Difference between revisions of "Suggestions"

Revision as of 19:38, 13 October 2010

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).

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.

Could I suggest a possibility for a new section? I have noticed there is a page for music as a subject, but no area for the music department. This could contain links to all music teachers and to instruments, music rooms, notable musicians in the school and any other topics that would fit in. Please tell me what you think, whoever it would be who decides these sort of matters. Thanks.

PurpleGuy

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)

Moving everyone up

This isn't strictly a suggestion, but I couldn't think where to put it. I just realised that over the summer there's going to be a load of work to do with changing everyone's year group category. Everyone has to be moved up a year, any sixth formers leaving have to be added to 'past students'; and we'll have to find out which year 11 students have stayed on and which have left; to be able to categorise them. Maybe we should start thinking about how to do this now - otherwise situations will arise with people being moved up two years and all the rest of it. Jonny (talk) 13:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Resolved with Help:Year Upping DavidB 17:20, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Special:UserScore

The Special Page Special:UserScore has disappeared in the new wiki software... why is this?

..As to the actual suggestion, it is, "Bring back Special:UserScore" Tar7arus 15:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Will be restored next week when I get more time. I got rid of the extensions when updating so that it worked (extensions tend to be version-specific). UserScore needs a few non-obvious tweaks to get it working unfortunately. Clizard

Just in case you were wondering, the developers of UserScore have created a new version that supports MediaWiki 1.6.3+. It's available here 1885 (Contribs) 19:47, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Can we create our own version (or copy over) of the Infobox system implemented in Wikipedia, Wikia etc.?

The Wikipedia template & information for infoboxes can be found here. I can/will create the template on BRGS Wiki if required. Thanks, 1885 07:54, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes that'd look good. DavidB 16:38, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I think they'd be a good idea, i don't know how to use them so you'll have to tell me how to work them but as soon as I know I'll get it on pages when i find one that needs one. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 17:24, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

OK then will add the template - I'll write a guide to using the infoboxes as well. 1885 (Contribs) 17:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The Infobox currently isn't working- not sure why but either i've messed up the code port or it's a configuration issue. Any ideas? 1885 (Contribs) 18:22, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah sorry we don't have the ParserFunctions extension, which is needed for all the #if s and things. I'm probably going to upgrade the wiki tonight with the next version so I'll add in that extension as well since it appears to be a stable one. DavidB

That would explain it! I have managed to create a basic infobox using tables... see Template:Infobox for more details. (i'll move it over to a proper page and write a guide soon). If you do upgrade the wiki (and add ParserFunctions) then i'll implement the 'proper' Infobox template on the site. Thanks, 1885 (Contribs) 18:54, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I've created the guide to using the table-based-infobox, it is here. 1885 (Contribs) 19:32, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi Clizard, if you are going to update the wiki tonight i would also like to remind you that i requested to you on facebook to install the user score chart extension and that the Admin Alan also requested that the Who's online extension was installed. He said this on User talk:Chris. Hope you can install what you can! Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 19:54, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

A new version of UserScore has been released to work with MediaWiki 1.6.3+ too - I've put the link on this page under the existing topic Special:UserScore. 1885 (Contribs) 20:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm having problems with uploads at the moment so I couldn't get the site update done last night. Hopefully I will be able to get an upgrade this week. I'll try and put the latest UserScore on but it's one of those bargepole extensions that anyone can edit the PHP code on, fortunately it's relatively short so I can keep and maintain a separate copy. DavidB 19:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I've just tried to get the proper Infobox template to work again - no joy. I think we should just leave the table based infobox as-is for now. Thanks, 1885 ^{says hi!} 20:12, 24 September 2010 (BST)

ParserFunctions isn't setup properly yet because I was away this weekend and did the update quickly last week. I'll put it up tonight and I'll let you know when it's on (unless it breaks something serious :)).

Done. Clizard

Still no joy. I think it's best to leave the Infobox as-is for now until I find what's gone wrong! 1885 ^{says hi!} 18:30, 4 October 2010 (BST)

Combined Subjects Page

I've been browsing the wiki lately and it seems that a lot of the subject pages are just two or three lines of information. Is it worth combining these pages into one subjects page, and adding teacher links etc.? I could do this as a side-project to my infobox project if required. Thanks, 1885 ^{says hi!} 20:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, I bet a lot of them are fairly out of date by now :) DavidB

OK I'll start on that project then :-) 1885 ^{says hi!} 18:30, 4 October 2010 (BST)

Inverse Suggestion

I've just upgraded the wiki software, and the server has also just moved. If you notice anything weird (I've looked briefly and all seems roughly in order) then please let me know here. I've done the update quickly because it was overdue and I'll patch it on Sunday with the other September stuff on my scheduled System Changes list (including the long awaited ParserFunctions). Enjoy :)

Hi Clizard, I've noticed all my edits from yesterday have completely disappeared, as if I never did them (which is a bit weird), I thought I'd let you know seeing as I wrote quite a chunk for the suggestion above (which I had already lost one time before from refreshing the page!). Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 16:59, 24 September 2010 (BST)

Sorry about that. Can you remember when you did the updates? I'll check my last backup copy to see if they are there, but it's unlikely. The server was migrated very early last Thursday morning so it shouldn't have been that. Hopefully it was a one-off from the move/update but if it happens again then I'll investigate further. In the meantime I'll have a look at what we can do to prevent it happening again.

If anyone's doing a large update then I'd recommend using a program with autosave, e.g. MS Word, so that work isn't lost by a browser fault/crash or a problem at the server end. Clizard

From what I've noticed, the server seems to change, because it has been on the current server with recent changes, but then yesterday it switched back to the old one, my old edits from 23/9/2010 popped up, along with some new edits by a new users yesterday... Don't know whats up with it but thought you need to know. Any other help? Let me know! Thanks BRGSMan ^{talk - contribs} 21:15, 27 September 2010 (BST)

Thanks, well spotted, I didn't realise the old copy was still active. I've recovered the old changes so I'll merge them shortly, there's about 24 revisions that were dropped like this. Editing is now disabled on the old one. Sounds like a DNS issue with old cache so hopefully will fix itself in a few days. Clizard

Use Patrolled Edits

From Alan: Let's use this new feature, it sets a flag on edits to say if a sysop has looked at the edit. You do this using diff or pressing prev on multiple edits.

It's useful, but annoying to do because it's not possible to do directly from recent changes. I'll try and get some extension to make this feature easier to use but it's much better than nothing. You can filter recent edits by unpatrolled status. Clizard