use as a variable. Rather convoluted, but I believe it's the only way to grab the information one piece at a time, so I'm glad it exists. —Aichon— 22:33, 22 May 2013 (BST)

Awesome, thanks! Question number 3: can I sepparate a user's name and date from his signature, when pulling that info from a sitrep? PB&J 19:53, 23 May 2013 (BST)

Not that I'm aware of, since we lack any of the parser extensions on this wiki. I'm also unaware of any way to merely grab the date that the page was edited, in case you were thinking along those lines. —Aichon— 20:07, 23 May 2013 (BST)

Hmmm, that makes my idea a bit less attractive than I had hoped. PB&J 20:12, 23 May 2013 (BST)

Actually, I'll take that back. Look over some of the relevant magic words and see if any of them might work for you. —Aichon— 20:19, 23 May 2013 (BST)

One of the revision-tags could do the trick. And I can just minimize the {{{user}}}, which should be ok. Thanks, you once again prove that you're a great help, be it with a giant map or a simple idea :) PB&J 20:24, 23 May 2013 (BST)

I see where you're going with it, and sadly I have to inform you that the revision tags will always give you the revision date of the page (or template) it displayed on. I tried a similar project once, and ran into the same problem. ~ _{21:14, 23 May 2013 (UTC)}

What if I define the tag "date" in the sitrep template, like the name, comment and user are defined?

For whom it may concern: this is a first step towards a new template and page for all suburbs. PB&J 21:33, 23 May 2013 (BST)

Yeah if I remeber correctly, I tried that on on danger report template and it still displayed the wrong date when transcluded. Plus, ya 10,000 Danger Report templates. ~ _{21:52, 23 May 2013 (UTC)}

You might be able to do something like have sub{{sometemplate that has "st:{{REVISIONDATE}}" in it}} in order to effectively subst the REVISIONDATE in order to get the date of a particular template in the chain of templates. We've done similar stuff to allow automatic signatures with templates, as I recall. —Aichon— 22:05, 23 May 2013 (BST)

@Vapor: Why don't the Danger Reports use one template for their content? Also, there are "only" about 5 000, since streets and other empty lots don't have one ;) PB&J 15:25, 25 May 2013 (BST)

Well the User:DangerReport pages technically are the templates. That's where the data for each location block is stored, and then various other templates are used to pull and display the data in different ways. Aichon's suggestion is a nifty little trick and it's possible that could work I think. The trick would be adding a variable to all of the location block pages with revision date magic words subst'd in using Aichon's trick. Then it's just a simple matter of creating one template that pulls that data. ~ _{17:54, 25 May 2013 (UTC)}

To be honest, I'm not convinced at all that my idea would work, since subst-ing works with some strange rules, as I recall. But it's the only idea I had to do this sort of thing. If it doesn't work, I'd have absolutely no idea at all, other than having people separately sign and date each of their edits to the danger reports. —Aichon— 18:42, 25 May 2013 (BST)

Even if it was doable in a reasonable manner why would you want to ever transclude a single template big enough to hold all the suburbs on every page to only call a 100th or 10,000th of the template's content. That's just irresponsible really and would cause more issues than it could ever solve. Additionally I may be horribly misunderstanding what you guys are trying to do but if I can get an idea I could probably be useful in figuring out how to do it. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 19:46, 25 May 2013 (BST)

Well, I'm trying to develop some elements for the suburb pages to make them more appealing, and the idea behind this one would be to make sure that if you load a suburb page, it'll display different information than it did yesterday (or maybe even an hour ago). In this case: a rotating system (as described at the beginning of this thread with the FA-cycle) that displays the current situation of a certain building in the suburb with some additional flavor text and background information. In stead of just putting the danger reports themselves there, I was thinking along the lines of something like this:

Building Status Feed

Currently, Caiger Mall is in ruins. 
"All four corners are ruined and nothing living or undead can be spotted inside.", reported PB&J on 09:51, 26 May 2013 (BST). 
Caiger Mall is best known as the site of several big sieges. 

PB&J 09:51, 26 May 2013 (BST)

HARMANBARGARZ

Orison Flynt said "Oh, hey, Jackson! We actually just ran across each other on the wiki earlier today. Anyway, sorry, but I'd prefer to keep my brain while on this alt. And I'm a bit busy to engage in the activity you've suggested, I'm afraid. Raincheck?" (8 seconds ago)

You say "ARRRH!!!! MANBAG!"

Next time! --Jackson 5 06:00, 30 May 2013 (BST)

Until then. ;) —Aichon— 06:04, 30 May 2013 (BST)

Danger Map on BB4 page

What would that issue be exactly? The lag? PB&J 15:01, 31 May 2013 (BST)

These. Basically, by itself, something like the suburb level danger map is not particularly useful to most Bashers (particularly when it's presented without a key or context for understanding what it's supposed to represent), nor is it functional, nor is it aesthetically pleasing. I considered tweaking the custom barricade plan trick I did for the MOB Locator for use on the BB4 pages, but that involves having to c/p barricade plans for each suburb we visit, and I'm really trying to automate things as much as possible, so I decided against doing it. If we want to include the danger map for the suburb, I think we'll need new templates, frankly put, that can be clicked on to be edited, can have custom colors specified, will have building names present, and can be switched out automagically somehow. It's a lot to ask, but I'm actually giving some thought to how something like that might be possible, since I'd like to work them in if I can figure out a good way to do so. —Aichon— 15:13, 31 May 2013 (BST)

I've been thinking about uniting as many of the safety and status tools as possible (the radio broadcasts, danger reports, etc.) and I'm pretty sure we should start cleaning out the wiki a lot one of these days (especially when it comes to template calls).

To illustrate: User:DangerReport/The Blackmore Building has dozens of pages that link to it, and I'm pretty sure we could shorten that list quite a bit. It's an arduous task, I know, but it would be a rewarding one... PB&J 15:20, 31 May 2013 (BST)

Well met

Thank you very much for your input. I shall reply on [2] asap,for there is an entirely good reason for that exact specific edit.

please,if maybe you could either reply here or write on the Groups topic I've started on the talk page.

If you'd have the pleasure means and time in guiding me on my way of putting up a new group's page;I've been reading the guides here but they haven't been that helpful.

Also,I've noticed you have a character with the BB4.I did play a zombie character at first but due to the fact it has been revived while living the life of a zombie -haha,I let it be;was wondering if there might be any group I could join this zombie character of mine to the BB4 playing it completely independent of my survivor's char.

Thank you so much for stopping by and having your input.Hope in hearing from you soon.

Edit: have read almost anything there was to read on your page and some of the things that caught my attention where the 'image stamps' saying things like 'supports humor' and so on! Thus,pleased in meeting,well met. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Concerned'Citizen (talk • contribs) 01:42, 5 June 2013.

Regarding groups, what information are you looking for, exactly? I understand that you're trying to make one, but I'll need to know where to start if I'm to offer any advice or answer any questions. I've made a few group pages over the years (e.g. Soldiers of Crossman, Big Bash 3, and Big Bash 4 are all ones I made), so I at least have a little experience in this area. ;)

As for BB4, yup, you could say that I'm involved with it. If you'd like to join BB4, you are VERY welcome to do so. We welcome all zombies, new or old, and we'll even help feed your zombie so that he can earn some levels and skills. BB4 only lasts for a few months before it goes away (it's been three years since the last Big Bash), so I definitely would recommend joining it while it's around, since they don't happen often. Also, it's worth pointing out that BB4 is an event and that entire groups come to it as well, so we actually have The Nurglings joining BB4 as a group. If you like BB4 and like what you see of The Nurglings, you may want to look into joining them, since they're a newer zombie group that's making a name for themselves.

Otherwise, the traditional recommendations for zombies groups are the three remaining hordes: the Militant Order of Barhah, The Ridleybank Resistance Front, and the Feral Undead. The MOB tends to be very structured and focused on strike teams and efficiency (one of my other characters is in the MOB), the RRF is a bit more flexible and has everything from death cultists to strike teams and ferals, and FU tends to be more of a free-for-all with minimal leadership. All three of them are great groups, and you should go with whichever idea appeals to you the most, with MOB being super structured, FU being open-ended, and RRF being a bit more in-between.

There are a number of smaller groups as well, but I have less experience with them, I'm afraid. You may want to check the Groups page for ones that are recruiting. —Aichon— 02:13, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Most wonderful in reading.

This urban dead sure got exciting as of joining the wiki,which I strongly recommend to anyone out there who really wishes to have their game on,so to speak.

In regards to group would appreciate in being guided regarding : group page creation; how to load art,pictures,images videos; how to create a layout,something of a template with titles linking to new wiki pages opening up-which I've noticed on several wiki-user's pages.

For starters,would be just fine in being able to have a blank group's page adding group's name,description,purposes/goals and a neat banner on tops,though I don't do them-lacking the software for it as well as not being quite experienced with IT art-work.

As for groups,best suited for a zombie,in my own opinion,would be something such as the MOB.Where do I sign? :D Well,I should be able to get my zombie on,if he's still alive - haha (which I'm sure he is :D them rascals seem to NEVER die oO)

almost forgot to sign the article just now,haha :P um,here it goes Concerned'Citizen 04:37, 5 June 2013 (BST)

If you check the "toolbox" section on the left side of the page, you should see a link for Upload file. If you want to upload images, just click on it and then follow the instructions. I'm afraid we can't upload videos or audio files to this wiki, however. Just images.

As for a layout, you'll mostly have to do that on your own, or else find someone who is willing to do it for you, since there aren't templates or other resources that you can use. One idea you might try is to find pages that you like and then look at their code to see how they did it (I would not suggest starting with the group pages I created that I linked, since the code for them is rather complex). Regarding the "template with titles linking to new wiki pages", could you point me to an example? I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean.

Anyway, you'll have to figure out how to make your own banner, since I'm not very good with images either, but for making a page, all you need to do is go to the page and then start editing. For instance, you could create a group at Lorem Ipsum by following that link and merely editing the page. You can easily add in the information you've talked about, such as their name, description, goals, etc.. You may also want to look at the {{Groupbox}} template, since many wiki novices use it to get that information onto their group page quickly and easily.

Finally, for applying to MOB, you'll need to sign up for an account on barhah.com and follow the instructions in this message board topic. You may also want to look over the MOB page here on the wiki, as well as the MOB Locator page. —Aichon— 05:01, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Much appreciated.

I've made an account with the Barhah Dot Com since of yesterday after reading around the wiki and wishing to join BB4 as a zombie novice.

Have not received a confirmation e-mail;though I haven't got to checking my e-mail as of yesterday.

The wiki and all the information coming my way on reading is keeping my undivided attention here.

regarding the layout and functionality of links: having a template showing contents; clicking on a title would open up a new page which may contain further data. Hope that I managed to explain this well.

Example : Template - A B C D E F G ... etc. Clicking on either would open up a new page which could have any data there.

That would be it.

Concerned'Citizen

Just make each of A B C D E F G into links to pages (typically you'll want to make them subpages of your group, like Lorem Ipsum/Members or Lorem Ipsum/Recruitment), then create those pages by simply editing them. That's actually how pretty much anything around here works. People just make links to pages that don't yet exist, click the links, and then make the page there. —Aichon— 08:42, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Suburb Danger Reports

Taking my time.

It sure is a job in reading,searching,updating.

Especially reading.

As for updating the danger levels of suburbs it's clear that survivors could sure use an update on the info.

That is,in case they are interested and watching the wiki,which specifies danger levels.

a little something started to work on

safe - Break-ins rare, max 50 zombies in suburb and no zombie groups above 10. moderately dangerous - Active zombies and break-ins, but no 50+ hostile hordes.

It is fairly outdated,don't you think? Reporting a suburb as 'moderately dangerous' may be too late if you take the above ad literam.

Reason being,several mobs of around 9 zombies may be moving about,just an example; and consider there are 8 cardinal points they may close in to a building.

Let's say that only 4 groups of 9 zombies each will target a building coming from the major cardinal points en route for their target.

In this case,the danger levels of each suburb may always be set as Safe until it'd be too late ...

This here danger report system "" Available 'Danger' statuses:

safe - Break-ins rare, max 50 zombies in suburb and no zombie groups above 10.

moderately dangerous - Active zombies and break-ins, but no 50+ hostile hordes.

dangerous - Zombies inside many resource buildings; OR hostile mobs of 50+.

very dangerous - Most buildings wide open or zombie-infested; OR hostile zombie mobs of 150+.

a ghost town - At least 2/3 of the suburb's buildings either empty of Survivors or Ransacked/Ruined AND max 60 zombies in suburb and no zombie groups above 10. ""

greatly advantages the zombies from any perspective anyone would look at it.

In that case,what play does the concepts of 'balance' and fair play stand? Concerned'Citizen 06:11, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Talking about your example, if those zombies are all in the suburb, then there would be 72 zombies in the suburb, which would mean it'd be classified as Moderately Dangerous or Dangerous anyway. And if they're coming from out of the suburb, then the suburb is safe until they arrive, which makes sense, since the danger isn't there yet. Seems like it's working to me. ;)

There is some leeway in the system, as well as some gray areas, but generally speaking, the easiest way to check is to go through the suburb and look for zombies gathered at resource points. If you see 10+ zombies gathering outside of a resource point, then it's probably time to call the suburb Moderately Dangerous. Also, when you're counting zombies that are roaming around, make sure you ignore the ones at revive points, since those are really survivors, not zombies, at least as far as we're concerned.

And, I don't really see how it provides an advantage to anyone, since it's simple fact reporting. Granted, the system was written back in the day when the game had quite a few more players in it, so the numbers may be larger than what makes sense for the game's current population, but that's a separate topic of discussion (and I believe it's been discussed to death elsewhere), and I am not someone who can change it all by myself. I'm simply the guy policing it at this moment. :P

Also, having suburbs incorrectly labeled as Safe is actually a disadvantage for zombies, not an advantage, since the worst thing that can happen to a horde is that they arrive expecting a buffet of food, only to find out that the suburb is actually in worse condition than the wiki said and that there's almost no one there to eat. All of the zombie leaders I've talked to over the years prefer that the map be accurate (or red, since it makes them look good), rather than green. —Aichon— 06:49, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Hmm -nods-. Indeed That is one way of looking at it.

Though,if we are to take into account that survivors which aren't well organized within groups,even those belonging to groups,may seek the shelter of a Safe suburb rather than venture in a suburb marked red/orange even light orange.

Te simply put it,it's a matter of psychology. One example would be update and danger reports from which anyone active enough can benefit,of course.

Another example that can be interpreted in more ways than one is this broadcast "The Eley Way Police Dept in Greentown is having a party" - what would you make of it?

Concerned'Citizen 06:53, 6 June 2013 (BST)

I understand the psychology, but that would be a bad strategy on the part of zombies. Specifically, if the zombie's objective is to eat more survivors, they want those survivors to be concentrated in a few areas, not spread out where they're harder to eat. Having more green suburbs will actually cause the survivors to spread out over more suburbs, meaning that there are less survivors to eat in any given suburb, which is the exact opposite of what the zombies want. —Aichon— 16:01, 6 June 2013 (BST)

In regards to the example broadcast you gave, I would personally never update a building status based on solely that information. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 18:34, 6 June 2013 (BST)

From my own personal experience, I find the danger reports to be wrong good idea. Meaning that when it came out I was quite happy to participate in maintaining them too but then I realized that it was mostly used as intel and group boasting tools instead of the real, basic journalistic ideal. Because of that I stopped updating and paying attention to them and I really think my suburb is safer when flagged as red even though it is not true because troublemakers and zombies alike tend to avoid the suburb then.

As far as psychology is involved, a psychological weapon might unfortunately be this tool greatest use... -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  18:15, 9 June 2013 (BST)

Any zombie strategist worth anything would tell you that information should be public and accurate, the easier it is for the horde to follow you the easier it is to wreck stuff and it's the orgnanized groups that already have the information you need to worry about anyway. Feral/unaffiliated management is all about getting the word out and motivating people who are outside your meta-pool. As such I was always a fan of more active posting on wiki-news so long as it wasn't falsified, and drama over NPoV occasionally helped to stir up more visibility when people followed those pages. In the end it's just another way to keep things interesting and informative without spending AP, which is what really matters anyway since this is a wiki about informing and driving interest around the game.( and in this case the state of things in that game) --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 19:24, 9 June 2013 (BST)

Yes. That's pretty much what I think too. Thing is, this kind of public, readily available info is clearly at the advantage of the zombies rather than the survivors. As a survivor we only get there and see for ourselves, free running is not something difficult to get by. Zombies, on the other hand, have clear advantages from knowing where the next target and/or meal should be - all this at the expense of a luxurious 0 AP. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  00:02, 11 June 2013 (BST)

In that case, DangerReport updating is a fantastic thing, because without it, the game would be even more unbalanced in favor of survivors. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 01:00, 11 June 2013 (BST)

It's really not, both sides benefit massively from it and the 'zomgeveryonewilljoinagainstus' people are basically waving at a straw man. Survivors get less benefit from it only because they have more venues to do it in, such as Radios and easily understood speech. The benfit from wiki updates is really their static nature, which means that ferals and lone rangers can see where the action is and come enjoy themselves and depending on what they see while they're there it can be a great recruiting tool. Most survivors see it as a 'The zombies will overrun us' and forget that without coordinated strike times survivors have a significant advantage and a number of the players that would come from that information are most likely to play in state(Dual Nature is normative play) and having an uptick in feral population is largely a plus. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 08:06, 12 June 2013 (BST)

Sorry but I've been playing a pro survivor since 2005. What I'm basing myself on this matter is direct observations, evidences and experiences. I actually participated in the past in "edit wars" which, like I said before, were more like lame group boasting attempts to publicity... And they clearly were never in favor of survivors. One group take control of a building and post about it. The other group do the same. Then again. Then again. Indefinitely. But what does the survivors have to gain to know that a building is in ruin or barricaded? Not much at all even in case of a resource building. Zombies, on the other hand, know to move away and hit another target or gather at the same place again. Since there is bigger disadvantage for a fully leveled up survivor to simply keep killing zombies around pointlessly (AP, ammo, the zombies always win in the end whatever you do or try to do) why is it important for survivors to know that block X is in the hands of survivors or zombies? Really, it is not. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  00:15, 13 June 2013 (BST)

Haven't you primarily been playing with a stationary group? At least for me, as a leader of a mobile survivor group, the danger reports can be incredibly helpful. They let us know where we need to go to work, tell us where the action is happening, and can cut down on the number of suburbs we need to scout to get an accurate sense for the condition on the ground. I know that we frequently use it in the SoC when we're trying to plan out missions, but I'd imagine that The Abandoned really don't have much need for them, since you guys know your area forwards and backwards at all times. Really, I think that's the actual distinction: the danger reports are useful for people who aren't there, regardless of if they are survivors or zombies. After all, stationary zombies in your area won't get any more benefit from the reports than you do, but a traveling horde or a mobile survivor group can use them to direct their activities. Also, as a quick aside, zombies can't know to both "move away and hit another target" or "gather at the same place again" when they see a ruined building, since those two ideas are mutually exclusive. It can only mean one or the other, since zombies don't psychically communicate or something. ;) —Aichon— 14:52, 13 June 2013 (BST)

Quite true that The Abandoned is a stationary group. However, even then the use for the danger reports are the same if you want to cover lots of ground quickly from one side to the other. Let me tell you something: if the danger reports were actually updated in a timely manner, let's say every single hour at most, they would be very useful because you can then rely on the information. Since it is not the case and the info is unreliable, why rely on it as a survivor? We just get there and see if it is still good. Info on this regards, especially in an active suburb, can change in a matter of minutes. You're the one who have experience of a roaming group so tell me how useful that can be? As a stationary group, I persist and sign in stating that the danger reports are the most useful to me when they are showing false information. Green suburb when under heavy attack and red suburb when all's quiet is the best way to keep my suburb orderly. Which is why I ignore the reports now, because if I were to actually use it I'm sure you can guess what I'd do with them. But that would not be right in any way.

On your aside, I disagree. It is quite true that zombies can't communicate well in game, so they need to communicate out of the game. For me the most obvious way to do it would be a forum but then you only communicate with your own group. Using the danger reports allow zombies to communicate with each other on a basic level even if they are not part of the same group. How? Well, let's say you are a ferral zombie. You stumble in Yagoton. You open the danger report. You see that Hinks is currently "under attack". What do you do? Wander around aimlessly or head to Hinks to participate in the destruction of the barricades, hoping to get a breach in? Another example: the danger report says the place is ruined and the guy who posted, whom you recognize to be from a competent zombie group, posted only a few hours ago. Will you head there and look at the ruined building or go elsewhere?

As a survivor, those reports serve little purpose. Either I'm going to get away from the reported building "under attack" because 1) it's common sense 2) it is reported so many more zombies will come in, ruining any chance which were pretty non existential to actually hold the place up... Or either be already dead from the breach. And in the case of a suburb wide zombie attack, the reports are going to be extremely unreliable at best, so again useless.

I don't know for you but for a play style heavily focused on lack of communication, adding good communication between players kind of become a way more helpful benefit than unreliable sightings... And that's my whole point. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  01:14, 14 June 2013 (BST)

This mindset is basically why zombies usually win sieges even though all of the math favors survivors when they keep NTs running. Every successful siege I've been a part of on both sides has been won by better communication with the non-meta populace, something zombie groups are historically better at post-Caiger and that there was some parity in during the heyday of the Mall Which Must Not Be Named. It's the same thing that stopped the RRF at Santlerville and froze Big Bash 2 at Giddings for over a month(almost ending it there and/or in defeat if a few of us in the leader role hadn't talked the others into switching tactics and staying just long enough to give them time to work). As a survivor every siege I've participated in in a strategic role has relied heavily on catoring our tactics towards making it easier to keep the non-meta's involved particularly by keeping them alive and reviving them when they die(the best thing a coordinated group can do is repair and revive) where most other groups come in suspicious of everyone, revive only their members, and then blame Zombie Spies and Death Cultists for why they aren't able to establish a footing. It's even worse when they bring that mindset to sieges and approach it like hiding that there's a siege is helping them when any zombie group worth it's salt is groaning, gesturing, and updating through every venue they can find and recruiting idles slowly over time in timed break-ins while obscuring the revival pool(the best thing a survivor group can do in response to this is revive more, track rotters, and do the best to raise the population of idle non-meta barricaders).

You may not know me from a hole in the ground but I speak from a role of authority when it comes to zombie and survivor strategy. I've walked the walk when it comes to the talk I talk. And as a zombie horde leader in a number of large hordes the one thing I was always more than glad to make use of was the fact that I had a recruiting advantage because most survivor groups were massively paranoid and when I targetted the non-group survivors they stayed dead. It's the biggest thing I spent my time talking the survivor groups I've run/run with into focusing on and I've never seen it fail, this is including against groups like Extinction who use dedicated Zombie Spais, Alts, and Death Cultists all of which failed. You're giving up the momentum in a game of momentum in favor of smaller numbers and secrecy from the people that would help you. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 17:12, 14 June 2013 (BST)

Also two other notes as an addendum. The zombies that you should be most worried about don't choose targets based on suburb news, they choose targets based on the easiest path to be able to pull a horde and maintain momentum and the zombies that are left are the ones you want attacking you where you're strong, which would be where you have your active meta-users, instead of where you're weak, where you have your non-meta can't tell you when you lose stuff survivors. While survivors are directing the combat they almost always have the numbers advantage and make the most use of it when they have an instant communications network (forums for larger groupings, chat rooms for smaller). That's math and basic strategic logistics. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 17:16, 14 June 2013 (BST)

Well, you know what? I completely agree with the vast majority of what you said. I just don't see how it is relevant with the suburb danger reports and this conversation. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  00:25, 15 June 2013 (BST)

Suburb danger reports, when functioning as in your premise, draw priority of target to your place of strategic strength and when functioning as intended draw over all intention of feral/unaffiliated players who will be likely to be a net benefit when a group prioritizes non-idle functions like repairing and reviving. If a coordinated horde, for whatever unlikely reason, decided to respond to it they will bring ferals along behind them who, when appropriately responded to, will provide a net numerical benefit to survivors non-meta defense. When you strategically consider announcing and telegraphing your movements you'll be better strategically equipped to respond to them getting out there(which they will) and will always benefit. In this context, for many of those reasons, survivors have no real downside and plenty of reasons why it is a good idea. Not the least among them being that they will drive nearby killed survivors towards your area as that's one of the ways they search for active revives, via locations of active groups and news updates on the wiki. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 00:46, 15 June 2013 (BST)

I had to re-read what you just said plenty of times to really understand what you were trying to say. I wanted to reply right away but without really realizing what bothered me I thought it would only lead to confusion. Then I went to bed and thought about it the whole day until I realized that what really bother me is that you are right... But that "my premise" was to use the danger reports completely at the opposite of how they should be used. And that's what's bothering me and why I'm ignoring them to begin with. 'Cause I don't like acting like a dork. -- •Eagle of Fire• 

 •[Talk]•  01:09, 18 June 2013 (BST)

Date format

DD-MM-YYYY being mistaken for MM-DD-YYYY could easily as well happen for YYYY-MM-DD and YYYY-DD-MM. Besides, there is only country in the world stupid enough for not maintaining an orderly format. --Thadeous Oakley Talk 20:51, 5 June 2013 (BST)

That's not exactly true. There are no known cultures on earth that make use of the YYYY-DD-MM format, whereas YYYY-MM-DD is intuitive, sensible, and in common use in a number of nations and cultures, meaning that ambiguity is essentially as unlikely as it can possibly be in this context, and that the one being mistaken for the other could not happen very easily at all. In contrast, you and I are both aware of how ambiguous DD-MM-YYYY and MM-DD-YYYY can be when dealing with people from around the world, since there are billions of people on one side and hundreds of millions on the other. And while I do agree that the US' MM-DD-YYYY format is "stupid", I'd also fault those who use DD-MM-YYYY for "not maintaining an orderly format", since it doesn't order itself chronologically when lexicographically sorted, which would seem to be an obvious trait that would be desired. Long story short, ISO >>>>> everything else. —Aichon— 21:27, 5 June 2013 (BST)

Also, Belize is as stupid as we are, apparently. They use MM-DD-YYYY too as their main format. :P —Aichon— 21:32, 5 June 2013 (BST)

May I cut in?

Scratch this in case you feel that it should be left out for any reasons.

Well,if there's an automated signature imprinting the exact date and time (such as the above:5 June 2013 (BST)),then either ways the format would become clearer by comparison.

Even so,I'd have t concur that keeping a standard format may help everyone making things simple,clean and clear for all eventually.

It may work with having the month alphabetically written. That solves showing dates such as 2012:6:8 or 8:6:2012.

Also,when in Rome-do as the Romans do.

Concerned'Citizen 07:27, 6 June 2013 (BST)

There was some context to this conversation that you're unaware of. We were talking about the Sysop Check page, and since it uses future dates, we can't use auto-generated timestamps like we can with signatures. —Aichon— 15:51, 6 June 2013 (BST)

As a point of fact the stupidiest(logic wise) date order is actually day, month, year. It's ass backwards when you need to know the year to know the length of days in a month and you need to know the month to know the length of days in a month. Logically it follows that Year, Month, Date is appropriate and forgiving movement of year to the end for common practice reasons(since you're basically supposed to know the year regardless) months limit days and has informational priority. So really it's all about how China and Japan calculate time. Anyone defending anything else is arguing for idiocy and at least middle-endian doesn't completely abandon logic when vocalization makes it the vocal big-endian.(You say November 5th not November 5th, 2013 when talking in the current year). Also, in addendum, the 'more people use it' argument loses ground when you know that India uses both month day and day month with one being the governmental method of practice since they were a colony and the other being the one popular in it's culture and media. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 08:01, 6 June 2013 (BST)

Additionally now it can sort dates right with the exception of year followed by month Abbrevs but you all should still follow ISO 8601 because it's just right. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 08:42, 6 June 2013 (BST)

I didn't know it could do that. Neat fix. Learn something new every day. :) —Aichon— 15:51, 6 June 2013 (BST)

Editting User Pages

I was looking around at all the pages that call on the 5000 or so danger report templates, and I noticed that a lot of them were userpages. Since we're experiencing so much lag these days when the danger reports get updated, I was wondering if I could delete or disable the superfluous ones? Putting nowiki tags on them, with a little explanation that we disabled it because of performance issues and because they were unused. Problem is: they still are other peoples' user pages and I'm not sure what the wikipoliticians and wikilawyers would say about this, so any advice? PB&J 14:51, 18 June 2013 (BST)

The lag isn't from them. The lag is from the Danger Center needing to re-grab all 5000 templates every single time a single one of them changes, since the cache for the page needs to be recreated. Right now, updating a danger report might kick off, say, 5000 updates for the Danger Center and another 10 updates for the other pages mentioning that danger report, giving us a total of 5010 updates to do. Quite obviously, removing the 10 won't have a significant impact on performance. —Aichon— 15:11, 18 June 2013 (BST)

Quite a lot of the pages I'm talking about are like this one, and call on about 50 everytime a single one of them changes. If we look at the "What links here" of the first one in the topleft corner, Special:WhatLinksHere/User:DangerReport/Palprey_Road_Police_Department, one which is among the lesser used ones and lesser known ones, we see that several of those pages call on dozens of templates, including used, unused and personal test status maps, as well as specific building status maps (in this case the PD Status Map. That could amount to quite a lot of pages, each calling on a couple dozen templates, just for one danger report update, no? PB&J 15:18, 18 June 2013 (BST)

In this case it would make no difference because it's a by page thing and not a by call thing. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 16:50, 18 June 2013 (BST)

I still don't really understand? The lag increased when we added the danger center, and it occurs more when updating the danger reports than when you look at the center itself. AFAIK the amount of times a danger report is called upon has a direct influence on that lag, ergo reducing the amount of maps that call upon a danger report should reduce the overall lag. Right? PB&J 16:59, 18 June 2013 (BST)

What Karek is saying (and what I was typing up before I saw that he had already linked exactly what I was going to say) is that the Danger Center is a gigantic job, whereas the other pages are not. The reason that matters, is because the wiki is configured to process one job in the queue per page load. As such, those smaller pages are not even getting processed at the same time as the Danger Center and are thus in no way contributing to the unresponsiveness that people are suffering. To draw an imperfect analogy, the job queue is like a relay race where every time the baton is passed a page gets loaded for a user. In this race, some runners (jobs) are slower than others. Quite obviously, you can improve the speed of the faster runners all you want, but you'll still be waiting the exact same amount of time for the slower ones to complete their laps and pass the baton. So, more or less, those smaller pages aren't contributing to the problem at all, since the unresponsiveness they create is separate from what people are complaining about and is small enough that most of us have never noticed it at all. —Aichon— 18:39, 18 June 2013 (BST)

Technical gobbledegook-> Yeah, sorta this. Basically everytime you load a page the job queue processes 1 job. Everytime you have a template on a page it loads a function and then on repeat calls of the template it just references the already loaded function. Different templates do have different costs but that's based on the size of the initial template, not so much the number of times it's called(which has a much smaller impact). Everytime you call a unique template the server has to go and make a new database connection and call that template's page content to then queue it up for the preprocessor/job queue. Batch processing it with the job queue means instead of having a half hour of horrific lag(where you have thousands of database connections and nothing can load) you queue up the change and then half multiple hours of much more negligbile lag(where you just double the normal page loads). Super simple version is instead of having 5000 pages load when you edit danger reports it makes it so that for the next 5000 pages loaded you're basically loading 2 pages. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 18:49, 18 June 2013 (BST)

It sounds like you may have accidentally said the opposite of what you meant. Just to double check, as you said above, the queue adds jobs on a per-page basis, which means that the Danger Center is processed as a single job, just as each of those other pages is also processed as a single job (though clearly the Danger Center is a larger job). When a user visits a page, the wiki does the job at the front of the queue before it delivers the page to the user. When a danger report gets updated, each page that transcludes that danger report will receive a corresponding job to update the page. For those smaller pages, because they each have their own job, they get spread out over a number of page loads and cause no noticeable delay. For the Danger Center, it too is done as a single job attached to a single page load, but because it's a much larger job it creates an extremely noticeable delay (i.e. it does the 5000+ db operations you're talking about). I think that's what you meant to say, but please correct me if I'm mistaken. —Aichon— 19:55, 18 June 2013 (BST)

A lot of this is going to be process descriptive but not exact to how the code runs. It functions like a php include that contains a class with only a single method that's being batch processed. What happens is essentially when you update a template it checks to see how many rows return in the table(see picture below) of transclusions. It then adds those pages(where the template is transcluded) to the jobs queue if there are more than a certain number.

The jobs queue then runs a preprocessor on each of those individual pages. The preprocessor runs through the page content sequentially until it finds text matching what it sees as a template call. It then runs that call through a check against all other held templates/functions already preprocessed, if it returns that none are already stored it queues up a database call to the page(usually a template) being transcluded. It searches for include only tags then for noinclude tags to determine content and then converts the uneliminated text into XML Trees and stores this as a callable variable to be referenced when the same template is called later in the text. That means it only calls the template from the database once per page instead of however many times the template is included in the page.

Once the preprocessor sets limits on the generated text size for the final result and stops converting template content after a certain point. There are a number of reasons for this but the biggest one I can imagine would relate to the topic of this white paper microsoft released a few years back(pages are stored in blobs) about large file vs blob performance. The end result all then gets thrown through the parser when the page is called which converts wikitext like to it's output state.

My understanding is thus that when a page does not hit the rows returned in the 'Pages Included On' check it runs the preprocessor in reverse, thus processing all of the pages then and there making x calls where x is the amount of pages it's included on. When it determines that this would be too much strain for the server based on the limits set it instead queues them up for batch processing so that the calls are processed at a set interval and not all at once. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 03:07, 19 June 2013 (BST)

I love the technical description (honestly, I do), but that's actually tangential to what I was asking. You already explained the details below, and I thought it was well understood that that's what the function of the job queue is, since it's basically just "baking" elements for later use. What I was talking about was specifically the un-struck line you left, since the problem we're having is that it's not being broken up into 5000 jobs, which is what it sounds like you were suggesting is happening. That's why I said you sounded like you were saying the opposite of what you meant. ;) —Aichon— 05:34, 19 June 2013 (BST)

I was insanely oversimplifying, the default value is 500 operations and each job itself is 500 operations. So with a current job queue of 6 that's roughly 3000 transclusions. Basically it is just the numbers are obscured, additionally Kevan might have changed it but it's unlikely. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 06:16, 19 June 2013 (BST)

This may help some. The Job Queue, from my understanding, basically functions like the preprocessor for templates so that the stored wiki text can be served faster on significantly large template calls to minimize load time. Templates are thrown into the job queue based on how many pages need to be preprocessed and it converts them into wiki-text/html there. Because job queue processing isn't done through a cron or based on server load it's happenning while other things are being done on the server, so lag will increase be it 1 template call on a page or 10 as it's running the same script either way. As far as impact on performance, because there's no additional complexity to the call(you should only have to queue up the template's content once regardless) it's of neglible impact of processing speed. You get a bigger impact from an increase in unique templates as 0-1 is where you're having to open a new file stream or make a new databse connection(which is likely the cause of the lag). Preprocessor ref. This is also one of many reasons templated signatures suck, they slow down the wiki for everyone, particularly more so the more pages they're on. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 18:43, 18 June 2013 (BST)

Too bad, I really hoped to optimize this whole thing... Then again: the danger reports are updated regularly these days, even more with BB4, and that was always one of the goals :) Maybe I'll go on a little wiki-patrol later today and just list a ton of stuff that can be deleted or otherwise archived to clean the whole wiki a bit out. PB&J 12:54, 19 June 2013 (BST)

If you want to optimize these pages you could make the core templates use non-wikicode code, here's a list m:Help:HTML_in_wikitext, it'll reduce the work done when the parser runs. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 22:12, 19 June 2013 (BST)

Mob Locator Map Style Practice

Hi Aichon, you should update the comment on http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php?title=Militant_Order_of_Barhah/Locator&action=edit&section=3 to reflect the actual practice which is used to colour the map. greetings Ja7 13:09, 25 June 2013 (BST)

Sorry, I got it wrong. See my edits to MOB Locator. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ja7 (talk • contribs) 13:12, 25 June 2013.

Yup, looks like you got it figured out, though I really need to update the Locator since it's several suburbs out of date at the moment. —Aichon— 15:46, 25 June 2013 (BST)

A/SA questions

I'm planning to start moving the A/PM archives into A/SA format, and I had a couple questions.

1. What do we do about awkward redlinking of archives for those who were never sysops? Example - "Akule" is redlinked in the breadcrumbs.
2. I'm planning to convert the A/PM navtemplates so they can be kept in one location, and am adding a key to make them more detailed. Would something like that (or which already exists for A/BP) be useful for A/RE and A/M as well? (Not to be included on each page, but be in one location for cross-referencing.)

Thanks! Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 16:40, 18 August 2013 (BST)

There's nothing saying we can't make pages for the non-sysops too, and with your changes to put it all in tables, it seems like the concerns we have about it taking up too much space have been alleviated pretty well. I'm thinking give them their own page, and kill two birds (the red-link and the fact that the table will get bulky as we add data) with one stone.

As for the key, I kinda feel like the improved categorization is designed to remove the need for keys and color-coding sort of stuff, though the categories could definitely be better-linked from A/SA in order to make them more useful. —Aichon— 21:50, 18 August 2013 (BST)

Ok! I can make pages for them easily. I'm gonna stick with making the key for now, mostly as a way for me to keep track of which ones I've moved so far; it can always be easily de-keyed later. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 01:08, 19 August 2013 (BST)

IRC

Can you jump on when you've got a minute, please? --BOSCH 20:50, 20 August 2013 (BST)

Done. —Aichon— 20:58, 20 August 2013 (BST)

A/D

As a note, Revenant's revelation would be what would normally be a checkuser policy allowance. In this case he actually would probably be one of the better authorities on this since he can potentially compare it to one of the various RG boards. Odds are this is another Nubis type situtation in which case you guys should lock the account in question and send an email via the wiki, if possible, letting him know what has happened, why, and how he can contact one of you guys to resolve it. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 04:48, 26 August 2013 (BST)