Suggestions

The Suggestions Page

We would really like some input as to how the wiki can be improved. This can be to do with our policies, editing guidelines, ban policy - absolutely anything you want!

Please tell us by writing down your suggestion under here. They will all be listened to and discussed, and implemented if we think it is a good idea. You can be anonymous if you wish, and every suggestion will be treated in the same way, no matter how daft you think it is!

Suggestions

Email addresses for moderators

Moderators currently rely on the brgswiki@hotmail.co.uk address, which is slightly unprofessional and I'm not sure if everyone gets the email from it.

Since the facility is available, I can add @brgswiki.org addresses, that can be checked by an IMAP client (e.g. outlook/thunderbird/etc). I think team@brgswiki.org would be a good address for the moderators.

Clizard 23:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd agree with that, as I've never got any email from that address sent to me Jonny (talk) 18:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that all but one e-mail received thus far on the Hotmail address is a friend request on MySpace. The ONLY other e-mail received was the one from Darren Vass that has been discussed. I also believe that having one central address means that everyone is certain to know about any correspondence, particularly Clizard as he is the webhost.. Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:46, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I don't have a problem with just having the central email address, I think that's great. Jonny (talk) 23:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

To what extent should the wiki be protected?

Until recently the wiki has been completely open. Should policy be the following?

• Only administrative) pages should be sysop protected.
• Only the main page; discussion pages and locked pages (due to repeated vandalism) be given protection from guests (but still editable by users).

Clizard 23:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

May I suggest having the Frontpage and all fully-locked pages being Sysop-only editable? That seems to be the pattern on all other wikis and removes the risk of major vandalism from newly-created or otherwise vandalising users. Tar7arus 16:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Admin pages being protected, and also the Main Page. The idea behind "locking" the Community Portal, News page etc was to encourage account creation. We now have a lot of accounts so maybe this could be relaxed? Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:54, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Leaving the Community Portal locked wouldn't be too bad, as then we can reply personally to anyone who's on there. It'd be good to have this page protected as well - I'd like to know who's making suggestions. In fact, I'm going to do this now, feel free to revert it if you disagree. Jonny (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Student Pages

The wiki currently does not support student pages from year 7. School edits seemed to have been blocked by the IP block introduced a week or so ago which has reduced bits of daytime editing that was mostly not worthwhile. I suggest this block continues. Should links from student sections be removed from the front page or stopped completely, being replaced by the New Content projects instead.

Clizard 23:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

With regards to the block, I agree 100% - it has cut out the majority of vandalism.

Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, a great idea Jonny (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

New Content

There hasn't been a nice big empty section to focus on recently to expand the wiki's content. This would also reduce expansion into student pages.

Therefore I propose we appoint administrators responsible for new sections of content. Ideas include:

• News Service - stories about what's happening at BRGS currently.
• Content Improvement - aims to improve current article quality. This is a big issue for student articles as what is being written may not be accurate at all.

Clizard 23:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Personality Tests

Some pages have recently had these on them, saying you are 62% apple pie or whatever. I really fail to see the point of having these, as while interesting on a MySpace page, are they really relevant to a wiki? Chris ^{talk - mod} 22:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I think these should be discouraged rather than formally banned as they add nothing of value at all. Tell people to link to their MySpaces if they want to show them Jonny (talk) 23:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Since i started this mess, i apologize, i just thought it would be an interesting thing on my page to be unique to mine, but others failed to see that, i have now removed them. Kronos^mod 21:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Extensions

I think it'd really help the wiki if we had these extensions installed:

Email Notification - allows you to receive an email if any of your watched pages have been edited.
PageProtection - allows us to protect certain parts of pages e.g. the opening of Moderation Requests, the top of the Community Portal etc.
UsernameBlacklist - stops people creating usernames that look like IP addresses, or that contain swear words (and so on)
SpecialUserScore - I think it'd just be interesting to see how many contributions everyone has.
DeletedContributions - allows moderators to check a user's deleted pages so we can see their entire editing history (deleted pages are removed otherwise)
Who's Online? - again, just an interesting one I think
Permissions - a lot clearer (and updates itself) than What can each user do?
Page by page access - a lot easier for private discussion on the wiki if we can set up pages like this
NewUserLog - we can easily see if a user's contributions were simply because they were new or if they were vandalising. Also, it'd be interesting to see how many new users we get per week.
YouTube - allows users to embed YouTube videos in their pages e.g. on the Rage Against The Machine page.

Jonny (talk) 18:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestions. I'll install some of those later on. Clizard 19:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I found a few more as well:

BlockTitles - allows us to block words in titles.

PageSecurity - better than PageProtection I think.

Sort - simple way to sort names on form pages.

When it's ready, DidYouMean, should also be a good one, to help the search function. Jonny (talk) 23:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Added UserScore and Permissions modifications and I intend to add shortly the deleted contributions; new users and the 'did you mean?' mod looks good. I think some of the other ones add complexity or are impractical (like sending out lots of email). I think there's an RSS feed somewhere for the wiki that can notify you of recent updates. Clizard 00:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll have a look for that then Jonny (talk) 10:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured Articles

Another thing that would make the site seem altogether more like a "major" wiki such as Wikipedia or Uncyclopedia -- the very best pages should receive "Featured Article" status. Admittedly this would be a monthly or weekly thing, rather than daily as it is such a small wiki, but I think it would make the wiki "better" overall Tar7arus 21:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)