User talk:Robin

Tidying This

I'm starting a discussion here because I'm having trouble navigating my way round the site -- which is surely a bad sign, considering how much time I spend here. There are at least 3 different groups of people to bear in mind when modifying this:

1. Casual browsers trying to find information
2. More advanced users who are not editors but who might one day become editors
3. Wikispooks Editors

Before talking about smaller points, perhaps it would be worth discussing, are these three equally important? Personally, I am inclined to make (2) the priority at the moment, intending to attract more editors.

Robin (talk) 15:57, 11 November 2013 (GMT)

Sorry - only just spotted this.

Piwik stats show that the bulk of site visitors get here from a Google search. They are followed by fairly regular links posted on Reddit ('Conspiracy' and 'Endless war' sub-Reddits mainly); then Twitter (I regularly tweet article and document links) then Facebook, then odd mentions on odd sites about specific subjects that sometimes bring a flood of brief visits. A single page accounts for around 15% of total site visits since it was posted 3 years ago - 9/11:Israel did it. It remains the top visited page nearly every day.

I agree it would be nice to have more editors. Site purpose would be more effectively advanced. I'm happy for you to exercise judgements over which group to prioritise on navigational matters. I do think a mandatory form for DocProv would be good when current mountain of work and mods is complete. Also, I have still not thought through the most effective way to employ semantic properties with categories. I'm still also preoccupied with timeline stuff - I am using the Sandbox wiki a lot now too --Peter P (talk) 21:56, 20 November 2013 (GMT)

I'm also mulling over a major main page revamp using SMW to select and present lists rather than the current mish-mash using both the 'News' and 'DynamicPageList' extensions. SMW can do all they currently do without defining any more properties - there are resource implications that I do not fully understand yet though --Peter P (talk) 11:37, 21 November 2013 (GMT)

Bots

Since any user can be made a member of the Bot group, I am unclear what the purpose of the two new users are - beyond their user pages being a logical place for discussing the use of bots anyway. Do you have any existing bot or bot framework in mind? --Peter P (talk) 07:58, 8 December 2013 (GMT)

The other main benefit of a separate user is the ability to keep statistics/edits clear. Today's User:UpgradeBot efforts are by a home baked PHP script adapted from this. Robin (talk) 13:22, 8 December 2013 (GMT)

SMW potential etc

The SMW query additions to William Blum David Guyatt John Pilger Sharmine Narwani and Mark Curtis provide insight into some of the potential for SMW use on Wikispooks. I have not altered any other author person pages yet because this needs a bit more thought. Such queries can themselves be saved and parameterised for use in templates. There are also many other output formats, the appearance of which can usually be tweeked with CSS, so best to settle on a bit of standardisation before taking this further. I also think we should delete all the named person categories in Category:Authors because they duplicate the SMW Property:Is author which is far more useful and are thus redundant - some of them can be converted straight into regular pages because they have page-like content already. There is also scope for dramatically pruning the current category tree and replacing with better considered SMW properties. - Lots of work and I want to be addressing content rather more - Hmmm --Peter P (talk) 09:43, 12 December 2013 (GMT)

I've done a couple of new templates and had a first pass at the above pages now - plus just one subject page Blood diamond. --Peter P (talk) 15:08, 12 December 2013 (GMT)

A couple of useful tools

1. php cache information
2. The RTRC facility accessible from the sidebar

--Peter P (talk) 10:18, 26 January 2014 (GMT)

Plus: Old server sub expires 10 February. I think I've got everything needed off of it. Is there anything you can think of before it vanishes?

And there IS still a date problem but a function of the latest Release of SMW Forms. If the day is not completed then an error is printed on the page, in red, right after the template info Expression error: Unexpected < operator.. As before, it's OK if just the year is completed or if day month and year are completed. See File:King Family File Transcript.pdf for an example. No sweat to wait for a fix with next release though --Peter P (talk) 15:58, 26 January 2014 (GMT)

Nothing springs to mind, if the scripts etc. are working OK on the new one. Best take a backup copy of everything else, just in case. Robin (talk) 16:13, 26 January 2014 (GMT)

A couple of questions about the {{Person}} template...

Is the Person template a superset of {{infobox person}}? It incorporates semantic wiki extension, correct, while the old infobox person doesn't?

The complexoperations wiki used semantic wiki extensions, and I wonder if they are the same as those used here. Wikilinks with a pair of consecutive colons established a property for the article. So if an article on Eric the Red contained [[Father of::Lief Ericson]] the wikilink would render as a link to Lief Ericson, while adding a "Father of" property to the article.

I told Peter I would like to be fickle, and port articles that risk deletion at the wikipedia to multiple other wikis. The drawback of using even excellent, clever extensions, is that they make it more complicated to port them to other wikis.

I saw you put a {{Person}} template on Ahmed Siddiqui, when I went to put a more fully populated {{infobox person}} there.

I imagine there are no tools to transform one template to the other?

If you think the Person template is preferable please feel free to restore it.

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 00:47, 24 February 2014 (GMT)

I just checked complexoperations and yes, that also uses SMW. See WikiSpooks:Semantic Mediawiki for how that is used here. You're correct about the "::" notation, though you don't need to know that syntax to use the semantic templates, which are invoked just like ordinary templates. The first thing you should be aware of is that the policy, templates and page data are all in flux; we only really got going with SMW last December, and until a month ago, there was no Scribunto, meaning that infoboxes didn't work at all. The plan, such as there is a plan, is laid out in the SMW section of the community portal. I think we'll probably end up with:

1. A set of namespaces, 'person', 'event', 'website' ... in addition to (main)
2. A matching set of forms and templates, so that every page in the event: namespace uses template:event, and semantic data can be input by people without neededing to learn and SMW (or even MW) mark-up

As regards the {{Person}} template, yes, this preferable since it adds SMW data. Now that infoboxes are working, it shouldn't take much work to fix the display. I might even try it now. If {{person}} takes a superset of the parameters taken by {{infobox person}}, we should be able to upgrade infoboxes to use SMW just by removing the "infobox ". Robin (talk) 03:29, 24 February 2014 (GMT)

I've studied the workings of the Infobox template quite closely and was gearing up to make the changes discussed here myself. However, if Robin is up for it I'd rather he did it because he is a far better coder than I. The fundamental thing about infoboxes is that they all use the same Lua (ie scribunto) modules to present the data. There are just two of them: Module:Infobox and Module:InfoboxImage - no need to do anything to that code but that's where it resides.

Parameters are passed to these modules by Infobox Person (or other Infoboxes) in numbered pairs representing the Label and the Value. To maintain WP compatibility we can make only minimal changes to the WP templates. I suggest picking maybe 4-6 parameters (possibly the unused ones currently labelled "Module") and using them for any required WS specific parameters not included in the WP template.

I conclude (provisionally) that the best way forward would be to do something similar with templates Person, Event etc, to what was done with (for example) the 200YT template; ie have them INCLUDE the major operational template to handle data formatting and display.

Work required: Modify the Person, Event etc templates to include the relevant Infobox templates. Assign and display SMW properties only and leave the included Infobox xxx template to format and display the infobox itself.

That way anything imported from WP should remain fully operational and such pages can have their SMW data added by simply changing the wikitext from the imported Infobox to Person, event etc. as and when.

Obvious issues: What to do with existing WS param Description should that be assigned to WP param known for or probably better Footnote with its existing label "Notes"?; getting WP params Constitutes and ON Constitutes to display prominently may require using WP honorific suffix and prefix; + a few others. --Peter P (talk) 07:27, 24 February 2014 (GMT)

Another thought: I spotted a tip on the SMW mailing list which we might consider when assigning properties in this context. The syntax {{#set:property=value}} can be used instead of [[Property::Value]] so that the value is not displayed by the act of assigning it. Display can then be handled by the suitably tweeked WP template. --Peter P (talk) 09:03, 24 February 2014 (GMT)