DDO wiki talk:Administrators' noticeboard

General Discussion
shouldn't this be all under DDOwiki namespace? --yoko5000 (Contributions • Message) 06:50, April 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * That's one option, another might be forum and I believe half of the environment can be hidden removed from the wiki text of the page that way. I'm mostly curious as to why we need to fragment this all into so many tabs, I mean there are only  administrators,  active users, and  total editors... ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 09:22, April 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * , I'm not sure why I didn't initially think about putting in the DDO wiki namespace. I have moved all of the pages over there now. , this is just the initial layout that I had brainstormed.  I am trying to avoid having it be one VERY long page that editors and admins have to sort through to try and find any new and/or relevant information to act/work on.  I want to keep it as is for the moment, but I will likely combine everything involving requests of some sort into one "Requests" tab and have fixed headings that users/editors/admins can post under.  Additional tabs could be added later on down the line if a need is identified, or similarly, tabs could be removed and merged with other like tabs.
 * My main vision for this noticeboard is not to have massively long entries with long debates/conversations. It's going to be an organized location where users (speaking universally, regardless of position on the wiki) can post concerns, requests for various administrative tasks to be done, a place for admins to vote on multiple issues in one central location.  I understand that using one of the forums might have been more ideal in some aspects, but i know personally, when I go through the forums here, it can be difficult to find things at times.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 16:25, April 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * So I made some edits and changes to the noticeboard. I feel it is ready to be used in its current state.  It will likely be molded and shaped as time goes on, which is exactly what i hope it will do.  If anyone has any questions or suggestions just make it known.  I would like to add this to the Side Bar navigation, so if nobody objects, then I'll go ahead and place it there tomorrow.  Please feel free to edit and update the General page as needed.  I'm going to work on it a little bit more and try to make it look all shiny and stuff.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 15:43, April 3, 2014 (EDT)
 * I still think this should be set up as a new forum section in the forum space. It would be so much easier to manage and control that way with less opportunity for error. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 10:51, April 9, 2014 (EDT)

Visibility

 * Tech, if this was only showed to just admins, it would sort of defeat the purpose of being a central location for wiki users and/or editors to come to to get things brought to the attention of the admins. Perhaps, maybe Super User and above with restricted editing for SU and above as well.  I think that would be good considering that a good chunk the highly active editors have SU rights.  What do you think?  But as far as the link showing up in the Sidebar only for certain people wouldn't work per-se.  They would still be able to view it via hotlink, Recent Changes, etc...  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 10:10, April 9, 2014 (EDT)
 * Yeah. I was thinking something specific, but I don't remember exactly what it was right now. I'll post back when and if I remember. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 10:52, April 9, 2014 (EDT)

Popup Templates

 * OK, so I've finally finished tweaking the Template:Popup and published it. My next concern is why do we need 3 popup templates on the wiki?  Seems rather redundant if you ask me?  I programmed in a short/long switch into the template I just updated.  I'm thinking maybe Bot through and update the rest, then deprecate the short/long templates?  Thoughts?  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 17:37, April 11, 2014 (EDT)
 * I actually have a problem with the new popup template, and it is a technical one so it should eb easy to fix. When I mouseover the text that has a tooltip, the tooltip shows.  If I move my mouse down or down and to the left, the tooltip disappears (which makes it impossible to click on any links in the tooltip).  Strangely, if I move my mouse down and to the right, it stays and I can click on links.  I am currently on FF28.0 on a WinVista machine.  I can give you the full useragent if you need it. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 18:48, April 11, 2014 (EDT)
 * I don't have a Vista box to test it on, but Win 7 & 8 FF 28 (newest update) is working good now. Just a minor spacing error.  Those types of nuances are fairly uncommon between the major browsers.  Normally it's new features that have issues.  But anyways, it's good to go now, Tech.  So what are your thoughts on the OP regarding the multiple templates?  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 19:35, April 11, 2014 (EDT)
 * The issues seems to be fixed for me as well. As far as merging Popup, Short popup, and Long popup goes, I'm all for it and actually started writing Custom popup a long time ago with the same goal in mind.  There is also Image popup but I'm thinking that one is different enough that it should be left out for now. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:08, April 11, 2014 (EDT)
 * As far as the image popup goes, images work just fine so long as you use the | and the long switch. Something I will add to the documentation.  Also, I will work on incorporating images formatting switches directly into the template as optionals.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 16:43, April 16, 2014 (EDT)
 * I just saw the result of this as is used with Xpcolors and inside of MissionInfoBox, the extra width taken by the :after icons stretches it out way too much. Can we get rid of those or add them as an extra class that can be turned off if not wanted? ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 13:33, April 12, 2014 (EDT)
 * I'll explore this and see what I can come up with. It shouldn't be too hard.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 16:36, April 16, 2014 (EDT)

Site notice change
While I like the idea that it uses divs now instead of a table, I'm not too happy about the style of it and the way that it looks. It's too blocky, there is too much white space, and the box stands out too much as opposed to the links inside of it. I'd like to see some other styling change ideas (and to be honest, I think the styling should be stripped from in-line and we should use classes that we define on a per skin level so each skin can have a different look and feel to it). I'll mock up what I think it should look like in the next week or two, maybe some of our other css knowledgeable persons can mock up their ideas as well and then we can all comment on all of them, have a week to adjust and pick the best one that most represents the wiki? Thoughts? Feelings? ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:15, April 11, 2014 (EDT)
 * Yeah, it looked good but after looking at it for a while and letting it marinate in my mind, I have a little different idea for it now. I'll play around with it and see what I come up with. -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 16:35, April 16, 2014 (EDT)

Main Nav Menu, the Sidebar, and You

 * So reading a post by Agonshar on his talk page recently (Same as above), he makes some good points. Namely, why don't we incorporate the main navigation menu in the box above into the sidebar?  The Site Notice would best be used for important notices regarding the site rather than a navigation menu, and would free up that valuable vertical real estate for content.  Now as for moving the the page title over there and the user menu, that's most likely beyond our control as those are hard coded into the template.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 12:17, April 24, 2014 (EDT)
 * Okay, not sure why I was mentioned and got no Ppoi on my talk page, but my responses are these:
 * The only way to get that appearance is to use one of the other skins (Cologne Blue IIRC). It is very hard-coded into the MediaWiki software for how it currently looks (and messing with changing skins up is a real PAIN...)
 * There are tons of things we "could" add (and I have added a few for administrators to make it easier to research trouble users and exceptional users deserving of promotion of some sort). If there is something else you want added, please do let me know and I will help create the element (you can also add personal elements and I would be happy to teach or write the private scripts for anyone to do that as well).
 * I'm actually already working on making the sidebar headers collapsible (like on Wikipedia), but I got distracted from my research of learning how the MediaWIki source manipulates the sidebar (it's not a simple element, it actually uses a convoluted series of subpages in the MediaWiki: space to populate everything).
 * As far as adjusting the sitenotice and anonnotice goes, I'd be happy to collapse it (or part of it) and make it take less space, but I don't think it should be outright removed or emptied and differed to sidebar.  Be happy to discuss it more though. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 19:01, April 24, 2014 (EDT)

Spoilers
I notice that all throughout the wiki we see SPOILERS everywhere in bold, caps, italics and so forth, now I understand entirely that editors are trying to alert others reading the wiki that there is information about to be read that may lead to knowledge prior to reading. BUT I'm raising this topic for the following reason (and it may seem a poor reason to some but here it is):

The entire content of DDOwiki is a spoiler, why do we have these alerts throughout when those reading are fully aware they at any point could be about to read something they did not know - that is why they are here firstly and throughout their experiece of DDOwiki over time, its always spoiler material, everything here is; please don't just shoot me down - I like to rock the status quo and see where it goes (valid arguement of course required), I'm wondering what others thoughts are on this and the reasoning behind it.

Agonshar (Contributions • Message) 20:50, May 12, 2014 (EDT)

Diffs not working?
As in title. I've tried in IE and Firefox; in both cases, diffs are not displaying changes between page revisions. --Thalone (Contributions • Message) 13:48, May 24, 2014 (EDT)


 * Which diffs are you referring to Thalone ?

Agonshar (Contributions • Message) 13:51, May 24, 2014 (EDT)
 * He is referring to the page differences that are shown when you review the changes between one edit of a page and another. I noticed they aren't working for me either (Chrome). --Zav (Contributions • Message) 14:00, May 24, 2014 (EDT)


 * The code isn't being produced in the source. I'll email  about it, it has to be something he has done on the backend because there is nothing in recent changes that would cause that (looks like a PHP error). ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:25, May 24, 2014 (EDT)
 * I emailed Xevo and the problem seems to now be corrected. Thanks for reporting it. :) ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 19:13, May 24, 2014 (EDT)

Mobile Skin

 * OK... So I'll start it out. I do not like the mobile skin that Xevo introduced.  The page does not scale properly on my phone (Galaxy S3) my girl's phone (Galaxy S5), my tablet (Galaxy Tab 10.1), iPad, or iPod Touch.  Xevo, please fix or give me an idea of which skin you are using so I can optimize it for this wiki.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 21:11, May 25, 2014 (EDT)


 * Surprisingly, there are very few mobile skin options for mediawiki. The WPtouch one was the only one that seemed halfway decent. I don't know about you, but the default Vector skin makes the text so small on a phone that it is pretty much unreadable. I'm curious, what do you mean by it not scaling properly? Do you have text scrolling off to the right? If so, that's definitely bad. There are some instances where things like tables, or the 3 columns on the homepage (for example), will scroll to the right. That is by design though. The skin is supposed to make it so the text is large enough to read, which sometime causes things to scroll to the right. If this skin was to stay I do know that we would at the very least need a prominent link that can be clicked to switch back to Vector. This is all somewhat of an experiment. I am sorry if it is causing problems ; I am completely open to suggestions Xevo (Contributions • Message) 16:47, May 26, 2014 (EDT)


 * I'm not sure that did it intentionally. I'm guessing it was part of the upgrade to 1.19. I'll email Xevo tomorrow and have him take a peek on this page and see if he can find anything to offer us some insight as that skin is atrocious and broken... ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 21:19, May 25, 2014 (EDT)


 * Semi-related; I created a DDOwiki APP a while back, worked fine but always seemed to be at least 5 minutes behind when synching in. Agonshar (Contributions • Message) 21:21, May 25, 2014 (EDT)
 * If you recall Tech, a few weeks ago Xevo was editing (!!!) stating that he was working on introducing a mobile skin. I will have to dig a bit to find the exact post. -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 21:22, May 25, 2014 (EDT)
 * This one on his talk page --Zav (Contributions • Message) 21:28, May 25, 2014 (EDT)
 * Agonshar, the way mobile skins work for websites is (usually) the main site detects the user agent and if it's a mobile, it redirects. Alternatively, the site can also check for user agent screen width and just implement a secondary CSS file altogether.  Mediawiki uses the former.  Regardless, I feel the mobile skin needs much customization since (namely the homepage) uses absolute width divs/tables to display, henceforth breaking the intended display of the mobile skin.  -- Ague (Talk · Contribs · Blocks · Deletions · Imports · Patrols · Page Moves · Page Protects · User Merges · User Rights) 21:26, May 25, 2014 (EDT)


 * I'm not sure where this skin is, but I do know the source for the truglass skin is on http://ddowiki.com/skins/truglass/main.css and there is the truglass2 in http://ddowiki.com/skins/truglass2/main.css ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 22:10, May 25, 2014 (EDT)

Immobile Skin problems

 * Perhaps related to the skin problems: Without logging in, users cannot see certain pages. See
 * Thanks for pointing that issue out to me, I'll look into it and see if I can reproduce it. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 06:53, May 26, 2014 (EDT)
 * I'm unable to read the forum post you linked as the connection to ddo.com keeps timing out(although I did manage to get in from my mobile phone, but could only read page 1), and I'm unable to replicate the issue while logged out. I've fixed all the links on the VotA item page so that they don't go through a redirect, but I doubt that will fix the issue.  Can you possibly give any detail about how to replicate the issue here that you can, so I can dig deeper?  I'm guessing that those people are using some kind of ad blocking program or have some other system configuration/file that is blocking those pages (not sure why only those pages) from them.  Thanks for any details you can provide and steps to replicate. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 07:44, May 26, 2014 (EDT)


 * Hmm. Weird. I could replicate it few days ago. Once I logged out, the page was empty. Redirects did not matter. Edit-Preview displayed the content just fine. Repeatedly logging out and back in produced consistently the same results. I cannot replicate it now. I am now at home - I might have previously tested at work. If I manage to reproduce it again - any ideas what can I do for troubleshooting? Second page of the thread does not really bring any important information beyond how being logged in alleviates the problem. --Cru121 (Contributions • Message) 13:49, May 26, 2014 (EDT)
 * I'm guessing it was the same bug mentioned above about the page diffs not working which was a result of a server upgrade that Xevo has already corrected. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:17, May 26, 2014 (EDT)

Customizing user pages
I'm not entirely sure that's correct but wanted to raise the topic if you understand my meaning. Agonshar (Contributions • Message) | My projects  |  My ToDo list  |  My Sandbox  |  My Links  18:19, May 31, 2014 (EDT)
 * Hey Zav - I've just seen you have amended the Wiki Help page and removed all of the tab information for users - I wanted to say that the previous instructions explained to users how to create the template so that they do not HAVE to use the predefined template structure that is in place here: Template:UserTabs, the intention of the previous expansion of this information was to give new users much more freedom than to lock them into a pre-defined set of template tabs for several reasons. perhaps some more revision might touch on this in the tutorial at all?
 * I don't think Help:Editing is the place for such information. Maybe creating Customized User Tabs or something would be a better place for it. (Then link it in Help:Editing and T:UserTabs.) Also, users don't need to put any code in their common.css to use any of the custom tabs.&thinsp;&mdash;&thinsp;Zav 18:54, May 31, 2014 (EDT)
 * I actually saw this post last night before I got the Ppoi and decided to sleep on how I wanted to address the issue. I agree that H:Editing isn't the right place for that... It belongs on DDO wiki:User page customizations/tabs which will need to be reformatted to show both methods of creating tabs.  I'll working on trimming down the existing page today by creating some more preloads and collapsing the source.  Give me a little time, and I'll let you know when you can add your alternative method (which is kind of convoluted on its own at the moment and will need clean up as well.) ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 07:51, June 1, 2014 (EDT)

Empty lines after ncl
Can someone eliminate some of the empty line breaks after using ncl? For example, see Weaken Undead. --Cru121 (Contributions • Message) 04:02, June 26, 2014 (EDT)
 * will have to fix it. He should probably update that extension to a new version which uses class names and whatnot so we can adjust it.  Right now, the php for that extension sticks an empty  on the end of all ncl lists, so Xevo would have to change the PHP in the extension to fix it and no-one else has access to that right now. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 08:25, June 26, 2014 (EDT)
 * In the mean time, I've moved the "Effect:" section up on the page to above the "Found on:" section because it doesn't look quite so bad this way. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 08:28, June 26, 2014 (EDT)

T:Wizardry include/noinclude/transclude problem?
Can any template demigod take a look at Template:Wizardry?
 * Category:A Lesson in Deception reward items is correct
 * Update 19 named items is not, at least on my system it shows Wizardry Expression error: Unexpected < operator.X --Cru121 (Contributions • Message) 13:18, August 2, 2014 (EDT)


 * I'm looking into it. It appears to be a transclusion/variable issue.  I'll find a way to fix it as soon as I can. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 12:24, August 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * AH-HA! I've found the problem!  this change to the template where the trouble was actually being introduced (Template:Dec2Roman) made it so I could see exactly what was causing the error.  I'm going to make some adjustments to see if I can't fix that now.  ;) ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 13:11, August 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * Update: I'm pretty sure I know what is causing the errors, but it is doing to take some digging and trial and error to get it fixed and I've spent too long on it today. I'll take another stab at it tomorrow or in a couple days if no-one beats me to it.  I think fixing T:Dec2Roman && T:Roman2Dec to pass through already formatted values and not rely on the variables extension will fix the problems.  We are hitting a max loop issue with that extension and those templates need to allow pass through anyways to make sure the correct value is always returned no matter what is passed in. ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 14:43, August 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * I think I have the problem fixed. I created T:Ifnumber to use to pass values through T:Dec2Roman and T:Roman2Dec. At some point during 's edits to T:Dec2Roman today, the template no longer works for 3001-3999.&thinsp;&mdash;&thinsp;Zav&thinsp; (C&middot;T&middot;E) 17:15, August 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * , you seem to have made some progress as I expected being able to pass through would, but if you mouse over the text of the template, the calculations still aren't working on Update 19 named items. It's not just T:Wizardry stuff either, it is also T:Dmg and T:Spellfocus stuff too (mouse over them on the C: transcluded content on the U19 list page to see what I mean).  If you mouse over enough of them for the popups, you'll find some that say  which is caused by https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Loops#Configuration and if we can eliminate the use of the variables extension in those two meta templates it should fix it.  I realize this may not be possible using just template \ string/parser functions, and I may have to look into other possibilities to continue using these meta templates...  ShoeMaker (Contributions • Message) 17:29, August 2, 2014 (EDT)
 * Would something like mw:Extension:RomanNumbers work? It always switches the input to the other number system, so two versions would be needed combining it with T:Ifnumber should be able to replace our templates.&thinsp;&mdash;&thinsp;Zav&thinsp; (C&middot;T&middot;E) 20:54, August 2, 2014 (EDT)