User talk:Fenyx4

Abacus
Hiya Fenyx,

I noticed you just did an entry for abacus, and wondered if you would like a write up of how the abacus works in the Ultima 4 Character creation system?


 * I'd love to see that! -- Fenyx4 18:01, April 26, 2010 (UTC)

New banner template
Hi Fenyx, I was thinking perhaps it would be good to have a new template for a "consensus required" banner. AngusM raised a good point about this recently as well. Speaking for myself, there are a lot of times where I'd like to draw attention to an issue for discussion but it doesn't feel appropriate to use the expert verification banner, since there isn't anything that needs to be verified, per se. Perhaps Expert-verify could even be changed to Consensus, since it allows for a broader range of situations. What do you think? --Terilem 08:48, August 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of the consensus banner. I'm ambivalent about just changing the expert to it vs. having a different one. The ambivalence might be a good sign that just changing would be best though. :) If no one complains soon I'll go ahead and do that. -- Fenyx4 19:27, August 29, 2010 (UTC)

Things Fenyx needs to fix after the move
Not everything is perfect yet;
 * DPL replaceintitle breaks things
 * I've simply removed the replaceintitle in Template:NPC list for now. That will make stuff in show up in the lists until I can get it fixed.


 * Sidebar
 * Cleaned this up some


 * Install a Rich Text Editor
 * Installed one


 * Edit counts
 * Found error in revision table


 * Galleries
 * Now displaying but needs some formatting improvement


 * Changing the "Editable Codex" namespace to something not too wordy but more related to the current name (Ultima Codex? Codex of Ultima?)
 * My Home
 * A better search extension (MWSearch(Lucene), Sphynx, or/and OpenSearchXML)
 * Video links
 * Forum
 * Tables
 * This should be fixed but you might have to do a full refresh (ctrl-f5 in firefox) for it to show up immediately. The tables aren't matching the old ones exactly but I sorta like 'em better this way. If people want it adjusted further let me know and I can keep messing with the css.


 * Show/Hide in tables
 * Remove the Template:Moving from articles
 * Fix gif thumbnails
 * Page Creation box on main page
 * RecentChanges to match our old Recentchanges
 * Title bar
 * Favicon
 * Changing/Merging usernames
 * Renameuser extension

--

If you see a page missing please use Wikia's Export to export and Special:Import to import it (or just let me know and I'll do it). I wouldn't be surprised if somethings got missed due to the crappy way I had to do the move thanks to Wikia not updated the dump. I know the page count is WAY off. But I think that is either due to a counting error, it hasn't fully caught up with all the imports, or it counts differently than Wikia. Fenyx4 09:44, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * I noticed a serious bug with gif-files. If they are shrinked, then they seem to make some colors (especially black) transparent. Can be seen for example here : List of Timegate Locations.
 * EDIT: Two more points:
 * The tutorial link on the main page still points to wikia.
 * Page creation box above it is broken.--Tribun 10:04, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Dang it. I'd hoped that gif problem was something limited to home server and that a full fledged webserver wouldn't suffer from the problem. I'll look into it.
 * Removing references to wikia is fun everyone can join in on! :)
 * If people want to see something amusing check out the Job queue on Special:Statistics. Slowly working through a 14k long list! Fenyx4 10:17, 26 October 2010 (PDT)
 * What is really sad, is :User talk:Fenyx4 is the 2nd most viewed page on this wiki. Dungy 10:54, 26 October 2010 (PDT)

FYI: Currently importing new files requires administrator status. That should probably be changed. Also, can I be an admin on the new site. Please? Please? Pretty Please? Dungy 17:48, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Whoa, you are quite enthusiastic, aren't you? I for my part don't really have use for too much power, but some kind of recognition, now that we are free of wikia, would be nice (is there something alse besides admins?).Btw., I noticed that the geography navigation isn't yet collapsable.--Tribun 10:58, 26 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Mainly, I'd love the ability to delete pages. It means I could fix my own mistakes instead of always relying on Fenyx to do it for me.  Dungy 11:07, 26 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Also, uploading is curently disabled. Once that gets fixed, I have a ton of new Ultima IX NPC photos to upload. :P

Yeah. Uhm, if we are unable to fix the gif-bug (however THAT happened), the only alternative would be to convert all of them to png (to prevent loss) and re-upload them and changing all links. I sincerely hope however, that it won't come to that.--Tribun 11:15, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Sad? User talk:Fenyx4 being the 2nd most viewed page isn't sad. It's awesome! ;)
 * Doh. Sorry about the import problem. I'll try to figure out who to change the permissions on that. Enabling upload was easy though. Let me know if you are still having problems with that.
 * Figuring out some sort of admin nomination thingy was on my list of things to do after we made the move! Thanks for bringing it up. Umm... But I dunno what is typically done. And besides "get some sort of consensus" I dunno what to do. So, we'd have to dig into it and figure out how we want to deal with that. By default there is Admin, Bureaucrat, and Bot. There are ways to make more... but I don't even know what the difference is between Admin and Bureaucrat. I'm gonna keep working on polishing this move up before I start looking at though. But I'd love if someone starting figuring out how we want to do it.
 * Yeah... gif thing is really bothering me too. I notice the Job queue has gone up. Wonder if part of that queue is generating thumbnails... Hrm... Fenyx4 11:31, 26 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Thumbnails are in the process of getting fixed. Flushing out all the ones it already made incorrectly is taking awhile but it should be done soon. Fenyx4 12:18, 26 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Okay, done with the gif thumbnails. If you see any bad ones still lurking out there let me know. Oh look the job queue is back up to 15k. :) Fenyx4 12:41, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Yes, we'll have to do something about new admins in order to help Fenyx. And BTW, having only one admin is dangerous... no one to control Fenyx :). No, I mean at Wikia we had some Wikia admins in case something happened to the regular admins, but here, if Fenyx is sick or on leave, we're left without an admin... Btw, I think WTF should be an admin, even if it is honorary, as he's hosting the site and all...--Sega381 17:29, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * It's true the power is going straight to my head. We must put checks and balances in place before I decide to, say, force a skin on you guys with fixed width and a crappy interface!
 * I should really go dig into how other wikis do nominations 'n' elections 'n' stuff. I know the people I'd like to make admins but I want the community to make the choice not me. Fenyx4 00:20, 27 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Yep, that would be good. In the wikis I've participated as an admin, usually one of the admins proposes a new candidate, and all the admins give their votes. After that, when a consensus is reached, admin powers are given to the candidate. However, seeing as we have only one admin here, this process doesn't make much sense, so if you can find how some other wikis do it, it would be great.
 * Given the fact that we don't have an admin, an idea would be that the admin(s) propose one or more admin candidates, send messages to all users about the nomination, and leave the nomination up for votes and discussions on all the community members that want to participate. After, I don't know, a couple of weeks, the admin(s) collect the votes and discussion and make a descision. I'm just making this up here, but it seems like a logical idea to me.--Sega381 06:04, 27 October 2010 (PDT)

Yep, it works! Can you tell us what the engine screwed up, resulting in the mrangled gifs? Oh, btw., I noticed that tables have a light-gray instead of white background. Can you tweak that (Can also be seen on the timegate destination page).--Tribun 12:43, 26 October 2010 (PDT)

Title bar - Currently the title is "The Codex of Editable Wisdom, a Wikia wiki for Ultima and Ultima Online". Could you please remove the Wikia part? Also, a lot of people seemed to like the "Codex of Ultima Wisdom", so you might want to change Editable to Ultima. Dungy 12:49, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Whatever method it was using to make the thumbs was just doing it wrong. I don't know why it was making black transparent. And I'm not even sure what it was using to resize them. But there was an option to use ImageMagick instead. So, I turned that on and then deleted all the thumbs generated so far to force it to remake them.
 * The table formatting problems is already on my list. Changed it to be a bit clearer. Fenyx4 12:55, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * How did I miss this for so long: all the galleries are broken. Guess this needs to get a top spot for fixing.--Tribun 16:43, 26 October 2010 (PDT)


 * I for one just didn't see any of the pages we use the gallery tag on. :) MediaWiki has that tag by default but it just differs slightly in the usage on Wikia. Fenyx4 00:20, 27 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Figured out RecentChanges! Just go into Special:Preferences->Recent changes and check "Use enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)" and the click "Save". -- Fenyx4 00:42, 27 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Galleries are still a little bit broken. They're only displaying a maximum of 4 per row, and there seems to be a large white blank space around each image.  This makes the Lost Vale gallery take up a frightening amount of excess space. Dungy 05:33, 27 October 2010 (PDT)

Any chance of getting something like My Home from Wikia over here? I know there's Recent Changes, but it is a bit difficult to easily and quickly look over for changes. --Warder Dragon 14:31, 27 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Hehe, I never used "My Home".... I always thought that Recent Changes was easier and more efficient :)--Sega381 16:52, 27 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Oog, I never used My Home either. I think it was solely a Wikia developed thing. I'll add it to my list and see if I can find something similar though. -- Fenyx4 07:39, 28 October 2010 (PDT)

Thanks to WoWPedia I tracked down a good Youtube extension. It needed a bit of tweaking to allow you to specify the width and height but it works now (I hope). The weird Video: links don't work anymore (although as far as I can tell we only used that in one place). So you we have to use the &lt;youtube&gt;. You can see it in action in [[Main_Page/featuredmedia. -- Fenyx4 07:39, 28 October 2010 (PDT)


 * I found serious Wikia remains in the references of the Compainons, also Most of these references seem to be utterly useless. I don't dare to tinker with it, so can you cleanse them?--Tribun 06:24, 29 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Good point. I know how to fix that, I'll get on that.--Sega381 10:17, 29 October 2010 (PDT)

I know this doesn't belong here, but I don't know where else to write it: I updated all the links on Wikipedia to our new home, eliminating all mention of the old Codex.--Tribun 13:13, 29 October 2010 (PDT)


 * In my never ending quest to cleanse the codex of orphaned pages, I've noticed a number of Ultima IV NPC pages are incorrectly appearing as orphaned when they are not. Dungy 14:49, 23 November 2010 (PST)

Rich Text Editor
Okay, I installed one. You should now see a "Rich Editor" link above the edit window that let's you enable it. Definitely not the same as the one on Wikia (I think they forked awhile back). I messed with it a bit and this one doesn't seem as feature rich... But I never used the Rich Editor on Wikia. People use the Rich Editor does this meet your needs? -- Fenyx4 06:55, 28 October 2010 (PDT)

Search Function
I was wondering if it is possible to install a better search function. One thing I liked about wikia is when you started a search function, it gave you a list of available files that started with the same letters. Also, the current function can't find "sea serpents" when you do a search for "sea serpent". Not very good. Dungy 17:07, 28 October 2010 (PDT)


 * We're probably using the default search. There are several more. Wikia uses, according to the Special:Version page, "Wikia Search (Version 0.1)", "	cross-Wikia search engine using Solr backend". According to our Special:Version page, we are using... none, which is the default. Wowpedia recommends "MWSearch (and Lucene-search)" and "OpenSearchXml" (they have installed the latter in their new site). There is an interesting article about "Why MediaWiki's Site Search Stinks" you may want to read about. They also recommend MWSearch (Lucene), and another one called Sphynx.--Sega381 17:50, 28 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Thanks for tracking these down! Sorry I haven't had a chance to peek at them yet. But trust me they are definitely next on my list. -- Fenyx4 09:09, 30 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Turns out this is a bit more involved than other extensions. Requiring you to actually run extra services on the server. I think I'm going to demo it on my local machine and then I'll have to discuss with WTF about the possibilities of doing this with his hosting. -- Fenyx4 14:00, 31 October 2010 (PDT)


 * I got one part of Dungy's request. The auto-complete should now be working. -- Fenyx4 17:24, 2 November 2010 (PDT)

Japanese Ports
Seeing that you right now are making pictures and videos of the FM-Towns versions, do you have access to the Sharp x68000 version of Ultima V. From the few shots I saw, the dungeon graphics of the port are damn good, but it is nearly impossible to get good shots.--Tribun 10:26, 21 June 2011 (PDT)
 * I don't have access to it now but I'll try poking around and see what I can find. -- Fenyx4 10:37, 21 June 2011 (PDT)
 * I've gotten it up and running. Is there anything specific you'd like some screenshots or video of? -- Fenyx4 11:32, 21 June 2011 (PDT)


 * Just three or four shots of each of the three dungeon types, best with enemies and things like doors and fountains. They'd do good to show the graphical differences.--Tribun 13:26, 21 June 2011 (PDT)

Wow, it's impressive how different the same amount of colors looks at double the resolution. Thanks for the shots (although the moongate picture seems to be broken and far too big).--Tribun 10:43, 22 June 2011 (PDT)


 * Weird what happened to the moongate image. I'll have to reupload it later. -- Fenyx4 10:59, 22 June 2011 (PDT)

A little request: could you please also upload the actual intros of FM-Towns Ultima IV and V? I curious to see how they look in VGA.--Tribun 17:35, 6 February 2012 (PST)

Case insensitive searches and links
Is it possible to make inter-wiki links and searches using the search box case-insensitive. Can I use "Lord british" to link to Lord British? Using the search box would be easier for everyone if you didn't have to properly capitalize everything. I mean, we'd still have to use proper capitalization in all of our articles, it'd just make finding and linking articles easier for everyone. Dungy 16:38, 14 August 2011 (PDT)


 * Yeah, that would be incredibly handy. It does get somewhat frustrating always having to rewrite multi-word article titles in common form when linking to them in the context of a sentence. Kinda makes me wish we didn't have strictly capitalized titles. --Terilem 16:58, 14 August 2011 (PDT)


 * I'm afraid I don't know of any way to change this. It is a fairly low level code in mediawiki and, to my knowledge, there isn't a simple setting that I can change. -- Fenyx4 12:37, 19 August 2011 (PDT)

Spammers
Seriously, the spammer problem gets way out of hand and they by now have polluted our user database. We really have to find a way to keep them out (and maybe you can dispose of all these spammer accounts, as they have no worth at all).--Tribun 11:53, 19 August 2011 (PDT)


 * We already have a captcha on account creation. Enforce the creation of an account to upload images. Have an extension designed to stop bots. And have preemptively blocked over 140 thousand IP addresses. If you have any suggestions I'd gladly consider them.
 * The spammer accounts do have worth I'm afraid. They're blocked. If I delete them they would no longer be blocked thus allowing the spammers back in. Could you explain what your precise problem with having them around is? Although deleting them isn't an option perhaps I could find a solution to your actual issue with them. -- Fenyx4 12:37, 19 August 2011 (PDT)


 * I have a problem how they bog down the user list. Maybe you can make blocked accounts invisible, meaning they no longer appear on the list?--Tribun 12:49, 19 August 2011 (PDT)


 * That I think I can do. -- Fenyx4 13:31, 19 August 2011 (PDT)

FM Towns Intro Translations
Hey, there; just a notice that the first three intros to the FM Towns games have been translated here. I'll get on the ones for U4 and 5. RACapowski 19:45, 28 August 2011 (PDT)
 * You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. I've posted links to the translations on the videos I uploaded. I'll try to annotate them up later. -- Fenyx4 07:25, 30 August 2011 (PDT)
 * Long time coming, but the U4 & U5 intros (as well as, for odd reasons, the Japanese translation of Garriott's 1-2-3 Trilogy welcome note) are done, posted at the same URL. 74.75.238.32 19:24, 10 October 2011 (PDT)
 * Dang it, that was me. RACapowski 19:26, 10 October 2011 (PDT)

Not updated categories
While experimenting with not being logged in, I noticed that ALLcategories were recently (~2 months) where articles had been added were not updated, meaning a user that isn't logged in doesn't see the new articles. This seems to be a much bigger problem so is there a way to flush the cache so that it is forced to show the newest version?--Tribun 15:47, 13 December 2011 (PST)
 * I noticed the same thing yesterday, but forgot to post about it. Dungy 16:51, 13 December 2011 (PST)

Can I make a request? Could you please program a bot to purge the cache of all categories and pages (would that be difficult?) so that anonymus users can get the updated lists and pages? I just noticed the problem again and think something should be done.--Tribun 18:11, 26 December 2012 (PST)


 * I'm hoping that updating the wiki to a newer version will help with that. Just need to get my lazy ass around to doing that. -- Fenyx4 18:15, 26 December 2012 (PST)

It's getting out of hand
Fenyx, we really need to do something about the spammers. We now have five spambots a day. Please, can you make it that new accounts have to be approved by the admins first (f.e. Dungy) before they are activated? I think our real users would understand.--Tribun 10:49, 28 December 2011 (PST)


 * Seconded. I havn't seen anyone make a new account just to make a minor edit in quite a while. Spammers are bad, m'kay.--Browncoat Jayson 11:24, 28 December 2011 (PST)
 * I have to reluctantly agree. When there was 1 or 2 spam messages a week I could deal with it, but now it's like 3 or 4 a day.  This is getting obnoxious. Dungy 14:19, 28 December 2011 (PST)


 * Fourthed. (Quartered? And Drawn?) --polygoncount (Polygon Dragon -==(UDIC)==-) 00:21, 29 December 2011 (PST)


 * I've e-mailed Fenyx, hopefully he reads it.--Tribun 06:20, 29 December 2011 (PST)


 * Thanks for the e-mail but I do get e-mailed every-time there is an edit on my discussion page.
 * I tried grabbing a new blacklisted ip list yesterday but messed up and ran out of time.
 * Anyways I've turned off account creation for now to stop the deluge we've had. I'll try to get to the blacklist soon. Maybe set up an automated process to grab a new one every week.
 * I still oppose having a walled garden (but I understand that I'm not active on here so my vote doesn't hold much weight). But even though I've turned off account creation for now to stop the deluge the discussion is still open. And there are hopefully still other options. We've been hit hard before and I've managed to decrease it then. -- Fenyx4 07:08, 29 December 2011 (PST)

First thanks that you've stopped the flood of spammers. As for "walled garden", I've been on numerous wikis and boards already where it was normal that a new account had to be manually activated by an admin. It's just to keep out spambots and considering how small our community is, I don't see much of a problem with it.--Tribun 07:43, 29 December 2011 (PST)


 * We could also ask ourselves what damage is really being done by them. I don't have to deal w/the annoyance of docking these guys on a multi-daily basis, but the only wrong I feel is that it is offensive to us and our precious wiki. The way I see it, what's important is that readers don't see the spams. It'd wager that not a single user has seen any.
 * I am curious as to how they pull it off, though. We have CAPTCHAs in place, don't we? Are they defeated by bots because they are too weak or are there sweat-shops in Asia dedicated to answering each and every one of them? The Ultra-Mind 15:33, 29 December 2011 (PST)


 * Just got ConfirmAccount extension working. Admins will have to check Special:ConfirmAccounts to actually let people in.
 * As Tribun said it will hopefully keep the spambots out. I still don't like it though. Maybe it is a weakness in my character but when I come across something like this on other wikis I typically turn the other way and don't look back. On the Wing Commander one it was over 24 before they confirmed and I'd forgotten what I was going to fix on there.... I need to figure how to get this extension to e-mail me when someone makes a request... -- Fenyx4 08:27, 28 January 2012 (PST)
 * Okay, I've got it e-mail me now. I might be able add more e-mails if other admins would like notifications. -- Fenyx4 08:37, 28 January 2012 (PST)

Problem with picture update
There seems to be a problem when updating pictures. Sometimes after the upload, the wiki refuses to show the new picture and still uses the old one. Could you please look into that? Seems to be a cache problem.--Tribun 06:04, 8 January 2012 (PST)


 * [:Image:U72box.jpg] right? It looks like it has updated now. Just like back on wikia it takes a little time for pictures to get updated. This seems to be working just a bit slower than instant. (P.S. Unlike the categories that don't seem to be updating at all. I still gotta figure out how to fix that.) -- Fenyx4 07:23, 10 January 2012 (PST)

Aaaand We're Back!
As some may have noticed the Codex was down for a few hours. As you are reading this you can see that we are back up and running. No wiki data was actually in danger. We only lost some settings files (not actually sure why though). PHP was updated in our attempts to fix it which broke the ReCaptcha extension. But as that wasn't helping to keep the spam bots out anyways it doesn't seem to be a big loss so I've disabled it. Sorry for the downtime. -- Fenyx4 22:25, 4 February 2012 (PST)
 * Well, apparently the reCaptcha was stopping the anonymous bots. So, I'll see if I can dust of my php skills and go fix that extension. -- Fenyx4 06:53, 5 February 2012 (PST)
 * Should be working now. -- Fenyx4 07:11, 5 February 2012 (PST)
 * Thanks for all your hard work. I've been away for the last week, and will probably be away for the next week, but it's awesome you addressed this problem. Dungy 17:17, 5 February 2012 (PST)
 * Oh, it seems the search auto-finish, that thing that finished searches if there are pages with that name seems to be not working. Dungy 17:27, 7 February 2012 (PST)
 * Hrm, not sure why that isn't working. In the settings that is turned on. I'll keep messing with it. -- Fenyx4 08:30, 8 February 2012 (PST)
 * I also keep getting the following error message when viewing the codex, "Function split is deprecated in /nfs/c03/h03/mnt/55109/domains/codex.ultimaaiera.com/html/extensions/DynamicPageList/DPLMain.php on line 3385" It's not stopping me from viewing or loading the codex, and it appears to be happening semi-randomly, but I'd love to get rid of it. Dungy 05:15, 11 February 2012 (PST)
 * *rubs temples* I may need to upgrade the whole wiki to a new version to properly support this new version of php. -- Fenyx4 09:44, 13 February 2012 (PST)

New contributor having difficulty creating an account
User KopeofOnrac has been trying to create an account here in the wiki, but has been having difficulties. "I'm trying to get into my new login for codex.ultimaaiera.com, and I'm having no luck. I keep asking for an email for my new password, but I get nothing.  My login name is KopeofOnrac." "Oh wait, now it says that my user name KopeofOnrac is pending account request. That's strange.  I could have sworn I got an account approval message, but I guess I must not have.  It'll probably clear itself up."

Any idea the problem? Or is it just a matter of patience until things get cleared up? Dungy 02:07, 12 February 2012 (PST)
 * Just confirmed him in Special:ConfirmAccounts. You should have access to that too. Would you like me to try to set it up to e-mail you as well when someone requests an account? -- Fenyx4 08:35, 12 February 2012 (PST)
 * I don't have access to Special:ConfirmAccounts. That's only bureaucrats. Maybe it should be accessible to admins as well. But yeah, I'd love an email as well.  Dungy 09:01, 12 February 2012 (PST)
 * OK, admins can access account confirmation now. Dungy 11:48, 12 February 2012 (PST)

Table of Contents
Just drawing your attention to this conversation Talk:Ultima VI Transcript (old). Is there anything there that could easily be incorporated here? Dungy 17:55, 12 February 2012 (PST)
 * The instructions seem pretty straight forward. - Iceblade 21:00, 12 February 2012 (EST)

Sedition from Wikia
I accidentally went to Wikia and noticed it to be disappointingly vibrant. I was wondering why you weren't leaving seditious messages on their talk pages anymore, trying to attract them here. In fact, you're still leaving a bot message welcoming them. Do we need to put someone on sedition duty? The Ultra-Mind 21:25, 15 June 2012 (PDT)


 * Fenyx can confirm, but I'm pretty sure the admins there started shutting that down. It's my understanding that we aren't allowed to link this wiki on anyone's talk page.


 * On the other hand, in an average week the Wikia version only gets a small handful of minor edits from mostly anonymous contributors. It's hardly what I'd call a thriving community there. --Terilem 21:37, 15 June 2012 (PDT)


 * Yeah, SemanticDrifter is paying really close attention to it. Not much to do there unless he stops looking. The automated messages aren't from me per se. Wikia automates those messages and has them addressed from admins. I'm still an admin on there so my name still shows up. (I'm honestly surprised my admin status hasn't been revoked.) -- Fenyx4 22:47, 15 June 2012 (PDT)


 * Well, the old wikia place is pretty much as dead as a doornail. The number of edits per day (if any at all) is 1-2, it has about 1400 articles less than our current home (not to speak of screenshots), all illustrations are the old, bad versions and most articles are horribly outdated old versions that were long re-written here. Wikia is just too stubborn to admit that it is clinically dead.--Tribun 05:23, 16 June 2012 (PDT)


 * Dead from our point of view perhaps, but not the casual visitor; regardless of the lack of editing activity, I'm willing to bet Wikia still gets a lot of traffic, and there isn't much we can do about it. Our association with The Ultima Codex certainly helps, but what really matters in a big way is Google: Wikia simply buries us when it comes to search results. Most prospective visitors would be completely oblivious to the politics of the situation and just click through to the first wiki that shows up. --Terilem 18:50, 16 June 2012 (PDT)


 * Heh. Now a Wikia staffer is suddenly carrying out mass article clean-ups. Rather interesting timing in light of current developments in the Ultima community. --Terilem 18:15, 12 July 2012 (PDT)
 * Hehehe. I like their main page "the game will be set in the universe depicted in Ultima IV: Quest For the Avatar". Gonna be hard for people to keep those names straight. Subtle difference. ;)
 * Perhaps I'll have FenyxBot run through and hit the same spelling fixing his bot fixed... Although I'm betting people here have already caught a lot of them over the years. -- Fenyx4 06:22, 13 July 2012 (PDT)

An error message when updating the U9 Transcript
Not sure where to post about this error message, but here it is:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "Revision::insertOn". Database returned error "5: Out of memory (Needed 857744 bytes) (internal-db.s55109.gridserver.com)".

Is this error perhaps the result of too much text on a single wiki page? - User:Iceblade 19 October 2012


 * I'm afraid I can't reproduce it now. The max size for an article should be 2048 kilobytes and currently the article is only(!!!) 765 kilobytes long. So unless your next edit was doubling it in size... I'll ask Mr. WtF if we are running short on space and/or if he already increased it. -- Fenyx4 06:40, 26 October 2012 (PDT)


 * Just checked it out, and it works without issue. - User:Iceblade 8 December 2012

Some Deletion Please
In the category "Articles for Deletion" we have amassed a number of really big pictures that were replaced with much slimmer versions. Could you please delete these old pictures (they only cost server HD space).--Tribun 14:55, 3 January 2013 (PST)

Feature request: &amp;nbsp; hack
Because it's bad style to separate numbers in a paragraph from the words with which they are mated, (such as "Ultima" and "IV", "7" and "A.M.", "5" and "sqft.", etc.) I've been experimenting with putting &amp;nbsp;es to keep "Ultima" and their roman numerals from being separated. Unfortunately, it makes for awkward code, especially when the text forms a link, since "Ultima&amp;nbsp;IV" will not resolve to a valid link, saying nothing about the massive task in applying that correction to the whole wiki. I was wondering if a hack could be made to the site's engine, such that any displayed text that begins with "Ultima" is followed by a space and then either "I", "V" or "X" have a &amp;nbsp; replace the space. No one would probably even notice. I thought I'd ask you if it is feasible before putting it to the community. The Ultra-Mind 17:43, 17 February 2013 (PST)


 * This sounds interesting in theory, but I fear it will fall on our feet once we need to edit such an article. I made the painful experience that it is a nightmare to edit an article that is littered with such code.--Tribun 22:49, 17 February 2013 (PST)


 * I feel you're overstating the issue quite a bit. It seems you're drawing an equivalency between this idea and the result of unsuspecting contributors using the rich text editor, which I think is unfair. What The Ultra-Mind is proposing is pretty harmless and would largely be constrained to game titles, which would hardly result in articles being littered with code as you're suggesting. --Terilem 23:19, 17 February 2013 (PST)


 * Perhaps it is just bad memories, yet I can't shake off that feeling.--Tribun 04:35, 18 February 2013 (PST)


 * Let's avoid hacking the site's engine. That sounds like a maintenance nightmare. :)
 * There are multiple ways to do it though without messing around in mediawiki's source code though. Ultima&amp;nbsp;IV may not resolve to a valid link but you can create a redirect from that link to Ultima IV . But I agree with Tribun that &amp;nbsp; is fugly. Perhaps not for all the same reasons though. I think it can be confusing. When scanning the text it really just looks like gobbledegook to me and I have to pause and spend extra time parsing it. And if we ever want to change it later we have to go digging through all the pages to make the change again.
 * To fix the link/redirect issue we can use &#060;span style="white-space: nowrap;"> Ultima IV &#060;/span>. That still suffers from being a bit verbose and people entering it regularly could easily make a mistake and not notice. And doesn't fix having to go through everywhere and change it all again if we want it to look different.
 * So, we shove it in a template. will do exactly what the above does but it does it a bit cleaner. And it can easily be used elsewhere in the wiki. It is pretty clean too (still not quite as clean as I would like though). Also, although it makes it easy to change how nowrapping is done in the future, it doesn't make changing how we display the game titles in the future easy.
 * Sadly that is where I run out. I think the best solution would be to have template like this for each game. It would know that we want it to italicized and have no wrapping. We could change that formatting all in one place so we don't have to do it everywhere all over again. And it would be clean. But it breaks linking again since you can't have the link brackets around the span tag. Basically we can have the template always link or not link and clearly that doesn't work. If anyone has insight on how to get that working that would be awesome. Otherwise I think we'd have to go with the nowrap template. -- Fenyx4 08:46, 18 February 2013 (PST)

That's very imaginative. But in the end, it involves beating the code w/the ugly stick, at least a little, and editors are bound to make mistakes from time to time. Even though we can back out of something like that, then we still introduce just a little bit of clutter to all the articles' histories.

From what I understand about the site engine, I could probably make the change myself, if I could be trusted to act in good faith :) FWIW, I'm an accomplished developer and unlike most supposed professionals, I write code that can actually be easily maintained or cleanly reversed, as the case may be. Never am I more aware of that need as I am now, as my job for the last year and a half has been wrangling with the mess made by those to whom my employers outsourced overseas (before the got fed up and hired me)! So, what I'm saying is, worse case scenario, we have to reverse the changes, then no one who visits the Codex thereafter has any idea that the hack was ever applied. The Ultra-Mind 09:39, 18 February 2013 (PST)


 * Would it not be easier to apply this via CSS? Titles are italics and all hyperlinks are a tags, so apply a combo style that &lt;i&gt;&lt;a&gt; is no-wrap. Or would that break anythine else? --Browncoat Jayson 10:49, 18 February 2013 (PST)


 * @Ultra-Mind this is a content issue and doesn't need a code fix. Fixing it in the code seems like it would break HTML, CSS and Mediawiki standards and have to be redone everytime we wanted to bump up the mediawiki version. Why bother with that when we can just fix it in the content.
 * @Browncoat hrm... tempting idea but it wouldn't always work. If you look under, say, Julia's portrait 'Ultima Underworld' is not in a &lt;i&gt; tag due to the italicization is inverted since the entire line is italicized. And I would just be worried that it would pop up in random places that we do wanting wrapping. -- Fenyx4 11:39, 18 February 2013 (PST)


 * True, but in that instance, the game title isn't a hyperlink so it wouldn't matter anyway. There would always be a possibility that it would apply somewhere that we don't expect, but its easier to correct those few places than to force users to consistently apply a template to content. Anyway, just a thought. --Browncoat Jayson 13:20, 18 February 2013 (PST)

@Fenyx I don't know about HTML or CSS, but it quite probably would break w/Mediawiki standards. If the hack is as simple as I hope it would be, then it might just amount to a few minutes work every time my last few minutes work got clobbered. Of course, things happen--people lose interest in their hobbies, they die, etc. Now I could be wrong, but if that were to happen to me, I don't see how that would leave the rest of you up the creek, w/out a simple way of preparing for plan B. The Ultra-Mind 14:35, 18 February 2013 (PST)

I can't really follow all the code talk, but why does it have to break links? Can't it just be formatted as Ultima&amp;nbsp;IV ? That said, the template idea sounds a lot simpler for an editor to deal with. I can handle throwing in a few extra brackets. --Terilem 18:03, 18 February 2013 (PST)


 * ... *facepalm*
 * Terilem wins this conversation. :)
 * That also would fix the template linking problem. So Ultima IV for linked ones and for unlinked.
 * What do people think of that? If we like it then I can make the templates and have FenyxBot hit the majority of them. -- Fenyx4 19:45, 18 February 2013 (PST)
 * I'm taking the silence as agreement to this? I'll see about running FenyxBot after the Mediawiki update. That should give the site a good shakedown. :) -- Fenyx4 12:36, 5 March 2013 (PST)


 * To be honest I didn't get what actually will be new and what we have to do in the future.--Tribun 15:02, 5 March 2013 (PST)
 * Finally started on this. I've demoed it for on Ultima IV and Julia. -- Fenyx4 14:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.20
The update is mostly done. It went fairly smoothly but there are a few hiccups. The forums disappeared being the worst. The data is still there it is just hiding. The Youtube tag extension no longer works but there are recommended replacements so that will be fairly simple. ConfirmAccount doesn't seem to be sending e-mails to the specified admins. I'll work on fixing these tomorrow.

I also removed UserMerge since it hasn't been used since the move from Wikia.

FCKEditor is outdated and has security flaws. Did anyone ever use it or does everyone use the raw editing these days? There re some recommended replacements that I can look at if people are interested in them.

Search autofill is working again though! Yay!

And now I'ma gonna get some sleep. Let me know if you see any other problems. -- Fenyx4 22:50, 10 March 2013 (PDT)


 * I noticed the galleries are no longer fixed to 4 images per row and now adapt to screen width. Very nice.--Tribun (talk) 09:06, 13 March 2013 (PDT)

Error creating Thumbnails
When trying to create a new thumbnail, I just get a gray box with "Error creating a thumbnail" in it. This also happens with images that already have thumbnails of a different size. There seems to be something broken with it.--Tribun (talk) 17:06, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thumbnails should be fixed now. -- Fenyx4 12:48, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Error in histories
It seems that Time Lord gets a little more credit than is due in histories. What do you see in Rule Britiannia's history? All I get is Time Lord edits plus one that you did, during the move in 2010. I know Tribun and I did some work there. The Ultra-Mind (talk) 18:06, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Dang Time Lords travelin' through time and taking all the credit. Looks like he now has credit for EVERY edit from before the move. I dunno what is going on. It didn't have this problem immediately after the move. Perhaps some artifact from the move from wikia didn't work correctly with the recent upgrade or the even more recent server move? Hard to say. I still have the data from the original move I think. So theoretically it would be fixable... But may be a lot of effort. I'll poke at it as I can. -- Fenyx4 19:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I didn't notice this before. Better check it out as it could point to some serious problem.--Tribun (talk) 19:26, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * This should now be fixed (although I had to do a few ctrl-f5s to get it some of them to show up properly). For those that are interested it looks to have been a problem from the original move from Wikia. There are two columns in the revision table. One which has the username and one which has the user's id. Nearly all the ones from before the move had the right username but the wrong userid (I for one blame Wikia!). My guess is that the update to Mediawiki last month changes how the revision history showed the username. Showing the username based on the userid instead of just showing the username in the revision table. Thereby exposing the error. I fixed it with some SQL voodoo. (This probably fixed the edit count problem too) -- Fenyx4 02:29, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems to be working now! Now the question is, why do they have two columns for the user instead of just the user id? That's not following good database normalization guidelines... --Sega381 (talk) 13:29, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It appears to come in useful for anonymous edits since they don't have a user_id... Dunno why they'd put the username in there at all then though. Old laziness getting grandfathered along? Old optimizing for speed? Whatever it is I ain't gonna go digging in the MediaWiki code. :) -- Fenyx4 13:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Problem with animated pictures
When uploading an animated gif, there is an error in the thumbnail picture, when the picture is bigger than the thumbnail (meaning the preview is made smaller), corrupting the thumbnail. Can be seen in the history of .--Tribun (talk) 08:23, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks I'll try to fix that. -- Fenyx4 15:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Apart from that issue (which still persists) something wierd goes on at least in the history of gif-files that got a newer version. Just look here to see the strange effects. Must be a result of you upgrading the wiki engine.--Tribun (talk) 14:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yup. I see it. It was caused by the server change actually. -- Fenyx4 14:51, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you fix it?--Tribun (talk) 16:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I will try to fix it. -- Fenyx4 18:15, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * After much gnashing of teeth and pounding of keyboard this is finally fixed. -- Fenyx4 14:48, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, everything seems to be back in order. What exactly had went wrong?--Tribun (talk) 19:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * ImageMagick wasn't on the new server so I switched to an alternative. The alternative didn't handle gifs very well (as you noticed). Getting ImageMagick installed and working required a lot of debugging. -- Fenyx4 19:12, 7 July 2013 (UTC)