User talk:Gonzoron

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More spammers on February 8th. Perhaps a skill testing question could be added to the sign up procedure. Something about Ravenloft evidently, common knowledge really, but not readily searchable . . . Cure 03:53, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

dealt with. From now on, let's report spam at Mistipedia:Spam Report instead. I'll see what I can do about the sign up procedure when I have a chance. -- Admin 19:02, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I suspect we have some more spamming. See post for February 5th. Cure 04:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

dealt with, thanks. -- Admin 14:36, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

We have a spammer at Category talk:Nova Vaasan Frontier Cure 23:43, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


Interwiki Linking?

Hi! I have a request because my wiki knowledge ends here and I don't know how to reproduce the concept. Would it be possible to make an interwiki link template? That is, when one wants to link to a wiki article on Wikipedia, all one has to do is something like [[w:Ravenloft]] or the longer [[en:Wikipedia:Ravenloft]]. It makes things a lot easier for other templates that need to link to Wikipedia, as well (instead of having [http://en.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia] every time). I've seen it done on Wikia, and I had thought it was a standard part of Mediawiki. Mediawiki discusses it here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_link . Thanks! --Nerit 01:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive. At least this time.... :) [[w:foo]] now works. See? w:Ravenloft -- Admin 02:48, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Yay, thank you! --Nerit 05:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The Great Page-to-Category Conversion

Eeeeeep! Look at all them new category pages. When/why did you decide to make everything a category? --Nerit 08:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Try not to be alarmed. :) Not everything. Just the things that are categories. Namely, monster types and societies. See Talk:Elsepeth,Talk:Dread Plant & Category Talk:Hiregaard Family for discussions.
Cure did some experimental work on making everything a category. See Category Talk:Osiris,Category Talk:Har'Akir,Category Talk:Anhktepot's_Tomb & Category Talk:Nidalan for details. I don't mind the nationality ones, but both DeepShadow and I were against the Har'Akir experiment.
Please feel free to weigh in with your thoughts. With so few active contributors, it's easy to mistake silence for assent. :) There's nothing that can't be un-done, if there's a compelling argument to do so. -- Gonzoron 12:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it needs refining, but we're getting closer: IMO anything that is unique is an entry; anything there can be more than one of is a category. You can't have multiple Borcas, but you can have multiple domains. There are many fiends, but only one Gentleman Caller. So far the only possible exception I've found is thrall clasps. There are multiple little suckers, but they are so interchangeable that an individual (NPC) is not possible. But then I guess the same could be said of plants, no? DeepShadow 20:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

the same could be said of lots of the mindless or animal creatures. Are we really likely to have an individual Scavyt or Carrion Stalker as an NPC? no, but I like the consistency of saying that every species is a category. It removes the guesswork and judgement calls that we'd have if only those species that contain distinct individuals were categories. -- Gonzoron 20:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
PS - Here's one to keep us all up at night pondering... Toben the Many: Individual entry or Category? :) -- Gonzoron 20:32, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Am I misunderstanding? Because Borca CAN be a category. A category contains derivatives, not always something of the same type and never a "multiple" (multiple things belong in a category, not as a category). So Category:Borca could have the Boritsis listed in it, as example. Think of it as a container. Vampire should be a category, because there are types and members of a race. One NPC, no, not a category in itself (it should be categorized, of course, otherwise it is an "orphan"). Should every SPECIFIC species be a category? Somehow I find that unnecessary when there's no person/character that needs to be listed within, but it is consistent and I suppose we'll see how it looks after the conversion finishes. --Nerit 06:21, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I think that domains as Categories make a lot of sense. That to me seemed to be the one thing that I felt entirely happy with from by Har'Akir experiment.Cure 14:06, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh, and to the Toben the Many joke: I would assume not unless his distinct personas need separate pages to be described. It's a practical thing :P. --Nerit 06:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
No, you're right, there's nothing stopping Borca from being a category. (See Cure's Category:Har'Akir experiment), but as I said in one of those Talk pages, personally, I find that a little weird. I'd prefer a page for Borca itself, and perhaps a Category:Borca Related for all the things that belong to Borca. (Note that nothing in the wiki software stops us from having BOTH a Borca page and a Category:Borca. I just would prefer to keep the category named clearly differently.) But I am willing to be swayed.
As I mentioned above, the category for each species may seem unnecessary, but a) it's consistent, and b) You'd be surprised what species have named NPCs in them. Think all Goblyns are the same? Herrd ApKie disagrees. Also keep in mind, that we are allowing non-canon additions to the wiki, and you never know what some crazy DM has done. If I ever felt like putting in PCs and NPCs from my campaign, I'd probably put "Kukri" in Category:Wolf, even though to most people, a wolf is a wolf. -- Gonzoron 14:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I suppose that's where I was stumbling on the conversion logic :). It's really hard to determine whether something should have a page, a category, or BOTH. --Nerit 18:25, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I can see "Akiri" or "Borcan" or (as we already have) "Nidalan" as categories. My biggest problem was with circular categorization that resulted in some of the Har'Akir experiment. I think the "What links here" feature is the best way to find this stuff.
Based upon the Har'Akir experiment I would say that NPC's should never be categories, although in the case of especially infamous Darkords and perhaps many Dieties a parallel category might make sense (I am still thinking about it). Nationality is, in principle, a good idea. But I am not sure it is worth the work. Categories should generally be wide enough to include more than a member or two, unless we are expecting growth. Professor Balatslava Institute is probably too narrow as we only have one known professor from there. Whereas Professor is good. Circularity should generally be avoided, although I suspect that there are cases where it is all but required.Cure 20:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, please riddle me this. Why when I search "Wonder" or "wonder" do I find nothing? "Mechnical Wonder" however yields results. Even a search of "of" yields results. But nothing for "wonder". Why?Cure 22:34, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, it took some experimenting, but I think I have a theory: By default, the search only looks in the "Main" namespace. i.e., not categories. (Not sure how Mechanical Wonder came up for you, it didn't for me.) When you go to the search page and check the "Category" box, "wonder" does work. So it seems we might want to make sure that every category has a matching normal page that redirects to the category. ugh. -- Gonzoron 22:49, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I can't get "wonder" or "Wonder" to work by clicking the "Category" box. I can find "Mechanical Wonder" with and without clicking. And I can get "Engineer" from "Mechnical Engineer" to work without clicking. I can't even find "wonder" in Talk. A google search of the site won't even find "wonder" either. Cure 17:53, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Hmph... that's odd. I could have sworn I was getting wonder when I checked category...  :/ I'll look into it. might need to rebuild the search database... -- Gonzoron 19:44, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


AHA!!!!! I FOUND IT!!!! I've been searching and searching for this ever since Cure mentioned it, 9 months ago, and I finally found out why you can't search for "wonder":

http://www.searchtools.com/analysis/mediawiki-search/2-mw-search-stinks-stopword-hell.html

Guess what's on that list of unsearchable words. I have no idea why.... There's a fix, but it involves mucking with mySQL. I'll try it sometime when I have time to back everything up first. -- Gonzoron 22:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)



Thank you much for the greeting! I hope to provide lots of useful background material from my notes as the project continues (see for instance, the notes and discussion at Torek Wood). --ChrisNichols 14:22, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Articles vs. Categories

I was wondering if I could get you to look at the comments I made here regarding the use and nature of articles versus categories, and weigh in on the matter (as you seem to be nearer to the administrative end of things). Thanks! :) --ChrisNichols 08:51, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror

Gonzoron, if it's OK, I'd like to get your permission to add the Teeny Tiny Tales of Terror material you wrote to the wiki. I figure that its always best to ask. Thanks! (Also it looks like there's a wiki-spam account that has been added - AssaCom; hopefully you or someone else in admin can take care of this.) --ChrisNichols 18:48, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Permission granted, though we have been operating under the assumption that any text already published anywhere on the Fraternity of Shadows site (including the forum) is fair game for inclusion in the wiki. This hasn't been stated explicitly in Mistipedia:Guidelines but probably should be, if everyone still agrees that it's appropriate to allow it. And thanks for the heads up on AssaCom. (Our first wiki spammer! We're getting noticed! :) ) He's been dealt with. (I do try to keep up on Special:RecentChanges, so I would've seen him soon enough, but thanks for the quick notice.) -- Gonzoron 19:27, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Timeline

  • Hiya! I read your note and am familiarising myself with your instructions for timeline editing. Let's see if I can get this right... -- Rock, 3rd of December 2020, 22:34 CET
  • Saw your note! Thanks for the assist. ^_^ I'll be careful if/when I see a need for those tags, cap'n. *salutes*
  • Something's off about 738 BC; I made an edit, think I did it right, but it doesn't show up in the Timeline.


Talk Replies

  • Hey Gonzoron! No problem. Happy to be give back, and contribute to this wonderful site. As long as everything is acceptable I'm going to do the same for all of the box sets, and eventually, as I get them, the rest of the products on the timeline as well. And thanks to you for maintaining everything here. To a Ravenloft collector like myself this is the home base, and it's made gathering everything far far easier than it would have been otherwise.
  • Hey Gonzoron. I made some formatting changes to the 1e section. Check it out, and let me know if it serves the site better, and if there's any additions you think might be beneficial. I saved the previous formatting of this section to a notepad so it can be restored as it was if need be.
  • Thanks for reply, and the recommendation. I would love to add or create a page, like the one you suggested, based on the timeline that breaks it down into sortable chunks by product type with collapsable sections. I've already re-written almost the entire 2E section in a notepad. I also reverted the 1st edition back to its former state, and the expandable sections are now fixed....
  • On an unrelated topic. I'm on the lookout for Out of the Mists. The art book featuring Talon's work. There are zero listings online, and I recall someone mentioning there may be a forum here I can inquire about it. I aim to own everything listed on the timeline, and already have a good number of some of the more harder to find items, but that book would be an excellent addition to my Ravenloft collection. Would you have any leads or suggestions on where to ask around for something like that? I've already contacted Talon about it, and he no longer has any copies left.