User talk:The Rooster/Archive/2009

2009 ARCHIVE

Oldest posts, at the time of original message, are at the top.

Subheadings have be added to some of the longer conversations, that did not always exist before archiving.

Welcome Back

Good to see you! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:36, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah! The edit-conflict was unexpected! You're WAY too fast on the ball. Thanks for the welcome though :) --  RoosterDragon  21:42, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Thats us sysops for you! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:56, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Sysop? Oooo, congrats!. --  RoosterDragon  21:59, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you not heard about the failed coup? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I have been back a grand total of 20 minutes, I'm still working on determining if anybody has changed anything that might make my bots explode the wiki. I have had a chance to catch up on the latest over-dramatic nonsense this site spews out. So, explain away! --  RoosterDragon  22:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Mod Conspiracy --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:12, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Or UDWiki talk:Administration/Misconduct/Archive/Grim s/200809 I don't think anythings been done to the danger reports since you've left. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll have to sift through it when I have a proper chunk of free time. Anyway, while it's nice the danger reports haven't changed, I expected progress! Oh well, in keeping with the lack of progress theme, the first error I found was a case of a deleted user line. That piece of poor design plagues everything! I'll risk a manual run once I've fixed that and also the MPM page a bit. --  RoosterDragon  22:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

disambig

You're stuffing up the links on the locations blocks (at least the towers ones) -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:04 25 January 2009 (BST)

Yeah, I caught it after bout 10 seconds into that grouping, working on manual fixes now. Odd circumstances I wasn't expecting with the links linking to a disambig page, to the tower's location on that disambig page (which the bot was locking onto) which in turn linked to the actual building's page! What was the point in setting it up like that? Weird. --  RoosterDragon  01:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I did it. It's so that if you click on the link on the 9block template, you get taken to the actual location you want on the grouped location page (when all the locations info was on the Tollyton Towers page) -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:15 25 January 2009 (BST)

Yes, I've encountered that before, though usually they're not marked as disambiguation pages thus allowing me to not care. I'll keep an eye out for any others, thanks for the heads up. --  RoosterDragon  01:17, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

BTW, it would probably be an idea to register a wiki account dedicated to your bot. If something goes wrong, it makes it easier to deal with, in that it can be temporarily banned by any sysop that notices, and it's edits are all on the one contributions page for easy rollback (rather than mixed in with your other edits) -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:22 25 January 2009 (BST)

Would've done had I thought this was going to be such a job at the time, I was rather expecting to make a few hundred edits tops and have finished. Currently I've got less than 1900 pages left to check, of which maybe 20% (based on average so far) will need changing. In comparison to the far-too-many edits I've made with it so far, I'll just let these 400 run out and end there. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. --  RoosterDragon  02:02, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The bot doesn't actually unmerge any of the locations does it? So, that means we still have to go back and do that anyway, right? If we still have to go back over what the bot has done it seems pointless to run the bot.--– Nubis ^NWO 17:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

It's very useful for cleaning up after they've been unmerged! -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 10:34 27 January 2009 (BST)

No, it won't unmerge the collection pages, but it wasn't designed to. It will disambiguate any locationblock template (Most of the edits have been from pages dedicated to single locations) and that was my original goal. (On course to reduce links to disambiguation pages to around 1700 from whatever ungodly number it was) The mass unmerging can be done with another bot (shouldn't be too difficult either), one thing at a time. :) --  RoosterDragon  17:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't count on grouped locations pages being predictable enough -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 10:34 27 January 2009 (BST)

Ok, I'm lost, why should the order of disambiguation and unmerging matter? Do you mean if the unmerging then creates an ambiguous link? I can have the bot do a quick lookup on the Locations List for that. I also don't see that the collection pages should be that much of a problem, it can just rip the location template from the page and stick a copy on a new page. Minor nuisances like descriptive text (what little there usually is) is just a quick copy paste job between two textboxes before I hit the 'Save Page' button. The bot does the tedious work, cuts down on page calls and saves time. I don't get bored, and could turn those pages around in probably ten seconds each. Sure, there's the overhead time of setting this up, but the number of pages means that it probably works out in my favour timewise to do it that way, and certainly works out in my favour in terms of not making me terminally bored. But if you still rather I didn't, just say. I wouldn't want to make things worse, the manual changing of those pages would occur in due course, after all.

Anyway, I'll probably set up a generic bot account for any mass edits from now on, tis a good idea Boxy. --  RoosterDragon  18:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Mall Status Map

The only real problem with your updated version is it's a bit 'busy' on the eyes, it not as easy to read at a casual glance as the old one, although it does contain much needed extra information.

I did have the idea of combining the suburb feature from the Omnimap into the Mall Status Map, allowing people to see the current status of the suburbs using the colour code and being able to see the names of the suburbs with a roll over. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 14:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it works better without the names and images. I was hesitant to remove them since it was more of an established page. The rollover provides you with the mall name anyway. We'll see whether other people think it could do with de-cluttering too. I'm inclined to agree with you on that point.

As far as the Omnimap bit goes, the whole reason for the suburb system there (as opposed to using the danger map underneath, like the StatusMap system) was because it needed to show SIM data too. It was just a clever workaround, and probably not needed on things like the MSM or NT Status Map etc, unless you mean something else? --  RoosterDragon  15:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I've just had a go at this, but my coding fails me. I'm thinking a map similar to the old MSM, using Image:Mall-status-map.png and the old status system, but with the addition of a SIM suburb border overlay. This will allow the MSM to display the relative danger levels as well (though I think the colouring will need to be tweaked to make it easier to read). This also means that rolling over a suburb on the MSM will give you its name and a clickable link to its page and thereby reduce the visual clutter on the current MSM. Am making sense? -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 18:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(Deindented)Uh, not really.

• When you say a 'SIM suburb border overlay' do you mean:
  • The Omnimap's suburb border's, the transparent gif's?
  • The SIM-grid map's suburb grid overlay?
  • Actual SIM data?
  • Something else?

I get what you mean by the rollover, the same thing as you currently get for the Omnimap. Am you wishing to use this to replace the current underlay that looks a bit like the suburb danger map?

Resulting in, from the bottom-up:

• Old map image you linked on the bottom
• Layer of suburb status borders, like the current Omnimap. (If you mean that)
• Invisible layer of clickable suburb links
• Old status system (Mall name and status image) on top

Have I got that right? --  RoosterDragon  19:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

This level of complexity is why I can't code maps. You seem to have got what I'm after in your 'resulting in' section. However looking at that image I've linked it's got the malls on the image (I thought it was just a grid), and the coloured blocks representing the current status, like the NT Status Map, seem to make an easier instant reference.

Following your list, what I think I'm trying to say is:

• Grid image (I find an underlying grid to be especially helpful for working out routes without having to use another map)
• Layer of suburb borders (like the current Omnimap, so it auto updates)
• Invisible layer of clickable links to suburb pages (again like the current Omnimap)
• New status system (changed my mind due to the ease of the colour references)

Is all that even possible? Viable? And will it actually make it better do you think? -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 20:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Possible, very. The various parts listed are all work separately on their own, so you can just mix and match as you want, making some adjustments for size and so on.

Making it better is another argument. I would suggest first the mall name and status image get ditched (from the old system) and just leave the auto updating colours on what's left (basically, it would be exactly like the NT Status Map and MPM Status Map, just for malls). I personally don't think the suburb links are that distracting. I can see the suburb's in the back being confusing though, it is a lot of colours. Do you find it a problem on the other two maps I just mentioned? --  RoosterDragon  20:53, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

On the other maps (NT and MPM maps) the individual location names aren't needed and the suburb names are, however I feel the opposite is the case for malls, it is the mall name (and therefore links to individual mall pages) that is more important. Saying that, what I found limiting for the old system was the fact I had to click the mall name and then go to the suburb page if I needed a general update. I'd like to see whether it'd be viable to have both mall and suburb links, but it's the suburb name links that seem to clutter the map compared to the old one, but I can see how the inverse would be true given your work on the other status maps.

I'll have another go at a mock-up, my last attempt ended in disaster, but I'll see if I can code up something near what I'm trying to convey. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 21:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

A Mock Up

Again my attempt ended in disaster.If the image will go to the background, so the links work, and it all lines up of course, that's pretty much what I'm getting at. I'm thinking a change in the background image colour to a dark grey grid will make the border colouring show up better. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 21:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You're basically there actually. Heh. You're gonna struggle lining it all up without some size changes, because both maps operate on very different scales, but no major worries on that. You're right about the background, the Omnimap relies quiet a bit on the fact SIM data is mostly black. If you set up the main table as a gray (not black, or the gridlines won't show) background, and just shift the div containing the image above the code for the suburb links, you're mostly set. Items are pasted on one at a time, so something at the top will get buried by what is pasted on later. --  RoosterDragon  21:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I have had a small brainwave, either that or some sort of seizure from too much time editing the Imbalance page today. Anyway, it might be possible to make the little block representing the building clickable, and take you to that building! You already get a nice report on mouseover which tells you the building's name, so would clickability solve the problem with linking to the mall? (Could always add a note on top of page explaining how to navigate the map for such a purpose) Regardless, I might just try that at some point anyway, it would be handy. --  RoosterDragon  22:20, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm having a hell of a time trying to resize those layers, time to call the Gnome methinks. Your idea about making the blocks clickable could be workable, the mall have would be displayed on mouseover and might work visually with the page not being over saturated. Depending on how it works it might be an idea to add the other large buildings, cathedrals, mansions and forts to the map for an overall view of Malton. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 22:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Resizing wise, you'll probably want to rip open a word processor for some find/replace of size code. I'd suggest scaling up the suburb links and suburb borders to the size of the metatac grid. I'll have a look at it if it's still troubling you. As far as a view of Malton goes, I had a similar idea swishing around in my head, for 'Important' buildings in Malton. Basically, Malls, NTs and Forts. Other stuff isn't that important really. --  RoosterDragon  22:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying both Rev and Gnome to see if they can fix the resizing problem, if you've got time, feel free to have a go, after that I'll see about tweaking the aesthetics to make it legible and then we'll see how it compares to the other designs. The reason I suggested the large buildings is because they tend to be indicative of the general health of a suburb, more so that NTs which can generally be suicide striked by a few survivors to get up and running again. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 22:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No reason we can't have both! Big buildings and important buildings on two maps. The BIC would match up with the big ones perfectly. Anyway, I've determined that the suburb links line up just fine (set the table to a colourful background, you can see it, I used that trick to check it lined up on the SIMgrid and Omnimap when I set it up way back when. The suburb borders just need a new template, that formats said images to the correct width (79px) and a small edit to the table for the inclusion of a 1px cellspacing. You're literally done after that. --  RoosterDragon  23:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

BIC Status Updater Bot

Hey Rooster, just wondering how progress is coming on the design for this bot. It would certainly do wonders for the wiki, and save me from changing old BIC statuses to unknown manually. You've made some great bots already, and I'm really looking forward to this one as well. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 16:18, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

It has not progressed since my return, most of my bot related time has been to fixing error after error I've suddenly found with the EMR bot. I think a moron possessed me while I was typing up that code or something. Hopefully the BIC bot will be on the cards soon. --  RoosterDragon  22:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Right on. If there's anything I can do to help in the meantime let me know. Otherwise I'll just keep manually updating as many of the BIC reports in the Rose District as I can. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 22:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Rooster, just had an idea for the BIC Status bot. What about setting it up essentially like the bot for the mobile mast status? Add 'safeold', etc to the list of statuses that the bot can automatically edit for ones that haven't been updated in a week, and default to 'unknown' after a month. I don't know how or if it would even be possible to change the actual comment line, but the status image might be a simple fix in the meantime. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 19:01, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I hate that system. It just creates a needless amount of updating that can't really be handled by anything other than a bot. The reason it's used for masts is because generators run out after five days, thus 'activeold' which really means 'haven't checked for a while, probably out of fuel'. For continuity, all the others statuses get an 'old' version too. Anyway, I was probably only going to hit stuff over a month old, although week old reports are probably wrong, they might not always be. Besides we don't get enough updates for weekly clean-outs. --  RoosterDragon  16:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... good point. I'll keep brainstorming. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 18:38, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Testing Dulton

Any chance you could run up a similar section for vinetown? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Still working on fixing the errors. Those awful newlines have come back to haunt me again. Why are they appearing! Argh! --  RoosterDragon  20:53, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, errors are fixed. If you want to mock up one for Vinetown, go right ahead. The code should be pretty obvious. I'm still in the process of wondering what could yet be gotten out of the system. --  RoosterDragon  22:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

cyclical activity.

Right, I'm off. Thanks for the message and best of luck! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:31, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

User:The Rooster/Sandpit/7

Maybe we could get some sort of project going? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

That was the general idea, though I'm not entirely sure where to start. I'd like to get something set up so that it gets maximum attention, preferably with a nice block on the main page. Though that's beyond even my generally bold editing of things, and also my user rights of course.

I'd be happy to see a project created, but it would need a little time with a few users helping out to set everything up properly, and then a big intrusion onto the main page and general wikispace to try and get the community ball rolling. I wouldn't want to waste my own effort, and especially other user's, setting it up only to have nothing happen. Project CP was a good idea, but CP being the generally deserted area that it was, and the lack of any mission to get people involved again means that the community portal continues to be a generally deserted area. I'm aiming for all or nothing here, and nothing isn't an option. As a reasonably active but almost all behind-the-scenes user, I'm not that well known or particularly influential. Yet here I am, with a backwater sandpit page, pondering nothing less than one of the biggest shake ups in the wiki in recent times. You can see my predicament and general pessimism at this working by now, I hope. --  RoosterDragon  00:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Wiki news could help with visibility, but it can only be up there so long. Something large and noticeable would be great, but I don't know where that would fit into the main page. Speaking of the main page, it could probably do with a redesign. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:51, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm kinda thinking of a new entity entirely. A nice, permanent, fixture on the main page. Highlighting all the interesting stuff happening. Like I note on my list, maybe an article of the week and/or article in need of help of the week. Wiki news would be a section of it, and the 'Community Portal' (or something else if renamed) would be the general one-stop shop for finding out which wiki-maintenance projects are going on, what ideas people are proposing for new pages, and for getting help in getting pages updated more. It would also be the place to suggest big changes on the wiki, because I envisage it as being a place where users will check a lot. An entry in the wikinews if the project starts would suffice in trying to attract a few users. The first thing we could attack would be a redesign of the main page, to include whatever 'Community Portal' block we'd like, and whatever other changes people might be after. (I'm guessing you have some to suggest, since you mentioned it) Once done, the main page gets updated, and the general invasion of the wiki starts. I'm really am talking about a big attempt to get a proper community spot set up, no half measures. I am probably being somewhat insane. --  RoosterDragon  01:08, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I have a few ideas for a new main page and how to set things up. I'm thinking Urban Dead themed with the colours and style and all, something different from the common Wikipedia-like look to main pages. I'll be gone for the weekend however, so don't expect anything yet. :O --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 02:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

When you guys get the ball rolling, you can count me in. --Maverick ^{Talk - OBR 404} 06:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure thing Maverick. Anyway, Gnome I did a little test and found there was 821x550 room on the page in IE, fullscreen for the most common res of 1024x768. Obviously you can have more than 550 height, but that's gonna be in the scroll down region for most people. So if you design it with that in mind, you'll probably be able to get a page that makes the most of the space without too big a cramp. The current version does have some obvious points for improvement, like the 95% width of tables could be 100%, the wiki already gives a margin, no need for extra. --  RoosterDragon  14:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign

I started it, but I don't like rounded borders. Annoying to code, looks fugly etc. It's at a rough outline right now.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 04:20, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

The rounded corners can go, as an IE user I can't even see them. All the pages here seem fine without them and all the places I've see the code I can't imagine actually add much since the page looks fine anyway. The other places I've see it are coder idiocy because they wanted 'teh kool korners' and didn't think about if it was actually a smart idea. Your page looks fine to me without them, and probably better than with since everything tessellates nicely. Also, it matches the UD style better. Coding wise, three things jump out off the bat.

• You can lose the br clear bit I think, just leave a gap. It seems to work fine and also allows there to be a nice gap.
• Border wise, I'm pretty sure there's a way to compact the code that might be applicable here. I think it goes something like "border-something: 10 3 10 3;" where each number relates to each border, revolving clockwise from left I think. Might also be possible for padding.
• Drop the divs, it doesn't allow you to set spacing between the two sections properly. Nested tables are probably nastier to code by can give the correct result.

--  RoosterDragon  13:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm good with tables, oddly. Updated.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:34, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Well that took care of all the points I had pretty neatly, didn't it? I like it very much. I made a couple of minor fixes. (Well one, the v-align for news, in case the CP bit is ever taller, otherwise little). May I also congratulate you on some wonderfully obfuscated code at the bottom, that's brilliantly evil. Onto the more subjective stuff:

• Do you think it's worth keeping the current header, that shows the latest game update and the logo? I don't think it's worth repeating what the main site says for its header anyway, but I feel the page is lacking a focus point at the top...maybe just inserting the logo in the top left of the introductory text box?
• What other links are you planning to include? I don't think we need the same amount of insane links as now, but there's room for a few more. I think keeping a few of the important map/information centre links would be good. Suburb definitely, maybe also the MIC/MPM and NIC/NT Status Map. I prefer the maps, but the IC's are good too.

What do you plan on transcluding? I assume the CP and news sections, anything else? Finally, any thoughts on what to stick in the CP bit as a place holder until it's decided what we should actually have there? --  RoosterDragon  20:10, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Updated the top part with Urban Dead, let me know if the cracked font doesn't work or if the alignment looks wonky, we can always switch it for an image. I agree though, less links are needed for the site nav at the bottom. Maybe projects, or community activities should be in the CP section? Things that aren't normally announced in the wiki news section, but deserve a notice. Also, yep CP & Wiki News will be template, that's it though.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:46, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, font doesn't work for me, you'd have to stick to something standard anyway, or else use an image. Link wise I've had a thought, if the links tend to be ones that link to the other stuff (IE: Administration links to all the various admin bits, and the BIC links to all the maps and other status information) then you can cut down a lot, while still providing a leap pad to get to places. I agree that current community projects would make a good bit for the CP section, though no doubt that'll be expanded upon somewhat. --  RoosterDragon  22:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Image it is then. Think the wiki news section needs little aesthetic boxes like the site navigation section at the bottom?--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:14, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, go for it. --  RoosterDragon  22:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking these links for the site navigation part:

Gameplay Information

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Gameplay
• Character Classes
• Skills
• Items
• Map of Malton
• Malton
• Monroeville
• Borehamwood

Player Information

• Info for Beginners
• Playing Guides
• Glossary
• Groups
• Suggestions Portal
• Building Information Center

Wiki Information

• Wiki Questions
• Help
• Templates
• Administration
• User Hub

External Links

• Game Stats
• Unofficial UD Forums
• Urban Dead IRC Channels
• Iwitness
• Searchable Profile DB
• more...

We could probably do with some obvious in-your-face general starter guide like on what's on the main page now. Feel free to edit the list. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I made only a few additions and changes, you basically got everything I would've added. Do you plan on indicating that external links are external? --  RoosterDragon  23:17, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Mmm, I don't know. I don't like the little blue box things. I could change the colour of it, maybe. Should it be indicated? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Updated. The site navigation looks nice, but it feels off balanced because of the cities. It could be compensated by adding stuff to the other 3 sections, or moving the cities elsewhere? Would it be a good idea to put the game updates somewhere? Seems silly not to have them, but I'm not sure where to put it. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel the cities should be included, maybe a mention of them at the end of the intro? "The main city of Urban Dead is Malton, but outbreaks have been seen in the cities of Monroeville and Borehamwood too." or something like that? Hmm.

External link wise, I've never been a fan of the system either (Though it's the lighter text that annoys me). Normally, I would say you should indicate them as a matter of continuity, but in this case, the only external links are under the aptly named 'External Links' section, and so people should expect them even if the usual symbol isn't there. I think you can get away with it. Also, if you wish to be very pedantic about the section heights, you could add a link to the Community Portal under Wiki Info. Slightly redundant, but it makes everything a nice 6 links tall. --  RoosterDragon  18:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Added the latest news section. Other than templating the news sections and CP, all we have left is the Community Portal. I'm not sure what should go there. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe just make a small list of active projects until we get something better set up. The Great Suburb Group Massacre is definitely a good example. 'A Tale of Undead Cities' is a reasonably good one. Should probably have one more to fit the rule of three...maybe a quick mention of the UHUB having recently come online? I'm think basically the name and then a quick description (might even be able to use the 'aesthetic tables' like the News and section lists) EG:

Some of the current projects around the wiki:

• The Great Suburb Group Massacre - To keep the wiki up to date, groups have been queried as to whether they are still active, you can help out in the maintenance effort. If you're part of an active group, make sure you confirm it as active before the 27th February!
• A Tale of Undead Cities - An organization effort to clean up, improve and revamp the three city pages about Malton, Monroeville and Borehamwood. Help discuss ideas and add your own suggestions for improvements.
• User Hub - Recently implemented, the user hub allows you to search for users on the wiki more easily. Bookmark it, and come add your name.

Is the tone suitable? Also, you probably want to write something about the user hub, I've made a right hash of that one. --  RoosterDragon  02:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

CP updated. I've been scouring other wikis to see what they do with their main page. I think what we have now is fine and we can always add something later. Other than the templating, does it look good to go?--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 23:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine and dandy to me sir, and it works an utter treat on smaller resolutions too. The only minor things I can spot are:

• Your edit link for the news has a case error, it should be 'Wiki News' not 'Wiki news'.
• You need a proper article in the spotlight. Either that and you need a proper description for the example page. Hehe. You could always be a bit cheeky and have: "Main Page - Our main page has just received a really nice redesign, go check it out!". Ok...maybe not.

Last time the main page was changed, a vote was called on its talk page, is that what you are planning to do? --  RoosterDragon  23:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I can't think of anything new or amazing that would go under the spotlight, except perhaps the redesigned suggestions portal. Perhaps an article needing work? For implementation, I was thinking of sneaking it under the radar through A/PT, may require a few bribes though. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 23:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

We can work on what to include in the CP bit in due course. You could just ditch that bit for now, it'll be back I'm sure. As for a 'sneaking' it through A/PT...that's a joke, right? I'll go up the Drama template to 'wikigate' in preparation... --  RoosterDragon  23:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm totally serial. But seriously, I suppose a little announcement and some discussion on the talk page couldn't hurt. Yarp?--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 23:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I'll swing by and put down my vote once you've announced your little redesign. --  RoosterDragon  00:02, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Will do. Something else we might be able to add is that 'coders central' thing, and projects like Project Mentor. Anyway, deal with that later. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign V2

Updated with a white background. Anyways, I've got something going on at the bottom. Few things: the rounded borders can be done with images, the Urban Dead can be an image urban dead themed thing, and the links are just placeholders (the most important stuff will go there). What are you thinking? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 02:35, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm slightly lost. I get the white thing for those who don't fancy the green. But I have no idea what you're getting at with everything else. What are you after? --  RoosterDragon  14:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The bottom hmm... section. The edges can have rounded borders with images (so people using IE can see it). The words Urban Dead could probably something better, an image. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 15:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought you meant rounded borders worked on images. Heh. Ok, so this random section, is this a third page variant in progress or what? At the moment you're just throwing random musings at me and I don't know what you're trying to achieve. --  RoosterDragon  15:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure yet either. It's another attempt, like the current main page except it has some changes. The redundant Frequently Asked Suggestions bit can have important links to go through right off the bat, while the rest of the navigation can be at the bottom. See DHPD for the rounded image corners. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 15:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to use images you can have it look like whatever you like. No need to limit yourself to rounding corners. Beveled corners. Some gradients. Pictures of things. All sorts of stuff. --  RoosterDragon  16:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Good points. I like the idea of having little iddy biddy images for titles, like Evelopedia.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:20, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, they're alright. I was also thinking, since a few people seem to be against change in general, might it be worth just trying to rearrange and fix the current page to fit in the CP and make other minor fixes? It is mostly just layout problems, especially when it's scaled up. Could it be worked around? --  RoosterDragon  16:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It could be. The very first Urban Dead title could retain it's shape, but I'd like less height and be able to incorporate those most-important links to the side. The latest news may need to go somewhere else, or be shifted. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Updated. Perhaps with some better alignment, latest news could be put under those links in a white rounded box? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:54, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah maybe it could, give it a go. As far as just messing the current page around: Yeah, the main header is too big, the image can be scaled down too. I was thinking having the introduction take up the full width after that, with the CP and news side by side below that. Then the current navigation below that. The news takes up too much width to be floating in the intro's space. I'll go usurp the Sandbox for some test editing. My sandpit is beyond overused. --  RoosterDragon  16:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Usurping complete. If I can hack that together in a few minutes then no doubt a proper setup can no doubt be made. I had to subst the wiki news somewhat in order to get rid of the fixed width it's set to. Letting the browser deal with the width's helps to kill the whitespace somewhat. The news box template is a bit messy to say the least, and I'm sure more can be done to get it to align seamlessly. --  RoosterDragon  17:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Updated with the links, probably needs better alignment. I like a lighter green, but the logo background will need to be changed. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's one possible way of cleaning up the nav bit. --  RoosterDragon  21:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it could do those silhouettes behind the 9 links at the top right? For the old main page design, perhaps it could be made of use on the Community Portal page? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:51, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we need them behind the links, it won't add much there given the lack of room and the fact there are links in the way. I can whip up a transparent logo for you though. As far the the CP goes, one page at a time, eh? --  RoosterDragon  22:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course. Oh, I can easily make text on images. Click the H in my sig. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not doubting you can put the links in front of the image. I'm saying doing so would look weird and that adding the image behind wouldn't add anything. --  RoosterDragon  22:09, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Mmkay. Anything else to add? I'm not fond of the colour scheme for the wiki news section. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:11, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it looks really wrong, especially given the white background. Maybe two light shades of grey? Also, the Community Portal bit, even if just a placeholder, also needs fixing up. Up to you how to tackle that. --  RoosterDragon  22:30, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Chucked the transparent image up. I need to know which fonts to use to be honest, the bottom part looks off since the background was deleted from around it, and the top part I had to use a close font match since it wasn't going to come out ok otherwise. SO it's not an exact copy this. --  RoosterDragon  22:41, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks kinda faded. I'll give Kevan a shout, maybe. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 23:58, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Updated. Rounded borders on the bottom of CP and Wiki News, they're fatty thick because that's the only way I could get the curved edges to work only on the bottom. Is the interchanging colours in the Wiki News part better? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 04:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the colour interchange is better, and I'm impervious to ye rounded corners so I'll take you word on that. The only probably is when I shrink the window, and the news seems to be set to have it's overflow cut off rather than forcing the nav bit down. Is that intentional? The CP section is likely to get a lot bigger once we have some idea what to put in it, which will likely solve the news problem. I can't imagine it'll create too much of a whitespace issue, we'll see I guess. --  RoosterDragon  13:35, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

I can set it to a set width for the Wiki News section. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear lord no! Leave it up to the browser so it can divide up the news and CP as it likes and cut down on the whitespace. I had to remove the fixed width in my initial muck about because it just leaves the CP with a big gap underneath since it gets to absorb most of the screen width on bigger resolutions. I'm actually not too worried, like I said, I'm sure the CP bit will be longer in most cases anyway. For completeness though, would a br:clear thingy do the job? --  RoosterDragon  16:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so your magical coding means that when you set it to a fixed width, it works just bloody fine. Ignore my nonsense. :P --  RoosterDragon  16:24, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

*Wiggles fingers* Magik. Well, I got nothing significant to change. The links might need altering in the Nav, but we can let the rest of the peoples decide that through discussion. All that's left is figuring out the rounded images for the corners. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:18, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Can I assume you want them at all the places you currently have the rounded code? I can knock up some with the radius's specified, they'll be a fixed colour which is a downside. Unless you want to be cheeky and have the inverse made white. That would cover the corner of a rectangular box and you could change the colour if ever needed then, it just relies on a white background being the default instead. Have I made sense there? --  RoosterDragon  18:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, either or. It shouldn't matter. I'd just start with the first Urban Dead header part block thing, then we can go from there. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The bottom doesn't want to work. I can't get it centered properly without pushing everything else up, or giving way to the upper right. Could you combine the upper left and lower left & upper right and lower right? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:02, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh you... --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Gotta love divs :) Are you getting a colour mismatch though? I had it mismatched originally, and reuploaded after making sure the saved file had the right colour, but somehow I've got a different colour on my screen. --  RoosterDragon  19:07, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks off in Safari, but fine in Firefox. Except what you have with the image alignment doesn't work in Firefox. Might I suggest combining the upper right and upper left etc like looks like here? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:10, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I still don't see why the colour refuses to match up, I swear the server is toying with my images. And if the divs won't work on FF, we better drop em unless there's a workaround. Can't have a main header of fixed width since the table is variable width. --  RoosterDragon  19:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Mmm. Go for fixed height instead? Things may be screwy if Kevan decides to update the game, though nothing else comes to mind. The problem with FF is the curvy images are placed on top/under the background, instead of over it. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:16, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

That's easily fixed with z-order. I'll add that in. I'll have to do some investigation of the colour issue another time. --  RoosterDragon  19:32, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

No change. this is what it looks like. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

(Deindented for Sanity) Oh, I thought you meant something else. Sorry about that. Not too sure about how to fix your error. You might try editing it yourself to try and correct it. Might be something about how IE and FF deal with the top/bottom absolute div. I've done some googling and I can correct the colour mismatch though. If you can't sort the div's, you could always go back to the border radius code and drop the images. Not having rounded corners isn't really a problem. --  RoosterDragon  20:19, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Tried that. While I can align it properly in FF, it'll make it wacko in other browsers... I'll put it back the border radius. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 20:43, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, tis probably for the best. I'll go get the images speedied. --  RoosterDragon  20:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The last one, I'll put it on a separate page to avoid confusion. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:27, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

The Great Suburb Group Massacre, 2009

Is there a page for this anywhere? I noticed you posting on a group's page asking if they were still active, but I didn't see a link to a page for the project. --Pestolence^(talk) 20:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I had just followed suit based on some earlier posts. Could go back and link it I suppose, though it's not too much of a worry since all they have to do is respond on their talk page. I'll go back and link when I get the chance. --  RoosterDragon  20:14, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, cool. Just wondering. --Pestolence^(talk) 20:21, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

My sig

Can I increase the size of the images so those two white bars above them don't show up? Or, is there another way? --Haliman - Talk 16:31, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Bots

Do you think it would be possible to program a bot to work off the user list and add the welcomenewbie template to all new user talk pages automatically? The template will need altering if this can be done, but I'd thought I'd check with you if it's viable before planning that. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 23:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It'd definitely help, and it gets rid of the user provided WN spam.--Suicidal Angel, Help needed? 23:15, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

This section of the conversation was tactically lasered from orbit due to: Irrelevance, later followed by juvenile bickering. Go whine about each other on your own pages, mmmkay? --  RoosterDragon 

Is there a way to go through the user list and only pick out "newbies", rather than users without talk pages, that may be long abandoned?. Perhaps Special:Contributions/newbies may be a better page to work on? -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 01:44 17 February 2009 (BST)

Well we know that bots can work from current time as they can do updates based on time with danger reports, so if we tell the bot to start from X time and give every user that is created after that time a template (with a line of code telling it not to repeat itself of course) we should be fine. The only thing that will need to be done to prevent duplication will be to tell users not to add the template any more, provided the bot is running often enough to cover newbies. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 01:55, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Already done, tell users they are adding the template in error as it's duplicating an already existing wiki function, that text I linked appears to all new wiki accounts when they first load a page.--Karek^maps?! 03:44, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

While the current text based wall of doom method is pretty high on the insensitivity scale, having an automated script do it really takes the biscuit. Whatever happened to people just leaving a nice message, anyway? --  RoosterDragon  12:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Rooster

Evening.

A quick initial purge of the current navigation. Several of the pages left can be lost if they are referred to on other pages, (the lexicon if mentioned in chronicles for instance.) I'll sort that out tomorrow, anything I got read of that you feel is needed? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 18:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

How opinions differ. I like the creation of the cities bit, but otherwise I would've had a different list to a some extent. I would've kept some of the more useful external links. Namely: stats, forums, IRC and IW. I would've dropped more from Player Info, namely: Lexicon, Chronicles, and historic groups/events. The first two are long abandoned and the latter two are of lesser interest. Wiki Info. Drop the Style Guide (until not horribly outdated, anyway) and keep Wiki Questions & Help (even if outdated, it's useful to some extent).

That's just my opinion of course. --  RoosterDragon  19:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

A difference of opinion! Oh noes!! I lost stats, as its listed in the side bar, and indeed linked on the front page every time you log onto urban dead. I also feel that most people find out about the IRC, forums by joining a group? (I don't know about your own experience).

Lexicon I will drop, I just need to modify chronicles so its linked from there.

Help, again linked on the sidebar, and Wiki Questions, HAs only been viewed 20,000 times, and was last used in December. I don't think its needed, with FAQ, help and the remnants of project mentor.

I'll bring back Iwitness though. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 19:20, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Good points. That's a reasonably good list then, still I doubt that'll suade the many Nay voters. You should inform the Gnome of this list on his sandbox talk I think. --  RoosterDragon  19:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I thinking the nav boxes should be uniform in color, mmm? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 21:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

You're more than welcome to go tweak. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

A couple questions regarding you Mobile Phone Mast Bot.

Greetings Mr. Rooster. I am the creator of the Mobile Phone Mast Coverage template, which is on the Mobile Phone Mast page. I was wondering if your bot could be made to update my template, and if you could be persuaded to do so. My original idea for the template (before your bot started running again) was that it would serve a few purposes. First, all of the changes would be recorded on the template's history rather than the Mobile Phone Mast page's history, making the Mobile Phone Mast page history easier to dig through. Second, the mobile coverage data could be easily included on other pages (admittedly, I don't know what other page would need it, but I thought it was worth a mention.) The last benefit is a personal aesthetic opinion of mine (and I'm certain I am biased) but I think "operational masts accounted for" is slightly more intuitive than "mapped active network coverage." Anyway, as I said earlier, I was hoping to combine our creations. I realize the benefits are likely small. I don't know the difficulty involved in modifying a bot. So if the difficulty doesn't justify the benefits, or if you just don't want to, then forget I mentioned it.

My other question / comment regarding your bot is that I think it may be missing masts mapped as active. The last update came up with 12, but I'm almost certain there were 14 masts mapped as active when the update happened. My speculation is that its missing 2 masts that were updated by users without user pages, but I don't know for sure. --Zarneverfike 04:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, such a change is reasonably easy. The old format of the text was just what was in place at the time, so I followed that. Updating a template would be nicer actually, it would be quicker to load and save. I wasn't going to do it originally since at the time you only had the current coverage, and I thought it best not to lose the data. I'll look into changing the code since the template now has everything.

I have discovered an error recently where it has failed to recognize the timestamp given, but instead of creating an error, just leaves the date set to the default. (00:00 1 Jan, Year 0) and so makes it unknown since this is indeed more than 10 days ago. I traced one report where somebody had dated it manually in a different style. Maybe there were two, or maybe somebody updated not long after it ran? I'll look into it, but I'm not too worried since most people sign properly rather than adding their own timestamp. --  RoosterDragon  17:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I've had a quick go at the template to clean it up a bit. I've also changed the text to "Actual Network Coverage" and "Known Active Masts" and dropped the discrepancy. I think they're better terms, though hit me with any you think are better than that. If it is fine then I can have the bot updating the template right away. --  RoosterDragon  23:12, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That's fantastic. Those terms seem great to me. All I did to it was fix a typo on the instructions. Also, I changed "Correct As Of:" to "Correct as of:" because I'm a capitalization nazi. If you want it the other way, though, I don't really care. Basically, I think its just about perfect now. Once you get the bot running for it, maybe include a bit in the instructions about the bot running similar to the blurb about updating mast statuses to old. --Zarneverfike 00:29, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Not worried over it, I'm caps happy on most things. Anyway, just ran the bot, everything worked and nothing exploded. I'll just update the MPM page accordingly and leave some other notes as appropriate. --  RoosterDragon  20:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

You seem to know alot about sigs...

I may be wrong, but is this guy's sig a little too big? Just trying to help out. --Haliman - Talk 01:11, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The current, and not particularly comprehensive, sig policy only forbids images over 14px. Text can be as big as you like provided it's doesn't "break" something. While his sig does indeed cause minor line breakage, most sigs using superscript cause similar breakage. We could potentially nab most of the wiki for breaking policy. It's a technical point most people ignore, or probably don't even notice. Don't sweat about it. --  RoosterDragon  16:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, sorry. I get it now. --Haliman - Talk 17:07, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Things to do

Its kind of a placeholder page for in project CP. I'm going to add a number of pages that need a good clean out, or redesign. Starting with zombie skills. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:49, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Go for it! --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

	A FREE COOKIE
	Linkthewindow has given The Rooster a cookie for for helping with the great suburb group massacre

.

Thanks for your help (and also for lurking on my talk page so often.) Linkthewindow  Talk  05:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

U doan liek..

..my congratulations for Link? :'( --Janus ^talk 13:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course not, he's awesome. Just trying to keep the news matter-of-fact tis all. Otherwise all the other recent successful promotees look unloved. Can't have people thinking they're not loved, or they might attempt a wiki-coup. --  RoosterDragon  18:51, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, they could also hide. --Janus ^talk 21:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Sig

I've had it for 6 months and used it on both Chrome and Firefox and I never saw anything wrong with it. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 23:01, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
^{Yet this sentence which I'm typing now will get overlapped horribly. Watch as this typical superscript with no size changes overlaps with the subscript quiet easily indeed.} (I think I've got enough text there so that it will occur at most res's) The change you made to make the letters smaller fixes the problem when people use newlines to break text which is what happens most of the time. If text is broken with a br-tag (like this message) or used by a template in a similar fashion it might still cause problems with superscript. It is a rare occurrence though. --  RoosterDragon  16:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Preliminary Discussion

The design for the new main page seems good to go, however I'm discussing some supposed colour problems with Honest. Before I forget, I have a few good ideas for the Community Portal:

• Articles needing work - Meaning an entire list of articles, or ones of top priority
• Ongoing discussion - Things that wouldn't be on Wiki News but that require attention
• Community Projects - A full list of the active/ongoing ones, the rest archived
• Technical help - Technical wiki questions (not like "how do I sign?")
• General notices - Again, something that isn't announced on the main page but needs attention
• Other things the community would be interested in

Probably couldn't be all on the same page, so there'd be links to some of these (such as technical help). --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 19:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Good thoughts and some similar to some of what I had in mind too. I must pick your mind over whether the page is 'good to go' though. I did a count of the yays v nays and got 16v16. That's not a majority opinion by any means. We can't go acting on such numbers, surely? --  RoosterDragon  13:46, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

You have to read the comments they put. I've managed to shave down all the nays to basically "the colour". --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:46, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Unless you can properly address it, and even if you do, you'll still be looking at an unpromising ratio of votes to try and convince whomever happens by A/PT when you request it. --  RoosterDragon  17:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

There aren't any guidelines to implementing such a large change, really it just boils down to getting as much support through compromises and changes. I'm sure whatever sysop looks at the request will see what it's gone through to get it liked by everyone as much as possible and the fact that's impossible to get it yay'd by everyone, unfortunately. You'll probably find that there's a significant lack of complaining on the talk page if/when it gets implemented.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, one would hope so. I'll defer to you on that. Moving on, the CP does indeed need some major re-organization, and adding some of the above pages as sub-pages as needed will be a start. The actual CP page itself will need re-doing since it's going about everything all wrong. --  RoosterDragon  19:50, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic, but do you see rounded borders here? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 00:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Nope :) I viewed one of the images somebody had posted in the main page discussion, showing the borders on the design. The aliased edges are pretty disturbing, so I get to win on that count regardless. --  RoosterDragon  17:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, well. The corners look much better on a Mac, much smoother. Lots of things look better on a Mac. Yep. Mac. Buy a Mac. Now. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 20:36, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

*Ehem* last thing. It seems smart to mention the Community Portal reboot in the CP section on the main page. Do you have anything in mind? Are we calling this project anything? --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, make it the top message in the CP section, that's a good thought. Doesn't need a project though. --  RoosterDragon  22:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Everything is up to date and ready, unless you spot something wrong. I noticed that the CP section stretches the full width when the Wiki News section is small. A good thing, it cuts down on the white "emptyness." The CP section is of course still lacking, but we'll worry about that later. Yarp?--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 02:45, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Your magical code means that it auto-adjusts perfectly. I saw a full width CP even when the news was medium length, and it cleverly stole the CP's room when I windowed it to test 800*600. It's brilliant. Anyway, I just whipped through and made the most pedantic edits I think I'll ever make. For the most part it was just capitalizing the letters in the hex code. In the nav links though (box8 I think), the pink header text has a font size of 102%. That seems a bit pathetic, is it important in some way, or can it be dropped? Finally, and I'm probably insulting you merely by suggesting that you overlooked it, you do plan on templating the "Last Game Update" table at the top of the page, right? Otherwise, no more narks I can see. --  RoosterDragon  20:39, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Bah, yeah I've forgotten the {{Lastupdate}} template. The teeny 102% increase in font size was requested, it does make a difference, albeit a small one. I'll make the request later, couple of hours I suppose, when I have the time. Since I need to explain what goes where.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 20:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, hehehe. Anyways, we're going for a complete redesign for the CP, right? I'll cook something up. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 16:26, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Yay for collateral damage, I've replaced it with a lolcat for now, so knock up something soon if you can. --  RoosterDragon  17:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

STARS is still active.

http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/STARS --President Jackson 16:44, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

And this concerns me how? --  RoosterDragon  17:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

EMRPs

Replied here.

Also, a bot to maintain the User Hub? _■^■ 19:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Maintain in what fashion? And does anybody even use the thing? --  RoosterDragon  20:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See it's talk page, most recent edits. See what its creator thinks? _■^■ 22:28, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I officially define that page as "I can see the advantage" on the scale of pages that can benefit from scripted maintenance and "Meh" on the scale of pages for which it would be worth the effort. I'll get Link's opinion though. No doubt his talk page will interest a few other users since it gets stalked so much, mine is backwater by comparison. --  RoosterDragon  22:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Stole mah idea for the mall logos >.> _■^■ 00:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Danger Reports

Mmh.. I don't know if it's changed now because of the bots, but just wanted to say that Lazarus General Hospital doesn't have the template. :) --Janus ^talk 00:32, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Most things don't have templates. The Timekeeping Bot just marks report unknown, it doesn't create missing reports. Forts, Malls, NTs, Large Buildings, MPMs and the Zoo have templates. TRPs have a decent coverage of templates, but not all. The generic stuff might have a template if you're lucky. --  RoosterDragon  20:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the sig help!

Cock a doodle doooooooooo! --Paddy Dignam^{IS DEAD} 22:49, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Question

Would it be possible to write a bot to change pages with Category:Human Groups to Category:Survivor Groups? -- Cheese 23:41, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Easily, yes. I could manually nab a copy of the pages listed in said category, have them loaded individually and then just find/replace [[Category:Human Groups]] to [[Category:Survivor Groups]]. Job done. --  RoosterDragon  23:45, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The NT/Fort/Mall Status Map

...is lovely. Great work! ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 22:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

You think so? I can get a decent overview from the NT Status Map myself, but there's too many colours here and I find I have to concentrate on portions of the map to make heads or tails of it. How well are you able to cope? --  RoosterDragon  22:37, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I stare at the NT Map a lot, so honestly it doesn't bug me anymore. However, I can see from a newbie POV that it might seem crowded or confusing. So... hmm. Personally, I never found the "flow" of colors in the dangermap to be particularly good. I like green (safe) to yellow (attack) to orange (siege) to red (ruined) as a degree of danger, but purple isn't an intuitive "hostile" color, and it's supposed to be "in zombie hands," which is pretty damned hostile.

In all honesty, having been making rounds with NecroWatch the last month, from my POV "under siege" is a useless status, since it implies a sense of immediacy that the Wiki doesn't do a good job with. Either something is under attack or its not; am I going to go there faster because someone rated it as "under siege"? I feel the same way about blue for "rebuilding"; I don't know what it's supposed to mean. People (including myself) just seem to use it to say "no zombies, but not powered and EHB either," and so it's a pretty vague status.

I guess what I'm saying is that I would support changes to simplify the status color scheme, if someone suggested it. I'd get rid of "under siege" entirely, and I would probably combine "ruined" and "in zombie hands" into one status (since really, what's the functional difference to someone using this map?).

Sorry, I'm rambling a little. Other things that might help "break up" the combined status map might be thin borders around the forts and malls, to help subtly distinguish them and make the map a little easier on the eye. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 22:59, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Rambling is awesome, people actually say enough that you can guage their opinion properly, and it makes for interesting discourse!

The system has been around longer than me, and I've had to work around it. The MPM page has this sort of sliding colour scheme (with purple = in zombie hands) and so I adopted that. It's less intuitive as hostile, maybe, but flows on from red in the colour spectrum so it could be worse than say a random beige colour or something. I had no idea what to do with rebuilding TBH, it's a weird fucking status and so I just borrowed the blue colour from the fact it's little image has a blue background. As an aside, rot revive is brown since these NTs are usually ruined, so brown is similar to the ruined red colour, since the building can be sucky as a safehouse but isn't unsafe persay.

As far as under siege goes, I'm not entirely against it, it's so rare that any building actually holds out long enough to attract a zombie horde big enough that I find it interesting to see orange pop up occasionally. As an indicator of status, well yeah, it's not that useful I guess. I do support the distinction of ruined/in zombie hands though. Ruined means you can walk in and fix the thing up right off, in zombie hands means you're gonna need some guns and patience first. Mapwise, you could combine them I guess, though I'd feel like I wasn't making the most of all the possible statuses. Ransacked/ruined is combined, though (It's a pointless difference anyway, no buildings stay ransacked for longer than the ten seconds it takes just to go for the ruin)

I was considering putting a 1px black border round the forts, with a gap on the gatehouse square, just for the heck of it (and maybe back it up with some waffle about not being able to enter through those sides). I don't think much more is needed to differentiate the three buildings though, NTs all being 1x1, malls 2x2 and forts 3x3, that's a great differentiator-in-a-can right there.

If you ever do suggest redefining some of the statuses, give me a shout, I have some rambling about changing the little images so the background colours make more sense on a sliding scale of danger. Maybe a good idea to bring to the CP once that's been revamped. --  RoosterDragon  23:54, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll let it squoosh around in my brainpan a bit more. I like the idea of indicating the gatehouses on forts quite a bit.

As long as something goes up to replace the horrible (and I mean horrible) Mall map page, I will be happy in the short-term ;) ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 02:24, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Why do Williamsville and Miltown lack a border as part of their danger color scheme? ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 08:59, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, maybe somebody was messing the reports around earlier? --  RoosterDragon  11:50, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Still looks funny to me... here's a screen grab. Look at Lockettside, Williamsville and Miltown:

See how Lockettside, Williamsville and Miltown don't have colored borders? ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 08:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I've encountered this myself on occasion. It's a spacing issue in the Danger Report page - see here for an example of one I fixed a while back. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 03:42, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

StatusMap Colour Tweaks

Anyway, as I have been thinking about it, it seems to me like the danger level should progress like this...

Safe

Under Attack

Under Siege

In Zombie Hands

Since "In Zombie Hands" is more dangerous than "Ruined" in actual play. For the other statuses (stati?), I'd mostly keep them as they are, with one minor change...

Ruined

Unknown

Rebuilding

Rot Revive

I made "Ruined" a very dark grey (I'd also thought about white with a thin black border), to evoke more of a ruined feel to it. Anyway, what do you think? I worry any change might be a struggle to get any of this past the community, but maybe I'm wrong. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 08:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I traced the problem with the borders, those reports had a space between the template and the noinclude, which doesn't seem to be a problem for IE but seemingly FF doesn't like it. I fixed two of them, see if you're still getting the error with that one, if so, just edit the report and remove the space. I noticed from your pic that the gridlines are actually 1px too high. I set them to be -1px so they worked for me, I might have to try setting them to 0px like they should be and seeing if I can find a way to get both browsers to align it the same.

The colours used on the StatusMap are not a worry community wise, I seriously just made them up on the spot when I created the whole system, and I'm more or less still the only editor of the system. If you change the key, you'd probably get no complaints, if anybody even noticed. Anyway, I can see sense in the top four for a sliding scale. Unknown should certainly be the gray it is now. The other three are a toss up. Ruined is a sort of 'kinda' dangerous and rebuilding is a 'kinda' safe. Maybe that should be reflected somehow? And rot revive is still weird. Usually they are ruined, but usually not that unsafe, sometimes they are even caded and decaded as needed, therefore being safe 99% of the time.

Maybe a pink colour for ruined (not the eye-burning kind, more of a pale red) and a pale green for rebuilding? The pink/pale red would complement the red or gray of VD and GT burbs, respectively, that those buildings tend to be in, while pale green goes with green and yellow of safe and moderate. Guess rot revive could stay brown. Brown is an odd colour, so it suits the odd rot revives. Something about having ruined as dark gray just doesn't cut it for me. Do keep pinging the ideas back and forth, and hopefully we'll up with something sensible by the end. --  RoosterDragon  16:47, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

That space between the template and the noinclude was spot-on. I changed that last one and it looks fine in FireFox now. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 16:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Colour Tweaks Continued

Okay, so you're thinking something like this? "Danger" Statuses

Safe

Under Attack

Under Siege

In Zombie Hands

"Transitional" Statuses

Ruined

Unknown

Rebuilding

Rot Revive

~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 05:39, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

More or less yeah. You think it's reasonable? --  RoosterDragon  18:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Seems good to me, but maybe a test run to see if the pastel colors of the "transition" statuses fade too much into the suburb danger colors. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 05:20, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah I won't use those exact colours. Whatever I can get to show up and maintain the same brightness/saturation for consistancy within the danger and transitionals. --  RoosterDragon  20:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The other thing worth doing (probably) is looking at the danger status images. I don't know whose "property" they are (if anyone's), but for example...

It'd be neat to change the background color from yellow/orange to green, to match. Is that worth pursuing? ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 21:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I had a similar thought in my little rambling section of my sandpit. That would probably need community support since they're so umbiquitious. Hagnat made them originally, but they aren't 'owned' persay. I was figuring raising the issue at the CP once that revamp is done. --  RoosterDragon  21:31, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, I've got your back, if and when you do. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 21:42, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I have another little pipe-dream about the Status Map. When you mouseover a building, you get "The BLAH Building is safe". Is there any way at all to make that fuctionality draw off the timestamp of the danger report that gives it that color? For instance, I just updated the Hippesley Building‎ as rebuilding and signed my update with a timestamp. Is there any way to make stat status map show

The Hippesley Building is rebuilding ( ~ extropymine Talk |  NW |  4Corners 22:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC))

when you mouseover, or something similar? Or is that not possible? ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 22:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Probably not within the constraints of wiki-markup. I originally wanted to show the timestamps, but you need to include the whole userline in the tooltip, which means you see all the markup and it didn't work that well. If there is a way, it's well beyond my skills. --  RoosterDragon  22:25, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Your skillz pay the billz, so don't sweat it. Unless there was a way to draw the code in a form like the recent updates page, where it filters out signatures and such, I can see it breaking the tooltip. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 22:32, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I changed the colours on the maps (yay for my supurb planning ahead, only 1 edit per status!) Unfortunately the background to the safe and V.D 'burb statuses are pretty much the same pastel we were aiming at, so I've darkened them to be somewhere inbetween the usual safe/in zombie hands colour and the background burb colour. It doesn't seem too bad, but I dunno, could go either way on it. --  RoosterDragon  23:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

My initial reaction: it looks great, and flows much better. I only have a couple things with it. Under Siege needs to maybe "pop" more as a color (one shade more red?), and I think Under Attack could go one shade more orange. Both blend in a little too much. I think Rebuilding looks great, but somehow the color for Ruined doesn't say "ruined" to me. But by golly, this is progress! ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 23:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah the ruined doesn't come across great, but I rather like rebuilding. I redid under siege and it stand out much better, but the yellow of under attack refuses to come out nicely, it didn't before and it doesn't want to now. I tried a few and it just sucks on orange backgrounds if you notch it too far towards orange or darker, and sucks on yellow like now. --  RoosterDragon  00:12, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Siege looks great now, and yeah... I'm not sure what you can do with Under Attack. It's either blending in to Moderate or Dangerous. So, hmmph. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 00:26, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Concerning ruined, maybe some cross between red-orange? It ties with in zombie hands and under siege(IE: Soon to be in zombie hands :)) I'm just tossing ideas about here. --  RoosterDragon  01:12, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Ruined still needs fixing, it really looks horrid. --  RoosterDragon  14:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I tweaked it to a darker shade of the red-brown colour and I think it actually works quiet well now. Hits on the original tie in with ruined without looking downright awful, might not need a new colour after all, what do you think? --  RoosterDragon  22:27, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

It's a bit hard to distinguish from the red of "In zombie hands." Why not be consistent with the Mall Status and have "In zombie hands" be dark green, "Rebuilding" be blue, and then used the freed red color for "Ruined?" --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 22:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Because that system has no logic behind the statuses, just some pretty colours. The Omnimap uses that system, and I always have to think about what each means since it's so backward. Some tie in with the suburb danger is also good. Red burb with red buildings for in zombie hands, as opposed to green buildings sitting on a red landscape. --  RoosterDragon  22:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Just as a test, what does the map look like if we use the grey for ruined, and a white with 1px black border for unknown (r possibly the other way around)? If it looks crappy, that's fine-- I'm sortof getting used to the dark red. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 07:46, 29 March 2009 (BST)

I totally overlooked your message! Here's an example for today's map:

A border is a bad idea, it applies externally and gives undue prominence, and would also mess with the border image on for forts when they are unknown. Pure white without border would also be barely visible against yellow burbs. --  RoosterDragon  22:36, 2 April 2009 (BST)

New Timed NT Map

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Let me stare for a couple days. But FYI, have you seen Alka's timestamp map he's made (it's on the NW talk if you haven't seen it). ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 00:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have, but unadulterated levels of awesome have prevented my immediate comment. --  RoosterDragon  00:02, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I know! I'm going to take this moment here and bask in the fact that I invited him to NW. Go me. Anyway, by pillaging Alka's map code, I bet we can make the the NT Status Map tooltip on rollover say "The BLAH Building is safe, reported X days ago." ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 07:41, 29 March 2009 (BST)

Recruitment and ad size

Hi. :)

You've just got me slightly confused over two of the points of your proposed plan (currently up for voting):

• If you are using a fixed table width, your advert is limited to 600*800px.
  --For example, using style="width:600px" in your table gives a fixed 600px wide advert on all screens. If in doubt, use this code.

Why 600*800px? That is more height than the lowest resolution, 800*600px, can display. That would result in ads being 200px out of screen. 600*600px limit would result in it still being in screen as that accounts for the sidebar and gives the correct height.

• If you are using a variable or scaling table width, your advert may be no longer than 800px when viewed on a 800*600 resolution.
  --For example, using style="width:100%" in your table gives an advert that uses 100% of the available space, which varies depending on the person viewing the advert.

Not sure of the use of the term 'longer'. Do you mean width or height? In either case it cannot be 800px while on a 800*600px resolution as (as mentioned above) it would result in the ads being outside of the screen. It might not be necessary to state a max value for px, easier to just state; 'you may not use a variable higher than 100% for both height and width'.

If you could make clear if I am misunderstanding that would be helpful, I'm pretty much for the changes, I just want to be sure what exactly is being said. - User:Whitehouse 22:56, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The 800px height limit is designed not to ensure that ads are viewable to the 800*600 folks without needing to scroll. That would be horribly restrictive as we'd need something along the lines of a 600*400 max which is restrictive. The 800px height limit is just to prevent people having stupidly long ads, and on proper resolutions scrolling will be minimal, a group should take into consideration the scrolling issues and the formatting etc anyway, it's their ad so they are responsible for its appearance. The overall limits are to prevent ads interfering with the page as a whole.

The ambiguous 'longer' means height. Can easily replace it with 'higher' to be totally obvious. Again, this is needed to ensure non-mad advert length. A person can skirt the measures by setting width 100%, the browser will happily scale to full width and be left to its own devices in deciding the height needed so an advert that is overly long would still go over a screen, or 800px, or anything you might set as a limit. Forcing them to set both means the advert A) Has to fill the screen, even it this leaves space everywhere. B) Defeats the object of setting the absolute limits in the first place. Variable settings are used but sometimes people don't consider squashing the ad to a small res to test it at which point it starts breaking stuff because there's not enough room. Absolute settings means that WYSIWYG for any res, so it's harder to go wrong and also easier to enforce.

I'll correct the 'longer' thing. Otherwise if you feel it's still a bad proposal then by all means shoot it down, hopefully more people would get involved in refining it properly next go, damned discussion barely went anywhere on the size limits... --  RoosterDragon  23:34, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Legends of Darkness

My Dark Mistress, Psychotic Pantomime, has informed me you have been most helpful in your suggestions (catergorize LoD, bots). However, I am more wiki savvy then here (I steal code and learn how to use if for my purposes). I am most interested in your suggestions, but not solid enough on my own coding to implement them myself. Hit up my talk page or LoD talk page where you have been posting if you are interested in helping us.

Peace, Donald Crane, Panty's right hand man.

If you're referring about the category, all you have to do is go to that page and edit it so it has some content, job done. Since it's your category I was going to let your group do it. As to the suggestions, I'm not sure what suggestions you're on about, all I wanted to do was let you know your category was a redlink... --  RoosterDragon  19:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

NecroWatch Scanning Map Template

Rooster, Alka Selzer has taken the time and trouble to turn the Recon Map into an actual template! I'm not sure whether it should remain in his user space or if it should be moved into the general template category, though. Can you chime in on the discussion on the NW talk page and let us know what the best course is? Thanks! ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 15:51, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

If it's done, it should probably be moved to the template namespace since it can be used by everybody. --  RoosterDragon  18:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Have you...

upgraded to IE8 yet, its out of Beta now? --D.E.ATalk 14:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the message, I have upgraded now. --  RoosterDragon  19:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem. :) It was only after I tried that nifty little 'Compatability View' feature that I noticed the difference in the main page setup. Just glad that it was an IE7 error and not an overall IE error, otherwise we'd still be staring at the main page attached to the top of the screen. --D.E.ATalk 19:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the IE team seems to be finally getting their act together after the horror that was IE6. I must retest acid 3 sometime and see how it's doing on that front. --  RoosterDragon  20:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

so...

trying to improve my major contributions to the wiki, are we ? Of course, that was bound to happen with me leaving this place. Anyway, some input: you have coding skillz, but you seem to lack some design and usability skillz... moving the 'update' links from the suburb template to just below their info (the update the dangerstatus link just below the dangermap, for example) simply make the template look awful... having the links at the bottom of the template not only improved its readability, but improves its graphical design. I am completly against your renaming of the danger levels, specially 'ghost town' to 'adandoned', which reads awful and has no connotation to the game... and the reaons to change moderate to moderately is dull... you are the first and only to complain about it in more than two years. And why did you removed the rounded borders from the danger levels colors table ? Since are onto it, why dont you ask all dangerreport pages to be moved from user:DangerReport to template:DangerReport ? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 03:58, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I would like to say that I find the term "abandoned" to be insulting and an unnecessary change. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 04:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

'Abandoned' can be changed back to 'a ghost town' is that is preferred. After all but nonexistant discussion on Talk:Suburb and nobody raising any major objections I just went for that term as opposed to the other.

The changes to Template:Suburb were from 2 months ago. The EMR section had been added by somebody but was a bit messy at the time. So I attempted to smooth that out and figured that the extra gap could fit in a section for the phone masts, making the links for it below somewhat redundant. The NT section was already redundant from some while back, and with the EMR and mast section having moved, just leaving the danger level on it's own seemed odd.

Removing the rounded borders on the map key seemed sensible, the map uses a rectangular box with a 2px border, so the key should as well. That as opposed to a circular swatch with no border (as it was when I ran across it) which again is another change from a while back. The light green particularly was a problem without it's border as it matched the background quiet well.

Moving the danger reports is out of the question, this would take creation of 1000's of pages which might be possible, but it would also need the renaming of the many links to those templates which would need, at a rough guess, upwards of 10000 references altered.

I am not opposed to criticism as often I don't come up with the best solutions to things, but I am opposed to you coming here and insinuating I am some kind of moron. I will happily discuss the reasoning behind edits I make and the advantages or disadvantages to using another method but you need not suggest that I am destroying "your work" because you weren't here. Your edits are subject to being improved upon, same as mine, same as anybody else's. It's a wiki, that's the point. --  RoosterDragon  13:27, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Creating new templates will only replace 100 pages, and require the edit of only some few templates (unless i am wrong about how i created the suburb template).

Sorry if it looked like i was accusing you of something, but i was not. Actually, i welcome any improvement that can be made to the system, since it was created two years ago with just a little of wiki-knoweledge. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 00:33, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

In that case, my apologies for the over-reaction. Anyway, I originally thought you were referring the the whole of User:DangerReport which includes some 1000 or so building reports too. The suburb's only would be easily possible, I cannot imagine there would be too much to fix. --  RoosterDragon  17:25, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I have changed "Abandoned" to "A Ghost Town". --  RoosterDragon  14:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

EMRs

Well, in fact, I know about the EMR Bot. I just choose to report it by hands to suburbs that I do care about. So it's not that much work really. Besides, I take the chance to archive news for those suburbs while I'm at it. I may switch to the Bot when I'm bored, though. -- Kittithaj 14:08, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Understood. By the way, today's 3 reports has already been done by hands. They came to me one at a time, so I figured it was easier this way. -- Kittithaj 18:13, 31 March 2009 (BST)

Preview problem with the new changes

I updated the danger status on Tollyton and noticed it didn't show a change on Preview, yet when I saved it, it did change. Just for grins - and to make sure I'm not blind - I tried changing a different suburb from "very dangerous" to "safe" and saw the same thing; preview doesn't reflect the change. No, I didn't leave it at safe when I was done :) Using FF2 if that makes any difference. -- Grogh 19:38, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It would work like that. The preview takes the current page's data, so until you save, you're still viewing the "outdated" version. I'll add a note about that on the template. Thanks for the head's up. --  RoosterDragon  17:19, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

I was waiting for someone to upgrade the reports, namely ridding us of the "special" templates. I never even got around to asking for a "special bot", also explains this being broken. I'm still wondering why neither me, nor Karek beat you to implementing that Mall auto logo. :P _■^■ 11:01, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Well somebody had to eventually. :) --  RoosterDragon  14:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Because I'm not doing wiki projects really anymore. --Karek^maps?! 05:49, 5 April 2009 (BST)

Non important vague request.

If you're bored, any chance you can create a 69x48 suburb map template? If its effort I'll just type it all out manually. I don't really know the limit of your bots power. Thanks --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 12:31, 4 April 2009 (BST)

As in a 69x48 version of {{EXP_Suburbblock}}? That wouldn't be too hard, though it'd be rather massive. *awaits reply in a week's time* --  RoosterDragon  13:07, 5 April 2009 (BST)

<Littlechris> Im going now, i promise.

<Jessica_Devenish> XD

<Littlechris> Jess, do me a favour though?

<Jessica_Devenish> Favor?

<Littlechris> can you tell the rooster "yes. thats exactly what I want" thanks!

I've been speaking to Rosslessness (Little Chris) via IRC. We're in the same group (I'm Jessica Devenish.) So there's your quicker-then-expected answer! Linkthewindow  Talk  10:59, 6 April 2009 (BST)

The Monster is ready. I think he might've underestimated the size 3312 blocks myself. --  RoosterDragon  17:34, 6 April 2009 (BST)

Perfect. Ive copied it so you can scrap it. Any chance of the usage page? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:22, 13 April 2009 (BST)

I have updated my page accordingly. The location number is X and Y co-ordinates, 0-indexed and padded. So 4531 is the block 45 across and 31 down. I'll be most surprised if this doesn't break the include limit, by the way. --  RoosterDragon  16:54, 13 April 2009 (BST)

help me create a group page

hi im jock horror, i am starting a group Bealey Boulevard Class of 06 and need some serious help getting it connected to the groups page, basically I need an in depth discription of how to create a group page, group ad, and get it all set into place. Thanks in advanced.--JHORROR ^{Black Delta Mockridge Heights} 05:14, 13 April 2009 (BST)

Well, creating a group page and advert is upto the group as far as style and information goes. They can have whatever they like for the most part. You will need to catgeorise the page as a group, which you've already done.

Your advert, and any other group pages should be subpages of your group. Such as Bealey Boulevard Class of 06/Recruit for your advert. They should all follow the structure Bealey Boulevard Class of 06/Subpage.

There are some nonsensical rules regarding adverts that are listed on the Recruitment page. You'll need to make sure your advert conforms where possible. If it doesn't, somebody will alert you and help you to fix it most of the time.

That's about it for my knowledge of groups. You're better off talking to somebody who knows more about such things. All my puny characters lead Dual Natured lives. I might be able to assist if you're having some technical difficulties, but design and styling are not my forte. --  RoosterDragon  17:09, 13 April 2009 (BST)

Thanks for your responce. I will look into it for now, --JHORROR ^{Black Delta Mockridge Heights} 06:15, 16 April 2009 (BST)

this bastard

help! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 15:40, 17 April 2009 (BST)

all edits are reverted. effecient wikiers we are. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 15:42, 17 April 2009 (BST)

My connection locked up as I noticed it, I see one revert managed to make it through though. :D --  RoosterDragon  15:45, 17 April 2009 (BST)

Exact same thing happened to me, that's why I panicked and struggled to contact you. Only one of mine made it to Kevan's basement too. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 15:52, 17 April 2009 (BST)

Bot Operations

I'm willing to run and if possible, maintain/develop them further if it's within my ability. _■^■ 05:32, 30 April 2009 (BST)

I hate to be intrusive, but I'm curious, what is your ability? I always wished I could code and maintain bots. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 09:40, 30 April 2009 (BST)

I know a couple of other languages, PHP, Processing, and a couple of scripting languages. I was going to start learning C relatively soon. _■^■ 15:17, 30 April 2009 (BST)

You're welcome to take over anything you like. My stuff is written in C# which isn't exactly the best solution since I have to run it myself, plus this site has a habit of pretending not to exist occasionally despite no other problems with my connection. So yeah, if you want to knock up another solution, just shout and I'll make a point of not running my code. You can ever usurp the accounts if you need to. --  RoosterDragon  17:28, 30 April 2009 (BST)

Well, Ideally we both could run them in tandem.. Is that a problem with the Bots' account type or DNS? I'll write up a quick variables file/page. Might I suggest turning the Bots' talk pages into redirects with (if possible) the current message in there somewhere. _■^■ 05:07, 1 May 2009 (BST)

It's a problem with the site, my connection is fine (streaming music works and the like) but the site refuses to respond to connections from either my browser or the program. Yet RC often shows people having made edits during my downtime. It's weird, it's random and I don't think I'll ever know why it happens. I'm not sure what you want the bot talk pages to say, which message are you referring to? I can't imagine that anybody has ever actually navigated to them anyway. --  RoosterDragon  16:20, 1 May 2009 (BST)

Okay, so could I meet you on IRC? 99 on MobilePhoneMast, 81 on ScenteralIntelligenceMap, 48 on DangerReportTimekeeper, 56 on ExternalMilitaryReport, 17 on BulkUpdates. I was thinking #redirect User_talk:The Rooster and then the current page content. _■^■ 05:24, 2 May 2009 (BST)

DangerReportTimekeeperBot and general status updates.

I was editing for status; then being the OCD type I am I started reformatting them for consistency. Minutes later I realize there was a big warning header that was no longer appropriate after editing; it took me a while longer to spot the "bot" designation. So now I'm uncertain:

1. Should the bot's note be deleted when someone makes edits? Will it automatically know where to re-insert itself later?
2. If not, should the note be manually edited to inactivate it? (presuming it needs to old note somehow to remind it where it insert a new one later -- I imagine not too easy on the pages with several location entries).
3. If not, how often does the bot run?

It actually isn't crucial that I know here; it might be better to change the text that the bot inserts to provide these answers, along with a "Do not edit" tag if the bot might get confused in case of edits. And instructions for further details on the bot's page, perhaps?

Second, you seem to be a good template maker -- how about a general status template? I started toying with what it might look like; see the Current Status text at Kebby Street Fire Station, Junkyard 33,89, Gell Lane Fire Station, St. Ferreol's Church or St. Faustina's Hospital; or a multi-block page at Dartside Police Department.

Thanks. Lariat2301 10:00, 7 May 2009 (BST)

The bot can be considered as any other user who updates reports. It just makes the comment that the report has not been updated recently so people don't get caught out by reports that are actually too old to be accurate. Anybody can update a report as usual, just update the status, make your own comment and sign. The bot is run whenever I remember to, I usually run most of them daily and the timekeeping one weekly. Time is limited for me right now, so I might only get to run them on the weekends. --  RoosterDragon  17:02, 7 May 2009 (BST)

Lariat2301 05:06, 25 May 2009 (BST):

• I'm interested in bot-making. Can I look at yours as examples? (C#, though? My ancient C skills should work.) Suggestion: put the current source code in the "discussion" part of each bot's page. It is a logical place, if you don't mind it being public.
• The primary function that I'm interested is a bot to:
  1. gather all the DangerReports for a single suburb;
  2. create/update a page showing the block-by-block current status; and
  3. make a list of which DangerReports for that suburb are out of date.
  4. Ideally, actually make the report graph 12x12 with two rows/columns from adjoining suburbs.

Is there anything already doing something like that? Thanks. --Lariat2301 05:06, 25 May 2009 (BST)

I could post it, though it's such a tangled mess I think you'd probably keel over in shock. I occasionally keel over in shock at it. :)

Anyway, most of what you described would be possible with a wiki-based solution. See the SBSM for reference. If you wanted reports for a suburb, you could maybe try a rescaled version of it, or lark about and modify the Suburb Navigation Map depending on exactly what output you're after. It would update automatically to boot.

Even as far as recovering reports goes, I find the wiki is probably the best option simply for speed. The phone mast bot needs 100 reports, so I've just stuffed them all onto this page and used a template to pull the data I want. Saves effort for the server and my internet connection since this way I can load one page, rather than 100. --  RoosterDragon  13:07, 25 May 2009 (BST)

D :

Any idea when your going to be back? We could use some (automated) help :P.

Good luck with your exams, by the way Linkthewindow  Talk  14:05, 20 May 2009 (BST)

Remember Rooster, the answer's B! --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 18:14, 20 May 2009 (BST)

Duly processed, that new server seems to have vastly improved things. I was able to whizz through 120 updates and 10 skipped reports in no time. Would've taken hours on the old one for sure. I mean updating each report takes several page requests, tis wonderful to not have to wait 10 secs for each set of pages to load, and then another 10 for updates to save.

While my exams aren't over, half term means a handy little break (and then we're only coming in for exams, delightful) so I should be able to stick my nose in a few places this week. --  RoosterDragon  18:43, 22 May 2009 (BST)

Re: New Danger Reports

Re: User_talk:Lariat2301#New_Danger_Reports

 [[Category:Building Danger Levels|LONG NAME]]
 [[Catgeory:BUILDING TYPE]]
 [[Category:SUBURB]]
 --  RoosterDragon  17:50, 26 May 2009 (BST)

That seemed like an oversight -- the addition of the categories, I mean. Are they necessary for the bot to update something? Because otherwise they'll just end up creating a huge "U" section in the category listings that are also used for the buildings themselves. For example, a single suburb will already have 100 buildings in its category, but this would double that to 200, at least half of them in the "U"s.

Are you amenable to changing this? Perhaps new categories specific to Building Danger Levels? (Can't a wiki do something clever with subcategories?) I'd also like to see another category between "Safe" and "Under Attack". Something like "Threatened", for use when there are a lot of zombies in the neighborhood and barricades keep going up and down, but the specific building in question is at full 'cades. --Lariat2301 17:59, 26 May 2009 (BST)

Well, most of them already are (go check out any burb's category) and handily the U's help separate the reports to some extent. They're only there for organization. A while back the reports were an utter mess and I ran a script to try and standardize things. The categories are consistent now at the very least, though in retrospect I've often thought maybe it was too many. In any case, it's hellish changing so many reports.

As far as actual danger levels go, under attack already covers your problem. Under attack covers a medium group of zombies attacking, but with survivors maintaining overall control, this includes repelling temporary breakins. The definitions are mostly based on number of zombies outside/inside and ruin status. Cade levels vary too quick. --  RoosterDragon  20:44, 26 May 2009 (BST)

My response at my page: User_talk:Lariat2301#New_Danger_Reports. --Lariat2301 22:57, 26 May 2009 (BST)

Template:Verdict

I was wondering, is there any way to have it so, if a user types 'Not Vandalism' into the {{{1}}} bar, then it automatically comes up with 'None Required' in the {{{2}}} bar? D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 10:47, 28 May 2009 (BST)

The wonderful world of lazy switch hackery makes it possible, User:The Rooster/Sandpit/5. You could always have a shorthand code if you're real lazy. --  RoosterDragon  14:07, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Its... so... beautiful... Thank you, Rooster. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 14:09, 28 May 2009 (BST)

I copy+pasted the code over Template:Verdict and replaced the instances of User:The Rooster/Sandpit/5 with verdict... and it exploded A/VB... What did I do wrong? D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 14:23, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Unprotect the page and I'll fiddle. --  RoosterDragon  14:27, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Actually, looking at the edit I think you just pasted in wildy without deleting the old content. Maybe you forgot to hit ctrl-A before pasting? --  RoosterDragon  14:37, 28 May 2009 (BST)

It's unprotected if you want to take a look at it.--Mr. Angel, Help needed? 14:37, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Probably. Editing protected pages can be nerve-racking on your first day. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 14:38, 28 May 2009 (BST)

The Rooster pounces and devours the old page. --  RoosterDragon  14:40, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Thank you. Now we can be even lazier! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 14:42, 28 May 2009 (BST)

You two went through PT on this? Oh, the bureaucracy! --  RoosterDragon  15:03, 28 May 2009 (BST)

Yeps.--Mr. Angel, Help needed? 15:04, 28 May 2009 (BST)

News Box

Thanks, It's all Drawde's fault though., He told me the coding was okay in irc. :( --Mr. Angel, Help needed? 13:18, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Your fault for not waiting for a second opinion. Hmph! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 13:24, 1 June 2009 (BST)

It was just a bad case of toolazytopreview-itis. There were merely a couple of square brackets missing from the link. --  RoosterDragon  13:29, 1 June 2009 (BST)

The stupid irony is that he did preview it, he took the liberty of copy+pasting the code onto IRC. He just jumped the gun too quickly after Drawde said 'yay' and before I could say 'nay'. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 13:44, 1 June 2009 (BST)

sig

I think a small, sillhoueted dragon would work well on the right end of your signature... D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 15:01, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Course it would, but I lack one that works well at a mere 14px. --  RoosterDragon  15:07, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Hmm, mayhaps an actual dragon will do it. What do you think of it? --  RoosterDragon  19:30, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Re - Co-ordinate Redirects

I know, but almost every location's page I'm linking to is unmerged. Besides, I'll probably be the poor bastard. :P --Janus ^talk 22:12, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Ok :D --Janus ^talk 22:14, 1 June 2009 (BST)

Thanks! Hope to get to them soon. --Janus ^talk 20:30, 8 June 2009 (BST)

Eley Way Police Department

Hello! I'm a bit surprised about your large edit of Eley Way Police Department. I can imagine what you're trying to bring across, but I wonder if you attempted to convice the main editor of that page, User:lane grate. A lot of what you deleted I'd consider valuable content and it might have been appropriate to move it elsewhere instead of just deleting. What you left of the page appears quite impersonal to me, compared with what was there before. - Stephen Krantz 17:46, 6 June 2009 (BST)

There was a large chunk of POV, followed by a larger chunk of news copy-pasted from various suburbs. The copy-paste stuff certainly isn't useful, but if you, the author or anybody else wishes to keep the POV part I'm not against putting it back in or finding another home for it (preferably the latter). Generally though, locations are intended by be reasonably NPOV and not used to by groups to stake claims (even though many are), hence my edit. I'll drop a note by his page to see what he thinks (and maybe convince him to use the neglected danger report). --  RoosterDragon  18:02, 6 June 2009 (BST)

Thank you, that's certainly a productive idea - Stephen Krantz 21:12, 6 June 2009 (BST)

User:lane grate here, after the shock of what was done, I realize a revamp of Eley Way Police Department's wiki is probably overdue. I have since I began UD built the site from scratch and assistance and advice of others. Any further advice can be sent me on my User page or through my email.

The newsbriefs were outdated, admittedly, but were included to inform of conditions in the SW-1 district. Vital communication is crucial to avoiding a suburb collapse into ruin. Current conditions in Tollytown, Freyer Bank, Milltown; are conditions that could have been contained to RED status if communication and co-opporation were employed by the Pro-Survivor community. The recent retaking of Griggs Heights is a prime example of a community re-establishing order through communication.

The Police Departments, regardless of who occupies the command,(MPD, Military, or group) are 1) a prime target for Pro-Zombie players, to deny ammo and flak jackets etc and demoralize a population. 2) a priority for Pro-Survivors to gather ammo and join as a community by planning strategy and informing one another of known dangers. I will find a NPOV way to inform and prepare the citizens and my fellow officers to the hazards ahead. Detective Lane grate MPD SW-1 18:59, 2 July 2009 (BST)

A little advice

Hey there, you seem like a fairly helpful sysop so maybe you can help me out with a quick question. What's the policy on drastically changing the "History" section of a location? The location in question is Vincent Square Police Department and man is it ugly. Spelling and grammar errors abound in each sentence and the thing drones on like a wall of text. What kind of license can I take in "restructuring" the info there? --_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 17:17, 8 June 2009 (BST)

I'm not a sysop, and probably not fairly helpful either :P. Anyway, locations pages are community based so you have free reign to make any edits that will improve the article. The history bit shouldn't even be signed... So yeah, feel free to correct the errors, or rewrite or remove the whole thing as you see fit. --  RoosterDragon  17:21, 8 June 2009 (BST)

Thanks, you ARE helpful. And you're not a sysop? Weird, I see your stuff all over the place. --_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 17:23, 8 June 2009 (BST)

He probably should be a janitor-op, unless he's totally opposed to the idea (hint, hint) -- boxy ^{talk • teh rulz} 13:59 21 June 2009 (BST)

Him running for ops is one of our favorite things to talk about in IRC.--Mr. Angel, Help needed? 21:21, 21 June 2009 (BST)

STOP IT! ALL OF YOU! IT WAS MEANT TO BE A SURPRISE FOR AFTER BOB'S BID! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 00:09, 22 June 2009 (BST)

Oooooo! Fancy fancy! You've got my "vote". =) --_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 15:48, 22 June 2009 (BST)

I didn't feel like starting a new thread here, but I wanted to alert you to the fact that I've included a question in my vouch vote for your sysop bid. Please check it out and register an answer. Thanks =) --_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 18:36, 8 July 2009 (BST)

Hey

Thanks for the info, haven't gotten around to it yet.--Mr. Angel, Help needed? 01:57, 9 June 2009 (BST)

Protection

Any parts of your new DS you want to request protection on? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:46, 9 June 2009 (BST)

Not really, I don't think there's any risk to any of it. --  RoosterDragon  21:50, 9 June 2009 (BST)

Wiki Cookies...?

	Rolfero-Wiki-Cookies!
	Rolfero baked you some wiki-cookies!

You're cited at my 'talk:'

Kittithaj made some comments on my talk page that invoke your worshipfulness. Take a look? --Lariat2301 03:15, 11 June 2009 (BST)

Rippon Building

You removed the buildingstatus template for what reason?

I am in the process of creating the page for that structure. It was barely up there 5 minutes. So just FYI, please don't take it back down.-- Belgianrofliron 21:00, 18 June 2009 (BST)

I took it down because that template isn't intended to be called directly onto pages. You need to create a danger report and call that. I removed it as trying to track down bad calls is impossible after the fact. --  RoosterDragon  21:05, 18 June 2009 (BST)

Emergency

The last in a long line of wiki coders, I need your assistance, Beowulf! My lands have been cursed! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 12:59, 20 June 2009 (BST)

No moar!

Some guy removed the </noinclude> tag, which broke quite a few templates. Linkthewindow  Talk  13:08, 20 June 2009 (BST)

Sig

How does this one strike you? Better?-- | T | BALLS! | 23:06 22 June 2009

Additional info for your convenience: First I made a new template page, User:Zombie Lord/sig2. I removed all calls regarding Timestamps on that page. Second I put

{{SUBST:User:Zombie Lord/sig2}} <tt>{{subst:LOCALTIME}} {{subst:LOCALDAY}}

{{subst:LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{subst:LOCALYEAR}}</tt>

in the Nickname space on my preferences page. Now I only sign with 3 tildes. -- | T | BALLS! | 00:07 23 June 2009

An innovative solution, and it looks nice. --  RoosterDragon  15:23, 23 June 2009 (BST)

Sidebar

My, that's a sexy side navigation bar you have there, Rooster. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 01:57, 23 June 2009 (BST)

It'd be better if the last box led to #urbandeadwiki instead of the ancient #udwiki ;) D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 02:49, 23 June 2009 (BST)

^^^^^ --Cyberbob 14:03, 23 June 2009 (BST)

It no longer leads to #udwiki, happy now? --  RoosterDragon  15:23, 23 June 2009 (BST)

I promote you using one or the other, or both, not neither, Rooster. Bah! D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 04:30, 27 June 2009 (BST)

Annus Horribilis

Hey Rooster. Thanks for the heads up.

Could you please explain how I can replace the black boxes with Wiki things or whatever you recommend.

Thanks x --  ▧  ^{: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :} 21:56, 29 June 2009 (BST)

Okay, all fixed now, hopefully. With a lickle help from BobB. --  ▧  ^{: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :} 23:28, 29 June 2009 (BST)

Quickly

I would like to point you back into this discussion here. It seems I have some unfinished revelations to discuss with those who are interested. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 12:34, 1 July 2009 (BST)

I would now like to point you in the direction of Known_Bugs#Game_News_Bug. I don't know any other user who would be qualified to assist Kevan appropriately. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 14:53, 3 July 2009 (BST)

Well then you don't know me well :P I'm using IE and I don't know much about web-coding or javascript or whatever, so you're barking up the wrong tree entirely. Midianian might be better, he writes a couple of scripts and seems to know about this stuff. --  RoosterDragon  15:49, 3 July 2009 (BST)

Awwww. Well Moonshine helped me out some. Maybe next time, Micronoobsoft. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 15:58, 3 July 2009 (BST)

Recrutement....

How do we know what the size of our Recrutment Ad is? -Poodle of doom 00:57, 4 July 2009 (BST)

Danger Report Timekeeper Bot

It's the best thing since sliced bread and washing machines. Many many many thanks for creating it! :) (And for the SIMbot, too!) --Jen 15:46, 5 July 2009 (BST)

Jason Stafam

Thank you very much for your help. Perhaps I should brush up on my wiki-fu —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jason 'Fock'n' Stafam (talk • contribs) 19:13, 9 July 2009.

Heyas

Yes, you can delete it. I haven't touched that page in well up to 2 years now, and I haven't been on in up to a year. Go ahead. --User:Axe27/Sig 03:43, 11 July 2009 (BST)

Congrats

On your sysopness. *throws confetti all over talk page* --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 19:39, 12 July 2009 (BST)

May your sysopness save you a lot of time Rooster. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:51, 12 July 2009 (BST)

May you not fall to the dark side and may you continue to contribute to the wiki in all your ferocity and glory. Don't risk losing the support of the guardians, now. D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 12:07, 13 July 2009 (BST)

But who shall keep watch over the guardians? Props. --_GANG Giles Sednik _CAPD 18:18, 13 July 2009 (BST)

Group Active and all that nonsense

Hail!

Having shamefully neglected our wiki for far too long, it has come to my attention that Cobra has ben labelled inactive. As you seem to be the one in the know, how do I change this sorry state of affairs?

Cheers, Sage|Carr ^Cobra 21:53, 12 July 2009 (BST)

You've just got to add your group back on any group suburb listings. I was going to do it for Yagoton, but I see it's already done. If there's any others, just copy *[[Image:Gijoe-cobra.jpg|25px]] [[Cobra]] and add it back on any suburbs you are active in. Thanks! Linkthewindow  Talk  01:21, 13 July 2009 (BST)

Ad Removed

Why? We changed the image... --Haliman - Talk 15:55, 14 July 2009 (BST)

Which ad did I nuke mistakenly? Probably just an oversight on my part. --  RoosterDragon  15:58, 14 July 2009 (BST)

The UBCS ad. Umbrella Biohazard Containment Service/Recruit. --Haliman - Talk 16:08, 14 July 2009 (BST)

I didn't remove it. --  RoosterDragon  16:13, 14 July 2009 (BST)

FAIL! Sorry. A little slow this afternoon. --Haliman - Talk 17:48, 14 July 2009 (BST)

No problem. I reduced the size, and added it back. Is that satisfactory? --Haliman - Talk 22:31, 24 July 2009 (BST)

I read user pages.

they give you a good sense of what kind of person you are dealing with. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 15:44, 16 July 2009 (BST)

Using RC is cheating. --  RoosterDragon  15:46, 16 July 2009 (BST)

stylish minimalism is my gag, go somewhere else >=[ --ϑϑℜ 15:50, 16 July 2009 (BST)

Indeed

I was planning on doing so, and considering there's only 2 rows of suburbs left, I may as well continue. It'd be great if you could create one for Hospitals, though. :) --Rahrah^{Come join the #party!}18:42, 21 July 2009 (BST)

I noticed your conversation on Rory's crazy-map project, just wanted to tell you not to worry about missing any reports. When Rorybob and I updated the BIC we also made sure each FD, PD, and Hospital had one.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 20:10, 21 July 2009 (BST)

Top stuff, I've been waiting on that ever since I dreamed up this crazy mapping system. Now I can make several other maps and the sever will hate me even more! --  RoosterDragon  20:18, 21 July 2009 (BST)

I'll start User:DangerReport-ing Factories. :) --Rahrah^{Come join the #party!}20:58, 21 July 2009 (BST)

I checked, the "missing" reports all exist, just without the (suburb) tag at the end. Note that they all share their name with several other buildings. While we could (and probably should) file a move request for the reports, it could be as easy to just alter the name to match the reports.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 21:01, 21 July 2009 (BST)

P.S. are you planning on making a map for the Fire stations? I know their status as a TRP is debated, but they are one of the few buildings to have a complete listing.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 21:03, 21 July 2009 (BST)

Best to disambiguate them in the long run so that you can always match reports and building names through templates. I'm not sure if we really need a map for FD's and the other misc useless buildings, you might wish to get some opinion on the BIC talk page about it. --  RoosterDragon  21:08, 21 July 2009 (BST)

I was thinking of adding the map to the top of the category pages (like here); while fire stations aren't really TRPs, they already are linked into the BIC about as much as Hospitals and Police departments. They also appear to be updated fairly frequently (not as much as PDs or hospitals, but more than most other buildings). Basically, Fire stations are already on the BIC, I don't see why they should get a half-way treatment. Either way, it's your call :P--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 22:31, 21 July 2009 (BST)

Your current project

Danger Report Update

It has been a year since your sweeping updates of Danger Reporting, and now you're updating them once again. Because I'm very obsessively fuzzy about aesthetic looks of the Wiki, I believe there are things that can be improved upon. But since it looks like you haven't finished them yet (for example, Template:UpdateDR hasn't been linked to), I'm not going to do anything for now.

Few questions I'd like to ask first:

• What's the scope of your project this time? What are you changing? I believe one of the things you're doing is clarifying the Building Danger Levels. But there are tons of stuffs you changed in the past few days and I don't think I can keep track of them all.
• What new things you are adding? What old things you are removing? I will try to standardize the looks of new stuffs to the old ones. And if there are pages/templates/maps that will be removed, I better make backups of them so they can be used as references. Unless, of course, you want to revolutionize new solutions from scratch, independently from the past system.
• Is it really necessary to put Status Reports in tables (like this and this)? For some reason, I have a strong dislike of them. Perhaps that's because the old Building Danger Levels didn't have visible tables. I admit that all those borders make them a little bit easier to read. But on the other hand, the descriptive texts looks like they are in cages. If you're fine with it, I'd like to remove the borders, or at least keep them to a minimum. If not, then I'll only round the corners and center them.

-- Kittithaj 00:08, 23 July 2009 (BST)

if you feel we need to organize the list somehow, then i have two words for you: zebra stripes. They allow non-border tables to be better organized with an awesome look if you have the right colors set for each row or pair of rows. Take a look here --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 01:39, 23 July 2009 (BST)

I have taken the time to convert the Mall/Building status table into a "zebra stripes" format here. --Rahrah^{Come join the #party!}12:50, 23 July 2009 (BST)

Almost there. You need to be able to easily differentiate one line from another, and the colors you have chosen dont. Like i said above, it only works if you have the right color set. Still, you are on the right path. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 20:02, 23 July 2009 (BST)

They seem fine to me, they match the very example you linked to if I'm not mistaken, what wrong with them? --  RoosterDragon  20:07, 23 July 2009 (BST)

each situation requires a different combination of colors. The set used on the example work there because there are several columns and little data, mostly numbers. The status list is only 3 columns wide, and most of it is text with one image in each line. For that you need a set of colors that would stand out more, yet not enough to take the eyes away of the content of the line you are currently reading. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 20:35, 23 July 2009 (BST)

i just went to the item location table page, and WTF? These were not the colors i used originally, nor the colors i seen in my notebook at home last night. WTF? --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 20:38, 23 July 2009 (BST)

at home now, checking rory's work. That color set works nicely now. Its so strange that i get to see the same page with two different color sets in two different computers. Must be because i use my notebook at night, with brightness set down to ease the eyes. I wonder how this look in a CRT screen. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 00:02, 24 July 2009 (BST)

I figure the tables probably needed some sort of border as they looked a bit unconstrained otherwise. Setting the wikitable class was probably is definitely just me being lazy. I also wanted to try and knock the width down since particularly the MPM one was very wide, and had squished up text on smaller resolutions. If you chaps ever wish to override me on aethistic issues feel free (now and in the future), you're all much better at it than me. I quite like the example you've knocked up, much better than mine, I'd go with it.

I was gearing up the new update DR templates so I could phase over reports without disrupting those on the old one, I have some random musings on how I'm looking to fix the reports in User:The Rooster/Sandpit/2, but basically:

• Recategorize everything to that new system since reports have wildly varying categories right now.
• Use the disambig variable where possible.
• Change to the new UpdateDR template, which can allow a few different lists of building definitions: buildings, malls, necrotechs, forts.
• Create templates for buildings without them, so I don't have to fix any again.
• Identify any reports with unexpected names (such as ones that might need disambiguation, that are spelt wrong, that are just plain wrong, etc) so somebody can fix them.

Thanks for mentioning it, there I was being a jerk and making crappy sweeping changes under everybody's nose as usual. --  RoosterDragon  17:03, 23 July 2009 (BST)

A clarfiying afterthought: I like the above example as a good way to contain the table without the 'cage-like' internal borders. I'd still like to slim it down, increase the font size and do some rewording per my original attempt if that's ok. --  RoosterDragon  18:01, 23 July 2009 (BST)

Ok, I've passed the changes without borders/headers/etc. Just tightening everything up a bit actually helped to 'contain' the table so I guess the borders weren't need after all. If it still needs tweaking feel free, just be sure to hit them all: Building, Necrotech and Mall. I also reverted my changes to Template:Mobile-PhoneMastOperationLevels and tweaked from the old version. Can't say I'm entirely sure what to do with this template. It's a bit fiddly. I think maybe the enlarged font-size should come down a notch? Dunno. --  RoosterDragon  16:31, 26 July 2009 (BST)

Aww... Come on, you're not being a jerk. Everyone of us here just wants to make the Wiki better. It's just normal that when you make changes, some will like it, some will not. Let us cooperate for the best result.

As for table looking unconstrained, well, why not? We're all free men. And we don't need our borders to cage us in! Seriously, though, Template:BuildingDangerLevels is fine by itself. If you think the descriptions (i.e. "Meaning") need to be rewritten better, go ahead and change them. But I don't see the necessity to draw all the borders in, or adding headers that say Icon-Status-Meaning. The table itself is self-explanatory; people can understand it the first time they see it. Zebra stripes aren't even needed. The same thing can be said to Template:Mobile-PhoneMastOperationLevels. Although there are two types of statuses and icons, I don't think it would be too hard for would-be Wiki editors to figure them out.

Of course, those things I said are purely aesthetic. But good presentation is almost as important as good information. Caging up the tables makes them easiest to read. But only people who never work with tables before are going to need that help. And in this age of spreadsheet, how many of them are here on the internet anyway? I propose using those two tables without border and sub-header (Icon, Status, etc.) at all. Or if not, go with Rorybob's zebra stripes style, with solid outer border taken off.

As for the scope of your project, I must say it is very interesting. The old system is like an unplanned tower construction. It is built level by level, upon older works, by different editors, with little or no documentation. It works, but its parts don't combine well, and has much redundancy. And like an unplanned tower, it might collapse one day in the future. So if you can put everything up together into one solid and uniform system, it'd be much better.

Just one thing to ask, please don't change the way updating will be done too much. Old Wiki editors are like old dogs. While we can still learn new tricks, we'd be happier if we don't have to! -- Kittithaj 23:35, 23 July 2009 (BST)

Alright, I'll just run my other changes through then, and promise not to touch anything else :P

Won't be changing how the system actually updates, everybody will still edit the same way. It's just updating all the old templates for consistency with the new ones. --  RoosterDragon 

New Maps Break Wiki

Hey! Don't just read other people's unfinished comment! And how do you find my Sandbox anyway? I only created it just two days ago, and it has no visible link!

Anyway, everything that can be fixed is fixed. The masts map, however, isn't. And there is no easy way to do it. I don't know what you have changed to the mast system. But all those changes make the old map incompatible with the new system. To use the 21 July version, everything you have changed must be revert. That would be painful. Not to mention it would cause new conflicts as well (the horror!) Maybe you should analyze your code and determine the cause of problem. If I was the first one to notice this problem and report to you, then not many people use it anyway. (Or maybe not many people use Firefox, but I doubt that.) So, the mast map can wait a few days while you're working on it.

Now, with you've already read my reply (it is almost finished anyway.) Should I post it again on your talk page? -- Kittithaj 22:42, 29 July 2009 (BST)

I haven't read it properly, but when I noticed the bold bits saying "Holy crap, it's all broken!" (or to that effect) I paid more attention.

The MPM map isn't a big issue, I bet almost nobody uses it, plus I think I know the problem. While the old formatters that allow the older revisions of the other maps to work aren't gone yet, I did manage to SD the one for the masts. I can restore that and I think that'll do the job.

Post your reply, if only for posterity. As to finding your page, I noticed it on Special:Recentchanges of course. Second link in the nav bar on the left, best tool ever. --  RoosterDragon  22:50, 29 July 2009 (BST)

Well, good to see a quick temporary solution is possible with the masts map. But yeah, I believe not many people use it. Heck, I myself never use the mobile phone once!

I'm not finished what I'm going to do, though. So I'll post my reply later, when it's done, which is probably tomorrow. This section is getting confusing, too. -- Kittithaj 23:43, 29 July 2009 (BST)

Actually I just fixed the whole problem. Yay me. So yeah, you finish up your reply and I'll see if I can't have some subheadings sorted out by tomorrow. --  RoosterDragon  23:49, 29 July 2009 (BST)

Initial Changes Complete

Ok, I've run a whole raft of changes through. All the danger reports have been standardized and created. There are no gaps, I assure you.

I've gone through Category:Danger Reports and all its subcategories. I've changed the text on all the pages and also used that "where you are" thingy like they have in the Misconduct archives since that helps.

I recategorized a lot of pages, some gained new ones, others lost some and I fiddled with the sort keys a lot as well. This included messing with pages related to the Building Information Center, the category of the same name and related pages.

I've created a Status Map for every type of building which I've included on each subcategory of Category:Building Danger Levels. The exceptions are office buildings (way too many to even hope to show with template include limits) and the zoo (tis only one report). As you can see, mostly grey.

I shifted stuff related to the Template:DangerMap to Category:Suburb Danger Reports (it previously was in the now master category, Danger Levels) and also changed the DangerMap itself to reduce the code and tidy it up a bit. It is fixed width and text size. The 11px font size prevents blocks from stretching and also makes it look similar to the image records people have taken (For me in IE, the 12px default font made it look a bit off). It now looks the same in IE, FF and these records (to me at least).

I'm still clearing up a few loose templates, categories, etc. I haven't forgotten, but a few are still in use in custom projects and aren't quick fixes.

I hope nothing is downright wrong. If it is however, a lot of it is templated so fixing it shouldn't take overly many edits. Some fresh eyes will help in identifying where tweaks are needed, methinks. --  RoosterDragon  01:45, 30 July 2009 (BST)

Do I understand correctly that all buildings in Malton now have their own Danger Reports, that's why no further instructions for creating them is needed? It looks like so, because I've seen a Danger Report of a junkyard in Owsleybank.

Okay, isn't that a bit excessive? It's really an overkill. And to think that I once discouraged Lariat2301 from creating too many of them, fearing they will never be in use. And most likely so, evidently by all those "grayed-out" reports. Even that junkyard Danger Report isn't even been included in the main junkyard page itself. People not using them is one thing, but I'm afraid that all those pages will put more work on your bot (and ultimately, yourself) whenever the next sweeping changes is needed.

Anyway, here is my finally finished comment:

Thoughts About Changes

Sorry for the slow response. But you changed a lot of things, I have to review all a lot of them before I can give my comment.

First I must say your new system is brilliant. No more confusing, cross-referencing templates. Just one template that can be used anywhere with any type of building. The leaning tower of chaos is now redesigned and made secured.

Now, what I'd like to change visually is the How to Update section. I always like the old style better. So this is what I propose for a change:

Template:UpdateDR

Template:UpdateDRMast

How to Update a Building Danger Report Check out the building. Change the status line to one of the available status codes. status=STATUS CODE Add more information about the building in the comment line. comment=YOUR COMMENTS Sign your edit by changing the user line. Just replace it with four tildes. user=~~~~

How to update a Building Danger Report Check out the building. Change the mast_status line to one of the available mast status codes. mast_status=MAST STATUS CODE Change the status line to one of the available building status codes. status=BUILDING STATUS CODE Add more information about the building in the comment line. comment=YOUR COMMENTS Sign your edit by changing the user line. Just replace it with four tildes. user=~~~~

Nothing fancy here. I just copy the old table header and combine it with the new table body. And I rewrite the comment section.

As for the Building, NT, Mall, and Mobile-PhoneMastOperationLevels, I see no point in changing the style at this point. They work fine without border and your descriptions are understandable enough. And your enlarged font-size is actually smaller than original versions.

Of course, There are things that I think can be improved upon, things that I am still not sure about. Things like:

• Ackland Mall and its weird-looking Danger Report on its page. I look at the oldest possible version from August 2008, and see that this problem persists for over a year now. Is there no way to fix it?
• In the same vein, what about NT Mast? It's another template from the old system you deleted. I don't know which suburb and building was that. Does it has the same problem with Danger Report as the mall?
• Which leads to another old problem. While updating Danger Report for a mast, you can't see the Mast Status on the Danger Report page itself. Can this be fixed?
• Regarding your rewrite of Danger report. The first three levels are used when barricades are still up. What if barricades are down but survivors still maintain control (and barricades can't be put back because there are too many zombies, like in NT siege?) What if survivors are outnumbered but the building is still intact, use "in zombie hands"? Is this too much hairsplitting? But there are always the possibilities, especially...
• Mall and big buildings. While mall have their own Danger Level classification, big buildings have none. Should they have their own Danger Level like malls? And if they do, should the classification be exactly the same as malls? Or should the number of zombies be tweaked? For example, I don't think hundreds of zombies will gather to attack a Cathedral.
• You removed this comment of mine, citing it was not needed anymore. Well, it would be fine if no new Danger Report will ever be created again. And I won't mind that bit getting removed. Still, are you sure about that? I believe malls, NTs, masts, forts, large buildings, PDs, FSs, hospitals, factories, and the zoo are all covered. Still, what if someone want to add a new Danger Report to a less important building? For example, a new group may want to use a bar as their headquarter, and need a Danger Report for it. The comment would be useful in that situation. And...

Looks like all buildings, no matter how trivial, have their own Danger Reports now.

• The new Template:BuildingStatus doesn't have a usage direction. Should it be written so new editors can easily use it? I'd do it myself, but it is protected...

If all possible Danger Reports have been created, then the usage direction is not needed.

• Also, I see that you've moved some of the more frequently used template usage directions to their talk pages. I know you're tidying the code up so they won't load the server too much. But shouldn't there be a message telling people to look at the talk page for usage guide at least? Maybe one link with the word "Usage" which leads to the talk page? Again, this is for new Wiki editors, so they won't be confused of what to do.
• Template:DangerMap page fonts are too small, can't you increase the font size to at least the size of the suburbs in Template:Suburb? Again this is protected so I have to consult you about it.

And, your recent edits on the maps seem to cause undesirable effects. All new malls, NTs, masts, strategic buildings map looks weird on Internet Explorer, with all the building squares stretched. Worse, those new revised maps doesn't work on Firefox 3 at all. The problem lies on the templates. The last working templates are from 21 July 2009: malls, NTs, strategic buildings. Also, the report for The Poulter Building was missing. It must be changed to The Poulter Building (Shore Hills) to work. Perhaps there is a problem in your disambiguation system? The MPM, however, doesn't work on Firefox 3 at all, no matter which version it is. Even the oldest one from June 2008 now gives blank mast status colors, like the 21 July 2009 version.

If you're using Internet Explorer, you won't notice those problems. But for Firefox users, those are serious issues rendering the map unreadable. I suggest reverting those templates to 21 July 2009 version (and add (Shore Hills) to The Poulter Building) as a temporary solution while you're working on it. As for masts map, well, you have to revert your mast system as well to fix that...

Seems to be fixed.

And by the way, all templates associated with the old Danger Report system have been removed and replaced with newer ones. Template:Updatedr and Template:Updatedr norot is replaced with Template:UpdateDR. Template:BuildingDangerLevels plus rot is replaced with Template:NecrotechDangerLevels. I've told people who use those templates the reason for the changes. I believe most of them don't mind. Three people who uses Template:Updatedr (Goebi, 007 warbear, Dr Stiles) don't seem to be active anymore. I can't believe I'm saying this, since I'm a conservationist at heart, but feel free to remove them. All of them are archived in my Sandbox anyway.

That's it for now. I'll try to look at other in-depth changes later. -- Kittithaj 23:56, 30 July 2009 (BST)

All Reports: You understand correctly, every building now has a report no matter how trivial. I agree it's throughly excessive. My not-so-masterful plan is to see how well they get used during the next few months, and then we'll have some information to go on in considering what reports to keep. I imagine the majority can be binned (my next round of sweeping changes will be mass deleting a lot of them). After that we'll have a consistant implementation and usage of reports and no reason to add any more. We can put a notice somewhere about not creating any more (an update to the LSG makes the most sense in that respect) So yeah, it's a temporary thing, and I'm not fooling myself by thinking otherwise. It's all part of the plan though, worry not.

Changing the UpdateDR appearance: Looks fine to me, go ahead and just run it through.

Building/NT/etc DangerLevels templates: The font size appears smaller? I will address this later in the reply.

Ackland Mall: Ackland Mall is a total bastard in regards to having a mast. I changed the behind-the-scenes a bit but not the appearance of anything. If you can reference which template is being used to format it that making it look weird that might help. If you could mock up a version that doesn't look weird that'd be great, it doesn't need to work but that way I can see if it might be possible.

NT Mast: That's The Herman Building, it doesn't have any problems with the new system. You pass {{UpdateDRMast|NecroTech}} which gives the mast update instructions with NT danger levels at the bottom. Tis fine.

Updating a Mast report: Not seeing the mast status, I know! Tis not a straightforward issue however:

The danger report pages have a nifty definition that User:Morgan Blair put in when she originally overhauled the MPM template system. The template variable, allowing you to decide what template gets the data and thus change the entire format. It's the most bloody useful addition ever, and so I propogated it to all reports when I first did some major runs. Anyway, it defaults to BuildingStatus or MallStatus if not set. So if you just plain call the report it shows up in the standard template.

The mast reports have a special template which you can pass to show the mast status: BuildingStatusMalTel. The reports default to the usual standard template for consistancy, and so you must pass the special template to get the mast status.

This leaves a few possible fixes which I had considered but decided none were suitable.

• Change the default on mast reports to the mast template. Tis a good idea but I figured for consistency it's best to keep the default templates as default. Otherwise you need to know what the default template is to get this minority of reports, those with masts, to display in the same fashion as other reports.
• Use noinclude tags so that the mast template is used when you update the report, but so the report is show in the usual style when used. I figured the problem would be users wondering why the hell the template looked different when they try to use it and not being able to work out why.
• Have some sort of special box that shows up in the usage documentation that shows the status. I didn't know whether it would be seen, or if it might still cause confusion like above when the user didn't see it on using the report.

So yeah, none of the options seemed all gain for no cost, so I didn't change anything. I'll be interested in your opinion on this.

Barricade Rewording: I aimed for consistancy with the safe status, as well as trying to push the "survivors haven't lost yet" angle. With NT sieges and the like, people usually just post under/attack or siege if there are ongoing temporary break-ins. It usually then goes to ruined/in zombie hands once the zombies break through in large enough numbers such that people can see the building will inevitably be emptied and ruined, even if this takes another day.

As for large buildings, that's a good point. Aside from malls and the forts though, the large buildings probably don't any more action than your normal single block building anyway. So I figure the normal levels aren't unreasonable, but a dedicated template is also fine. To hell if I know what levels to set though (the fort one I knocked up is the same as the mall one, but reworded).

Template Usage: That was a rush job when A/VB hit the include limits recently. I just hit a few templates with large noinclude sections that were used on the page to try and fix it. Making it less crap is on my to do list, but I did try and provide a link to the talk page at least.

DangerMap: This is interesting. I discovered that all the images taken for the archives showed a smaller font that what appeared to me on IE. I was also annoyed as the font size I had skewed the map a bit as suburbs with long unbroken names caused their column to stretch. I decided to resort to definite pixel based sizes on the whole map (it was a fixed width and heights anyway, so it was just about making the internals evenly spaced and whatnot) and so I knocked the font size down a notch to prevent stretching. It also now matches the archive images almost dead on. I got FF to investigate the error with the status maps you had discovered, and later noticed that a lot of fonts came out smaller than their IE equivalent. The default font sizes on both are the same at 13px, and some investigating later I found an error with FF. A quick comparison is in my 6th sandpit. Long story short, FF screws up on % font changes making them smaller than they should be. So my changes to the DangerMap were mostly to make it look the same in IE as FF, provided you are on the default font-size. Your comments suggests yours may be larger than default. Doubly so since Template:Suburb appears to use the same size to me! Resolving this issue fully will take further investigation as IE can do the math, but nobody on this site uses it, FF fails at the math but people are used to what it produces. Then throw my changes to fixed from scaling fonts into the mix, which nukes you if you're not on the default size. Further throw into the mix the generally fixed width/height definitions all over the wiki making scaling fonts in tables even more of a problem. It's a massacre.

Old templates: Thanks for doing that, I got a lot of the misc uses but was still thinking over whether to subst or update some of those leftover ones, especially like you said since some of those users aren't around to reply to inquires. You've done it which saves me all that darned thinking, top stuff. I'll see they get tagged and SD'ed in due course.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, it will certainly help straighten out the loose ends. --  RoosterDragon  01:06, 31 July 2009 (BST)

I'm glad you find my reply useful. I feared it might be too long and annoying. Sometimes I talk/write too much and many people don't appreciate that.

For the old templates, well, I can just change them all without telling the users. But I don't like to do that. I would hate it too if the same thing is done to me. So I take time writing all those notes. Perhaps too much time really, because no one seems to care enough to write back. :/

I've changed both Template:UpdateDR and Template:UpdateDRMast to the new version. But for all other changes, I'll wait for a while. I'm taking a Wiki-break right now. All those system changes from last week, combined with my own pet project to check and sort out all suburbs' News Archive, really exhausted me. I've only skimmed past your reply. And will read it more carefully when I've done recharging. -- Kittithaj 20:17, 3 August 2009 (BST)

While every building has a danger report, it appears that the majority of the location pages don't have their corresponding report listed on them. It might be a bit much to ask, but do you think you could have a bot go through and add the reports to the location pages?--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 06:46, 10 August 2009 (BST)

Somewhere it the mass of text up there I mentioned that I plan on deleting the unused ones at some point. I don't want to add in all the reports only to remove the vast majority at a later date. If you run across any building's you think should have one on the page, feel free to include it however. --  RoosterDragon  15:11, 10 August 2009 (BST)

Ahh, that makes sense. Still, I get the feeling that most buildings won't be updated without the link. Granted, they probably wouldn't get updated with one either, so I suppose it doesn't really matter anyways.--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 00:23, 11 August 2009 (BST)

Philosoph Knights' Wiki

Thanks, that was fast. Haunting the recent changes, then? CITIZEN VI 16:49, 26 July 2009 (BST)

As always. --  RoosterDragon  16:53, 26 July 2009 (BST)

BIC categories

I noticed that you consolidated the TRP categories under the "Other Buildings" header into Category: Building Danger Levels. While this does save space, that category's still a mess, I'm not that sure your average user would be able to find the hospital or PD listings on it (even threw me off for a minute). I'm adding back the other listings to the directory, just for the ease of access. Other than that, nice tweaks to the BIC page (I'd still like to have a FS map by the way).--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 19:52, 26 July 2009 (BST)

I'm working on that mess as we speak, a bot is running to fill in the missing reports and re-categorize (check RC with show bots turned on). No reports will show up in there when it's done. Just give it a while. :) I'll knock up maps for most everything once it's done. I figure in a few months I can use them to see how well used the reports are and ditch anything that is awash with unknown. --  RoosterDragon  20:08, 26 July 2009 (BST)

You and your darn bots. Where would we be without them? =P --~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 20:11, 26 July 2009 (BST)

I'm better than his bots. Ask him. --ϑϑℜ 22:46, 26 July 2009 (BST)

Just stopping by...

I lurk/stalk around the recent suggestions page quite frequently, and as such have seen a few of your edits, and by a few, I mean five hundred of them. I don't know if anyone else is doing it, so I just wanted to take the time to thank you for all the work you're doing to keep this wiki a convenient and orderly place.

Call me a kiss-ass if you want, but he has something like 20% of all wiki edits over the past couple of weeks; if that doesn't deserve a quick thanks than I don't know what does. Lelouch vi Britannia is helping make Ridleybank green_ and gives Achievements 17:37, 28 July 2009 (BST)

Agreed. Linkthewindow  Talk  22:18, 28 July 2009 (BST)

I just called to say I love you

I just called to say how much I care

I just called to say I love you

And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

<3<3--Mr. Angel, Help needed? 04:36, 29 July 2009 (BST)

I find it most ironic that the day after I get this message, I find out I've broken large swathes of wiki. Go me! --  RoosterDragon  22:54, 29 July 2009 (BST)

Who cares if you wrecked the place? You'll probably have it back up and better by the weekend :P. Anyways, have to say thanks for siccing your bot army on the danger reports- I don't want to think how long it would have taken Rory and me to do all that my hand!--~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 01:17, 30 July 2009 (BST)

As a matter of fact, I already fixed it. :D --  RoosterDragon  01:22, 30 July 2009 (BST)

While I'm stopping by, I thought I'd drop this: Special:Contributions/Chekken, Is that considered kosher? It seems like the llama might have to get out his floss if this keeps up... Lelouch vi Britannia is helping make Ridleybank green_ and gives Achievements 02:25, 30 July 2009 (BST)

Seems a bit odd, overcading/overbarricading is the term anyways. Twill likely end up on A/D in short order I should think. --  RoosterDragon  02:29, 30 July 2009 (BST)

It seems like some butthurt newbie-turned-troll going on a wikicrusade against barricading, and the last thing we need around here are trolls and drama! What would life be like if we had those!? Oh, wait... Lelouch vi Britannia is helping make Ridleybank green_ and gives Achievements 02:32, 30 July 2009 (BST)

I've seen zeds using danger info to find targets - may stop updating. Comments? or direct me to this conversation if it's already happened. thanks Baruch 18:20, 8 August 2009 (BST)

It's a community resource, anybody can use it for any purpose. --  RoosterDragon  17:43, 9 August 2009 (BST)

NecroWatch Hub Scan Age Template

Hi, what did you do to the key template? Judging by the code it looks to have been useful (no idea what you did, though :P ), but, at least in Firefox, you screwed up the formatting a bit: http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/6239/55134430.png CITIZEN VI 18:24, 30 July 2009 (BST)

Aw, whoops. I'll get right on fixing that. I was just swapping out some old templates. --  RoosterDragon  18:26, 30 July 2009 (BST)

Fixed. --  RoosterDragon  18:34, 30 July 2009 (BST)

Thanks, but, um, it's still a bit messed up (the colour blocks in the key are way to the left -- maybe this is a browser compatibility thing). CITIZEN VI 01:28, 3 August 2009 (BST)

Actually I had intended it to look like that. I didn't realise the text had been left aligned on purpose there... Anyway, I've reduced the width and made the text left align again, is it ok now? --  RoosterDragon  01:39, 3 August 2009 (BST)

Response:

I got your message, luckily, since I was actually checking the wiki, which I pay very little attention to normally. Thanks for the offer, we would appreciate it if you would take a whack at fixing our ad. It was done on the quick by a friend of ours who hasn't had time to fix it. I fixed the link to our forum, if you would like to come there and discuss it privately.

Thanks, --Calista griffin 01:37, 31 July 2009 (BST)

A WINNER IS U

Nice work with that template!--Orange Talk 17:00, 1 August 2009 (BST)

Well I couldn't let you have all the glory with those transparent item pictures. So yeah, good job with uploadi- OH DEAR GOD MY USERPAGE! --  RoosterDragon  17:08, 1 August 2009 (BST)

My Suggestions

I removed my suggestion on crucifixes because there was no way it could win, and I realized that other items would go better with the newspaper style of slap then a crucifix. I then realized I could make a new suggestion since I took it down. I only thought of making a new one to take it's place after the deed was done. I don't post in developing suggestions because I spend a lot of time thinking them over, trying for the fairest and most realistic way to do it. If I ever have trouble with either fairness or realness, I will post in in developing first. Thank you for notifying me of you dissatisfaction, and I will work towards improvement. --Justinbronze 19:49, 2 August 2009 (BST)

Please note: Removing suggestions to post new non-revision suggestions is considered abuse of the system. In other words, if you withdraw a suggestion, you can only re-post a revision of that suggestion in the same day. Otherwise, it's not hard to wait a few hours. --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 20:14, 2 August 2009 (BST)

Then again, those rules are draconian and do not take into the account that new users generally have no fucking clue what they're doing.-- High Overlord and Lead Conspirator of the Administrative Rebellion. Want help? 20:51, 2 August 2009 (BST)

Sorry about my edits

I'm trying to find a good place to put the link to this ALICE/ NecroWatch related RPjournal thing, but I can't. Could you help me? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Justinbronze (talk • contribs) 00:45, 3 August 2009.

I had forgotten NecroWatch was a group!. But, could I add the link to a page related to ALICE, as I doubt she is a group, she is more flavour than anything. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Justinbronze (talk • contribs) 00:55, 3 August 2009.

Question about Deletions

Might as well ask to see if you know. Speedy deletions have to go the two weeks if someone votes keep, right? Nothing strange happened in the meantime, did it? --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 21:29, 3 August 2009 (BST)

If somebody votes keep then it gets moved to deletions. At which point it would be subject to the usual two weeks for any deletion. --  RoosterDragon  21:32, 3 August 2009 (BST)

So then, this shouldn't have happened? --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 21:36, 3 August 2009 (BST)

That was originally a deletions vote. The three speedy votes meant that the pages were then eligible to be removed. But by the time Nubis got to it a few people had allotted keeps. So you should be asking him really. --  RoosterDragon  21:42, 3 August 2009 (BST)

I wanted to get a non-involved sysop view of things in case there was something I was missing. How long between the speedy delete votes and processing the request does there have to be? Meaning, could hypothetically someone post a deletions, three people vote speedydelete within seconds of one another, and then immediately after a sysop legitimately delete it? Or does more time have to pass? --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 21:47, 3 August 2009 (BST)

The rules don't exactly cover it. I mean there was a period where three speedy's or more were lodged with no keeps. If he'd nuked it then it would have been kosher and any intended latter votes moot. If you want a philosophical discussion on that, I'm sure A/M could turn out walls of text on the matter.

Personally I would have let the vote run, but the minimal content and the bulk of speedy votes don't make it near controversial enough for me to quibble. --  RoosterDragon  22:03, 3 August 2009 (BST)

I'd rather get a clarification for a timeframe added to the Deletions policy. I just recall Hagnat got caned in the past for something similar. After all, I can't undo the deletions to have the ones I voted Keep for run through their normal time. --Akule ^{Maker of fine, hand-crafted UDWiki sass since 2006 -- Akule School's back in session™} 23:12, 3 August 2009 (BST)

If you want clarification, make a section on the deletions talk page about it and I'm sure the other sysops can decide how to treat the grey area. If you want your keeps restored: A/U. --  RoosterDragon  23:15, 3 August 2009 (BST)

Your new category navigation links

are fantastic. Many thanks! --Bob Boberton ^{TF / DW} 23:02, 3 August 2009 (BST)

Well, somebody had to untangle the mess that is our categorization structure. --  RoosterDragon  23:07, 3 August 2009 (BST)

WTH

What did my page do wrong? Moreover, why the hell did you put it up for deletion? (New User Page) And you could at least bother to waste enough of your time to put a link to the actual discussion for deleting it. (Despite the fact I know its just a template; I just feel like bitching about it) --The Shoemaker ^{Talk Red Faction} 23:44, 3 August 2009 (BST)

I put a SD banner on it to alert people. This means you need only check the A/SD page, though there isn't any discussion yet. Further, being a speedy there likely will not be. There are link in the banner if you care to follow them next time.

The page is hideously coded and looks really rather bad. It uses HTML for examples when the is valid wiki-markup to do the same and the wiki markup is preferred in such cases. We have an help section which covers all the basic markup and more anyway. The page is not worth saving, but if you want to drag it out you can vote keep on the SD page and it'll be moved to normal deletions for two weeks of voting. I don't imagine it'll be kept though. --  RoosterDragon  23:53, 3 August 2009 (BST)

Dude...

Does categorising pages turn you on?--Orange Talk 02:09, 4 August 2009 (BST)

Yes, yes it does. He admitted it on IRC. Creepy, I know. I haven't been back to the channel since he said so. :s -- High Overlord and Lead Conspirator of the Administrative Rebellion. Want help? 02:41, 4 August 2009 (BST)

... --  RoosterDragon  02:42, 4 August 2009 (BST)

The new mini maps

are pretty damn sexy. But aren't malls TRP's?--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 20:56, 4 August 2009 (BST)

They're on there, but you'll need eyes like a hawk to pick them out. It's #FFE on a white background (#FFF). So yeah, frankly all the colours need to be better as most of just different shades of grey. Unfortunately borders on the minimap squares are not possible so you're left with plain colours. I'm not sure what to do (is there some sort of standard colour scheme for differentiating TRPs easily?) but you can knock about with these templates to change the colours if you have any ideas. --  RoosterDragon  21:01, 4 August 2009 (BST)

Oh yeah, very slightly blue. Perhaps green? It's not as if we have any forests.... All the other colours seem fine. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:04, 4 August 2009 (BST)

Green it is. I guess I'll make Forts orange or something. --  RoosterDragon  21:10, 4 August 2009 (BST)

Yep. Looks good. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 21:17, 4 August 2009 (BST)

about border colors, you can set them on you template as 'border-color: #FFF!important' or some sort. There is some hacks to make it work on IE too. Anyway, great to see this function of the suburb template finally being implemented. It was a planned move, but one with lots of work to be done, which your bots made it a lot easier. Congratulations --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 21:26, 4 August 2009 (BST)

Don Roosterone

i am in need of a favor that only you, Don Roosterone, can do without spamming recent changes. I need you to solve this problem with your bots, linking the families of malton to a single category instead of four. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 14:24, 6 August 2009 (BST)

ddr made the change before your bots could have the chance. Thanks anyway. --People's Commissar Hagnat ^{[talk] [wcdz]} 15:51, 6 August 2009 (BST)

I'd noticed and was going to ask Conn what the deal was at some point. But this works too, I mean DDR's practically a re-categorization bot all on his own. --  RoosterDragon  16:24, 6 August 2009 (BST)

Civil Defense and the EBS

Hello! My name is George Zip, and I'm sending an alt - Captain Video - south to work the Emergency Broadcast system, with the intention of permanently bringing it back online in the name of public service and Civil Defense. Video has a generator, a radio transmitter, fuel, a single FAK, some ammunition and two needles, and, knowing your interest in the EBS, I was curious if you'd be willing to join me in an attack on its current undead occupants. Cheers! -George Zip ^◆◆◆ 23:42, 7 August 2009 (BST)

Request moving Image:Tompson-mall-logo

I still don't have time to review all your changes yet (yes, still busy with other things and having a break.) But I have noticed a mistake that should be fixed immediately.

Image:Tompson-mall-logo.JPG needs moving. It is the only mall image that ends with uppercase .JPG, and thus doesn't work with your Template:Mall Logo, causing a red link. I can't believe that people looking at, and updating the page never care to fix it since you have added the auto-update feature on March. Well, now that I accidentally come across it, time to make it right.

After the move to lowercase .jpg, links on those pages have to be fixed too:

• UDWiki:Projects/The Great Mall Project
• UDWiki talk:Projects/The Great Mall Project
• Mall Images

-- Kittithaj 19:47, 11 August 2009 (BST)

Couldn't you have done this yourself? In the time it took you to write that I'm sure you could've uploaded a replacement and fixed three links. Tis hardly an major change or anything. No worries though, I'll jump on it. --  RoosterDragon  20:31, 11 August 2009 (BST)

Well, the reason I request it to be moved is to preserve old information. And I have no power to move it myself. Deleting it and all information associated with it, such as the original uploader, is gone. And you know I'm all about preserving those information.

Since you chose the delete/re-upload route, I added the original uploader name, User:Daniel Hicken, to it. Have to give credit where credit is due, even though he may not be here anymore. -- Kittithaj 22:09, 11 August 2009 (BST)

I have no power to move it either, images cannot be moved. --  RoosterDragon  23:23, 11 August 2009 (BST)

Junkyard 67,76 Revisions

Hey Rooster! I'm glad you noticed that the article I wrote for Junkyard 67,76 had been vandalized. I realize this was some time ago. However, is it possible for anyone to revert it back to what it was before Weeks made it a redirect? Thank you in advance. --Chekken 23:44, 13 August 2009 (BST)