User talk:Fenyx4

Formatting: Italicized titles
Hi Fenyx, I was wondering if it would be possible to have your bot automatically italicize Ultima titles (Ultima V, Ultima VI, Martian Dreams, etc.) in articles if they aren't already? It is formatting that needs to be done and I've noticed people going through and doing it manually. This would save the laborious process of combing every article to make the changes. --Terilem 06:46, April 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, sorry I'd already offered to Polygoncount to do this but got distracted by RL partway through making it work. I'll get back on it. -- Fenyx4 13:38, April 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you Fenyx, much appreciated. :) Another thing I forgot to mention: changing any instances of "Ultima VII/2" to "Ultima VII Part Two" would also be a big help. --Terilem 15:17, April 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * That one is really easy! FenyxBot is working on it now. -- Fenyx4 15:24, April 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * FenyxBot's work on italicizing the titles is done. I know it didn't catch everything but hopefully the large percentage of them have been caught. -- Fenyx4 23:01, April 26, 2010 (UTC)

NPC Infoboxes
Don't take this the wrong way, but the use for NPC infoboxes is not very apperant. What are they supposed to accomplish, when all the information in them is already included in the first sentence of the character description?

Personally I think, that you are wasting your time with them.--Tribun 10:37, April 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I'd already started writing stuff in the forum when you left this message. I replied to this there. -- Fenyx4 11:39, April 24, 2010 (UTC)

I wanted to inform you that all Ultima Underworld I NPCs are now online and can be Infoboxed by you. Also I don't plan to all Ultima IX one-liner NPCs, so you can infobox them as well (careful here, since some pictures have different sizes). Savage Empire can use Infoboxes as well.--Tribun 21:31, May 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. If I just ran the bot I'd be done by now but I need the large chunks of time free to follow-up and fill in all the information, fix picture sizes and specify species. Tryin' not to leave a mess behind me. Hopefully I'll have more free time soon. -- Fenyx4 16:28, May 31, 2010 (UTC)

Btw., "Location" for the NPCs of Ultima Underworld would be in the infobox "Abyss-level X" (X being the level in question), apart from Corwin and Almric, this works with all of them (even Garamon, as he manifests on level 5)--Tribun 22:14, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I was just looking around for how it should be formatted. Do we have maps of the Underworld anywhere on here? I was hoping to enter them in such a way that if it is changed to links it'd be linking to somethin'. -- Fenyx4 22:27, June 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Nope, we don't have these maps here.--Tribun 22:31, June 2, 2010 (UTC)

Something must've went wrong when the bot infoboxed the Ultima V NPCs. All that have no picture in the article have their infobox below instead of beside the text.--Tribun 11:16, June 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Arg, figures that would happen the time I head to bed. Thanks. Should be fixed now. -- Fenyx4 14:21, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

The Ultima IX NPCs are now ready to be infoboxed.--Tribun 15:06, 30 October 2010 (PDT)

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)

Deleting discussion pages
Do we have to come to you to delete discussion pages? I see that "Talk: Great Bridge" is still around, even though it doesn't have an accompanying article. AngusM 20:32, May 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I missed that. If you find anything else like that you can mark it with . -- Fenyx4 22:07, May 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Talk pages, too? AngusM 22:21, May 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if it's clear that I missed it when I was deleting its article. That template adds it to Category:Articles for deletion which allows me to find it when I go on a deleting spree. -- Fenyx4 22:26, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Bot request: common nounization of professions and races
I've decided that Forum:Need_policy_on_capitalization_of_races_(and_I_guess_other_things) has gone as far as it's going to, for now, and I've gone ahead and changed the style guide to reflect what I think is consensus that professions and races are common nouns. Do you think you could make bots to fix cases were these words are capitalized in the middle of sentences? Yes, I know you won't be able to think of all the words before you break for lunch, but you might get it started, and slowly, all professions and races will be covered. You might even make a template so we can flag words that you've missed.

BTW, as long as I'm here: I just lost everything I was writing you because I accidentally clicked on a link when I was done. Do you have the power to make sure the rich text editor doesn't do that? AngusM 22:07, May 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * If you really want to do this, then please find a way that won't shredder the links. Otherwise it will only create a huge mess od red dead-ends.--Tribun 22:09, May 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * This shouldn't be an issue. It's very easy to link a word or phrase that doesn't necessarily match the actual article name it's linking to. --Terilem 23:47, May 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's what I have as a list to change so far;
 * Human
 * Gargoyle
 * Mage
 * Fighter
 * Goblin
 * Daemon
 * Bard
 * Shepherd
 * Dragon
 * Ranger
 * Wizard
 * Paladin
 * Druid
 * Troll
 * Tinker
 * Gwani
 * Emp
 * Sorcerers
 * Cyclops
 * Blackrock
 * Add it here if you have some more.
 * RE red links: Shouldn't be a problem.
 * RE Rich text editor: 'Fraid I don't. Probably best to take that concern to Wikia Help. -- Fenyx4 16:06, May 31, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, is it possible to isolate "blackrock" only when it's a standalone term? For instance, at this point we haven't reached a consensus on whether things like "Blackrock Serpent" should be de-capitalized, so it might be best to leave those for now.
 * Also, I don't think "Ophidian" should be on the list. They were a society of humans, not a race unto themselves; it would be like writing "Britannian" without a captial letter. --Terilem 17:38, June 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, excellent point. Too much UO playing makes me think of Ophidians as a race of snake creatures.
 * With something like this I'm planning on monitoring all the bots changes to catch stuff like "Blackrock Serpent" and stop them from being changed.
 * As a slight aside I thought people would be interested in this; GW2 Capitalization. I find it amusing they are having to do the same cleanup we are. :) -- Fenyx4 18:23, June 2, 2010 (UTC)

Broken Ultima VII Quotes
Can you fix the Ultima VII lore Quotes? Some genius altered them and now instead of linking to the "Book of Fellowship", it links to the organisation. I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that this is quite a stupid screw-up.--Tribun 14:51, June 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ran FenyxBot over it to fix it. Just to be clear no one altered them from "The Book of Fellowship". They were always "Fellowship" but they were turned into links. Since they weren't links before no one noticed the ambiguity. Thank you for pointing this out but the vitriol was unnecessary. -- Fenyx4 16:53, June 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, it's just that such things sometimes tend to make be go up the wall.--Tribun 16:59, June 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Then we have something in common, you and I. I suspect this also makes you kindred spirits with many other editors as well. What separates us, however, is that we are able to keep genteel restraint, even when we think someone has done something unnecessarily foolish, hamfisted or crude, and even when we feel it might suit our baser and more immediate emotions. AngusM 19:27, June 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Tribun, it helps to take some humility from your own errors before rushing to lambaste others. We're all capable of mistakes and such abrasiveness is not productive. --Terilem 01:54, June 5, 2010 (UTC)

Hey Fenyx4, had an idea: What about a new template called "LoreBook?" The new LoreQuote template fixes the redlink problem within a page, but those red links are still on the "wanted pages" list. The LoreBook template could be specifically for in-game books (so, Text + Book Name + Author + Game). I think there are much fewer of these currently quoted on the Codex than actual rulebooks etc., so it would be less of a problem to hunt them down. What do you think? --Polygoncount 03:31, June 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * I asked around and doing an #ifexists is equivalent to linking which is why it still shows up in the "wanted pages". I honestly sort of see this as a feature. Although I didn't like them being redlinks I was hesitant about changing it so they weren't since they are things that we might want articles about. This is sort of best of both worlds. Doesn't show up as a redlink in the article but still gives us a count of how many times we use it in the "wanted pages" putting some pressure on us to create those articles. -- Fenyx4 19:15, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

New Categories
Hey, noticed you added some new categories (Pages Needing Cleanup/Expert)... I seem to remember a "pages without images" category that was once easily-accessible from the "special pages" page... what happened to that? It was useful to go over them that way and see what needed help. --Polygoncount 20:49, June 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Category:Image_needed? I think you added images to nearly all of them! :)
 * Wow! I guess that's a good problem. For the future, though... --Polygoncount 21:17, June 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * I dunno for the future. I tried finding a way to list all pages without images but I didn't have any luck. I could have a bot run through and add the category to every page without an image but that might be a bit extreme. I dunno if EVERY page needs and image. -- Fenyx4 23:21, June 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, especially since there are lots of articles for which there simply aren't any pictures available in the gmes/manuals/etc., meaning that the banner is useless in these cases. So using the bot would only plaster the codex with banners that serve no use.--Tribun 23:26, June 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed, not all image-less pages need images. I guess we'll continue to deal with them as they come up. --Polygoncount 03:32, June 8, 2010 (UTC)

Making special pages
What does it take to make a special page? Special permission? I was thinking of taking Forum:Need_policy_on_capitalization_of_races_(and_I_guess_other_things) and putting it onto the talk page of a special page that would be a lexicon of proper nouns for the Codex. These things are currently on the style guide, but instead of bloating that article, I thought a separate lexicon would be a better idea. AngusM 04:52, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * Hrm, I'm not sure what you mean by special page. Like Special:SpecialPages? That requires installation of stuff on the wikia servers. That is probably out of our reach. If it is a list could it be put on something like Ultima_Codex:Lexicon? -- Fenyx4 05:18, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * I would have called it the "Noun Lexicon". In that case, consider it requested. AngusM 05:26, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you unable to create Ultima_Codex:Noun Lexicon yourself? I think anyone should have permissions to create Project pages. I'll go ahead and create it just in case you can't. -- Fenyx4 05:29, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm not, but I just don't know how. Thanks, that's good enough. AngusM 15:07, June 15, 2010 (UTC)

Toggling italics
I was wondering about italicized words that are embedded in italicized sentences. Isn't the proper way to do this by toggling the italics? That would mean that a mention of a game (which is usually italicized) which appears in a creature infobox caption (which are italicized by default) should be de-italicized, right? AngusM 01:48, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's the case. A non-italicized title within an otherwise italicized sentence looks strange to me, and Wikipedia doesn't do it this way either. For example, see the hatnote at the top of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars --Terilem 03:01, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Proper English-wise I think AngusM is right. I've even done it some places. Think I was fairly consistently doing it for Template:Otheruses like on Sam's article... However I can't find any sources stating that it is the actual proper way. Just supporting fiction books doing it that way. -- Fenyx4 04:17, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, I stand corrected and I did find a couple of sources saying it, as well. I just assumed Wikipedia would have been following general English rules. --Terilem 04:34, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * So did we want to stick with proper English on this? I'm leaning to "yes". -- Fenyx4 04:51, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * No arguments from me! --Terilem 04:55, June 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed how the italics for the Creature infobox's caption works so it should now be correct. I also changed how the Ultima IV NPC infobox's caption does it. I'll change the rest after some sleep. -- Fenyx4 05:21, June 28, 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)

Ultima IV NPCs
Great job on the Ultima IV NPCs. I noticed you missed the Ultima IV gate guard, and I would have added him, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to add anything to your Ultima IV lists. Any hints? Dungy 19:16, September 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, because I'm an idiot, I forgot to change the name of my Avatar from the standard one that came with my version of Ultima IV. His name is Pissy Ey.  Whoops!  If anyone is too offended by this, I'll upload new screenshots, of course that'll take awhile.  I'll change the name in the future.  Dungy 22:46, September 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I just wasn't sure how to do the guards. Especially in Yew which has three "a guard"s.
 * Add it to the lists on the city pages? Just add the npc with an NPC Infobox and make sure to specify the location. It'll automagically show up in the list. Maybe not immediately. Need to wait for it to run through the job queue. If you need to speed it up you can edit the city page and save it with no changes. -- Fenyx4 01:08, September 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * And thanks for helping with the U4 stuff! I'm excited to have the NPCs wrapped up. -- Fenyx4 01:16, September 4, 2010 (UTC)

CategoryTree Extension
Hey Fenyx, I'm not sure if you're the one to ask about this, but maybe you know who to ask at Wikia. I've noticed that we have the CategoryTree extension installed. However, as you can see in the NPCs by Species page, its configured to show only subcategories when the "+" symbol is clicked. However, it would be a lot more useful to have it cofigured by default to show all pages under that category, as well as the subcategories. Otherwise, I find the extension kind of useless. If we did have this enabled, it would be easier to check stuff in subcategories, without having to jump back and forth to the subcategories pages. And I don't really see any points against enabling that configuration (constant CT_MODE_ALL I think) as the default one. What do you think?--Sega381 18:45, September 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm asking around about this. So far I haven't gotten any positive replies. I did notice that WCPedia uses them like this. It's pretty nice (expand Kilrathi). My concern would be for categories with a LOT of pages in them. Category:Human for example would be pretty crazy expanded like that. Aaand I just realized I could check it out on the test I made User:Fenyx4/Sandbox. Looks like it just stops listing them after a certain amount. So, not useful for large categories. But to me it still seems useful for small categories. Hopefully we can get it set up. -- Fenyx4 04:22, September 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Special:CategoryTree - Someone pointed this out on the forums. Not what you are asking for but still useful to know about. -- Fenyx4 04:47, September 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! BTW, I think I noticed that a parameter ($wgCategoryTreeMaxChildren) can be configured to say how many items can a node show after being expanded, which has a default value of 200. So we may be able change that default configuration to allow for more items to be displayed. We may have to configure it to stop after a certain amount anyway, maybe higher than 200; we should have to test if it is reasonable to have 1000 humans listed in the expansion of the node. But if we have few really big categories, it's not a big deal. Thanks again, and do tell me if it you can get it working.--Sega381 16:15, September 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe now that we have our own site we could enable this behaviour? Please?--Sega381 17:54, 28 October 2010 (PDT)

Lazarus infoboxing
THANK YOU for sorting out all that infobox stuff. I realize that's a huge job. We'll soon have photos for every NPC from Ultima IV to Ultima IX. I can't believe I've added close to 800 images to the wiki over the last month and a half. Dungy 17:52, October 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. Fenyxbot took a lot of the pain out of it. You've been doing a crazy amount of stuff! -- Fenyx4 19:09, October 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've had WAY too much free time the last month. That will all come crashing to an end soon enough, and then I'll be back to my usual post rate.  Dungy 19:17, October 2, 2010 (UTC)

The whole new skin thing
The whole new skin thing at wikia is even bigger. Whole wikias are already leaving and I have to admit that it pretty much shoots everything to hell. Many already are creating a mirror at ShoutWiki, which looks like a good alternative. What do you think about it? I for one have already decided to leave, should this shit get forced on us.--Tribun 12:46, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Admin rights
Fenyx, I was wandering, if you do have admin privileges, why do you not show up as an Admin in the Special:ListUsers page?--Sega381 16:22, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Weird, I have no idea. Special:UserRights still lists me as an admin and I can still delete stuff too. -- Fenyx4 20:15, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe Wikia is trying to put down unruly admins? :)--Sega381 20:37, October 13, 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
 * 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)

Anonymous Edits
I can't find our old conversation on this. I do recall that we seemed to have reached consensus on disallowing anonymous edits. (IIRC I was the only dissenting voice. :) ) Since we don't have to rely on wikia for changing it anymore I did go ahead and disallow anonymous edits when I set the wiki up. -- Fenyx4 09:09, 30 October 2010 (PDT)
 * Personally, I think we should give anonymous editors a try. We get vandalism less than once or twice a week, and that's not so difficult to clean up.  Also, allowing eeditting anonymously encourages people to start up at the wiki.  I probably never would have started if I had had to register. Dungy 05:51, 31 October 2010 (PDT)

Dungy
 * I'm certainly open to reopening a discussion on this. The above is precisely why I'm not a fan of it. I believe the arguments for it involved stopping spam (which I don't think has been a big problem). And requiring accountability. Giving us the ability to have someone to go to and ask "Why they heck did you do that?" :) -- Fenyx4 14:00, 31 October 2010 (PDT)


 * As we have a brand new site, I think we should leave anonymous edits enabled, at least for a while. We should disable them only if we do see a lot of spam, or a lot of controversial anonymous edits. Thaat's my opinion at least.--Sega381 16:30, 31 October 2010 (PDT)


 * Really wish I could find the old discussion on this.... But if no one speaks up in support of disallowing anonymous edits I will allow them again. -- Fenyx4 12:14, 3 November 2010 (PDT)


 * I've re-enabled anonymous edits. :) -- Fenyx4 13:05, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

Activity feed
Hey Fenyx, I was wondering if it would be possible to have an Activity Feed more like what we had at Wikia? I know the Recent Changes page is pretty much the same thing, though I can't help but find it a little overwhelming to read through, as much as I've tried to adjust. Its format is certainly less legible and user-friendly.

I'd welcome others chiming in here to discuss whether or not there's a need for this to be changed. --Terilem 20:02, 8 November 2010 (PST)

Chaning the "Editable Codex" namespace
Hi Fenyx, any idea how hard will be to change the "Editable Codex" prefix/namespace thingy? Every time I do an edit, I have to see "Please note that all contributions to Editable Codex are considered to be released under the Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (see Editable Codex:Copyrights for details)."... and we're not the Editable Codex by now. This might confuse new contributors too. Thanks!--Sega381 05:39, 15 November 2010 (PST)
 * Okay, I'm gonna try this. Did we ever talk about what we should change it to? I feel like we did but I can't find the discussion... "Ultima Wisdom" seems good to me. -- Fenyx4 08:24, 8 March 2011 (PST)


 * I don't think we ever talked much about it. I had thought "Ultima Codex", being more similar to "Editable Codex", as what we changed from the last name was "Editable" to "Ultima". I think I prefer this to "Ultima Wisdom", by I think anything is preferable to "Editable Codex".--Sega381 12:06, 8 March 2011 (PST)
 * My vote goes to "Ultima Codex" Dungy 12:12, 8 March 2011 (PST)
 * Well that wasn't nearly as bad as I feared. Didn't have to jump through nearly as many hoops as I did when fixing the forums. Hopefully I caught everything. -- Fenyx4 14:41, 8 March 2011 (PST)


 * Great, thanks!--Sega381 17:31, 8 March 2011 (PST)

Create new page
As per the discussion here: http://www.ultimaaiera.com/blog/back-to-roots-progress-report/comment-page-1/#comment-7210 It might be useful to have a "Create new page" link in the toolbox on the left-hand pane, since it seems new users can find that troublesome.
 * I added it the best way I could figure out quickly. -- Fenyx4 07:10, 7 December 2010 (PST)

Spambots
Fenyx, I've noticed (as you probably had, too) that we have started to get a lot (compared to what we had on Wikia) of spam lately. Besides the repeated attempts to create the index.php page by an anonymous user, now we have spambots creating users to add spam.

Given the fact that blocking anonymous users won't be enough (and won't be useful for now if the spambot comes and creates a new user), I think we should add some measure to prevent spambots from registering, such as a captcha or the like. And maybe, if it seems necessay, also block anonymous users, but for some reason spambots are starting to like us, and I wouldn't want this to get out of hand.

Thanks!--Sega381 13:52, 9 December 2010 (PST)


 * The index.php was solved by protecting those pages. I think we should test blocking first (it also blocks the ip addresses) and see if that solves our problem with registered spambots. If not then I can look into a captcha or the like.


 * On the bright side if we're getting hit by bots that must mean we're starting to show up in search engine, right? :) -- Fenyx4 14:07, 9 December 2010 (PST)


 * Yes, it seems today there's a surge of spambots. Assuming that this is a trend, and not a sporadic event, I wonder what would attract spambots to here and not Wikia. Wikia certain has an awful lot of material, so it's not like it's something that spammers wouldn't be interested in. I would guess that it's a matter of Wikia just being very spam-resistant, while the engine here is known to be weak, at least w/its default configuration. Could the clue be in configuration? CAPTCHA's a good one, but I'd think there could be others (IP-banning, for instance). The Ultra-Mind 14:19, 9 December 2010 (PST)
 * I'd be happy with a CAPTCHA type check for anonymous users. It won't seriously deter them and it'll hurt spambots.  Still we'll see what happens in the next few days.  Also, hurray for getting more popular with search engines.  I recently emailed one or two wares site people and got them to change their links to us and not the old site. I know they're evil software pirates, but now they're evil software pirates who are helping us, which makes them slightly less evil.  :) Dungy 14:23, 9 December 2010 (PST)


 * Ok, let's see how this goes. Wikia does have a CAPTCHA when registering a new user. I'm not sure how effective IP banning is, unless the spambots are limited to a few IP address. But let's see how things evolve.--Sega381 09:29, 10 December 2010 (PST)

Two more of these §/)/(/&"# spambots, and it looks they are coming from the same source. Can you please block the IP and delete these spambot accounts? No one will think any less of you if you erase these spam accounts.--Tribun 13:02, 10 December 2010 (PST)


 * Well, blocking the IP doesn't seem to be slowing them down much at all as Sega381 was worried about. I'll look into installing a CAPTCHA. -- Fenyx4 13:24, 10 December 2010 (PST)


 * Unregistered edits and creating an account now require people to reCaptcha. -- Fenyx4 13:40, 10 December 2010 (PST)

Guess it doesn't work. There is another one.--Tribun 14:00, 10 December 2010 (PST)


 * Sigh* By now I'm counting 10 spambots and they start to clog up the member list. Can't you just erase these accounts?--Tribun 10:36, 13 December 2010 (PST)


 * I want to hold off on deleting them until I figure out a way to stop them from being created. But hey at least they aren't messing up pages anymore. -- Fenyx4 12:17, 13 December 2010 (PST)
 * But how awesome it makes our wiki look with all this activity! :P 14:50, 13 December 2010 (PST)


 * Spambots have increased a lot this last few days. I'm not sure how, as we have a captcha for new accounts. Any ideas on what to do? It's getting a little tiresome.--Sega381 20:25, 4 June 2011 (PDT)


 * We should temporarily lock picture upload, account creation and article creation for non-members. This might not be ideal, but if they can't do anything (no new dummy account, no pictures therefore and no anonymus articles) this hopefully can make it go away.--Tribun 04:57, 5 June 2011 (PDT)


 * I'd rather not do anything as extreme as shutting out all outsiders. Defeats the purpose of a wiki if we don't let new people in. Even as a temporary solution this is no good as the spambots would just be there whenever we open it back up. Especially now as we've got all the cool Ultima news coming out we should be attracting new peeps. These bots aren't even doing that much damage. They are just annoying.
 * I'll keep adding more spam detection stuff until they go away. -- Fenyx4 22:53, 5 June 2011 (PDT)

A Request
Before you have too much to do, can you run Fenyxbot to infobox all Ultima IX NPCs, now that they are all done? It would be horrible work to do it all manually.--Tribun 04:26, 24 December 2010 (PST)
 * Taken care of. Dungy 16:37, 5 February 2011 (PST)

Access
Fenyx, we haven't seen you around for awhile, and I've been wanting to make a few changes under the hood, like editing the footer, and a few other minor things. I was wondering how one could go about getting permissions to make some of those changes. I'll try really hard not to break the wiki. I promise! Dungy 16:55, 3 February 2011 (PST)


 * I think it would be best if we got around to actually doing the voting to get a new bureaucrat and we can talk to WTF about giving who ever gets voted in ftp access. I'm just really hesitant to give that kind of access since irreparable damage can be done from in there.
 * And sorry for not being around. Life has just been all... lifey. -- Fenyx4 17:45, 3 February 2011 (PST)
 * I understand lifeyness. I don't even particularly want to be a bureaucrat, since I'm not very experienced with such activities, and I'd be very apprehensive about destroying everything.  I just want to fix up that footer and a few other minor things that haven't quite been fixed or settled in right since we've moved to our new home. If someone better than me handled it, I'd be all for it. Also, the whole moving the Ultima VI Online wiki to a new home thing, got me thinking about about possibilities.  Dungy 17:52, 3 February 2011 (PST)

Spell article's name poll
Hey there, I think you may want to contribute to the Forum:POLL: Spell article's merging policy. Thanks!--Sega381 17:03, 6 March 2011 (PST)

I remember you
You're that guy who used to hang out here. Dungy 09:09, 8 March 2011 (PST)
 * Eeek! They found me! *hides* -- Fenyx4 09:17, 8 March 2011 (PST)

NPC infobox templates separated by game
Fenyx, one question: for some reason, we have several different infoboxes for the NPCs of the different games. In your sandbox, I see you have different mock up spell infoboxes too for different games. Why is that? I can't really see, in your sandbox for example, the necessity of having a different template for game. This is true for the NPCs too; in the spells, there may be some parameters that don't apply to one game, but I think all the NPC infobox templates are basically the same. So, what is it that I'm missing that prompted you to create all this different templates depending on the game, instead of one, unified template?--Sega381 12:17, 8 March 2011 (PST)
 * The thought was that there would be significant differences between the NPC infoboxes but they never manifested. Classes, hitpoints, keywords, different portrait sizes, a link to their entire dialogue tree... Portrait sizes were a major reason towards separating them as that was going to be defaulted differently for each game and wasn't something I wanted people to have to be concerned about but then that ended up being taken out. *sigh*
 * But having them in separate templates also makes some things more efficient. If the U4 NPC template is changed then it only causes all the U4 NPC pages to need updating and not all the NPCs. If something across all the templates needs changing then I could stagger the changes so it didn't hit everything at once. And it made DPL easier to deal with and more efficient. And when it came right down to it if it turned out we needed the versatility of having separate templates then we don't have to go back and change every NPC.
 * I dunno if I'd do the same thing again though. My sandbox was definitely just an experiment. But since spells definitely have differences between games I decided to take a stab at separate templates again. I think I got a bit better at it though. Each separate spell template uses the Template:Infobox/Spell_Base. That does remove some of the advantages (i.e. if Spell Base is changed then all spell pages need updating) but it removed the really annoying maintenance hassle of having to propagate every minor change to each template while at the same time keeping the advantages of versatility (i.e. if Game Y needs an option that Games A-X don't need then A-X's templates aren't cluttered up) and it keeps DPL happy. -- Fenyx4 14:07, 8 March 2011 (PST)


 * Ok, I think I understand. I guess I'm not familiar enough with DPL to easily notice that advantages, but I see what you mean. Thanks!--Sega381 16:34, 8 March 2011 (PST)

Nice find!
Nice job finding that artwork. Pity there wasn't a copy of the NES Ultima V or Runes of Virtue boxcovers. I believe (maybe incorrectly) that they were drawn by the same individual. Dungy 12:02, 1 April 2011 (PDT)
 * I have good news for you then! I actually came across the artist via some collectible cards. The cards have NES Ultima V and at least one of the Runes of Virtue's boxcovers. When I can get access to a scanner I'll be uploading those too. -- Fenyx4 12:09, 1 April 2011 (PDT)
 * Ah-ha! I knew those cards existed.  I see them on Ebay from time to time.  Love to see the scans when you get the chance.Dungy 13:23, 1 April 2011 (PDT)

Little Request
A request: In your talk page (and propably the archive) are several old "Editable Codex" links. Can you please correct these, so that they aren't broken? I don't want to tinker with your talk page (unlike article talk pages).--Tribun 13:44, 3 June 2011 (PDT)
 * All better! Thanks Tribun. -- Fenyx4 14:45, 3 June 2011 (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)

Interwiki table logs
Maybe I missed this discussion, but what are they? How do they work? They sure sounds impressive at least. Dungy 04:27, 30 June 2011 (PDT)
 * No discussion to miss I was just poking around. :)
 * It is shorthand for linking to other wikis. So, say I want to link to Dralthi on WCPedia. Instead of typing out the entire URL I just need to do wcp:Dralthi and I'll get wcp:Dralthi. It also gets rid of that external link arrow and, if WCPedia were to ever move, we just change the interwiki table and all the links get updated.
 * I also added one for UOGuide e.g. Poisoning -> Poisoning. I'm playing with the idea of shoving a little message in the upper rigthand corner of UO related pages Template:Uoguide. But that disrupts the page too much. Maybe a banner across the top like on out disambig page (see James). Or I might just stick See Also sections on all the pages. -- Fenyx4 05:55, 30 June 2011 (PDT)

Broken Article
When I try to access Ultima Generation, I get this error message:

"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 "". Database returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (internal-db.s55109.gridserver.com)"."

Any idea what causes it?--Tribun 06:06, 3 July 2011 (PDT)
 * I get the same problem. Bizarre.Dungy 06:34, 3 July 2011 (PDT)


 * Even stranger, whe editing it, there stuff is all still there, it just can't be accessed the normal way. I have too little experience with this stuff to guess what is going on. Maybe Fenyx has to ask our administrator for help.--Tribun 17:55, 3 July 2011 (PDT)


 * Should be fixed. -- Fenyx4 07:51, 4 July 2011 (PDT)

It's fixed. Fenyx, if I may ask, what had been broken?--Tribun 08:49, 4 July 2011 (PDT)


 * I believe due to our increased traffic an SQL query stepped on the toes of another. This caused it to enter into a locked protective state. I gave it a shove to get it to leave the protective state and tweaked a setting to (hopefully) keep it from happening again. At least until our traffic increases a lot more. -- Fenyx4 20:47, 4 July 2011 (PDT)

Just a heads-up: I've been getting this same error for several days when I try to edit Template:Infobox/NPC/Ultima II to update the caption formatting. --Terilem 00:26, 20 July 2011 (PDT)


 * Okay! So first the outage the last few hours was due to the hosting service upgrading us from MySQL 4 to MySQL 5. Which shoulda gone off without a hitch but ended up causing the i10n table to freak out. I seem to have sorted that out though. *cross fingers*
 * And in the process of all this the problem with the Infobox also got sorted. -- Fenyx4 12:21, 22 July 2011 (PDT)

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)

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)