Doom Wiki:Central Processing/2013

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The brave new world of independent hosting
Hello all.

Sorry to be the bug in the raspberry here, but our separation from Wikia has given us a few extra to-do items (mostly for admins). Ideas I've had so far:


 * Real-world issues
 * Designate one or more users who know how to contact the server maintainers offline, in case of a prolonged outage where they are unreachable in the normal manner. (I have nothing against Manc and I respect the longevity of his contributions to the community, but he is a human being like everyone else.)
 * Offsite backups. Even downloading the MediaWiki dump once a week is better than nothing .  I've just learned how to back it up myself, using this.    Ryan W 23:09, 22 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Review licensing notices to make sure our wiki-to-wiki copying practices are still justified, in the absence of standing Wikia directives. (Not a discussion about whether CC-XYZ or GFDL is better &mdash; that's for later.)


 * Vandalism, spam, and all that
 * Identify at least one admin who can perform range blocks competently, and knows how to deal with collateral damage.
 * Be vigilant about keeping Doom Wiki:Administrators accurate and up to date. In particular, we should try not to run out of active admins &mdash; we will be responding to attacks far more often, and without the automated reversion tools that Wikia's janitors use.
 * Consider reinstating Special:ProblemReports. Requires the ProblemReports extension which is no longer supported.  The server admins have had more than enough trouble configuring extensions that are *supposed* to be compatible, so I assume this is off the table.  It wasn't used much anyway, and it's easy enough to post a question on a talk page.    Ryan W 17:25, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Consider semi-protection of Entryway (by far the most frequent target of junk edits). Two months after the relaunch, and no vandalism on Entryway.  Consider the subject dropped for a while.    Ryan W 23:31, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Bureaucratic mop-up
 * Create Doom Wiki:Departure from Wikia (or whatever) to explain the reasons for the fork. This should include instructions for migrating an account, resetting preferences, etc.  IMHO it should also advise editors not to spam the old site or otherwise create fanfare.  OK, I made a stab at this.  If you were involved in the migration, I would love it if you fact-checked.    Ryan W 11:38, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Remove links/references to Wikia from Entryway (including the transcluded parts), templates, and policy pages. Already done during "power user" cleanup period.
 * Deactivate mirrors of Wikia's help pages. (As a short-term fix, Wikipedia's tutorials are probably OK to link.)  Already resolved during "power user" cleanup period.
 * Remove references to Wikia policies/help pages from system messages. Already done during "power user" cleanup period.
 * Disable hardcoded shortcuts like  colon bug.) Already resolved during "power user" cleanup period.'''
 * Change the default skin!  :D  Already done during "power user" cleanup period.


 * Other
 * Possibly reach out, off-wiki, to inactive longtime contributors and notify them of the fork. (Even active editors do not always read Central Processing or dwforums.)  See reply to Janizdreg below.    Ryan W 02:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Set up a widget allowing users to donate toward hosting costs. Done by Manc shortly after the site opened; Monobook users have to switch skins to see it.
 * Fix the robo-generated meta keywords and other SEO "enhancements" made by Wikia over the last 4 years. Meta keywords were apparently removed during the migration, page title has been changed, and major sites (other than Wikipedia) basically link here now.  IMO this is no longer a front-burner issue.    Ryan W 18:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I regret the appearance of volunteering other people's time, but I cannot do all of these things myself as I lack the required technical skills. Hopefully the first two lists, at least, are non-controversial and people can agree they are needed.

Ryan W 02:46, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * The old wiki is still edited. What about copying revisions made after fork (if the article wasn't edited here)? Admins have a better way to do this (Special:Import), which preserves edit history without having to do too much work. I don't know how important it is to preserve the edit history, though.
 * An example: the Game Boy Advance article is edited there. Maybe the editor is unaware of the existence of DW forums (console ports is a niche topic). The editor is an unregistered user, which makes it impossible to contact him other than by posting to his talk page. Should we notify him of the new wiki? If yes, edits made already should be copied here. PolicyNonsense 11:30, 14 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I made a new topic below for import suggestions.


 * I would say people still editing the Wikia wiki should be notified of the fork where possible, as spreading awareness of it on the grassroots level is an important part of the migration process. The person in question has also contributed plenty of valuable information and should be among the very first to be invited over. Especially considering the fact that his/her IP address could change at any moment and he/she might very well eventually get frustrated with Wikia like we did. -- Janizdreg 20:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * spreading awareness . . . on the grassroots level  I took it upon myself to reach out to 6 departed regulars: Illdo, Insertwackynamehere, Kyano, Shidou, Splarka, Zaximus.  This is a completely subjective list and I have probably forgotten somebody.  As far as I know, everybody left on good terms.  As a rule, admins are/have been highly active elsewhere in the Doom community (I am the exception), so if Quasar can't find the missing ones, I sure won't.    Ryan W 02:56, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Glancing over the user list at the old wiki (the one here is near useless) I found some others that might be worth getting a hold of: Doomknocker, Ashley Pomeroy, Mithran Denizen, Mega Sean 45 and Ixfd64. All seem to have a good amount of constructive edits (glanced over their edit history) and have visited the old wiki in the past month. Nuxius 09:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Google rank
I don't know if you have noticed, but our Google rank has recently plummeted. When searching for "doom wiki", the first four results are from wikia, then there's three from Wikipedia, then some Japanese site, then the Chocolate Doom wiki, and the first result for this wiki is the multiplayer page... Last year, when I checked, we arrived instead of that Japanese site just between Wikipedia and Choco, and there was only three results from Wikia. Our Entryway doesn't appear in the list; while it previously did. Anyone has an explanation for why this is happening? We shouldn't become less relevant than earlier... Looking up some other wikis that I remember migrated away from wikia, they're all either in first position (tfwiki, wowwiki) or second position (grand theft wiki). Something has to be done I think. I just don't know what. --Gez 21:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


 * What you're getting in your results aren't mirrored in my results at all. GrandTheftWiki appears behind 3 GTA Wikia links and 3 Wikipedia links on GTA; Wowpedia appears behind 5 WOW Wikia links and 3 Wikipedia links on WOW. Looking at the various wikis on Wikia's pagerank (including the Doom Wiki on Wikia), I've noticed they have moved up to a PG of 5 (from 4). So it appears Wikia has moved up, more so than anything else moving down.


 * Your Doom Wiki results don't really match mine either, with the first doomwiki.org link coming in behind 2 Doom Wikia links, 3 Wikipedia links on Doom, and Chocolate Doom's Wiki. (that Japanese website is on down the page a bit)


 * So out of this, the only thing that really brings up any concern for me is that the front page isn't showing up, with the Multiplayer article coming up first as it did in your results.


 * I know exactly why this is happening, as well. However, it's a bit of a multilayered problem, so you'll have to follow me for a bit here, as it gets a bit confusing.


 * First off, do a search for "Doom Wiki". Now note that DoomWiki.org's first result is the Multiplayer article, with the front page not showing up. Now, use the links at the bottom to go to the last page of Google's search results. Here, at the bottom of the last page Google gives the usual line of "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 173 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." Click that link. Now you will be back on the first page of results. Now scroll down. Notice something showing up that wasn't there before? Yep, it's the front page, which Google has flagged as a duplicate (or extremely similar to another result). Why? Well, unfortunately, the answer is two fold.


 * First, let's start with the easier to solve problem. This has to do with how Quasar has the various different domain names set up. Unfortunately, instead of just forwarding doomwiki.net and doomwiki.info to doomwiki.org (which is the proper way to handle multiple domains for one website) he mapped them all directly to the website. So you can use this website from any of those 3 domains, complete with 3 different logged in accounts if you wanted, because as far as anything outside of the server (ie your browser) is concerned, it is 3 different websites. And this includes Google. However, they're 3 "different" websites with the exact same content (obviously, since it's the same pages on the same server). In other words, duplicates, and of course as we have seen previously, Google has a method of removing duplicates from its results.


 * Another coincidence of this is that it temporarily spreads results across all three domains, so some will be from the .org one, while others will be from the .net or .info ones. It basically makes this wiki competition with itself.


 * And this leads us to another, in this case particularly damning, coincidence, in that having multiple domains mapped to one website is something unscrupulous websites used to do to grab more visitors (ie create one crappy scam website, then get a bunch of different domains with celebrities names in them and map them to that one website, that way you show up in numerous search results and get more visitors). I say "used to" because Google caught wind of this and now has it set up to actively punish websites that do this in their listings. So over time, more and more links to this wiki will disappear from the results as Google's automated processes weeds them out.


 * That's why if you have multiple domains, you just forward the others to the one you want to use. Google then will completely ignore the other domains, doomwiki.net and doomwiki.info in this case (that's their combat against unscrupulous sites using that tactic). However, unlike the current method Quasar is using, it doesn't affect the actual main website, doomwiki.org in this case, at all (which is what we want).


 * Still with me? (heh, I hope so) Remember when I said this problem was two fold? Well, now we come to the other problem. (however, I have a solution for this one as well) This image will describe our problem, and the solution, better than I could.


 * So as you can see, unlike the WOW and GTA Wiki's, we are pretty much a carbon copy of the Wikia Doom Wiki, which is obviously a bad thing. However, that image also contains our solution. Change the Wikia wiki to better match up with all the other Wikia wikis. In other words, "Wikia it up", as I like to say it. Add a background image; use images to link to the Doom, Ultimate Doom, Doom II, etc, articles instead of text and the like. Remove some of the links that most people wouldn't need, simplify it.


 * This is something that would be good for Wikia, since designing pages for people with ADD and little children is what they want, and it helps us as it makes their page different from ours. Everyone wins. - Nuxius 10:42, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Related discussion going on too. -- Janizdreg 14:16, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs Issues Thread
Now that doomwiki.org has launched, can we please discuss details/bugs/changes here, and not on dwforums or IRC? That would be awesome.

I'll start:

Who can be a reviewer
The wankery about contribution history, mostly due to me on the dwforums thread, applies only to complete newbies. I propose that people with established reputations in the Doom community can be granted the "reviewer" permission based on that, no matter what their edit count. (Not "editor" status though &mdash; that should always be case by case.) Such people should contact User:Quasar to get started. Ryan W 15:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Update: apparently I have been misreading the MediaWiki documentation, and the Editor status is supposed to be granted more often than the Reviewer status. See the introductory section here.  This raises a few new technical questions, especially about auto-assigning permissions.  This subsection ought to be titled "Who can be an Editor".    Ryan W 03:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Backlog
All pages (main, redirects, File: and Template: spaces) are marked as unchecked by default. This may take a while. Volunteers are welcome! Ryan W 15:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Update: I estimate that I have just reviewed 40% of the mainspace backlog (articles plus redirects). If the other reviewers together can't manage 60%, then we have issues.  :>     Ryan W 02:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll go ahead and volunteer to help with this. (I have some free time) Hopefully I've been here long enough to be entrusted with Editor status (LOL). Nuxius 03:18, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Another backlog is forming from the previously reviewed but edited since pages. IMO this should get more attention, as anonymous visitors are shown reviewed vesion by default. (Some pages have edits pending for nearly a month.) I think that the pending changes should be either reviewed or reverted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PolicyNonsense (talk • contribs) 08:32, 14 October 2011.
 * Something that would help would be if some people (e.g. admins, reviewers, editors, etc.) were granted the authorization that makes their edits reviewed and checked automatically. I see little red exclamation marks next to my edits in the recent history. And I can make them disappear by reviewing my own edits. Which is silly. And since I generally don't bother doing so because, well, it is silly, the result is more backlog for the backlog god. --Gez 18:19, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The exclamation points are for patrolling, not reviewing. Two different things.  According to this, admins and Editors should already be able to mark patrolled, and autoconfirmed users should already be autopatrolled.  Maybe Quasar/Manc just switched patrolling off during the migration (since we already had FlaggedRevs).


 * More people should definitely, definitely be given the review ability. But Manc has said he doesn't want to change any settings whatsoever until the server load issues are fixed.  :(     Ryan W 20:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Bump. Can someone please review new changes to checked articles? PolicyNonsense 18:19, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * More bump. PolicyNonsense 17:11, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Now that the topic was brought up again, I'd like to illuminate the reviewing issues that are currently present.


 * 1. Five of the articles with pending changes have been set into "quality range" which means that only the two Reviewers (read: DooMAD and Quasar) can approve the subsequent changes that are made to them. The status of these two is more powerful than those of the twelve Editors. It just seems that the gentlemen are so busy at the moment that they haven't found the time to approve the changes. I don't know for certain what Gez did here but it's clear that quality approvals shouldn't be added to any new articles, at least if the two mentioned users don't review new changes regularly.


 * 2. Many of the open edits have been made to articles that connect to Doom 3. It's apparent that many Editors (including me) don't have a sufficient knowledge to review the changes or just don't have the time to do it. That's why I thought if either Shidou or Iwearafeznow could be given Editor status; they both seem to know about the game and could be readily considered trustworthy enough to give the ability of approving their edits automatically. Thus, they could also check the quality of the new changes of the Doom 3 content. Of course, as Ryan W said, extra chores aren't fun but that is something that has crossed my mind.


 * I'm sorry that you have had to wait for some of your edits to become published. --Jartapran 20:49, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * My bad for not bothering to look at the more minor changes for Doom 3 material before. They have been published now along with the pending edits by Iwearafeznow, the approvals being based on his trustworthiness. For the remaining changes I'm unable to do anything unless an admin removes the quality status from the articles. --Jartapran 08:02, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Iwearafeznow has voluntarily got himself the Editor rights . We have one problem less now, given that he will also review the new changes for the Doom 3 content that are made by others than him. --Jartapran 14:12, 24 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Point of terminology &mdash; "voluntarily" may be the wrong word as he was autopromoted. Because no one has proposed a definite system for this, autopromotions occur based on whatever configuration Manc felt like using at the time (GhostlyDeath was promoted after 200 edits, but Iwearafeznow has over 1,000).    Ryan W 18:16, 26 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the correction. Hope he would use the tools anyway cause a Doom 3 content reviewer is provably needed... --Jartapran 19:06, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

"Under review" flag
After the backlog is clear, I hope Special:Unreviewedpages will become useful. Note that if it says "under review" next to an article, it probably means someone looked at the draft and decided it was crap, not that they still have the page open and are mulling it over. EDIT: actually it does go away, but only after 10 minutes or so. Ryan W 15:16, 11 September 2011 (UTC)


 * There also needs to be a page created for Help:Page_validation, as this red link appears on just about every article on the wiki now. - DooMAD 16:04, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Shit, I didn't realize that was happening already. I'll do some work on the Help: space next time I'm at home.    Ryan W 16:41, 13 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Should Reviewers have access to Special:Unreviewedpages? At the moment it appears to be locked for Editors only. - DooMAD 19:46, 18 September 2011 (UTC)


 * That's a really good idea. Quasar and I are trying to figure out how to change it.    Ryan W 11:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)


 * As you may have noticed, there has been a delay. :Z   Here's a trick I just discovered for finding draft edits: look at Special:Contributions for someone with a lot of edits, extending the limit to 500 (or 5000 perhaps).  Unreviewed revisions are highlighted.    Ryan W 04:47, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Review quality
I'd like to know why the only levels I can get are Unapproved/Sighted (for Accuracy), Unapproved/Basic/Moderate (for Depth) and Unapproved/Acceptable/Good/Concise (for Readability). Among other things, this means that the higher levels listed by the (Accurate/Well sourced/Featured; High/Featured; and Featured, respectively) aren't available. If a page decides that it is at a higher level than what is available for review, then approving is impossible or ineffective. Any changes remain on the draft forever. That means I have to edit the page's stability to lower it. It's weird. I think it's because I'm not a reviewer. I think all admins should have reviewer rights because it doesn't really make much sense for them not to. --Gez 12:10, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Some of this confusion is my fault apparently. I've told people that once an article reaches a given rating level, it cannot be "downgraded".  This is incorrect.  Setting all three menus to the lowest level activates the submit button; you can then clear the rating and apply a different one.  As a bonus, it avoids the procedure Gez describes, which may be useful but can only be done by admins.  Sorry about that!    Ryan W 21:32, 24 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is also helpful if you run across a previously reviewed page edit that has changes to a template or a image it uses (after that review) that are stuck in a draft phase. Since as far as the software is concerned that edit has been approved, just using the same level won't work, you'll have to either escalate the review rating or wipe it clean and start over. -- Nuxius 06:33, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Changes on quality pages
Please approve or modify the change on Berserk, it's pending for over a week now. --Jartapran 13:00, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Configuration changes as of 2011-10-16
A few important configuration changes have been made as of October 16: --Quasar 16:51, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Some breaking changes to the Monaco CSS have been repaired.
 * Extension Oversight has been removed and replaced by MediaWiki 1.16.x's built-in RevisionDelete functionality.
 * Extension UsabilityInitiative has been disabled completely. This may revert some modifications to the Vector skin, and has removed the buggy "enhanced" edit box which was causing serious issues with copy-and-paste, amongst other problems.
 * Improvements to FlaggedRevs configuration are under research and are, at the moment, not implemented yet, but will be rolling out shortly


 * At the risk of being rude, what is your FlaggedRevs idea? 2 months ago when I brought it up on IRC, you said you were almost done thinking it over, and would propose it on-wiki for discussion.    Ryan W 01:01, 24 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Bump again. If this gets to 3 months with no followup, I'm just going to start appointing people (and other admins can do the same or not).  FlaggedRevs isn't practical unless we are able to deal with the backlog.    Ryan W 06:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Abuse Filter?
I'd like to suggest installing this extension. It has the ability to catch spambots in the act and preventing them from actually going through their edits. So instead of having to go delete pages or revert changes, there's pretty much nothing to do. Things like "anon IP creating user page" could be an auto-blocking rule, for example. --Gez 23:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Pretty heavy artillery for us, but I suppose the problem will only get worse. If we created new filters only in response to events (not edits we think might happen someday), I'd support this.    Ryan W 02:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I'll do some research into this. Some things we can do by changing permissions, though (see below). --Quasar 15:41, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Can somebody bring this up with Manc again? I am not able to install the extension because I don't have high enough permissions - it requires running some php scripts. --Quasar 18:18, 1 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Installed, perms are adjusted via localsettings, filters are managed through Special:AbuseFilter. --SpiderMastermind 15:04, 1 June 2012 (UTC)


 * And now we had anonymous users with different IP addresses spamming today, with every spam article having something to do with finance. User:Grain of Salt says (copying here because it was in the summary of a deleted edit): "It might be an idea to restrict page creation to registered (or even autoconfirmed) accounts, if possible." The Green Herring (talk ) 23:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Right now, all registered users are autoconfirmed. I would support making autoconfirmation a little more demanding, however, which would help here.    Ryan W 01:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

This is a thing of untold beauty. I love these angry-autoblocks. :) --Gez 14:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

NB: I have increased the action taken for blanking of existing articles by unregistered users with an edit delta of over 5000 bytes from "warn" to "disallow" - this filter already has 12 hits due to spam bots incessantly targeting the first few pages linked from Entryway. --Quasar 05:27, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Permissions change suggestion
I would suggest that we remove permission to create new talk pages from anonymous users. They're already not allowed to create articles in other namespaces, and this exception is exploited by nonsense-spamming bots that probably blindly attack any HTML form and mean to place links in a field that isn't present/supported on wikis. This doesn't prevent editing existing talk pages. I think if someone wants to create an entirely new talk page, asking them to register first is not a huge deal. --Quasar 15:40, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * And so bots will create pages in the main namespace. In the talk namespace, it's only visible to a few editors. Plus, by that logic, needing to register before editing isn't a big deal either. Are you sure that this is what you want? PolicyNonsense 17:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with PolicyNonsense, and moreover, the newbies and IPs willing to *use* talk pages are the ones we want to keep.   Ryan W 17:43, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Blocking talk pages to anon IPs doesn't seem really relevant. Blocking user pages, however? Yeah. There's plenty of bots who create both WhateverRandomName and User:WhateverRandomName. The latest example at the moment being this one, who made Morettic and User:Morettic to babble about the crisis of the € and the Greek debt. --Gez 18:01, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I encountered the same bot, "Morettic" on the Legacy wiki. It registered an account to spam there, so limits to anonymous users will make no difference at all. - DooMAD 19:17, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess you guys haven't noticed the pattern of attacks by bots that create new Talk pages filled with nonsense, but, OK. Bots can't register accounts here because of the strong captcha. If spam appears on an article that requires registration to edit or create, it's because a human did it. --Quasar 03:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is our highest-volume problem right now. It's just that, if we address it this way, we alienate a population known to produce good contributors.  I think that's a terrible trade-off, so I objected.


 * With AbuseFilter, we could (I think) prohibit actions such as:
 * Creating user talk page of a user with 0 non-talk edits
 * User page created by someone who isn't that user
 * Same user/IP creating multiple user talk pages five minutes apart
 * Same IP (or proximate IPs) editing multiple talk pages with identical edit summary


 * Ryan W 14:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Inaccessible Special:RecentChanges?
Seems that I can't access Special:RecentChanges. I get either a blank page or a connection reset. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PolicyNonsense (talk • contribs) 15:37, 12 February 2012.


 * Multiple Special pages are suddenly broken. Known to be not working: RecentChanges, NewPages, RecentChangesLinked, Contributions, DeletedContributions. I cannot check the apache error logs on mancubus.net because I don't have read permission to the folder. This means I have very little chance of diagnosing the cause. Clearly somebody did something that is breaking a significant portion of the MediaWiki software. Looking through the recentchanges table on the database, I don't see anything out of the ordinary. In addition, since installation of the PasswordReset add-in, which didn't apparently cause any of this, there have been no configuration changes on the backend that I am aware of. --Quasar 15:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * In the meantime, you can use the API feature |ids|sizes|flags|user&rclimit=50 like I do . It's not as legible as a working RecentChanges, but it's there. --Gez 18:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Temporarily fixed by rolling back some MediaWiki patches, according to Manc on #doomwiki.   Ryan W 23:59, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Great to hear this (this is me from Indianapolis :P ) - I hope it will still prove possible to update MediaWiki without breaking it though. --Quasar 01:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Dubious help page
Does anyone remember why we needed this? I seriously doubt we, or the Wikia staff, had plans to formally support bot contributions. Ryan W 12:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It's an orphan and anybody who wants to perform automated edits would probably find AWB via Google. —Shidou 11:24, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Request for assistance in reviewing new edits
Bump, I wonder if some of the editors have such a knowledge in Doom 3 that they could review the currently pending changes and those that are made in the future. I'm basically out when it comes to Doom 3 and right now I don't have time to start studying the game content and background. Thanks.

By the way, I'm thinking that these edits should be undone since the user seems to be unwilling to give arguments for removing the stuff. If there are opinions, please share. --Jartapran 22:56, 25 March 2012 (UTC)


 * About the Vermil edits, I think the reasoning is simply not to have the wiki talk about how there are juicy things to warez on the intertubes. Do we need articles saying "hey, you can totally pirate this game, the key is only for multiplayer"? Also, there was no citation given for things like "a couple of ATI employees" etc. Very specific allegations like that should be sourced. So, I agree with the edit. --Gez 09:47, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm no Doom 3 expert, but editorially, many of these edits seem pointless. Most NPCs are just a name and a few lines of dialogue; they don't need individual articles, much less screenshots.    Ryan W 21:45, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * And if there's such a big issue on conserving space, then I would suggest taking all the minor NPCs and putting them on a single page labeled "Minor NPCs in Doom 3" or something. Don't just outright delete them. -- Iwearafeznow 22:10, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Also characters with PDAs should be posted on separate articles. -- Iwearafeznow 22:33, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm posting all the minor NPCs to a single page. Basically, anyone who doesn't have a PDA or assist you in the game or attacks you is on it. -- Iwearafeznow 23:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Okay, I'll correct myself: NPCs who are just a name, a few lines of dialogue, and a locker combination don't need articles or screenshots.  Even if the articles stay, we most certainly should not be splattering copyrighted text all over them.    Ryan W 15:03, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about the PDA contents themselves? Because I'm pretty sure those aren't copyrighted. This is stuff you find in-game. It's not from a novel or anything.  -- Iwearafeznow 23:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Copyright automatically applies to everything. That's why fair use is important: even the level names are copyrighted, so if we're allowed to use and list them, it's because everyone with a functioning brain would agree that it's fair use. The question about whether copying all the text entries verbatim can be considered fair use (encyclopedic purposes, just a tiny part of the overall game, etc.) is one that is unlikely to be answered anytime soon; so it's mostly a question of comfort zones for wiki admins and maintainers. For example, the UESP features game conversation transcripts, quest messages, and in-game books, and ZeniMax Media never objected, so I think we're safe either way; but I understand if other admins would prefer to be more cautious. --Gez 13:37, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok. I see. Thank you. --Iwearafeznow 13:58, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I consider myself a Doom 3 expert as far as gameplay goes, and while I do appreciate all the effort you've been putting into adding more content, I don't see the majority of the characters currently listed here as significant enough to warrant their own articles. For most, I can't imagine their name appearing in any Doom 3 synopsis of reasonable length because they're just pieces of back-story that had no impact on the plot of the game.  They'd be orphaned if you discount the map articles that list their PDAs and other minor character articles (since back-and-forth emails are often found in the PDAs).  I recommend merging the lesser characters into Minor characters in Doom 3. Shidou 11:15, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmmmmm... I see your point there. I definitely could merge some of the characters with minor PDA contents into that page. However, I feel that there are definitely some characters beside the main four (Betruger, Swann, Campbell, and Kelly) who have enough background info or do enough in the game to warrant having separate pages (Ian McCormick, Ishii, Roger Pierce, the lantern guy, etc).  The question is what to do with the background characters (the one's you never meet) with extremely long emails/audio logs. I maintain that anyone with an audio log warrants a separate page.  I'll have to think about this some more.  But in the meantime, I'll move some of the people I consider minor NPCs with  into the Minor characters page. -- Iwearafeznow 18:06, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I personally wouldn't mind the examples you listed too much because at least there are either objectives or non-trivial gameplay tied to them. However, I don't think an audio log is a sufficient condition; for example, Adam Berneche's monologue is essentially another email with the dime-a-dozen "I did this today, this base is freaky, and here is a locker code" format but read out to the player instead of written down. —Shidou T/C 19:03, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I think I could do what this guy did, and put all the PDA emails and audio texts on a single page. I could then redirect some of the lesser characters to the PDA page. -- Iwearafeznow 02:11, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Doom 3 map data
Originally something I wanted to do a long time ago, I'm finally getting around to rolling it out onto the mainspace. I have all the wiki code ready to be copypasted from User:Shidou/Sandbox, and any feedback would be appreciated. I published the source code of my data collection script at Template talk:Doom 3 map data. —Shidou 11:46, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Others will have to assess the data's completeness, but the markup and layout look solid to me.   Ryan W 23:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not that good at reading source code, but it looks ok from here. -- Iwearafeznow 18:24, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm mainly concerned about the data's completeness, but I guess if everything looks okay I'll start inserting the data into the articles soon. The source code is mostly for error-checking purposes in case an error is found in the future, and the code isn't really commented anyway. —Shidou T/C 01:26, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Do we have a Wikitext shortcuts link on the editing pages?
I keep having to copy and paste special characters like "|" when editing pages. Is there a wikitext shortcuts box available? If not, I think we should get one. -- Iwearafeznow 18:29, 9 April 2012 (UTC)


 * We had one briefly after the fork, but removed it because it slowed the server down and caused crashes.


 * What's special about "|"? I can't remember ever seeing a keyboard without it.  Are you editing from a tablet or something?    Ryan W 01:05, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You had something other than MediaWiki:Edittools? —Shidou T/C 01:27, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Most of the discussion was on IRC unfortunately, so I can't link to it, but the editing interface was this.   Ryan W 02:01, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I suggest trying Edittools because it would help those on a laptop. I haven't tested its performance, but I highly doubt it would impact the server much because it's a built-in feature that only affects editing pages and essentially copypastes 4 KB of content when it does. —Shidou T/C 15:51, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

WAD Pages for Infamous Authors
Hey I wonder if it is acceptable to make WAD pages for Authors that are infamous like for example Terry. Justice Infinity

Once again with map data
Considering earlier discussion, I'm confused about what calculating method gives the 'real' values, or is more preferred. I have made a modified version of WadSpy, which calculates these numbers simply by dividing lump size by the length of a single entry. Is it okay to use such calculation for filling the levels' data tables? If not, then please enlighten me about these matters. --Unmaker 15:57, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Although I don't fully understand what the problem is, there's a way to find out if the data provided by WadSpy is consistent. Check the map data of a stock level using it, then download DeePsea that has been verified to give right information and use it so check if the figures are identical. If they are, you may freely use WadSpy. DeePsea would be a perfect tool to find out the map data but it seems that it can only do so for IWADs and not PWADs, at least when it comes to what I'm aware. By using the edit level feature (Shift+F2) of DeePsea, you can have this L=____ V=____ in the map preview box and the vertex figure right there is the amount after node building, the one that needs to be used. Do you have the latest version of either Doom or Doom II? If you do, choose the level from there and post the results here so that we can see about them. --Jartapran 05:54, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * You see, deepsea is a shareware program, and it refuses to load maps if they're too big, so it's a no-go for very big levels which the majority of user-made maps are.

For example, here is what my custom wadspy outputs for E1M1 (bracketed data taken from the wiki):  Things                 143 (143) Linedefs               486 (486) Sidedefs               666 (666) (how evil) Vertices               470 (391) Sectors                 88 (88)  I'm counting total vertices - then the wiki is probably wrong, and so far my program is okay.

Let's take a look at AV MAP01 then  Things                 145 (149) Linedefs              1359 (954) Sidedefs              2086 (1300) Vertices              1221 (826) Sectors                186 (162) 

Now here are contradictions everywhere. I am certain about vertices only - mine count is right. Then what about other entries? Maybe 194 things are 145 + 4 playerstarts. And for sectors - looks like I'm counting separate ones too. My head is spinning already.

Once again - I count raw numbers of entries in tables. --Unmaker 18:15, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * DeePsea gave map and thing data for AV MAP01 and MAP02 that were identical to those you uploaded (found the way to see the "node" vertices for PWADs too and the big one opens as well with 14,639 vertices after node-building). Thus, it can be assumed the problem has been solved. :)


 * Do continue! --Jartapran 19:39, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, nevermind about AV, it's just has dawned upon me that there's two versions of it and those counts were from the old one. Anyway, I've begun working my thing on this wad in particular, and I have some thoughts. How did it happen that our map pages do nщt list such essential things like total KILLS/SECRET/ITEM counts or thing numbers in coop. While this would've been very easy to implement in the templates from the beginning, today it would be a quite tremendous task not worth the effort. Might be not too cumbersome to fill these in for vanila levels, however. --Unmaker 20:27, 15 August 2012 (UTC)


 * So it seems with the AV levels, but it's not a bad thing at all to update them since the latest versions (of anything) are always preferred sources of information. While I regard total kill counts as a good idea, I object to a similar count for items because the category is quite illogical and thereby confusing (guess you meant the official category by writing it ITEM). Secret counts are technically present as the amount of secrets in the level is the highest number of the list in the "official secrets" section.


 * Things with the multiplayer flag? Sure, they could be an interesting addition. Heretic level articles from E1M1 to E3M4 already have them (with difficulty flags ignored though, don't know if it matters) and MAP01: Entryway even on a deeper level. As said, it's about your available time and priority. --Jartapran 22:35, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Validation statistics
Manc, in case it isn't too burdensome, could the validation statistics be updated? It's been four months, the amount of articles at the wiki has reached 3,000 and many new reviews have been made. Just interested in the information. Thanks. --Jartapran 00:29, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

ZDoom's (so-called) IWADs
I'm putting up this issue once again. Do we really need pages like these? They are nothing more than the WADs' checksums - and as far as I know, those free IWADs are perpetual work-in-progress projects. As those checksums are going to be obsoleted, the whole idea looks pretty worthless to me. Others are simply partial conversions - why should they need separate pages for their resource files?

It seems somebody is simply racking up their edit count by contributing useless stuff. Unmaker 21:47, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd say ACTION2.WAD is legit since it is a finished project distributed under this name. Blasphemer and Freedoom, however are of dubious usefulness. The pages use ZDoom aliases instead of their actual names, and yeah they are still works in progress. --Gez 00:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Future of video embedding
During the relaunch, I tested our video embed tool and found a lot of holes in the functionality. Specifically, for service values of I argued against installing this extension at all, but other people love it, so I would like it to be less frustrating (also, our longstanding policy requires media to include a link to licensing info). Therefore, I propose disabling the unusable services.
 * dailymotion: OK.
 * divshare: Videos not viewable unless the user is logged in to the other site.
 * edutopia: Does not work as stated in the documentation.
 * funnyordie: Only one of the two site logos takes you to the info page.
 * googlevideo: No link to info page (the link to the main page doesn't even seem to work).
 * interia</tt>: Does not work as stated in the documentation.
 * interiavideo</tt>: Does not work as stated in the documentation.
 * revver</tt>: Site went bankrupt, currently down.
 * sevenload</tt>: Does not work as stated in the documentation.
 * teachertube</tt>: Site no longer exists.
 * vimeo</tt>: Not supported.
 * youtube</tt>: OK.
 * youtubehq</tt>: OK.

Thoughts? Ryan W 21:15, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Seems like a no-brainer to me. Plus honestly I don't expect anyone to use something other than youtube or dailymotion here. --Gez 12:51, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

People category
I've been thinking about revamping Category:People into strictly a parent category, and there would instead be subcategories (like some already exist): People who fit multiple categories would be in all that apply. What do you think? --Gez 12:49, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Mappers (or level designers): people who create maps: anybody who has a Category:Levels by author category belongs there.
 * Composers: people who create music: Mark Klem, Tom Mustaine, Jimmy, etc.
 * Graphic artists: people who create or edit sprites and/or textures (maybe separate spriters from texture artists?)
 * Speedrunners: more generalized version of Category:Compet-n players
 * Programmers (or coders): people who write source ports and/or utilities
 * Scripters: people who write game mods code above and beyond the needs of a single Hexen/ZDoom map, like isle (Action Doom II)
 * Community managers: (not sure how to call that category): people who own, operate, administrate, or moderate community sites. Multiplayer clan leaders might go there as well?


 * That sounds great. The people articles have proliferated greatly since we established the current categories, and this would make it easier to find things (and also resolve the debate over whether, e.g., Anders Johnsen belongs in Category:Speedrun).    Ryan W 19:44, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting idea, however what about the people who somehow don't fit into any of these categories? Justice ∞ 23:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Then who are such people and do they actually have wiki pages? If there is a need for categories beyond those I listed, then they can be created too. It's pretty much why I put this on Central Processing. --Gez 12:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This looks pretty comprehensive IMAO. Perhaps the only exceptions are non-technical employees of commercial organizations (like Donna Jackson).  Otherwise, even if someone is only remembered as a community gadfly, seemingly they've always released a few non-notable maps, or served nominally on some development/siteadmin team.    Ryan W 16:18, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Possible problem with FlaggedRevs extension
It appears that FlaggedRevs is malfunctioning on the Blackbird article. The newest revision of the page, auto-approved, should have become the published version of the article, but when visiting it while logged out, the previous approved revision is displayed instead.

If this cannot be resolved and made to behave in a correct and consistent manner, then I will be in favor of removing this extension. It should be noted that it is already acting as an obstruction to the process of upgrading to v1.19 of MediaWiki, and my previous attempts to convince manc that loss of the extension would be acceptable in exchange for the upgrade were apparently not successful. --Quasar 18:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)