Cunnan:Village pump: Difference between revisions

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In [[Medieval village]]s people would gather at the '''Village Pump''' to discuss those items that were important to their lives. On [[Cunnan]] the Village Pump serves a similar purpose: Giving users a place to meet and discuss current events, policy and content.
In [[Medieval]] [[village]]s people would gather at the '''Village Pump''' to discuss those items that were important to their lives. On [[Cunnan]] the Village Pump serves a similar purpose: Giving users a place to meet and discuss current events, policy, and content.
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[http://www.sca.org.au/cunnan/wiki.phtml?title=Cunnan:Village_pump&action=edit&section=new You can add a new topic/question by clicking here.]
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==Projects==
Here is a list of some of recent projects in [[:Category:Project Current]].

<DynamicPageList>
category = Project Current
order = descending
addfirstcategorydate = true
shownamespace = false
ordermethod = lastedit
count = 6
</DynamicPageList>


== Announcements ==
== Announcements ==
Line 8: Line 18:
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2003)|Moved during 2003]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2003)|Moved during 2003]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2004)|Moved during 2004]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2004)|Moved during 2004]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2005)|Moved during 2005]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2006)|Moved during 2006]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2007)|Moved during 2007]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2012)|Moved during 2012]]
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2014)|Moved during 2014]]


== Topics ==
== Topics ==


=== sca.org.au documentation ===
=== Policy Page ===

Just wondering whether cunnan might be a useful place to store the documentation that I have started to put together for the databases and stuff on sca.org.au? This includes the new registry & groups database, and the events database (currently mentioned on the Arrowsreach wiki, but plan to start coding on it soon).

Specifically, neither the FAQ nor the policy document says what sort of articles are OK to put on Cunnan. The front page says it's a medieval & renaissance wiki with an SCA slant but that doesn't really cover it in my opinion. The SCA covers lots of areas, and there probably could be a lot of stuff added here about SCA administration, etc, but it isn't really related to the middle ages or renaissance.

Also, a side note, sca.org.au is going to get an OS upgrade sometime during October. That will mean things like a new PHP version, a new version of Apache (from 1.3 to 2.0) etc. Keep an eye on the site mailing list for annoucements.

[[User:Del|Del]]

: My view is that this is a beginner's encyclopaedia to the [[Middle Ages]]. It is being written with the knowledge that [[recreationist]]s are the main users. A decision had obviously been made in the past that the pages were allowed to relate the historical data specifically to how the [[SCA]] is played. This has been expanded by writers (like me) into pages that are specifically on how the SCA runs (cf. [[Board of Directors]] etc). I helped here to reduce the ambiguity of SCA jargon between branches and help define the roles of [[officer]]s etc for those outside the offices. However, I still feel that the main purpose of [[Cunnan]] should be basic historical information. While it could be used as an SCA database, that should not swamp the rest of the system. This is especially important if the SCA stuff was just relating to one [[Kingdom]], not the SCA as a whole. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 14:53, 2 Aug 2004 (EST)

:I think general SCA information would be no problem but Kingdom specific info would only clutter things up, IMO. There are enough people asking why we do SCA and general medieval info as it is. Maybe we should consider forking into two wikis eventually (I think it'll be a long time before this is actually needed though) - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 16:01, 8 Aug 2004 (EST)

=== Another upgrade ===
Those of you who contribute to the Wikipedia will have noticed that over the past few days it has undergone a major facelift as well as having a major feature upgrade. Once the software settles down and the new version is released to the public I will install it here. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 10:43, 1 Jun 2004 (EST)

:The upgrade is now complete. I apologize for the abruptness of the upgrade but there was a problem with the old software (I would have had to reinstall it or install this newer version). The new interface can be customized and we will have category support again.

:As always you should report any problems here. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 18:14, 8 Jun 2004 (EST)


Uploading has been disabled. Was this deliberate, or is it as a result of the upgrade? [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 00:11, 10 Jun 2004 (EST)

:It was deliberate (and done on account of the upgrade). I've re-enabled uploads now. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 01:14, 10 Jun 2004 (EST)

=== Information taken from Wikipedia ===
I've noticed that Cunnan is listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_%28low_degree_of_compliance%29 (under SCA wiki). I think that we are listed on the wrong page since we meet the criteria for moderate compliance but that is beside the point. We really should do something about this when we come across articles of our that are copied from the Wikipedia. Just adding "Some of this articles content were taken from the Wikipedia article at ''http://whateverurl''" would be sufficient. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 10:43, 1 Jun 2004 (EST)

=== re/moving misspelt page titles ===

Hi,
I have noticed that there is a page for Pavillions. This is a misspelling of Pavilions and while I have corrected all the words inside the page, I don't know how to move the filename. The only way I know is to make a new Pavilions page and redirect Pavillions to it but I am not happy to do this.

Please advise,

Cian, the spelling pedant.

:If you are logged in (which you seem to be). You can move a page by clicking the "move" link. It should be along the top of the article (if you are using the new design) or in the left hand set of menus (if you are using the old design). You'll be asked where to move the page to and the old version will be turned into a redirect. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] (PS writing <nowiki>~~~</nowiki> will automatically sign your name on talk pages)

=== Yet another upgrade ===
There will be a minor version upgrade tonight (sorry about the short notice). There will be no (big) cosmetic changes this time just a few bug-fixes. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 19:15, 8 Jul 2004 (EST)

:Done. If anything explodes mention it here. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 20:13, 8 Jul 2004 (EST)

:Grrr, I broke special characters again. Fixed again. I'll update the database to UTF-8 soon so that this doesn't keep happening. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 20:36, 8 Jul 2004 (EST)

::Not sure if it is related to these changes, but I had something break, I was looking at my watchlist and clikced of "7 days" and it gave me this error:

:::Fatal error: Call to undefined function: floatval() in /home/sca/public_html/cunnan/includes/SpecialWatchlist.php on line 74
::::: Should be fixed now. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 19:59, 13 Jul 2004 (EST)

::it was the same when I tried clicking on the other day or hour fields for this page. Cheers, [[User:Taryn|taryn]]

::I'm getting the following whenever I use the search box and click [Search]
:::Warning: Wrong datatype for second argument in call to in_array in /home/sca/public_html/cunnan/includes/FulltextStoplist.php on line 588
:::Warning: Wrong datatype for second argument in call to in_array in /home/sca/public_html/cunnan/includes/FulltextStoplist.php on line 588
:: - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 15:08, 13 Jul 2004 (EST)


I've added [[Cunnan:Policy]] so we can have somewhere to list Cunnan's Policies.
===Copying from Wikipedia?===
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]])


=== Mediawiki updates ===
Is it OK to copy articles from Wikipedia to add here? I would of course put the Wikipedia legal stuff on the copied content. I am not sure if this fits this community so I thought I would ask. [[User:Sir Michael|Sir Michael]] 22:22, 30 Jul 2004 (EST)
I've added additional Extension to the mediawiki setup here. See [[Special:Version]] for the current technical setup.
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]])


=== Reorganising Cunnan ===
: Copying from the Wikipedia is fine '''if''' you add something like "Some of this article's content were taken from the Wikipedia article at http://whateverurl". - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 23:11, 30 Jul 2004 (EST)


Moved to [[Cunnan:Organisation]] Project
===New Article===


-[[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 18:36, 6 February 2013 (EST)
I am planning on writing an article on libraries in Europe during the [[middle ages]]. I will probably take some info from Wikipedia and add stuff from my own knowledge of library history. Where should I add the internal links? I don't want to orphan this article. I think [[education]] and [[university]] are good starts. Are there others? Thanks. [[User:Sir Michael|Sir Michael]] 11:34, 8 Aug 2004 (EST)


=== Style guide ===
:There are probably others but you can always add links from them after you have written your new article. Its also perfectly acceptable to add "See also" type links to the end of related articles.


It appears that Cunnan could use a style guide for how to set out particular pages. For Example the Kingdom Standardisation Project could be adapted to be an SCA group standard style guide. Any thoughts or comments? [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 15:52, 1 February 2013 (EST)
:Wikis grow chaotically but in the long run they sort themselves out. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 16:12, 8 Aug 2004 (EST)


:The unofficial style guide tended to be me in the past. Others would write the page, normally rare editors who would not have any notion of style. I would make sure all branches started off with something like "The '''X of C''' is an [[SCA]] [[group]] in the [[Kingdom of Y]], mundanely in CITY, COUNTRY". Then I broke the text up when I could, sometimes rewriting it and made sure the homepage link was under External Links, since it wasn't within Cunnan. The actual content depended on what the original author gave us. Things like History and Events were rare or too small to make their own section. Occasionally I had to remove regional point-of-view or change it to third-person perspective (ie. change "we" to "they").
:: I see nothing wrong with searching Cunnan for instances of "library" or "libraries". If even slightly relevant, then make it [[library]]. That and the random page button is how I find most pages I read. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 10:35, 9 Aug 2004 (EST)


:So yes, you can try and establish a formal style, but other than a sidebar that will be out-of-date very soon if includes seneschal names etc, you probably won't have much to play around. After all, some branches are stub articles with only have one or two sentences that just say their location.
=== Admin Nominations ===
:- [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] ([[User talk:Cian|talk]]) 23:18, 1 February 2013 (EST)
I'd like to nomiate [[User:Cian|Cian]] for adminship and [[User:Tiff|Tiff]] and [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] for promotion to bureaucrats (admins that can create other admins). If no one objects I'll do this sometime next week.


:My main thought would be to list the elements that should be included in a page (ie the stuff that is unlikely to change quickly). So a side bar with name, device, location, link to homepage/website. and the main part of the article having an overview, history, events (if any), rulers (K&Qs, P&Ps, or B&B), and external links. Other info like current seneschal, current members, current events, etc. change too quickly and would be best placed on the groups homesite.
Its probably also time we looked at a better system of nominating admins (it seems like a bad idea to keep leaving these things to a single person). - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 10:33, 17 Aug 2004 (EST)
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 10:07, 2 February 2013 (EST)


=== On the use of Categories===
:I think having a nomination and a seconder from those with at least admin levels is probably ideal. Give a week's lead time in case there are objections (unlikely in the near future), and if there are objections have a vote.


Where should categories be used?
:Oh, yeah, and I second Cian. [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 18:49, 18 Aug 2004 (EST)


For example; does the category [[:Category:From the Peerless Kitchen|From the Peerless Kitchen]] need to exist, but can it be a page ([[Peerless Kitchen]]) pointing to a bunch of recipes. I ask this because there are currently 5 Unused categories, 182 Uncategorized pages, and 153 Uncategorized categories... Whatever that means. There are categories for people to note the recipes they have redacted, which works against the idea of a wiki. It also appear that most of the articles in [[:Category:Songs]] are in fact [[:Category:Filk]]. [[User:yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] 21:16, 30 Jan 2013 (EST)
=== Subcategories ===
:Categories work in two directions. If there is a new recipe, the categories help a reader find related recipes. The reader can then move from the category to these other recipes. All that is required is [[:category:From the Peerless Kitchen]] on the recipe pafge. [[Peerless Kitchen]] can be a page instead, but that would need to be updated, and each recipe page would have to link back to it.
I have created a new category [[:category:armour]] and I have also created [[:category:SCA armour]]. I would like to make the second a subcategory of the first. How do I do that? - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]]
:The recipes are a an awkward point. They are an ongoing project outside the wiki, but their inclusion in the wiki is another project. By indicating which have or haven't been redacted, I imagine it makes the people concerned make sure the two projects can be kept in synch.
Subcategories are added to to parent categories in the same way that articles are. Edit [[:category:SCA armour]] and add <nowiki>[[Category:Armour]]</nowiki> to the text. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]]
:The inclusion of recipes is also very much in tune with the aim of Cunnan - to help medieval reenactment and recreation. Being able to read the original recipe is great, but some may need the help of a redaction. Therefore, having a list of recipes that have been redacted is helpful.
:Some categories are made but no pages have yet been placed in the category. Some categories were started but no description was made of the category. Some categories were started, described but have few entries. Each of these must be evaluated on its own merits, like any page in a wiki. People had ideas and projects that these categories may be part of but may never have been finalised.
:- [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] ([[User talk:Cian|talk]]) 19:15, 6 February 2013 (EST)


=== Spammers ===
===Laurel Sovereign of Arms===
I was looking at the page that redirects for [[Laurel]] and noticed that the [[Laurel Sovereign of Arms]] is in a page bound with the [[College of Arms]]. Might it be more beneficial to do a dedicated page for Laurel instead of being tied in with the College? [[User:Donngal|Donngal]] 16:37, 22 July 2010 (EST)
I've been seeing this happen a lot recently. Has the chinese spammer always been a problem, or just recently? Can we ban them for more than a month, somewhere around indefinitely?- [[User:WanderingSpy| WanderingSpy]]
* Sure, since the [[Principal Herald]] page is now more substantive. I would make sure that [[Laurel]] redirects to [[Order of the Laurel]] with a disambiguation at the top for [[Laurel Sovereign of Arms]]. The page for LSofA should mention the [[SCA]] [[College of Arms]]. One of the pages should mention any historical links to similar ranks/titles in the RL Colleges, e.g. [[Garter King of Arms]], [[Lyons King of Arms]]
*The bans only work if they keep the same IP address. Admins can ban them for 100 years if we want to, but if the IP address changes every time they get online, then we might be preventing someone who is quite decent making any modifications. That's right isn't it Tobin? - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]]
: - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 10:35, 23 July 2010 (EST)


=== The Illegible Vandals ===
::That's right, banning them for even 1 month is pointless (but it usually stops them from coming back more than once a day). It is also possible for us to block a range of IP addresses in one go but that would make us even more likely to stop a legitimate user from contributing.
First it was the Ampersand Bandits. Now we have new class of vandals with a different MO - the Illegible Vandals! We have been getting unknown people adding just one word consisting of 8-10 characters to a range of pages. I believe the choice of characters is random because I don't recognise anything that I would find in any of my dictionaries. So the vandalism is pretty pointless. As far as I can work out, the same "user" has never struck more than once. Wierd. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 13:39, 27 September 2007 (EST)
:Alas, we're now seeing several articles vandalized by a single IP. It's the sheer volume of IPs involved that concerns me -- we've been hit pretty hard over the last week. Kudos on everyone helping to stem the tide! [[User:Paul Matisz|Paul Matisz]] 19:05EDT 02 Oct 07


:Yeah, I have since noticed repeat offenders. The thing that gets me is the fact that there seems to be no reason for these attacks. If they were all concentrated at particular times, then I could believe that it is was just an attempt at "denial of service" but there aren't enough of them at any one time for that. Other than restricting editing to logged in members, I can't see how any system can automatically prevent the Illegible Vandals. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 09:19, 3 October 2007 (EST)
::You can see all the bans we currently have using [[Special:Ipblocklist]].


:On 04 Oct between 10:39 and 17:08 some twenty articles were vandalized by these jerks. In some cases, the same article was vandalized numerous times. Given the randomness I suspect this may be some kind of bot or virus... is there any way to defend against them? [[User:Paul Matisz|Paul Matisz]] 17:15EDT 04 Oct 07
::I'm looking into setting things up so that any external link in China (ending in .cn) will be treated as spam and not saved. I don't think we're likely to link to Chinese sites.- [[User:Tobin|Tobin]]


: Attacks today from three different IP addresses from 87.101.244.* . I think we might be able to put a filter on that for a few months. Tobin? Unfortunately, there seems no clear pattern to any of the other addresses. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 13:09, 9 October 2007 (EST)
:::I've activated the wiki's antispam checker. Edits will now be checked for known spam links. If new spam makes it through bring it to my attention and I'll update the list. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 10:41, 10 Sep 2004 (EST)


=== Applicability Question ===
::: I've also unblocked the 131,081 (this number is correct) IP addresses I had banned. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 17:03, 10 Sep 2004 (EST)


See these Caidan Tourney results: http://wiki.caid-commons.org/index.php/Results
=== Server move ===
You have probably noticed that Cunnan has changed to a different server. This was done because the wiki was placing to great a strain upon [[User:Del|Del]]'s primary work machine (Cunnan only exists because of Del's generosity). Most features have been re-enabled and things should work as expected.


Has Cunnan evolved so far away from its St Monica/Lochac roots that setting up a section under Kingdom of Lochac to support something like the above (but for Lochac) would be a no-go these days? I refer to Village pump discussions mid-2007 on culling some SCA-specific stuff that was seen mainly as ego-boo.
If you see Del at an event you might like to thank him for dealing with the whole situation as kindly and quickly as he did.


Or would it be fair enough? A wiki is a very good way to maintain this sort of thing; the question is whether we need to set up a whole new one, or use the resource that already exists, but which may no longer be appropriate. (Or, indeed, whether Cunnan would be open to any Kingdoms which wished to use it so).
I had also turned off the anti-spam filter, it has now been reactivated. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]]
:There will be a few hours downtime as Cunnan moves to its final home on Wednesday 10th November. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 16:35, 8 Nov 2004 (EST)
*Umm... how about fixing the machine's time because I sure wasn't working on Cunnan at 5 o'clock this morning. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]]


- [[User:Bartholomew|Bartholomew]] 15:02, 9 June 2008 (EST)
Hi all,


: A similar idea has come to me, but instead why not merge the wikis and mirror them across the web.
Here's what's happened and why:
:* This would reduce the duplication of pages covering the same basic content. Also why would people from any of the following ([http://www.midrealm.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Midrealm wiki], [http://wiki.caid-commons.org/index.php/Main_Page Compendium Caidis] (aka the Caid wiki), [http://wiki.antir.sca.org/index.php?title=Main_Page An Tir Culturewiki]) support the efforts that Cunnan is making or vice versa.
:* The main Medieval & SCA content would fill the main section.
:* Each Kingdom could have a Portal:<Kingdom> to it's own unique flavour
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 10:27, 2 February 2013 (EST)


=== Templates ===
* Some time back in August I noted that cunnan was placing somewhat of a strain on sca.org.au (volta). I didn't bother doing anything at the time because I was heading off to Pennsic.
Greetings all. I have been working with learning the language of templates in MediaWiki and have copied one over from Wikipedia, [[Template:Information]] for image files. However, there seems to be a bit of markup that isn't working correctly, as can be seen in <noinclude>[[:Image:Thomas_Hawley_Clarenceux_King_of_Arms.jpg]]</noinclude>. If someone can fix this and explain in detail how they went about fixing it, I'd like to be able to fix broken templates myself. Thanks! --[[User:Averykrouse|Tobias Morgan]] 13:45, 24 September 2008 (EST)
* In early October I had a major project happening on volta due to a big government tender that was due. volta is also my main work server so I needed to move cunnan. I set up a temporary machine at my office and moved cunnan to it, this was what caused the site address to change (to cunnan.sca.org.au) because it was no longer on the same machine as the rest of www.sca.org.au. Unfortunately this was only ever going to be a temporary thing because the machine I moved it to (galliard) is a "project" server used for software development work and testing. Also galliard is on a fairly low speed link -- 512K/512K whereas volta is on a 10Mb link.
* I'm sorry but I don't know what error you are talking about. How about you use the [[Cunnan:sandbox]] to set up some examples and describe what you were expecting to happen and what has happened. I suspect it might be that Cunnan's MediaWiki version hasn't been updated for 3 or more months. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 09:14, 25 September 2008 (EST)
* Last week I moved it again, to a server that I lease in the USA. It's a server (cascarda) that I use for US based clients and has a 100Mb link but bandwidth over there is much cheaper. It also has more memory (1GB) and CPU (3GHz) than volta (256/600MHz). There it's going to stay I'm afraid -- cunnan has become a victim of its own success and it's no longer economical for me to provide sufficient grunt for it to run or bandwidth for all of its traffic in Australia.
** The problem using the sandbox is that the template is primarily used in the Image namespace. If you clickthrough to the Image page listed above then go down to the information section, you can see that it looks odd and cluttered, with bad markup. Whereas if you go to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Thomas_Hawley_Clarenceux_King_of_Arms.jpg original image on Wikipedia] and look at the information section, it's much cleaner. --[[User:Averykrouse|Tobias Morgan]] 12:10, 25 September 2008 (EST)


=== Wine ===
So the machine is now in a different time zone -- US "Central Standard Time" (CST) which is 6 hours behind GMT, or 16 hours behind Australian Eastern Standard time, or 17 hours behind Sydney/Melbourne summer time. Of course it will also have daylight savings at a different time of the year.
I want to make my own home made [[wine]] ,, were do I start ??? this will be my first time and I want to know how to start from being to end with [[fruit]]s
- gilpaulrod@yahoo.com, 12 Nov 2005


* Try C.J. Berry's books available from any good wine making shop or online. - [[User:Bcholley@btinternet.com|Bcholley]], 14 June 2010
I don't know much about the wikipedia code or why its dates are out, but I assume that if it was set up on the assumption it was running on Australian EST (GMT+10) it now needs to be told it's running at CST or GMT-6 instead.
=== Herbs ===
Would it be possible to merge the [[herb]] pages (e.g. [[borage]]) with their page of historical quotes (e.g. [[borage (Maplet)]])? I think having all those extra pages is superfluous especially seeing as most of the quote pages are only a few lines long. Could they be added to the end of the original herb page with a new heading instead?


* The idea with these entries is that they can be accessed either via the herb, or through the book title, so that one can browse the entries as one would a book. If you look at [[A Greene Forest]] and [[Askham's Herbal]] you will realise that merging these pages involves an awful lot of work for dubious benefit.
Yes, all of my servers are named after [[Renaissance Dance]]s.


=== New Spam Vandals ===
[[User:Del|Del]] 22:24, 14 Nov 2004 (EST)
I have killed off three spam vandal user-pages today. If I have erred, please revert and let me know. I am unable actually to delete the pages as I lack the authority-level.[[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] ([[User talk:Simoncursitor|talk]]) 22:27, 1 September 2014 (MIST)
<br> Another 4 today -- [[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] ([[User talk:Simoncursitor|talk]]) 17:27, 8 September 2014 (MIST)


My Spambot kill count is currently at 14. Is there anything we can do to prevent the creation of all of these ghost accounts? [[User:Hastilude|Hastilude]] ([[User talk:Hastilude|talk]]) 13:44 15 September 2014 (EST)
=== Spam filtering madness ===
For the past few days all edits were being stopped by the spam filter because of an extra bracket in the spam regex. I've fixed the problem now and would like to apologise for not having tested the wiki more thoroughly after I made the changes.


There are limits on a created account, which appears to be why we have many ghost account that do not create or add content. I am working on a way to remove the accounts that do not create content, but since there are over 15,000 of them I do not want to do it by hand. Most of the spammers/spambots are creating User:Talk pages, which are the only ones left open. I'll close that shortly.
Things should be back to normal now.
-- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 13:05, 17 September 2014 (MIST)


Blanked 7 userr-pages today which look to be bot-created -- an occupatiuon, some personal notes, reference to a holiday or location, followed by a spam-link which appears to be in a Malaysian typography. -- [[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] ([[User talk:Simoncursitor|talk]]) 17:46, 14 October 2014 (EST)
My thanks go out to [[User:Tiff|Tiff]] for pointing out my error.


Trying to block the adding of external links for new users, but need to upgrade first. Planned for the weekend.
Tobin.
--[[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 10:06, 17 October 2014 (EST)

Latest revision as of 10:06, 17 October 2014

In Medieval villages people would gather at the Village Pump to discuss those items that were important to their lives. On Cunnan the Village Pump serves a similar purpose: Giving users a place to meet and discuss current events, policy, and content.

Projects

Here is a list of some of recent projects in Category:Project Current.

<DynamicPageList> category = Project Current order = descending addfirstcategorydate = true shownamespace = false ordermethod = lastedit count = 6 </DynamicPageList>

Announcements

Topics

Policy Page

I've added Cunnan:Policy so we can have somewhere to list Cunnan's Policies.

- Yves de Lyle (talk)

Mediawiki updates

I've added additional Extension to the mediawiki setup here. See Special:Version for the current technical setup.

- Yves de Lyle (talk)

Reorganising Cunnan

Moved to Cunnan:Organisation Project

-Yves de Lyle (talk) 18:36, 6 February 2013 (EST)

Style guide

It appears that Cunnan could use a style guide for how to set out particular pages. For Example the Kingdom Standardisation Project could be adapted to be an SCA group standard style guide. Any thoughts or comments? Yves de Lyle (talk) 15:52, 1 February 2013 (EST)

The unofficial style guide tended to be me in the past. Others would write the page, normally rare editors who would not have any notion of style. I would make sure all branches started off with something like "The X of C is an SCA group in the Kingdom of Y, mundanely in CITY, COUNTRY". Then I broke the text up when I could, sometimes rewriting it and made sure the homepage link was under External Links, since it wasn't within Cunnan. The actual content depended on what the original author gave us. Things like History and Events were rare or too small to make their own section. Occasionally I had to remove regional point-of-view or change it to third-person perspective (ie. change "we" to "they").
So yes, you can try and establish a formal style, but other than a sidebar that will be out-of-date very soon if includes seneschal names etc, you probably won't have much to play around. After all, some branches are stub articles with only have one or two sentences that just say their location.
- Cian Gillebhrath (talk) 23:18, 1 February 2013 (EST)
My main thought would be to list the elements that should be included in a page (ie the stuff that is unlikely to change quickly). So a side bar with name, device, location, link to homepage/website. and the main part of the article having an overview, history, events (if any), rulers (K&Qs, P&Ps, or B&B), and external links. Other info like current seneschal, current members, current events, etc. change too quickly and would be best placed on the groups homesite.
- Yves de Lyle (talk) 10:07, 2 February 2013 (EST)

On the use of Categories

Where should categories be used?

For example; does the category From the Peerless Kitchen need to exist, but can it be a page (Peerless Kitchen) pointing to a bunch of recipes. I ask this because there are currently 5 Unused categories, 182 Uncategorized pages, and 153 Uncategorized categories... Whatever that means. There are categories for people to note the recipes they have redacted, which works against the idea of a wiki. It also appear that most of the articles in Category:Songs are in fact Category:Filk. Yves de Lyle 21:16, 30 Jan 2013 (EST)

Categories work in two directions. If there is a new recipe, the categories help a reader find related recipes. The reader can then move from the category to these other recipes. All that is required is category:From the Peerless Kitchen on the recipe pafge. Peerless Kitchen can be a page instead, but that would need to be updated, and each recipe page would have to link back to it.
The recipes are a an awkward point. They are an ongoing project outside the wiki, but their inclusion in the wiki is another project. By indicating which have or haven't been redacted, I imagine it makes the people concerned make sure the two projects can be kept in synch.
The inclusion of recipes is also very much in tune with the aim of Cunnan - to help medieval reenactment and recreation. Being able to read the original recipe is great, but some may need the help of a redaction. Therefore, having a list of recipes that have been redacted is helpful.
Some categories are made but no pages have yet been placed in the category. Some categories were started but no description was made of the category. Some categories were started, described but have few entries. Each of these must be evaluated on its own merits, like any page in a wiki. People had ideas and projects that these categories may be part of but may never have been finalised.
- Cian Gillebhrath (talk) 19:15, 6 February 2013 (EST)

Laurel Sovereign of Arms

I was looking at the page that redirects for Laurel and noticed that the Laurel Sovereign of Arms is in a page bound with the College of Arms. Might it be more beneficial to do a dedicated page for Laurel instead of being tied in with the College? Donngal 16:37, 22 July 2010 (EST)

- Cian Gillebhrath 10:35, 23 July 2010 (EST)

The Illegible Vandals

First it was the Ampersand Bandits. Now we have new class of vandals with a different MO - the Illegible Vandals! We have been getting unknown people adding just one word consisting of 8-10 characters to a range of pages. I believe the choice of characters is random because I don't recognise anything that I would find in any of my dictionaries. So the vandalism is pretty pointless. As far as I can work out, the same "user" has never struck more than once. Wierd. - Cian Gillebhrath 13:39, 27 September 2007 (EST)

Alas, we're now seeing several articles vandalized by a single IP. It's the sheer volume of IPs involved that concerns me -- we've been hit pretty hard over the last week. Kudos on everyone helping to stem the tide! Paul Matisz 19:05EDT 02 Oct 07
Yeah, I have since noticed repeat offenders. The thing that gets me is the fact that there seems to be no reason for these attacks. If they were all concentrated at particular times, then I could believe that it is was just an attempt at "denial of service" but there aren't enough of them at any one time for that. Other than restricting editing to logged in members, I can't see how any system can automatically prevent the Illegible Vandals. - Cian Gillebhrath 09:19, 3 October 2007 (EST)
On 04 Oct between 10:39 and 17:08 some twenty articles were vandalized by these jerks. In some cases, the same article was vandalized numerous times. Given the randomness I suspect this may be some kind of bot or virus... is there any way to defend against them? Paul Matisz 17:15EDT 04 Oct 07
Attacks today from three different IP addresses from 87.101.244.* . I think we might be able to put a filter on that for a few months. Tobin? Unfortunately, there seems no clear pattern to any of the other addresses. - Cian Gillebhrath 13:09, 9 October 2007 (EST)

Applicability Question

See these Caidan Tourney results: http://wiki.caid-commons.org/index.php/Results

Has Cunnan evolved so far away from its St Monica/Lochac roots that setting up a section under Kingdom of Lochac to support something like the above (but for Lochac) would be a no-go these days? I refer to Village pump discussions mid-2007 on culling some SCA-specific stuff that was seen mainly as ego-boo.

Or would it be fair enough? A wiki is a very good way to maintain this sort of thing; the question is whether we need to set up a whole new one, or use the resource that already exists, but which may no longer be appropriate. (Or, indeed, whether Cunnan would be open to any Kingdoms which wished to use it so).

- Bartholomew 15:02, 9 June 2008 (EST)

A similar idea has come to me, but instead why not merge the wikis and mirror them across the web.
  • This would reduce the duplication of pages covering the same basic content. Also why would people from any of the following (Midrealm wiki, Compendium Caidis (aka the Caid wiki), An Tir Culturewiki) support the efforts that Cunnan is making or vice versa.
  • The main Medieval & SCA content would fill the main section.
  • Each Kingdom could have a Portal:<Kingdom> to it's own unique flavour
- Yves de Lyle (talk) 10:27, 2 February 2013 (EST)

Templates

Greetings all. I have been working with learning the language of templates in MediaWiki and have copied one over from Wikipedia, Template:Information for image files. However, there seems to be a bit of markup that isn't working correctly, as can be seen in Image:Thomas_Hawley_Clarenceux_King_of_Arms.jpg. If someone can fix this and explain in detail how they went about fixing it, I'd like to be able to fix broken templates myself. Thanks! --Tobias Morgan 13:45, 24 September 2008 (EST)

  • I'm sorry but I don't know what error you are talking about. How about you use the Cunnan:sandbox to set up some examples and describe what you were expecting to happen and what has happened. I suspect it might be that Cunnan's MediaWiki version hasn't been updated for 3 or more months. - Cian Gillebhrath 09:14, 25 September 2008 (EST)
    • The problem using the sandbox is that the template is primarily used in the Image namespace. If you clickthrough to the Image page listed above then go down to the information section, you can see that it looks odd and cluttered, with bad markup. Whereas if you go to the original image on Wikipedia and look at the information section, it's much cleaner. --Tobias Morgan 12:10, 25 September 2008 (EST)

Wine

I want to make my own home made wine ,, were do I start ??? this will be my first time and I want to know how to start from being to end with fruits - gilpaulrod@yahoo.com, 12 Nov 2005

  • Try C.J. Berry's books available from any good wine making shop or online. - Bcholley, 14 June 2010

Herbs

Would it be possible to merge the herb pages (e.g. borage) with their page of historical quotes (e.g. borage (Maplet))? I think having all those extra pages is superfluous especially seeing as most of the quote pages are only a few lines long. Could they be added to the end of the original herb page with a new heading instead?

  • The idea with these entries is that they can be accessed either via the herb, or through the book title, so that one can browse the entries as one would a book. If you look at A Greene Forest and Askham's Herbal you will realise that merging these pages involves an awful lot of work for dubious benefit.

New Spam Vandals

I have killed off three spam vandal user-pages today. If I have erred, please revert and let me know. I am unable actually to delete the pages as I lack the authority-level.Simoncursitor (talk) 22:27, 1 September 2014 (MIST)
Another 4 today -- Simoncursitor (talk) 17:27, 8 September 2014 (MIST)

My Spambot kill count is currently at 14. Is there anything we can do to prevent the creation of all of these ghost accounts? Hastilude (talk) 13:44 15 September 2014 (EST)

There are limits on a created account, which appears to be why we have many ghost account that do not create or add content. I am working on a way to remove the accounts that do not create content, but since there are over 15,000 of them I do not want to do it by hand. Most of the spammers/spambots are creating User:Talk pages, which are the only ones left open. I'll close that shortly. -- Yves de Lyle (talk) 13:05, 17 September 2014 (MIST)

Blanked 7 userr-pages today which look to be bot-created -- an occupatiuon, some personal notes, reference to a holiday or location, followed by a spam-link which appears to be in a Malaysian typography. -- Simoncursitor (talk) 17:46, 14 October 2014 (EST)

Trying to block the adding of external links for new users, but need to upgrade first. Planned for the weekend. --Yves de Lyle (talk) 10:06, 17 October 2014 (EST)

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