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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==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 20:
** [[Cunnan:Old Village pump discussions (moved 2005)|Moved during 2005]]
** [[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 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 ==


=== Spam flood ===
=== Policy Page ===

As anyone who looked at [[Special:Recentchanges]] today probably noticed Cunnan was the target of a group of spam bots who touched a large number of pages. The domain the bots were spamming has now been added to the antispam filter.
I've added [[Cunnan:Policy]] so we can have somewhere to list Cunnan's Policies.
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]])

=== Mediawiki updates ===
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 ===

Moved to [[Cunnan:Organisation]] Project


-[[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 18:36, 6 February 2013 (EST)
I've been through all the touched pages and have edited and saved the most recent useable version of each. Unfortunately, the spam bots unwittingly hit a bug in the software which means that the the page revisions before each of their edits have most probably been corrupted. If anyone feels like spending an hour helping to cleanup then they should go through my edits for the day and check that the page revision I restored each article to was optimal (i.e. the second most recent revision in most cases).


=== Style guide ===
Cunnan's software has been upgraded so that the database corruption wont occur again even if the spam bots return.
[[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 23:35, 8 Oct 2005 (CDT)


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)
* Hmm, it just happened again. I believe I have got rid of the spam, but it was done using multiple "machines" so it wasn't worth my time blocking everyone. Also some pages were hit multiple times. Rollback only works for the last action on the page, including rollbacks, so some of the fixes had to be edits. Nasty! I understand Tobin's problems the first time. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 09:53, 22 Oct 2005 (CDT)
** Three cheers for Cian! Thanks for doing the dirty work Cian, the fact that you and Tobin have done this is much appreciated. Given that this is the second time this has happened maybe it's time that we adopted a policy of only allowing editing for people who have logged in. It's not a foolproof defence I know, and it makes us feel less welcoming, but it would save a lot of aggravation. [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 20:55, 22 Oct 2005 (CDT)
*** The most nasty wiki spam bots use a mixture of accounts and anonymous edits (the attack today and the first major attack are both examples of this). Forcing people to register only inconveniences humans. I've updated the anti spam filter to include the <nowiki><div></nowiki> id that the recent spam attacks have all included. Hopefully this will catch future attacks from this bot. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 04:57, 5 Nov 2005 (CST)
*** The two attacks I have "cleaned up" today all targetted the same files but the second one created blank pages. I wonder if they were doing so for a purpose? I blocked the repeating URLs which sometimes actually used a username. [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 19:40, 11 Dec 2005 (CST)
**** I've added some things from today's spam flood to the anti spam filter. If things stop working someone should tell me. -- [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 05:51, 12 Dec 2005 (CST)


: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").
*FYI the [[France]] page is currently showing up as uneditable due to the spam filter --[[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] 02:41, 8 Dec 2005 (CST)
** I know, I'll remove ''that site'' from the anti spam filter when I've got time to do a general cleanup -- [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 05:51, 12 Dec 2005 (CST)


: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.
*I'm getting sick of not being able to properly use the word special-ist (without the hyphen) because it includes cial-is (without the hyphen). I seem to use the word (and it's relatives) quite a bit. Is there any way we can still exclude the pharaceutical (because that trick is working nicely thankyou), but allow certain words that contain it? special-ist special-ism, special-ists, special-istic etc. [[User:Tiff|Tiff]]
:- [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] ([[User talk:Cian|talk]]) 23:18, 1 February 2013 (EST)
** Oops, my bad. I'll change the anti spam filter to require a non-letter character on either side for a match. Should happen after I'm back from work today. Have people noticed any other false positives? -- [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 13:15, 12 Jan 2006 (CST)
*** Should be fixed now. The new rule for c*alis is '''<nowiki>[^A-Za-z]c*alis[^A-Za-z]</nowiki>''' (with the * replaced by the appropriate letter of course). -- [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 01:43, 13 Jan 2006 (CST)


: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.
* I was unable to add a link to the Bordescros website hosted by www . freewebs . com / bordescros because of the spam filter. Can this be made an exception please.--[[User:MasterWill|MasterWill]] 06:49, 16 Mar 2006 (CST)
:- [[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 10:07, 2 February 2013 (EST)
** I've removed freewebs from the spam filter. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 00:15, 24 Mar 2006 (CST)


=== On the use of Categories===
* Not quite a flood this time, but the same pages have been attacked by the same sort of spam from various different "users". Is there anyway we can combat that sort of spam (other than the manual power of moderator's fingers) ? I have been banning the users for 2 weeks, but it really is pointless if they just come back with a new "name" the next day. Is it possible to prevent people/bots using usernames that are in the format of URLs (eg. 218.53.104.2)? - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 08:49, 23 Jun 2006 (EST)


Where should categories be used?
* I've just enabled two things that should help reduce the amount of spam we're getting. The first is proxy blocking using [http://www.au.sorbs.net/ SORBS]. This may catch a few legitimate users but that's unlikely (and if it does, well, they shouldn't be accessing the internet via an open proxy anyway). The second is [[wikipedia:Captcha|Captcha]]s for any edit which adds a URL to a page or changes an existing URL. For the time being the captchas are simple maths problems, e.g. "38 - 6 =" or "12 + 0 =". I'm going to e-mail [[User:Del|Del]] about the possibility of having the software required for image captchas installed on chiara (Cunnan's server). There may still be a few spammers which get through but this will stop the stupider bots and most non-humans. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 19:39, 22 July 2006 (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)
===Protected Pages===
: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.
:- [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] ([[User talk:Cian|talk]]) 19:15, 6 February 2013 (EST)


===Laurel Sovereign of Arms===
*I have just protected a couple of pages that have been repeatedly hiit by a spambot. These pages are [[woman]] and [[convent]]. I will try to remember to remove the protection once that particular spambot has given up. [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 22:22, 25 Jun 2006 (EST)
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)
* 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]]
: - [[User:Cian|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. - [[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)
===Branle Dance Broken===


: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've found that the page for the Branle dance is broken, both from searching for it and from the link for the dance page.


: 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)
:[[branle]] looks fine to me. [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 22:17, 25 Jun 2006 (EST)


=== Applicability Question ===
I have tried it again and it's still not working. Specifically, I'm getting this error:


See these Caidan Tourney results: http://wiki.caid-commons.org/index.php/Results
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last
attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)


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.
from within function "MediaWikiBagOStuff:_doquery". MySQL returned error "1062: Duplicate entry
'cunnan:messages:Currentevents' for key 1 (localhost)".


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 am using Mozilla Firefox, the latest version (if that might make a difference).


- [[User:Bartholomew|Bartholomew]] 15:02, 9 June 2008 (EST)
*I can't interpret the technical stuff (I'll leave that to others, who i hope will log in soon), but it's working fine for me too, on a recent version of firefox. Maybe this is a timing issue - [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] and I are in the same timezone, and may be logging in a quieter time of day than you useage-wise. Have you checked 10 minutes, or even an hour later? We've had occasional errors related to server overuse.[[User:Tiff|Tiff]] 19:15, 27 Jun 2006 (EST)


: A similar idea has come to me, but instead why not merge the wikis and mirror them across the web.
=== Software Upgrade ===
:* 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.
Cunnan has been upgrade to version 1.6.8 of the Mediawiki software. If anything appears broken or acts weirdly mention it here so that someone can look at it. It's worth noting that there have been major changes to the database including conversion to UTF-8 encoding. This should have worked but some special characters may be messed up. You can help Cunnan by fixing them as you find them. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 19:12, 12 July 2006 (EST)
:* 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 ===
:All the unusual characters are out. I know that you've changed a couple of the AE ligatures on AEthelmearc, but there are lots of other characters such as the Forme of Cury recipes, and the Exeter Book riddles. I seem to recall last time this happened you were able to do a fix without editing every single item. Any chance of doing that again? [[User:Conrad Leviston|Conrad Leviston]] 22:46, 12 July 2006 (EST)
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)
::No, sadly, the newer version of the software requires the database to be in UTF-8. I'm at a loss as to why the conversion didn't work. I'm going to have another look at it in the morning but I'm not sure if it can be easily fixed. If it can't be then will just have to bite the bullet and fix problem pages manually. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 23:21, 12 July 2006 (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. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 09:14, 25 September 2008 (EST)
:::Congrats on the upgrade! I hope you'll now be able to implement some of the extensions that help to address the wikispam issues. At mine, we ended up simply having to force a confirmed email address before editing, which unfortunately meant no anon edit at all, but since they only account for 1% of our contributions (besides spam) we went ahead with the plan. As far as you UTF-8 issue, I think it either has to do with PHP or with going from an early 1.4 version all the way to 1.6 in a single jump. I'm also working on the rest of the kingdom devices and their populace badges where I can. --[[User:ThorgrimrGunnarrsson|Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine]] 11:11, 13 July 2006 (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 [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)
: Why don't we just change them all to the accented letters etc to the &; forms, e.g. &AElig; and &egrave; They are charset independent. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 16:34, 13 July 2006 (EST)


=== Navigation links ===
=== 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 [[fruit]]s
The links in the sidebar to [[Current events]] and [[Cunnan:Site support]] aren't used for much at present. Does anyone have a suggestion for something they might be replaced with? I might send Del an e-mail asking if collecting donations to go towards the cost of hosting is possible. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 13:49, 13 July 2006 (EST)
- 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
=== 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.
=== weird characters ===
Hiya after a long time. I noticed on two pages, I was getting something weird - black diamonds with question marks in them. I believe in both cases they took the place of special charchters, like an e with an accent mark on top of it. I am using Firefox. [[User:Sabine|Sabine]] 06:19, 28 July 2006 (EST)
:Known problem. The database should have been converted to UTF-8 during the most recent upgrade but something went wrong. I haven't had time to try and fix it yet. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 11:41, 28 July 2006 (EST)


=== Content police :^) ===
=== 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.[[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] ([[User talk:Simoncursitor|talk]]) 22:27, 1 September 2014 (MIST)
I believe that one of the [[Cunnan:What isn't Cunnan|policies]] for [[Cunnan]] is that it is not to be used by groups as an archive that their own webpages/newsgroups can't manage. Therefore I am watching the pages for [[Bloodstone Keep Origins Ch 1]] and [[Bloodstone Keep Origins Ch 2]]. If too many of these sort of pages occur, we might have to make a policy edict about them. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 09:46, 10 August 2006 (EST)
<br> Another 4 today -- [[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] ([[User talk:Simoncursitor|talk]]) 17:27, 8 September 2014 (MIST)
:As they currently read the Bloodstone pages are OK, in my opinion. As long as they are only documenting events that have happened I don't think it's an issue. Planning events or using Cunnan as a genreal archive would be out though. The articles should probably be merged under a better title though. - [[User:Tobin|Tobin]] 13:48, 14 August 2006 (EST)
:I'm not sure about these articles. They don't strike me as conforming to either the style or the content standards we should have in place here. I respectfully suggest that "Bloodstone Keep Origins" should more appropriately be an off-site webpage with links from the [[Bloodstone Keep]] article. [[User:Paul Matisz|Paul Matisz]] 09:57. 21 August 2006 (EST).


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)
===Page of the Month===
You know, I think we could do with a new pages of the month.--[[User:User 144|User 144]] 14:30, 7 October 2006 (EST)
:I agree, but what one?--[[User:ThorgrimrGunnarrsson|Thorgrimr of Dragonsspine]] 23:41, 7 October 2006 (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.
:You can always add new proposed pages to [[Cunnan:Page of the Month]] (see bottom section). As to editting the actual [[Main Page]], it just needs us mods to get to action since we are the only ones who can change it. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]]
-- [[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)


Trying to block the adding of external links for new users, but need to upgrade first. Planned for the weekend.
===How Do I ... ?===
--[[User:Yvesdelyle|Yves de Lyle]] ([[User talk:Yvesdelyle|talk]]) 10:06, 17 October 2014 (EST)
"create" a Category ?
We have a number of "wanted" ones, which could probably do with some attention, especially as the "wanted" ones show up on the list of "categories" without a hint that they are, in fact, inchoate ?? -- [[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]] 19:10, 16 October 2006 (EST)
: I don't quite follow you, but I'll try and answer your query. If you edit the category to give it a possible description, then it will be able to show you what articles have been placed in that category. If that description is no longer accurate once you see the category's members, then either change the description or change what is in the category.
:If you want to start a brand new category, just put [[[[:category:NEWCATEGORYNAME]]]] somewhere on a page that is a suitable member for the new category. - [[User:Cian|Cian Gillebhrath]] 11:35, 17 October 2006 (EST)
:: Fine, so it's just a matter of ''describing'' the category. Good, can do that. Thanks, Cian. -- [[User:Simoncursitor|Simoncursitor]]

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)