HRWiki talk:Tour

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Contents 1 Purge the cache every now and then 2 Tour Image Options 3 Formatting 4 Location 5 Namespace variable in template 6 Name of the tour pages 7 SBEMAIL Page 8 Characters Page 9 STUFF section?

[edit] Tour Image Options

Here are some pictures that we could use as the image:

The Gremlin	The Tourbus	Riverquest Safariventure	Homsar's Shriner Car(s)
Portrait of Strongbad giving the Safariquest Adventure

If anybody has other ideas, please add them on. -AtionSong 15:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
These two pics are from Homestrunner.com Pay Plus

I R F 15:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Ouch! The Videlectrix mascot is totally shredded in my browser - looks like the resizing code for the gallery didn't handle that image well at all. —  KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:29, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

...and now it's fine again. Weird... —  KieferSkunk (talk) — 16:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, because less then one minute before you clicked save page I changed the image :) — Elcool ^(talk)_(contribs) 16:31, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Could somebody possibly make an animated GIF with all of the images? -AtionSong 16:49, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

You mean to have the picture rotate through all of the 5 options shown above? It would be interesting, but as I mentioned in my edit history, animations make things a little too distracting I think. --Stux 17:04, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

I got a portrait of strongbad added to the gallery above. The page with that portrait would look something like this. What do you guys think? (It could even be smaller too.) --Stux 20:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

If we're still doing this, I think the "Show me more, sir!" would be a great addition to the tour. —FireBird|Talk 04:12, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I created a test GIF animation cycle through the images if we still want to use it. It's information if people want to make specific suggestions:

• Each frame is displayed for 1^1/2 seconds
• The pallate used is 255 colors (the maximum allowed in the program that I use)
• The colors are changed based on "nearest color"
  • The alternative is error-diffusion

-AtionSong 20:14, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Good work, but animation = annoying to a lot of people. — It's dot com 20:32, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting

This is a neat idea. I noticed a couple of things, though: The background (at the top, especially) disappears. This may only happen on Internet Explorer, but quite a few (a majority?) of people taking the tour will have that problem. Also, perhaps one line of white space could be inserted between the boxes and the page content, just to make it a little easier to read. — It's dot com 16:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I tried the tour again while not logged in, and I didn't have the problem with the background. I can only guess that something in my personal CSS is causing a conflict. I inserted one line break at the top and the bottom, and I think the small bit of white space looks a-purty-purty good. — It's dot com 16:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I know this is a Firefox only problem but: the H*R logo that appears next to any H*R.com website link (see HRWiki:HRWiki_tour/Halloween_Fairstival in firefox -- i dont have a screenshot yet) has a white background instead of a transparent one! So it shows up white when seen with the peach background of the tour! --Stux 16:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Also, on the Fairstival leg of the tour, the logo crams up into the link, overlapping it, for me! —AbdiViklas 17:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

That was my fault. The <span class="plainlinks"> thing doesn't work well with links to HR. But just to test: Everybody! Everybody! --ENUSY 19:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow, the link above overlaps the picture and the Everybody link under firefox! Is there any way we can make the little picture thingy hardcoded so that a. all those pesky problems go away, and b. our left-out IE users can see what we see? --Stux 20:01, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

So is there any way to fix these firefox-related problems? --Stux 19:31, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Location

How about we add it as the third step of the Introduction? - Joshua 16:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Absofreakin'lutely! We've got this thing; now we need a way to connect newcomers with it. —AbdiViklas 19:49, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I have posted a suggestion for inclusion. --Stux 02:28, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. — It's dot com 17:08, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to seem as though I've been ignoring this; I haven't. I, like a few other admins who've commented on Tom's talk page, simply never felt the need to comment. I think posting this on the Introduction is a great idea, but you don't need my (or any other admin's) permission. Be bold! I do, however, agree with Dot com (below) that this page should be moved to HRWiki:Tour first. — Joey (talk·edits) 18:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd love to but these pages are protected from editing. At the very least I can apply the sandbox changes to this page and revert them. --Stux 05:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I would just unprotect those pages, but I don't know why they were protected in the first place. Here's what you can do: use the sandbox to edit those pages; make it just like they should be. Then, when you're ready, post the oldid links like you did in your post there and I'll copy the code to the protected pages. — It's dot com 05:23, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Crap! Great... Love microsoft. My explorer window crashed just as I was posting my reply! :-p. Anyway, I ran into a slight problem here when looking at the changes. Apparently at 800x600 the 3rd tab wraps over to the next line making things look pretty bad. I'm tempted to ignore the problem but I can't. (It looks great at 1024x768). I have the originaly sandbox edits ready but as I was typing the original reply I realized that I might be able to fix it using tables. So I'll try that and report what happens. --Stux 05:49, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't sweat it unless someone said that the majority of users use that resolution. The whole page seems geared toward at least 1024x768. And even though the 800x600 has the glitch, it doens't render the page unusable. I went ahead and made the changes. — It's dot com 06:03, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Alright! Sounds cool! I wasn't able to find a suitable fix so yeah i'll leave it as it is. It looks pretty neat! At both resolutions, but esp. at 1024x768 :) Thanks! --Stux 06:08, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Namespace variable in template

The "namespace" variable doesn't seem to be used. Instead, the whole path to each page is listed in the "page" variable. I started to fix it, but then realized that The Stick and HRWiki:The Stick are different things, and therefore the namespace should be a part of the visible title. And, assuming that's correct, does the "namespace" variable need to be a part of the template? — It's dot com 19:09, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I can't think of any reason why it would. Just to be clear what we're talking about, I also agree that the visitor should see the namespace, e.g. HRWiki:The Stick. Barring any reason for wanting to fake the appearance of a namespace, I don't see why a variable would be needed. —AbdiViklas 20:01, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I know this is an old post, and I don't know if the question was answered or not by the posters, but at least for the benefit of the "postees" (a.k.a. readers) I will post a reply: the namespace variable is necessary in that without it, there is no way to tell the template insertion operator "{{ }}" that that page is from the main namespace. For example: {{Main_Page}} will insert Template:Main Page, but {{:Main_Page}} will insert Main Page. The colon is necessary. And since I don't think we can simply type in: {{:HRWiki:Introduction}} (actually, we can. I just tried it...), we must use the namespace variable to resolve these issues. --Stux 06:41, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I removed the namespace variable and just left the leading colon: {{:{{{page}}}}}. It seems to be just fine. — It's dot com 14:18, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Name of the tour pages

Shouldn't the name of the tour just be "HRWiki:Tour" and not "HRWiki:HRWiki tour"? The fact that it's about the wiki is taken care of by the namespace. Similarly, the intro is "HRWiki:Introduction", not "HRWiki:HRWiki indroduction", and the description of the site is "HRWiki:About", not "HRWiki:About HRWiki". — It's dot com 00:46, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I mentioned above that I agree with Dot com about naming the page HRWiki:Tour, but after a bit of research I've decided it should be HRWiki:TourBusStop. That seems to be the standard name for these things. The central station for tour bus stops seems to be at Meatball:TourBus. Someone here should see about what it takes to get our TourBusStop featured on one of those routes. There seems to be good information for that at Meatball:HowToForTourBusConnections and to a lesser extent at Meatball:TourBusFaq. — Joey (talk·edits) 18:48, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that's the same thing as this. Those pages seem to lead you from and to different wikis, rather than pages at one individual wiki. If we wanted to do that in addition to this, that'd be cool, too. But I think "HRWiki:Tour" is what we're searching for for this group of pages. — It's dot com 20:07, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Everything has been moved now. If someone wants to look into making an additional "TourBusStop" page, please feel free. — It's dot com 06:09, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Probably by replacing the contents of this page? As I mentioned earlier it might be a good idea to wait to link it to the tour until at least new user registration is re-established. Just for good measure, here's the wikipedia tour bus page that can be used as an example. --Stux 06:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I remember it was mentioned that the category should be renamed too. I agree. I was thinking something like Category:Tour. It is only a matter of changing three pages and updating the rest. I was wondering though, if the old category page should be redirected, deleted or what? --Stux 06:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's as big of an issue because it doesn't have the HRWiki: preface in front of it that makes the other pages confusing. For consistancy though, I guess it could make sense. -AtionSong 15:17, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Judging by the tour bus stop template at Meatball Wiki (Which, incidentally, would probably have been a better place for the HRWiki article on Wikipedia. Hindsight is always 20/20, it seems.) we just need a page with a short description of this wiki, and links to at least three pages we think people who are new to this particular wiki should see. That sounds just like what Stux had said above. This shouldn't be much of anything in the way of setting up a new page for it. The only caveat is that there's a requirement that the page be named TourBusStop, which is currently a redirect to this page. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ @ 05:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

If we want to get a stop on a TourBus, we're gonna need that page on Meatball Wiki. Who's up for creating it? — User:ACupOfCoffee@ @ 05:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I have posted a reply to this discussion here. All further discussion on the TourBus should go on that page. --Stux 15:47, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] SBEMAIL Page

Is it really worth it to have the Strong Bad Email page on the tour? All the other pages are either important pages on the wiki or "example" pages to give people an introduction to what most pages on the wiki looks like, and this does not really fall into either of those categories. More importantly, how helpful is it really to new people on the wiki. Just my opinion, but I don't think it should be included in the tour. -AtionSong 20:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Considering Strong Bad Emails are the most updated and most searched feature of the site, I don't see why they shouldn't be on the tour. — It's dot com 20:57, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, anybody who comes to the wiki is probably already going to be familiar with HomestarRunner.com. If they want more information about an email, they'll search for the title. The idea of the tour is to get people familiar with the wiki, not all things Homestar Runner. And also, the page itself is very straight forward, so if somebody new ended up on it, they would have no trouble understanding it anyway. -AtionSong 21:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

All of the tour pages (except STUFF, perhaps) are straightforward. The sbemail page is very important, because it's not just a list of emails, but rather it has everything you could possibly want to know about the emails, organized multiple ways. — It's dot com 21:24, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I understand, but is it something that newcomers need to know to get familiar with the wiki? Perhaps we could create a list on the HRWiki:Tour/End page of other pages to check out. -AtionSong 21:33, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Dot com. There is really no reason why that page shouldn't be on the tour. --Stux 01:40, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I just can't see why this is important for somebody who's new to the wiki to see. What are you going to say in the description box at the top? "This is a list of all the Strong Bad Emails, as well as e-mails not found on the e-mail selection menu." I just don't see its importance. Somebody please explain to me why this should be included in the tour. -AtionSong 03:38, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

(In an ironic twist?) I have added your description and a little bit more to the Strong Bad Email tour. It definitely needs a description. Also to (hopefully) answer your question: my take is that Strong bad emails are one of the most important features (if not THE most important feature) in the h*r.com site. As such, the main page leading to these should be included in the tour. Much in the same way our Main Page is the first stop in the tour. --Stux 16:05, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

I get that, but it's one of the most important features on H*R.com, not on the wiki. And I don't understand the connection you made to the Main Page. -AtionSong 17:09, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh! Well, what I meant was that the Main Page acts as a gateway to the rest of the wiki's pages, much in the same way the SBEmail page acts as a gateway to all of the SB Email pages. --Stux 19:36, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Understand. Still don't like it, but I guess that everybody else thinks it's helpful, so I'll deal. But I still don't like it. -AtionSong 22:00, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Characters Page

I really think the Characters page is too long to have in the tour. I think a page like the Toons page might not be as resource intensive for a quick tour like this. What are you guys' opinions on this? --Stux 05:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] STUFF section?

With STUFF all but decommissioned, does it still make sense for it to be featured as a stop on this tour?  Green Helmet 23:04, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

No, it needs to be removed. We really don't need obsolete pages on the tour. I don't think we even really need to discuss it any further, so I took it out of the tour lineup (the page still exists, of course). HRWiki:Tour/Characters now links to The Stick. --Mini-Geek^{t c} 14:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)