User talk:ABC

Just want to say

Be careful about marking pages for deletion... ED upgraded to the latest MediaWiki recently, and it looks like some non-English pages might've been accidentally deleted. Until we figure out what's going on (and this could take a while, since ED is very busy), I'd rather not delete any of those pages that redirect to foreign-language pages that currently don't seem to exist... because they might have existed once.

Anyway, welcome to PandoraWiki! You've made a lot of nice edits recently. What prompted you to come over here suddenly? Was there a discussion on the German forums? Esn 05:58, 20 April 2011 (MEST)

Hi there, sure I pay attention if the content is outdated or just a stub or (in my opinion) is badly named. I agree thats hard to decide for non english articles, but as this is a wiki, I decided to be gritty. Thats why I just marked them to delete and a second admin should decide if it's nesessary. If I did anything wrong feel free to drop me a note and to revert my changes.

No there wasn't a discussion at the german boards. I come over from the OpenStreetMap project, where I do wiki cleanup, too. Guess this is my faith to help to document OpenSource projects ;) And course my bachelor thesis is nearly finished, I decided to put some more attention on the Pandora :) --ABC 07:55, 20 April 2011 (MEST)

Regarding "if you did anything wrong", the main thing I don't like currently is that you're copy+pasting templates from Wikipedia that look ugly here because some of the elements are missing. For example, this one. Please just remove the missing elements & redlinks unless you're planning to bring them over as well (and honestly, we're much smaller than Wikipedia here; we don't NEED all the stuff that they have. If the community is small, it can be more efficient to have fewer rules.). Esn 00:53, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Case in point: instead of just putting "merge" templates on pages that you want to move (as you did on Extend Utils, Emulator compression support, InfoIndex), why not start a discussion topic on the relevant talk pages discussing your reasons and proposals? If you just post a template, nobody has any idea about why you want to do it. Esn 01:43, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

To me this is just an personal note and to others a 'oh see somebody is working on that'. Of course when I start moving anything I will start a discussion. To be honest, I don't know the situation where the people monitor the global changelog (which is a very good thing!). But currently I try just to reformat the pages, not moving, merging,...--ABC 07:26, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

A few more thoughts... what you've done with organizing the existing information here has been very valuable. The categories, for example - it's no secret that the category structure here has been a bit messy. I would urge you to be a bit more hesitant, though, in organizing future information - that is, information that doesn't exist yet. Some people tried that in the past, for example here... well, those pages were accidentally deleted with the latest update, so you can't see them right now (unless ED manages to figure out what went wrong), but basically an editor created a complicated structure for emulator compatibility lists... which nobody ended up using, because it was too complex to read or update. A prerequisite for any structure is that somebody has to be willing to put content into it - if nobody is, then that structure is dead weight.

Ah ok I didn't knew that. Personaly I like more general categories (cause currently it aren't that much pages), but yes if it's a special project we should use the long 'emulator compatibility' instead. But wouldn't it be more wise to put all informations on a single page comparing all emulators? Or using a bot to generate it out of the content of distributed pages?

It has to be easy to edit - that's one of the most important criteria. Someone has to be willing to work on it. A single page is easier to edit than many different pages when you're trying to add several games at once, even if those different pages are later combined. So if you're going to compare different emulators, it might be better to have it all on one sortable list, with a column for each emulator. The discussion is moot for now anyway, because there's only one real compatibility list on the Wiki. Esn 07:52, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Ah ok, I see your point :) and yes there is a lot of truth. I had good experiences in offering wiki editing help directly to people in other communities, when I recognized that they would like to help but didn't knew how wikis work. But I guess this a wiki (or organisation in general?) at all. --ABC 08:30, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

"I guess this a wiki (or organisation in general?) at all." - pardon, I didn't understand what you tried to say here... I think you might've missed a word by accident. Esn 08:38, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Unstructured content is more valuable than contentless structure.

Difficult to answer :/ If there is already content the most users are afraid to change them. In a unstructured form newbies wont read it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big proponent of structuring content once it is there to be structured, and there's a good likelihood that more will be added later on. That's why I try to think in advance about how an article or list might evolve, when deciding what the table should look like and so on. But when there's very little content, and you're not sure how things will evolve, too much structure from the very beginning can stifle the initiative of those who would have contributed. I would say more, but basically I think this Bizarro comic says it better. :) In modest doses, structure provides encouragement, but if you go too far it will stifle it. Anyway, if you hang around here for a little while you'll probably get a better idea of the right balance. :) Esn 08:22, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

So basically, I ask that before you copy things over from Wikipedia, you take a bit of time to think about if they're suitable for this particular project - if there's a need for them. Maybe ask people. Some of them are - and lots aren't. If you are willing to use them to add some content to the wiki, then that's the best of all. ;) Esn 07:03, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Thanks, but most of all it's a issue with the missing SVG support. ED is working on that and I don't want to stress him again. And I didn't want to spam the wiki with prerendered PNG files. So please be patient, it might be fixed within a few days :)

Okay. Although honestly, just using PNG files wouldn't be the end of the world, though I can see how it might be annoying for you to convert all of them. Esn 07:52, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Well ...yes :) I think it's not a good style to alter things that way. So to me the wiki doesn't seem to be used that frequently that we need to hurry up and to polish everything. To me wiki means to be 'liquid', to be more a process than a single state (that might be just good or bad). BTW might you fix the SVG issue alone or don't you have an account to the wiki box? --ABC 08:34, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

I'm not sure whether I have access to it or not. Can you tell me how I might find out? Esn 08:38, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

I have access to user/page rights and to MediaWiki:Common.js, but not to LocalSettings.php or the server. Esn 08:39, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

I disabled images in template:Ambox temporary to make them less anoying --ABC 14:49, 22 April 2011 (MEST)

Thanks. Esn 06:49, 23 April 2011 (MEST)