Cyber Nations Wiki:Village Pump/Archives/4

This Page is an archive for the Village Pump.

Absence
As is most likely clear to regular editors of this Wiki, I have been absent for quite some time now. This is simply because I have been busy lately, and have found less and less time to help out around here. For this reason, this shall be my official notification of absence. It does not mean I will never return to the Wiki--I intend to-- but after I stopped playing Cyber Nations several months ago, I'll admit, I lost some interest in the CN wiki. I shall keep my position as a bureaucrat, and I can be contacted by clicking the "E-mail this User" link in the toolbox to the left, on my user page. Once again, I intend to return to this Wiki sometime in the future, so good luck to all of you. --Aido2002((talk)) 19:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * TO be honest, I was wondering where the other admins were. J Andres 20:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've been here, but I've also gotten busy. I mainly just trim the new nations list and respond to questions at this point... I haven't invested much in new content. Maybe when things slow down for me, but I'm not sure when that will happen. -- Alphacow talk 23:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Help Desk
I've re-done the help section. Any comments, suggestions? - Alphacow talk 20:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism
Someone just screwed over the NAAC factbook, and I can't find any history. Help? --Commie, Illy 15:19, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please post a link to the vandalism on my talk page. This message has been posted both here and on your talk page. Thanks - Alphacow talk 19:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Someone keeps messing with sections like the SWF, and a few others... - Zikawe 07:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I checked it out and reverted it. Simple stuff like that you can revert yourself (history, click on date of last valid entry, edit, save), but feel free to keep reporting vandals. A better method for dealing with vandalism will be put in place soon (see below). -- this unsigned comment was posted by Alphacow talk on Friday, 13 April, 2007

Update Vandalism policy
llalalla Please look here to review a proposed updated policy change on vandalism. IMHO, the current one is far too lenient. Discussion for the new policy should please take place at it's talk page.

Due to the lack of presence by a majority of the board administrators, if no feedback is received within five days I will enact this change myself and leave a note as such on the policy page. Thanks - Alphacow talk 18:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of taking the current system and just making the first offense a 24 hour ban and adjust everything from there. J Andres 03:00, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * My main problem with the current system is that no one has time to actually uphold it. I know that I definitely don't have time to track each vandal and see how many times he's been blocked. Unless theres software that I don't know about to do this for me (i.e. keep track of how many times he's been blocked, what hes up to in the warnings, etc.), I favor the three-strike method... much easier to actually do. - Alphacow talk 15:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Due to the lack of discussion on this issue and the fact that I am apparently the only active administrator on this wiki, this new policy is instated as of now. Further discussion on the matter can (and should) take place, but that discussion will be proposing modifications to this new policy, not whether this policy should be enacted or not. -- Alphacow talk 21:31, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

'''Discussion ended. New policy instated.''' -- Alphacow talk

Wikia Blogs
This wiki is included in our new Wikia Blogs feature. To get involved, just add snippets of this wiki's best articles to MediaWiki:Blog snippet each day and that content will appear on the Wikia Gaming Blog. Please see Wiki to blog for an introduction and Wikia Blogs for a list of wikis involved in this. Angela talk 15:51, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit link added to news template
I added this to make things easier. We'll see if there's a huge jump in vandalism over the next week or so. If so, we can remove it. -- Alphacow talk 14:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

New Policy for war wikis
The articles over various wars are becoming too complex. There needs to be a standard system in place. By complex, I mean that the wars are all connected in different ways.

In the sense that people tried to make VietFAN and The Legion-Valhalla war connected and now the VietFAN and the Unjust War. We need to somehow keep these articles seperate, because they are NOT the same conflicts.

While GOONS and several others were fighting FAN at the time of the Legion war, the war was started over completely different reasons, thus, should not be considered thee same war.

And with NPO at war with GOLD, who is also fighting in the Unjust War. GOLD was declared on because of their aid to FAN, so that theatre of war should be part of VietFAN.

This is why we need to seperate these conflicts. -Chaosman


 * Unfortunately, I don't pay much attention to the politics of CN, so I don't know what type of template would best serve you here. However, if you write something up, I'd be willing to help make it an "officially sanctioned" war format. -- Alphacow talk 02:15, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Report a problem
Hi, you may have noticed the new "report a problem" link. There is also a page where you can view and act on these problems at Special:ProblemReports. Anyone can view this list, but admins can also mark reports as "fixed", "not a problem", or highlight it for staff. And you already have the first of your problem reports! Maybe an admin can have a look and see what you can do to help! -- sannse (talk) 22:58, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

New Problem Reports page within our current vandal system
This new tool is pretty cool, but I was wondering what we should do with our current vandal reporting system. Should we abandon it in favor of this, or should be request that all vandalism reports continue to be posted to the report vandalism page? The second can be done by changing the text that appears in the "report a problem" box. Just curious to see what people think. - Alphacow talk 03:45, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Gaming wiki chat this Sunday!
Hi all,

On Sunday October 14th there is going to be an IRC chat for gaming wikis at the #wikia-gaming channel. Contributors, admins, and foudners of all/all gaming-related wiki on Wikia are invited to discuss common issues that we might have, sharing our experiences, and helping each other out. The time of the chat will be:

Please help to spread the word, and hope to see you there!

-User:PanSola 16:28, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

wiki style sheet
Who is effing w/ the style sheet and how do we change it back? This large size font is killing me. -CirrusOfMalla 15:46, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to be fixed now -CirrusOfMalla 16:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Rollback
You might like to consider giving trusted community members the rollback permission to aid in vandalism cleanups. These users are able to quickly revert edits using the [rollback] link administrators see.

A bureaucrat can grant and revoke the permission using this special page. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave me a message.

Regards,

Manticore 05:48, 28 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I like this idea. If anyone knows how to access the "most active users" list, we can check those folks out and see if they're helping, and if so give them this permission. -- Alphacow talk 04:10, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikia Gaming IRC channel
Hullo! I am Kirkburn, your friendly local Wikia Gaming Helper!

You may be interested to know there is a Wikia gaming IRC channel, #wikia-gaming on chat.freenode.net, where you can hop on, ask for help from users of other gaming wikis, or offer your own experiences. If you are not familiar with IRC clients, you can access it from http://irc.wikia.com/gaming.

Different people may be on sporadically, but we organize weekly chats at a fixed time so we can get the most number of people online at the same time to ask and answer questions, or just to hang out. The admins of some of Wikia's biggest gaming wikis (e.g. WoW, Halo) often attend them. You can find the time for the next chat by following this link.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me! Kirkburn (talk) 14:16, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Monaco skin
Hullo! I am Kirkburn, your friendly local Wikia Gaming Helper!

We are switching over all the default skins (for anon users) to our new skin "Monaco" this week. Most of the big wikis have already switched (i.e WoWWiki, Wookieepedia Dofus and FFXIclopedia.

It is now the main actively developed Wikia platform. As a successor to Quartz, it comes with even more customizability - you can find out more on w:c:inside:Monaco Skin Customization, where you can also find out info about the new features and widgets available. I have taken the liberty of already creating your MediaWiki:Monaco-sidebar, but you can customize it much further with more links.

An admin can set the default site skin via the skin section on Special:Preferences, or by editing MediaWiki:AdminSkin. If users wish to see another skin than the default, they can untick "See custom wiki skins (recommended)" on the same page.

We really want wikis to move on to Monaco partly because it's more awesome than Quartz and Monobook and partly as it is where the bulk of our resources are currently aimed :) Please report any problems or questions with Monaco here

Thanks for listening! Kirkburn (talk) 15:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm pleased with our new look. J Andres 17:55, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Treaty organization navboxes
Does anyone have an idea of how to make collapsible navboxes, like Wikipedia has? It would definitely make things look cleaner and more professional for cases in which there are multiple such navboxes (which will only increase as it becomes more common for an alliance to be in multiple treaty organizations at once). See Template:BLEU, for example. The template takes up a lot of space, especially in cases like FCO where the presence of two fairly large navboxes at the bottom of the page seems a bit inordinate for an alliance which is just a former signatory. This leads to my second suggestion: Make it standard practice to only include a bloc template on the pages of current signatories. &diams; Vinzent Zeppelin (talk) 20:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think this is an excellent proposal. Perhaps we should also have some kind of standard bloc layout, with a standard width et cetera. Right now it's a bit chaotic. Jeeooh 04:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Main page update
Hi all,

I've been working on a new main page layout. Hopefully you have read about the skin and ad changes at Wikia's New Style on Central Wikia. If not, I hope you'll have a look.

One of the changes is a block of two ads on each main page. It's possible that they won't always show up, but to ensure your main page continues to work properly when they do, you need to update your main page column formatting code with new column tags

I have drafted a main page using the new tags on User:Kirkburn/Dev which I hope you can take a look at - feel free to edit it of course. The main change to the layout is the fixed width of the right column. This still allows a lot of customisation - for example see these main pages - w:c:muppet, w:c:wowwiki, w:c:ffxi.

If you encounter any problems with the new tags, please let me know. In addition to this, there's a whole bunch of links you might want to add from w:c:gamingstarter.

You may also want to customise the skin for this wiki. For examples of customisation, see Memory Alpha, Millitary Wikia, Rappelz or even (if you really want to see what can be done) UK Transport Wikia.

Thanks, Kirkburn (talk) 15:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've put the new layout live with just a few little tweaks. The content is identical, just the boxes have moved around slightly (I would have tweaked more, but I didn't want to change it too much). Kirkburn (talk) 09:52, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I gotta tell you, it's ugly as sin. It really needs to be made to look more like the old one.  Surely there's some way to make the adds fit above the title in that one?


 * Overall rating: 0/10. I am seriously disappointed.


 * General Mazur 02:32, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that the look was somewhat bad. I tweaked it a little and made it basically the old layout but with the top two boxes not as wide for the ad can fit. I think it looks decent now. Feel free to make any suggestions though. Lol pie 06:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Why is this page protected, anyway. "Please note that Wikia protection policy advises against the protection of this page unless it is the active target of vandalism."  That is taken from the very text of the source code.  General Mazur 06:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, I've decided not to use the main page anymore. I've set up the same thing at User:General Mazur/sandbox and have made all my bookmarks go there instead.  Less ugly that way.  General Mazur 06:58, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

General Mazur's Templates
Since becoming a member, I have added several new templates, which I hope to bring your attention to here.

Template:Infobox Needed
To be inserted into sections or articles requiring an infobox.

Template:Infobox Country4
A nation infobox to be used by those who have substantially customized their nation. It works well for those who combine government types (Communist Republic or Democratic Monarchy, for example). Furthermore, it eliminates elements of the main nation infobox that divulge more information than is available in-game, such as tax rate. It also makes more elements optional.

The Template page includes documentation for how to best use the infobox.

Template:Infobox Anthem
To be used with national anthems. Very straightforward. The variables are:


 * title
 * year
 * writer
 * copyright

Template:Infobox Ruler
Template:Infobox Ruler redirects to Template:Infobox Officeholder now.

Template:Infobox football team
Can be used for both football (soccer) teams and clubs. The variables are:


 * teamname
 * motto
 * logo
 * nickname
 * founded
 * ground
 * locale
 * capacity
 * league
 * rank

Most variables are optional.

Thanks to KingJarkko for the help with this one!

Head Coach/Manager
Along with the above variables, the following are optional variables that can be used:


 * headcoach
 * manager

Using |headcoach provides forthe field "Head Coach" and using |manager provides for the field "Manager".

Team/Club
To make a team, include this variable:


 * country

To make a club, use this variable:


 * city

Template:Infobox Language
This infobox can be used for languages. All variables are mandatory, except for |official, which adds the "Official in" field.:


 * nativename
 * name
 * pronunciation
 * spoken
 * official
 * speakers
 * family
 * script
 * regulator

Template:Anchor
This template is invisible, but allows you to add anchors into the page. Anchors pre-exist in section titles, but this one allows for them to be added in wherever.

The coding is as follows:

Anchorname is replaced with the name for the anchor, for example "History" or "Footnote".

The template is based off of a similar one in Wikipedia, but unlike the Wikipedia one, which is limited to 10 anchors per page, this one allows for an unlimited number.

Restrictions on Anchorname
Due to coding, the Anchorname cannot include the following symbols: # | =

Linking
In the same article, you can link to the anchor with.

In a different article, you can link to the anchor with Articlename.

If the Anchorname contains a space, it can be replaced with an underscore for linking.

Example:

If Anchorname is Word Word, it is linked to with.

Other symbols require more intricate linking, and therefore are not recommended. If you do want to use another symbol, and do not know the ASCII coding for it, [ leave me a message].

Examples
Two examples can be found in the nation infobox above. Beside "Atheism" is a superscript 1. If you click it, it will take you to the footnote at the bottom of the infobox. If you click the superscript 1 there, it will return you to the religion section.

So there are my templates so far. If you encounter problems using them, [ let me know]. I will attempt to fix the problem or provide assitance.

I'd like to remind administrators that I have applied for adminship, and that the voting has been open for quite a while on my request, without any response. I would greatly appreciate feedback.

Thanks, and have a great editing experience!

General Mazur 13:37, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Switching to the new parser
Hi,

We are currently making preparations for the next wiki software upgrade. While we expect this to have little or no effect on most wikis, it may cause some pages on this wiki to render poorly. To help reduce or eliminate these issues, please see the Central Forums for more details.

Thanks - sannse (talk) 10:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This is ancient, but I figure I'll leave a note regardless. I have manually incorporated the old parser function for its continued use, and thus this problem is an entire non-issue.   Michael von Preußen   voicemail  •  nation

Favicon
Wikia has changed their favicon settings, and the CN favicon needs to be reuploaded to File:Favicon.ico. Thank you. ~ Michael von Preußen (voicemail) &bull; (nation)

The new Wonders
Shouldn't the mars and moon wonders have pages or at least mentions on the wonder page?
 * Don't worry, they will eventually. THis wiki takes time and needs people to update it, after all.  If you would like, you're welcome to add a mention about them yourself :) ~ Michael von Preußen (voicemail) &bull; (nation)
 * I've updated the wonder page. — Pikachurin - (Talk) (Contribs) 18:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)