HRWiki:Da Basement

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Where all the cool guys hang out
Welcome to Da Basement! This is a messageboard for coordinating and discussing administrative tasks on the Homestar Runner Wiki. Although it is aimed mostly at sysops, any user is welcome to leave a message or join the discussion here.
Current | Archive 1 (1-10) | Archive 2 (11-20)
Archive 3 (21-30) | Archive 4 (31-40) | Archive 5 (41-50)
Archive 6 (51-60) | Archive 7 (Logo discussion) | Archive 8 (61-82)
Archive 9 (83-102) | Archive 10 (103-117)


Contents

Collaborative Community Projects

There are a ton of things to do on HRWiki, but efforts are so scattered that they never get done. That's why Im'a thinking we need to hold occasional week-long collaborative community projects. Keeping in mind that HRWiki:Projects is rarely used anymore, we could set up a template at the top of HRWiki:The Stick and, if applicable, templates on articles that are the focus of the project. In fact, I'm dreaming up some templates right now. I can think of a number of Doings that need Doyng. Er... stuff like:

  • Making image pages more descriptive and less "funny." Wikify them as well.
  • Cleaning up articles that need cleaning. Particularly Peasant's Quest.
  • Giving Sightings and all its subpages the attention they so desperately need.
  • Working on NYU Talk - 1 Mar 2005 and other public appearances, preferably one by one.
  • Organize and clean up Strong Sad's Lament.
  • Organize and clean up Stinkoman 20X6 (perhaps once the finished game has been released).
  • Standardize, Consolidate, and all around clean up Items.
  • Clean up Characters, make more 'visually pleasing'.
  • Organize and clean up HRWiki:Da Basement. (Okay, I'm only half joking. This page is a mess. — It's dot com)
  • Organize and clean up HRWiki:Projects. Perhaps everything that has been completed or abandoned can be archived or the words "This has been refactored" used in place of much of the text on that page. —THE PAPER PREEEOW

Any other pages that need a makeover? How do you all like the idea? I'll come out with some beta templates here sometime. But I'm in no hurry right now. —BazookaJoe 03:04, 2 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea! I always hate those edit wars on what some IP number thinks would be a funnier caption to a picture than another IP number. If you look at the talk page of NYU Talk - 1 Mar 2005, you'll see that there is a large file out there with the whole event caught on tape. Someone needs to break it into smaller files and upload them somewhere so everyone could transcribe them. — Elcool (talk)(contribs) 04:00, 2 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Well I've already got the video on my computer (took around a month to download it), and I've been meaning to get around to finishing the transcription, especially since it's one of the most important to transcribe, since many likely will never get the video. If you're gonna assign sections of the video, count me in. I did a bit of work on sightings, but yea, it does need page to page attention. Also SSL could probably do with an overhaul not unlike Peasants Quest, due to it's recent revival. It could do with some fancy templates or something to make each entry stand more seperate. Then there's Items. So far random items that have been thought of have been added, in no particualar order or anything. We need some kinda item standard, as to what qualifies, (my vote is if it's a set of something, like radios, or if it's been interacted with more than twice or thrice, and it's not just part of the background, then it should be added). And following the standards, get the whole page totally caught up. Also some item groups, such as food, could probably be condenced into two or three encompasing pages, not unlike Minor Teen Girl Squad Characters. Which brings me to the Characters page. That too is far too long and disorganized, some well placed columns and tables would probably improve it considerably. There's probably more stuff around here that's been bugging me, but I'm sure It'll come to me later. I took the liberty of adding highlights from my rant to your list, and brilliant idea BzJ. Whew, glad I got that off my chest. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 05:50, 2 Sep 2005 (UTC)
First thing first:
  • I cleaned up Peasant's Quest Responses a bit, so it is easier to find the responses and write new ones. every response in the main article need to be verified and moved.
  • About the NY talk: I don't have the file and I don't know how to break it down to smaller files. I was just suggesting an idea. — Elcool (talk)(contribs) 11:00, 3 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Well, it appears the image descriptions have been largely worked on by E.L. Cool and Homestar Coder. Unless I'm wrong, Characters has been made more visually pleasing. I don't think I could make a template that will be applicable to every project, due to the variety of projects we have here. I would like to put up a message at the top of HRWiki:The Stick that has this message below. If someone could put that in a nice-looking box that draws attention, or tweak the message, please do.

Just finnished the captions on all the images linked from the characters page. I consider it done, at least until the a new character pops up. — Elcool (talk)(contribs) 17:35, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
This week's collaborative community project is to clean up Peasant's Quest. You can help!

And this will go at the top of Peasant's Quest:

Peasant's Quest is the focus of this week's collaborative community project. You can help clean up this article, and discuss any changes on the talk page.

I would like to do this at the start of the week after server migration has been completed, which could be next Monday.
—BazookaJoe 20:40, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC)

How do these look?
This week's collaborative community project is to clean up the article [[{{{1}}}]]. You can help!
{{PAGENAME}} is the focus of this week's collaborative community project. You can help clean up this article, and discuss any changes on the talk page.
Just a rough draft I threw up. Maybe an image? —FireBird|Talk 21:16, 11 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Let's try this image:

{very large version of the image below removed}

Is this good? It might be a little big... --minibaseball.png Bkmlb(talk to me·stuff I did) 01:26, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Lemme resize it... - Joshua
{{PAGENAME}} is the focus of this week's collaborative community project. You can help clean up this article, and discuss any changes on the talk page.

Yeah, that looks better.--minibaseball.png Bkmlb(talk to me·stuff I did) 01:32, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)

The color doesn't quite match. Other than that, I like it. - Joshua
Eh. I don't like the whole PBTC Poopsmith. Maybe just a regular Poopsmith? —FireBird|Talk 02:40, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I don't know... the Poopsmith isn't exactly "clean." Plus he's already being used. I would like an image there, it'll make it look Homestar Runner-y. I'm just not sure what of. - Joshua
I agree with Joshua. (Also, I removed the very large version of the image above.) — It's dot com 03:17, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Homestar with the Yella Paint, maybe? small_logo.pngUsername-talk 03:15, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)
What about this?:
{{PAGENAME}} is the focus of this week's collaborative community project. You can help clean up this article, and discuss any changes on the talk page.

--minibaseball.png Bkmlb(talk to me·stuff I did) 23:57, 12 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. This still doesn't say "clean up" to me. The first image was on the right track... except that it was PBTC, and the Poopsmith. I think we should keep ponderng this. — It's dot com 03:30, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Ooh! What about Strong Bad and/or The Cheat cleaning up Strongbadia from other days? — It's dot com 03:32, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Oddly, I was just thinking that. That, or the Blue Laser Minion scrubbing the wall with the Grout Clean'r. Great minds think alike? --DorianGray

{moved my template ideas further down ↓ beyond the colors discussion}

Here's something I don't understand: Why don't the colors match? I used the same number for the background color in both places, but what is being returned is not the same as what I uploaded. Phlip changed it to what I thought it should be, which makes me think it might be an IE/Firefox thing, but why should that matter? I'm not sure what color to make it. I even tried a Web-safe color, with the same results. All I know is that it looks right on my monitor with this edit. — It's dot com 05:16, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, the image background is (for the "other days" one) being rendered as #F8D8A3 in Fx but #F7D399 in IE (according to a screenshot and the eyedropper tool in The GIMP)... this merits some investigation... phlip TC 07:09, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
It should be #F8D8A3, because that's what I built it as. I don't get why it would be different. Isn't the server providing the same image to both browsers? — It's dot com 07:17, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Every graphics tool I opened the image in (I tried The GIMP, PSP5 and MSPaint) said the image's background was #F8D8A3, but IE still renders it as #F7D399 even on its own... It's not the server's fault, this is with a local copy of the image. I know IE has problems with some other parts of PNGs (like alpha) but this is still weird, and seems unrelated... I'll try making a new PNG with a websafe colour background, say #FC9 maybe. phlip TC 07:18, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, This PNG works in IE and Fx for me. I couldn't seem to recreate the problem your PNG was having though... what program did you use to make it? Is there a possibility that it made a faulty PNG that only IE was having troubles with? BTW: the various things that happened on the image pages was me uploading the file and forgetting to purge the cache, so I saw the old image stretched to the new resolution... was not pretty and I thought I'd messed up the upload. phlip TC 07:56, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Umm, is there any particular reason why you reverted my images back to your broken-in-IE-for-no-readily-explainable-reason ones? I mean sure, you can do what you like, it is a wiki after all, and I'm no sysop, I'm just curious as to why... phlip TC 17:46, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Patience, phlip. I think I has the solution. — It's dot com 17:52, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Okay, Photoshop was the problem. Apparently it was attaching extra info to the file. I removed it, and now everything should look fine at #F8D8A3. — It's dot com 18:06, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Glad you could figure it out - looks good to me phlip TC 18:10, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Templates:

Okay, check this out:

This week's collaborative community project is to clean up the article [[{{{1}}}]]. You can help!


{{PAGENAME}} is the focus of this week's collaborative community project. You can help clean up this article. See the talk page for where to begin or to discuss major changes.

— It's dot com 04:20, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)

That's flippin' sweet. small_logo.pngUsername-talk 04:23, 13 Sep 2005 (UTC)
It is rather good. Sorry, I've been a bit out of this whole 'community project' idea dicussions. I get that we'll have the template on the to be cleaned page, but will there be a central hub from which to choose what to work on, and how? In which case, is that gonna be here, or a new 'HRWiki:' page? I do like the general idea though. EDIT: Just re-reading the discussion, and it seems that HRWiki:The Stick is the place to set it up. In which case I think that page could also use a bit of work, maybe get rid of some older, less used specialty pages, make sure we've got all our specialty pages under control and everything, make it a bit more user-friendly and organized, probably introduce HRWiki:Featured Article Selection to some organized list, if it isn't already there, ect. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 05:01, 14 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Well, I suppose first we should concentrate on everything on the list at the top of this section. That'll take us about a couple of months. When we get close to finishing that, we can figure out where to go from there. — It's dot com 05:09, 14 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Looks great! Let's put these up this weekend, and clean PQ up like the business! And a reminder, don't bite the people who want to help pitch in. —BazookaJoe 02:04, 16 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Templates created! See {{communitycleanup}} and {{cleanuplink}}. — It's dot com 02:33, 16 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Should we put this, or something like it, on the main page?--minibaseball.png Bkmlb(talk to me·stuff I did) 02:53, 16 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I'm all for that idea. Very nice designs, Dot Com, by the way. — Lapper (talk) 1:53, 17 Sep 2005 (CST)

Ok, do you think Items can be crossed out of the list? every image linked is captioned properly and the page itself is set up a-preaty good. — Elcool (talk)(contribs) 16:39, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I think it can. The only thing I would like to have on there is a picture of the grumblecake form the video on the DVD. But that's only minor.--minibaseball.png Bkmlb(talk to me·stuff I did) 19:59, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Willy On Wheels Strikes Again

I don't think that he is going to come back. I think that he knows that this is a lot smaller than Wikipedia, and will move to a different wiki. -- Rogue Leader

Looks like that's not the case. Just thought I'd meantion to whoever didn't know, he just struck again, moved a bunch of pages, and was valiantly thwarted by Kilroy. Isn't there anything more we can do that will be a bit longer lasting than a few days? ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 22:29, 3 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Kilroy did the blocking, but don't forget Some HSR themed username. He moved the pages back to where they belong so fast that I couldn't even help him. — It's dot com 22:40, 3 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I have added User:Be's careful to Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress/Willy on Wheels. See the inter-wiki section. He not only vandalizes WP and Wikitionary, but WP in other languages, and other wikis like ours. —BazookaJoe 01:00, 4 Sep 2005 (UTC)

This guy has some serious problems. At least it isn't nearly as bad as Wikipedia. Rogue Leader / (my talk) 01:09, 4 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Dude! He's a wiki-vandalism-maniac! (Excuse the non-SySop-type person post please.) --Ookelaylay 22:21, 4 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Oh man. That guy is. . . well, persistent normally applies to diligent, good-natured people, but Willy is darn persistent on Wikipedia. Wow. — Lapper (talk) 1:51, 17 Sep 2005 (CST)

Fanstuff in External Links

On Stinkoman 20X6, several users keep trying to add a fanstuff cheat version and custom levels alongside the official H*R links. I removed them and gave the following reason in this discussion:

We don't link to fanstuff because (1) as a knowledge base, we should only list official sources as external links, (2) we don't have any real info on fanstuff nor do we have any control of its content, and (3) if we allowed person A's fanstuff on this page, then we'd have to allow the fanstuff of persons B, C, D, E, and everyone else on all the other pages, and that is not the point of this wiki, nor should keeping up with and policing things like that be one of our chores.

Since the revert war is still going on, I thought we should discuss what our policy on fanstuff in the knowledge base is/should be. — It's dot com 16:46, 17 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Well, we link to strongbad_email.exe's IMDB page in its external links. As long as its highly relevant to the page and interesting to check out, I think it should be in the external links. Now I'm a little so-so on the cheat version, as that's a single user's fanstuff, but custom levels are made by multiple users and could be very interesting for a person who might not find them otherwise. I vote they stay; at least the custom levels one. - Joshua 17:31, 17 Sep 2005 (UTC)

IMDb is an international database. Athough not perfect, it is very well maintained, like Wikipedia. Both of these sites are widely considered to be excellent resources. Fanstuff, on the other hand, is not. — It's dot com 18:26, 17 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I am very against to have a cheat version of the game in the external links. If people want to find the Cheat Version, they can go to Fanstuff themselves. Rogue Leader / (my talk) 18:39, 17 Sep 2005 (UTC)

If we do link to the custom levels, then we should link to HRFWiki:Email Stuff from Strong Bad Email, HRFWiki:Video Games and HRFWiki:Interactive from Games, HRFWiki:Characters & Places from Characters and Places... and all the others that I don't know of since I don't usually frequent fanstuff. To me, these links are no less relevant than the custom levels are to the Stinkoman 20X6 article. phlip TC 19:01, 17 Sep 2005 (UTC)

User:GrapeNuts sysop status?

Would anyone object if I gave GrapeNuts sysop status? I'd like him to be able to do find and replace even on protected pages. Since he's really just an extension of me, he's already a sysop in a way. What do you think? — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 00:09, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

That's a pretty interesting idea, Joey. What kind of work could he do to benift the wiki as a sysop that he couldn't do as a member? — Lapper (talk) 08:56, 18 Sep 2005 (CST)
Well, as I said, he'd be able to do search and replace (and other edits) on pages that are protected. He really wouldn't benefit from any other sysop privileges. IP blocking and other such privileges can't really be automated, to my knowledge. — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 19:44, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)
It depends - how much control do you have over the bot when its running? Do you say "do this stuff" and it goes and does it, or does it give you a list of "here are all the changes I'm about to make" and let you say yes or no? I'm just thinking about what kind of havoc it could possibly wreck if there was a typo in its instructions... like if it decided to do a global search and replace of the letter "e" or something... Sure, everything on a wiki can be reverted, but if the bot has sysop powers then some potential mistakes would be harder to fix... Though I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here - I don't forsee any major problems if the bot does become a sysop. phlip TC 14:56, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Phlip, the MediaWiki software already addresses your concern to an extent. Check out GrapeNuts' contribs, and you'll see there are [rollback] buttons next to every edit. Those handy rollback buttons only show up for users who have bot status. What this means is that it's super easy to rollback GrapeNuts' edits if I he starts going haywire. As for your question about how much control I have, it depends. Most commands can be automated (and throttled so he only performs an edit every so many seconds or minutes), but some require human interaction. On sensitive projects I'll probably be using him manually. For projects I'm 99% sure he can't screw up, I'll let him go by himself. The three projects he's already completed were done in automatic mode, and he completed them quite successfully. As I said above, the only real benefit to giving him sysop status would be so he can edit protected pages. An extremely small percentage of our pages are protected, so it's not that big a deal for me to just keep track of them and make those changes manually myself. But since I already have sysop status, it seems like it would make sense to just give GrapeNuts sysop status as well just to save me the extra step of having to manually alter the protected pages. — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 19:44, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Note however that those [rollback] buttons actually appear because you (JoeyDay) are a sysop, not because GrapeNuts is a bot. (They also only appear for sysops because GrapeNuts made the last edit to each of those pages.) Try viewing the same page when logged out. -- Tom 20:58, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)
It's completely escaped me now where I read it, but I was under the impression that this was a universal thing. I see now I was wrong. I have repeatedly demonstrated my sheer lack of familiarity with many new MediaWiki features of late. Please forgive me. Edit: And then I went and posted this without signing back in. I'm losing my mind. — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 22:39, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Mod rewrite to remove index.php from URLs

How long has it been since anyone's looked into this? I can't remember why we couldn't do this when we first installed, but is it possible this might work better now since we've been through several MediaWiki upgrades? Would it hurt anything to try setting this up again? — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 00:44, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I think to do this the wiki may have to be in a subfolder, but I'm very sure the redirect does. Not sure for sure, though. My wiki is in the /wiki folder and the rewrite is the /w folder. Howto If you do it you might want to make sure Wikipedia picks up on the change for their inter-wiki links. --AndrewNeo 20:44, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)
And there's the catch. How many people are linking to us externally, and how would it disrupt them and our reputation if we make the change? Unless there's some compelling reason to alter it, I think we should leave well enough alone. — It's dot com 20:47, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Well, you could always make index.php Apache-redirect to the proper page (HTTP 301 Moved Perminantly if possible), so old links still work, and /w/ so it's shorter and looks nicer for users. --AndrewNeo 20:53, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind the status quo. -- Tom 21:09, 21 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Easter Egg Inconsistancy

I just noticed something: we aren't consistant in the format we use to transcribe easter eggs. The most popular version can be seen here, but other versions can be seen here and here. Should we fix it? - Joshua (Note: The examples have since then been redone.)

Sounds like a worthy project to me. I prefer what you call the "most popular version" above. This should be added to the easter egg section of the standards page, too. — wikisig.gif Joey (talk·edits) 17:19, 19 Sep 2005 (UTC)
We also need to face the fact that the Chapos call stuff after the Paper "waiting eggs." I'd like to know why we don't list them as Easter eggs. — It's dot com 17:23, 19 Sep 2005 (UTC)
IMO I think they should be classified as easter eggs too. They're still secretive - people in a rush could easily miss them. - Joshua
People like that do miss them. I have friends who are only casual H*R fans (hard to believe such a thing exists), and whenever I show them an email with a waiting egg, at the end when they start to walk off or close the window, I have to say, "Hang on! There's more." — It's dot com 17:43, 19 Sep 2005 (UTC)
We used to put "waiting eggs" in Easter Eggs, but eventually they were moved to the transcript. Why? I'm not totally sure, but if I had to venture a guess, it's because the amount of time you have to wait for "waiting eggs" is kinda arbitrary, and it's a lot less in earlier emails (like 3 wishes.) I think it's a stretch to call the extra monologue in 3 wishes an "Easter Egg," but where should the line be drawn? Anyway, how we look at this one affects how we look at Strong Bad's comment after The Paper comes down in bottom 10. --Jay (Gobble) 17:49, 19 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I used to be in the "stuff after the Paper is not an egg" camp. For a long time I was. But the more I think about bottom 10, the more I think that it, ironically, has one egg. The fact the TBC call them waiting eggs kinda clinched it for me. As for the whether the end of 3 wishes is in this category, I'd agree with you that no, it's not. A good rule of thumb would be that you have to have time to realize the email is over and try to close the window. If I had to put a number to it, I'd say about 5 seconds, although I don't know how that fits the emails we have. I guess a more accurate rule of thumb would be the same standard as what a Supreme Court justice said (about something more infamous): that is, I'll know a waiting egg when I see it. — It's dot com 01:14, 20 Sep 2005 (UTC)
I think waiting eggs read better if they're transcribed in the Transcript rather than the Easter Eggs section - the pages seem to flow better that way. However I believe they should still be considered as Easter eggs for the purposes of Fun Facts, like the one in bottom 10. I think the definition should be that if it looks like the end of the toon/email (ie The Paper comes down, if it comes down in that email, the back link comes up if there is one, everyone stops moving, etc) and then after that something happens, that would be a waiting egg. Even 3 wishes would be included here. phlip TC 04:35, 20 Sep 2005 (UTC)
An extreme example in the other direction can be found on the Strong Bad Is In Jail Cartoon. - Joshua

"What's New?" Image Float

I've noticed that on the main page, the Strong Bad background image is constantly being partially obscured by the image of the most recent update. The Article of the Week is of course fine, since the image is on the left, and Homestar on the right. Would it look any better if Strong Bad were to be on the left side of the box (either horizontally flipped or not), or if the image were to be moved to the left? I think SB on the left might look a bit better. ⇔Thunderbird⇔ 04:59, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I actually never noticed that! I think that it looks better with the images in the same position, but I guess if I had to make a choice I would say Strong Bad should get moved to the left side of the box, but I don't really like that idea. There's probably another way to not have the image covering Strong Bad's head. «Rob» 05:02, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)
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