Talk:Main Page/Archive

Recruitment page

Now I may not be the most observant of Maltonites, but I've been here for nearly a month and half now, I love UD and as such I check the wiki pretty much everyday for new updates concerning my group, my suburb and more recently the battle at Caiger Mall. However I only just noticed today that there is a recruitment page on the wiki. Like I said it may just be my lack of observational skills, but it I feel that if it took me over a month to find it, it'd take your average person around a week to find it. Is it possible that we could make the Recruitment page a bit more obvious, perhaps by puting a link in the initial introduction? Something along lines of 'New to Malton? Why not join a group, here'. I'd do it myself if it wern't the front page and I knew how to make indirect links. Kripcat 07:57, 11 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I don't think this is a bad Idea, I myself just noticed the recruitment page as well, I will update the front page with something along the lines mentioned. If anyone disagrees with the idea, just delete my link and mention it here. --John Rove 08:22, 11 Feb 2006 (GMT)

You know what might be nice? Having a rotating "Featured Article", in a similar vein to Wikipedia's main page. Rotate it weekly instead of daily, with of course less stringent requirements. It could feature pages that your average Wiki user would find useful, or perhaps just interesting, or exceptionally well written or well formed, or otherwise topical to current events in game. Pages such as the Recruitment page would be an excellent candidate for this sort of treatment. And of course there would be a record of past Featured Articles, for when someone has time to keill to browse. --Reverend Loki 16:32, 24 February 2006 (GMT)

I think thats an excellent idea and would certainly encourage people to make better article's so as to have them put in the featured article list, especially so for groups who are looking to make their name known and/or attrat new members. Perhaps we could elect a 'Featured Articles Delgate' to scour the wiki and each week put up a new article. Kripcat 08:20, 27 February 2006 (GMT)

And we could have one for zombies AND survivors, so that no one complains... 343 00:44, 15 March 2006 (GMT)

Comments next to the link to the suggestion page

Recently I've noticed the comment next to the link to the suggestion page. "Suggest new game features". I think this is flawed. Short as it is, it doesn't convey the fact that it takes skill and luck to make good suggestions, making it almost sound like it should be natural and easy to make suggestions and have them peer-reviewed. Experience has shown us that it is never easy. I would thus suggest that we remove the comment next to that link ; The link's name is self-explanatory. It may look like nothing to you guys, but on the suggestion page, we get a lot of new folks who assume their suggestions should be easily accepted, and original, and don't bother to actualy learn how things are done, or what has been done before, for that matter. This may have reinforced that belief. --McArrowni 02:04, 10 Feb 2006 (GMT)

The link to Zombie Survival Guide

We don't need it on the main page. It's not related directly to the game, and if we're gonna have it there, we might as well have links to websites of every zombie movie, game, and book ever released. --Daranz-Talk 13:57, 21 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Glad someone agrees - I'll remove it now. --LouisB3 21:18, 22 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Eddo36: While I support the linking-to of the ZSG somewhere, on some "related links" page, the Main Page is simply not for links that don't relate directly to the game. I recommend that you make a case on the discussion page of an article when someone disagrees with your edit. You should definitely not just keep changing it back to your version - that annoys people (in general, not just me) immensely, and could lead to negative consequences if you do it repeatedly. Just some friendly advice. --LouisB3 01:33, 23 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Suburb Info Box

I have created an infobox for the suburb pages at the Judgewood page. I'm having trouble implementing the code correctly. Can someone take a look at it and fix it? I've tinkered around with it and can't figure out what is going on. Also anyone is free to look at the code and tinker with it, add stuff or change it. I'd like to implement this on every suburb page, but I'll wait a few days until people have had a chance to look at it.

Now that the box is done and awesome, is there a template for it, like the Template:Groupbox, that we can use to quickly add it to the missing ones? I also think, rather than listing malls and other big buildings by number, that they should be named. --otherlleft 14:33, 16 Sep 2005 (BST)

Latest News Update

I added a table with the latest news update to the right of the logo. The main page was kinda plain, so I thought it might be nice. Revertion can be performed if it looks stupid, and the latest news update can be edited via template:lastupdate --Daranz 22:40, 7 Sep 2005 (BST)

I've moved the content back into the source of Main Page rather than in a separate file, because I can never remember the name of it and it's quite fiddly to track down. I assume the separate file functionality is only really useful for heavily-thrashed Wikis where a frequently-updated page contains another frequently-updated element. --Spiro 16:21, 16 Sep 2005 (BST)

I was wondering if we could get the news updated a little more regularly. Today, yes, had a major release, but it'd be nice to know other things going on around Malton. Maybe not everything in the box on the front page, but at least a link to minor happenings, such as raids on the different malls?--GoNINzo 22:30, 19 Jan 2006 (GMT)

Getting an Index of Existing Wiki Pages...

How does one add a Table-Of-Contents to the Navigation box?

The Table of Contents automatically pops up when the structure gets complex enough on a page (typically you need at least 2 levels of headings). I'm not sure how to do it manually, however. -- Odd Starter 06:15, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

One way is to go to Special Pages (Toolbox), All Pages; this will give you a list of all available pages! Another way is to click Special:Allpages - --Walt.... 21:47, 9 Sep 2005 (BST)

How about a german wiki? crash.... \o/

To answer Odd Starter -- since this isn't what the original poster was asking, I don't think -- two underscores, TOC and two more underscores, as per Wikipedia How-to forces TOC to appear at that location. I know, old. --Nirovan Vorschtatz 02:31, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Recommended for Deletion

I'd like to see a page for deletion reccomendations, similar to Wikipedia's deletion policy. This wiki is growing quickly, and crap tends to grow faster than useful information. How many admins are there, anyway? --otherlleft 17:51, 13 Sep 2005 (BST)

If any page needs deleting, leave me a message and I'll get round to it. I'm on pretty much every day of the week, so it'll probably get deleted sharpish.

I think this sets a bad precedent. There are four mods right now, and bound to be more as the needs of the wiki grow. To take upon yourself the burden of making all those decisions yourself is unfair. I think we're better off having a page for recommendations and discussion, and you mods can decide how best divvy up the work.--otherlleft 15:49, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

Good call - moderators can add the page to their watchlist. --Spiro 15:57, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

I ganked the Deletion policy from MetaWiki and put it up.--otherlleft 16:51, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

Moderators

I would be interested in being a mod/helper, and I have large chunks of time to help update the wiki- something I have been doing on the main site for a while.

I think some responsible users deserve administration priviliges, if only to make it easier to lock commonly vandalized pages and delete accounts. Morlock, Daranz, and Katthew, amongst others, would be natural choices. Personally, I wouldn't want the responsibility. Also, having a moderator who has experience with the wiki source would be good, as it seems hacks are sometimes required to add features.--Milo 05:43, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

Definitely. The three you mention all seem good, and active, making good edits to things - they've now got the power to delete articles and ban users. If anyone else wants to put themselves forward for this, do so here. --Kevan 20:34, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

Eh, IMO we have enough mods now, but if they're ever needed, Otherlleft and LibrarianBrent seem quite familiar with the wiki, and have written some useful entries. And, if other huge groups need to defend their wiki entries (against whatever,) they should probably nominate members...--Milo 23:53, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

So now we know who to pester if we get more pages like Fuckers showing up. Good to know!--otherlleft 02:45, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

Thanks for the compliment, Milo. You're too modest to make note of your own editing prowess! Kevan, guys like him never have the giant ego it takes to nominate themselves . . . but you should consider him if you decide we need others. --otherlleft 05:17, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

I'd second that nomination. He's a sane, level-headed guy. --Katthew 06:26, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

We may want to consider either having no mods from one of the two seemingly at odds groups (COL/DARIS) or having one from each.

If you're still looking for other Moderators, I could take the job. I've Moderated several Urban Dead forums at this point (and Administrated one), as well as other various forums (such as www.Terminator3.com/forums/ ) -Xenomrph 04:45, 25 Sep 2005 (BST)

I've been editing/cleaning a few pages (mostly Suggestions area). I'd like to standardize some stuff like breaking the already large suggestions page into some smaller bits, but at my current non-mod state that would be overreaching. - Squashua

This is a wiki. Policy-making isn't left solely to moderators, but rather it's done by everyone. So, if you wanna do anything major, try to get consent of others and then go ahead with it. --Daranz-Talk 23:33, 5 Oct 2005 (BST)

I've installed the dispute templates from Wikipedia and altered them for here. Just letting everyone know.--AnimeGuy 21:50, 20 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Hi, I'm interested in moderating the Wiki. I haven't got any real experience to be honest, but I sure spell good and I have good punctuation! I also usually double check my posts before posting them. --Carfan7 04:47, 23 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Seconded, Carfan has made consistently good edits and is a real help to the wiki. --LibrarianBrent 05:01, 23 Nov 2005 (GMT)

If another moderator is needed, I have far too much free time for my own good and would be willing to put it toward the betterment of the Urban Dead Wiki. --Lordofnightmares 03:08, 26 March 2006 (BST)

Please have a look at Moderation/Promotions. --Brizth ^W! 11:06, 26 March 2006 (BST)

Questions, FAQ

What's the plural policy? Is it "ranged weapon"s or "ranged weapons"?

I recommend using the singular wherever possible for the actual name of the page. The reason is as follows: If you want to use the plural form of a singular page, you do this: "[[Ranged Weapon]]s". To do the singular form of a plural page requires this: "[[Ranged Weapons|Ranged Weapon]]", which is obviously more work. People universally being lazy, I recommend everyone use the singular form for any new pages (and possibly move old pages). John 16:10, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

That was my take also, but Spiro has been moving e.g. NecroTech building to NecroTech buildings --Markus 16:17, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

Wikipedia's policy seems to be the singular, for what it's worth. --Kevan 20:51, 14 Sep 2005 (BST)

I think the easiest way is just to use whatever's appropriate in the situation and create redirects as needed. --Katthew 08:55, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

. . . which is proven by is declared disinterest in being one. I tend to think anyone who would ask for the job is a little loopy.  ;)--otherlleft 15:51, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

I've started an embryonic Style Guide, currently incorporating John's suggestion since Spiro seems to have been busy redirecting things in accordance with it. Morlock 16:56, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

Does UD itself call it a ranged weapon? The name seems a bit silly, since the weapon has no range. --Jmccorm 18:34, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

Wiki stuff

Should we keep the wiki stuff on the main page? I mean, should all that stuff be in the community portal, or somewhere like that. I mean, actual articles are more important than requests for deletion, so maybe, at least move them to the bottom of the page.--Daranz 21:47, 15 Sep 2005 (BST)

I agree with Daranz on this one. The purpose of the wiki is to provide information. Yes, it's user-edited, but the main page should be links to the information moreso than the maintenance. The community portal sounds like a better place for the internal workings. --otherlleft 23:06, 20 Sep 2005 (BST)

Second that. Community portal seems like a much more logical place for it. --Raelin 23:12, 20 Sep 2005 (BST)

We've been vandalized numerous time, any idea on how to stop it? Is it even enough of a problem to warrant trying?--AnimeGuy

Vandalism is an inherent risk of having a wiki. It gets reverted quickly enough, and there's no real way to deter a determined user. Mods and admins can ban users (and they do) for vandalism, which gets rid of 90% of the culprits after the first couple of attacks, but anyone with the knowledge of how to use a proxy can have as much fun as they like with us.
Fortunately, most get bored pretty quickly. � ceejayoz ^{★ .com} 00:36, 2 Oct 2005 (BST)

Forums

Should we get rid of all the forum links and simply provide a link to the forums page? Should help people get a better idea of whats going on, and simplify updates. --Raelin 21:21, 22 Sep 2005 (BST)

It looks like someone has already made an Unofficial UD Forums page, so I've replaced the various forum links on the main page with a link to that instead. That should make things a LOT clearer. --SL 04:45, 24 Sep 2005 (BST)

External Links

Should there be some sorf of criteria for the links listed here? If all links were posted here the list would become quite long. Perhaps a way to categorize links onto their own seperate pages to save space would keep things organized? --Raelin 05:40, 30 Sep 2005 (BST)

Only the really useful ones relevant to most players should go on the front page. Less relevant links - for example, group homepages - can go where they're more relevant - in the example, the group wiki page. � ceejayoz ^{★ .com} 00:35, 2 Oct 2005 (BST)

What i'm really trying to get at here, though. Is what do we do when two different links are provided that are essentially the same thing(as in the forums, and the translators). Do we provide links to a page that offers the full list and an explination, as we're doing now, or provide the ones we believe to be most relevant/useful? --Raelin 04:38, 2 Oct 2005 (BST)

I'd say if there's one that's very useful and stands out amongst its "competitors" then it should be featured on the front page. The semi-official forums, for example. �ceejayoz ^{★ .com} 19:56, 2 Oct 2005 (BST)

Along these lines, someone seems to be running a business of some kind under the Free Avatar's link. I'm unaware of any problem with this, but it does seem rather strange to me, so I thought I would bring it up. --Guardian of Nekops 09:57, 11 April 2006 (BST)

The free avatars link links to free avatars. There's an option for people who want a personal one. Hardly a business. If necissary, I'll put the custome Avatars on another page and link to it from the Free Avatar page, which includes more and more free avatars for folks to use every couple days. -- Amazing 18:44, 11 April 2006 (BST)

Guidlines for journals

Is or should there be any guidlines for journals? I have recently started playing urban dead, and think I have a good RPG character concept I would like to explore further. More of the rather comical look at the rantings of a mad man with an axe trying to cope with a reality that has become a nightmare.--Kinnison 05:16, 8 Oct 2005 (BST)

So far the only real guidelines I know of are to name your journal like so: "Journal:character's name", and put [[Category:Journal]] somewhere on the page. Other than that, I think you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with the page. --Raelin 06:51, 8 Oct 2005 (BST)

Journal Namespace?

It occurs to me that we have enough Journals around here now that we could probably make the Journal namespace official. This doesn't actually do that much, but it does means that instead of Talk:Journal:X, we'd have Journal Talk:X, which would be much cleaner. Also, it means that we could very easily shunt journals out of the default search engine, letting people find things a tad easier in the general namespace.

Of course, there's an argument that it isn't needed, and even if we made Journal: a proper namespace, we'd still have the shunt all the Journal: pages manually onto the Journal: namespace.

From what I've been playing around with in my own wiki, it seems that adding namespaces isn't that difficult, as I assume that Kevan has complete access to the PHP files that the wiki is based on. It would make things a tad cleaner, at any rate. -- Odd Starter 07:49, 8 Oct 2005 (BST)

Group Pages and POV/NPOV conflicts

Alot of edit wars have been started over this whole "NPOV intro, POV rest of page" stuff. Perhaps we should have seperate pages for a group's POV, maybe a Group: namespace. This would allow us to reserve the main namespace for strictly NPOV, and groups can have their POV too. A simple template on all the group pages in the main namespace could notify readers if the group has a Group: page. --Raelin 23:52, 4 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Would these "Known members" lists go on the NPOV page? --Radoteur 00:28, 5 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Well, it's NPOV information. I suppose if a group has a member list posted on their page it could go on both the NPOV and POV pages, or we could link to the list on the POV page from the NPOV page. --Raelin 00:33, 5 Nov 2005 (GMT)

This is an excellent suggestion! It'd definitely get my vote of approval. --BenM 23:15, 25 Nov 2005 (GMT)

I like the idea of seperate pages. I think that's a sterling idea, but I think that member lists should, as a rule, be left off NPOV pages. While it is fair to talk frankly about whether a group is PK, barricade-mad, zombie-spy orientated, or using other controversial tricks, providing detailed intelligence on the group against the group's wishes seems very far from neutral. Such information should be posted on in-character pages.--Timothy Askins 15:09, 29 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Wiki Contribution Store for Urban Dead

I was thinking, a good way of raising money to pay for maintenance costs would be to open up a wiki-run cafepress store to sell Urban Dead merchandise. I'm sure there are some players with artistic ability who would be willing to create some cool zombie/anti-zombie themed designs on behalf of Urban Dead. People could submit original artwork on the wiki and moderators could (perhaps with voting input) select which ones merited being on a t-shirt. Kevan would obviously need to give his blessing for any of the products that used the urban dead name or logo but I think this could be a good way to raise money that would also give players some cool gear. What do you think? --Jon Pyre 18:54, 22 Dec 2005 (GMT)

I'm waiting for the Urban Dead Turban XD --shaft121 22:52, 06 Jan 2006 (GMT)

Firefox Extensions

I was wondering if this has been updated in a while. Several of the links seem to either be dead or link to apparently useless text pages. --Thelabrat 19:10, 19 Jan 2006 (GMT) I take it back...one dead link (Name Highlighter) that I know of. The useless text pages was me being dumb and not reloading firefox so I could install user scripts. --Thelabrat 19:56, 19 Jan 2006 (GMT)

Front Page Cleanup

I was curious if we could maybe have a front page clean up? In particular, this set of text below the News boxes. We have the repeat of 'The city is dying'. Maybe an in-game, mood description of what is going on, and then a second paragraph of meta-game information. I don't want to just do this due to the high volume of spammers defacing the front page, I don't want to have every person who watches the front page check if it's spammer doing this change. I'd rather get some concensus beforehand. Let me know what you think. --GoNINzo 22:34, 19 Jan 2006 (GMT)

GKers link

I don't think that we need the link to the GKers category on the front page. I think that the best thing would be to link to it from the groups page. That way, it's easy to find if you're looking for a group, but it's not cluttering up the front page. --RedKnight 06:00, 1 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Oh and my mistake about the Zombie group link disapearing. I had decided to move it under the Human group (from the bottom of the list) and then I decided that I didn't need to be doing that yet so I used ctrl+z to undo what I had just done. I guess I didn't go back far enough. --RedKnight 06:40, 1 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Why not? Its another type of group, and every other type of group is represented on the front page. Why the exception? You dont like generator killers? Your entire reason is baseless, as its two words on the page. --Grim s 07:18, 1 Feb 2006 (GMT)

What Grim said. How would you feel if I removed Human Groups from the main page because they were taking up space? - RosutoEnzeru 07:41, 1 Feb 2006 (GMT)

In my opinion, links from the main page should be to important and iformative articles or to categories with a large number of articles. Last time I checked the Category GKer Groups had only four groups in it and just a stub of text. I have no issue with the category itself, but I don't think that it's something important enough to warant a link to from the main page, yet. If the text in the article is expanded and more groups are added to the category, then you can make a case for having a link on the main page. --RedKnight 06:32, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Zkers only has seven groups in there (And some of them are human groups who ZK when slain), and it was added when it had only two or three in it. My belief is that you have a problem with the concept of Gker groups, harbouring a strong dislike for having your generators broken, and are acting out of dislike of that fact, rather than for any rational reason. The link is informative, as anyone in those four groups is likely going to break your generator. The fact is that by denying it a place on the main page you are denying people that have the policy of generator destruction the knowledge of the group, thus directly stunting its growth to the target you require. --Grim s 07:13, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Eh, I don't care either way about generators, myself, and can see the joke in calling generator-destruction groups "GKers", but it doesn't seem important enough to front-page. The list comes across as "these are the six types of group in the game" at first glance. (I'd argue that PKer and ZKer shouldn't really be there either, really.) --Spiro 07:20, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I agree with Spiro, including the part about removing the PKer and ZKer links. And no I really don't have a dislike for having generators broken. My survivor hadn't really used them until NechroNet access and my zombie loves smashing generators (especially the one in the Necro Tech building he's currently assualting.) --RedKnight 07:44, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

The purpose of the wiki is to inform people, and not informing people of groups and their types (Including GKer, which is what is done by absenting it from the front page where all the other types are represented) would appear to run contrary to that purpose. The only other solution i can see is to remove all the groups from the front page (Leaving the groups link on the front page) and making the group types the subcategories of Groups, and removing all the other things masquerading as subgroups of that category, placing them inside the organisations category. --Grim s 08:50, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I think mentioning the Survivor and Zombie groups is useful, so that zombie players don't assume that only the survivors get to have groups. But yeah, sorting out the subcategories would be good: Category:Groups gives a patchy set of subs, and could do with rewriting anyway (that the group page guidelines really don't need to be there). --Spiro 08:54, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I have taken the above suggestions and removed all group category links from the main page, as well as removing all of the subcategories from the Groups page except for the group types and DHPD because it is giving me trouble. If anyone disagrees, they are free to change it back. --John Rove 09:33, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

A bit bad of the Wiki software to only show A-J of the subcategories when it's showing A-J of the groups. Maybe subcategories aren't going to work for this. --Spiro 09:39, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I bypassed that in my latest edit. --Grim s 09:54, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

You albel groups by what they want to be labeled as, those in PKer groups are their because they requested to be there, and if there are any that did not request they should be moved to their respective pages. --ramby 15:05, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

I think that if there are groups that are dedicated to just generator destruction, then they have the right to have their group displayed in the wiki as their own kind. If you want to say that it isn't important enough to have a different category for them, then why don't we just delete PK and ZK groups and only have human/zombie groups?--AssaultLord 16:11, 3 Feb 2006 (GMT)

Zombie Pens

I thank we the survivors should go to a part of the city to revive all but a few zombies which will be traped in certain buildings called zombie pens the Zeds (Zombies) will be used for exp. NT scientists should be on call to revive killed survivors and medics should be there to cure those infected by strong Zeds in the pens. We need to group up at a point to start first then when our numbers grow we spread out from this point the start point should be a NT or hospital building. After the Head Base is started we move out setting up small outposts with radio contact to the main base. The outposts will stop Zeds from entering the parimiter by death or revive, so gunmen and fighters would need to be posted with NT scientists. The Zeds in the pens will be survivors that kill other survivors so we can keep them from starting trouble in our suburb. I need those interested in starting the up to please contact me with ideas of the perfect suburb for the start of our new home for all survivors for if we manage this then soon we could have no more Zeds on the streets for we could be safe. Please contact Athkatla at Rolt Heights in the game or lovedaanimals@yahoo.com.