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| - Hi. I'm a newbie to this particular wiki, if not wikis in general; is there anywhere to request certain extension additions, or other server-stuff? --Sky2042 20:37, December 22, 2007 (EST) Also, has anyone given thought to the policies regarding smashers in the global namespace? I find it a bit silly that people that I know aren't exactly premier smashers have their own pages in the main namespace; doesn't this seem odd? I doubt that a redirect to their userpage would kill them. It would make the "3,000" articles a lot less, considering how many smashers there are that have added their name to the global namespace. Obviously, names like NEO and Ken and such should remain in the mainspace... Thoughts? --Sky2042 05:55, January 1, 2008 (EST) Every smasher who chooses to compete in an organized tournament that is sanctioned by the community has a right to an article. It's not so much that I disagree that some players aren't notable enough to warrant one, but rather that the logistics of administering and enforcing whether or not a player is notable enough are far too daunting for anyone to handle. I know an awful lot about a lot of smashers from a lot of different places, but not nearly enough to be comfortable with deleting articles with names that I don't recognize. When I first came here, the smasher articles were in extreme disarray and in many ways they still are, but I've done a lot of work in helping to standardize a format and try to illustrate the difference between an article and a user page. Typical wiki communities frown on cross-namespace redirects and the reason for that is because there are two sides to a website that can be edited by anyone: a front-end, which is the presentation side and what the reader sees, and; the back-end, which is the discussions and consensuses that ultimately produce the front-end. MediaWiki software helps to keep these two platforms separate using namespaces to divide front-end and back-end work. Therefore, a user page is the place to go to find out information about a particular user at SmashWiki, but an article is the place to go to find out information about a particular smasher. User pages aren't even readily accessible to a front-end reader of the page and if they're coming to a smash-oriented wiki, they're looking for smash-oriented info, so if someone searched for my name, it wouldn't make sense to redirect to my user page because it really doesn't have anything to do with me as a smasher. Which is why I made . *thumbs up* --RJM Talk 10:51, January 11, 2008 (EST) The logistics shouldn't be difficult; we can go by people listed at Pro as being notable enough for a mainspace article, with all others having a mainspace redirect to their user page. Seeing as how pro is one of those pages that is maintained rather assiduously, that makes it easy to weed out the good from the bad.True enough, they do frown on cross-namespace redirects, but that doesn't make them a bad thing. All SW needs to do is encourage players to create an article on them in the mainspace, and then all we have to do is move it to their actual userpage or a subpage of their user namespace. In fact, a subpage would be more ideal than moving them to the actual user's page, as you yourself have pointed out. Relevant policy might be (changed to) that "If you are going to have a redirect in the mainspace to a subpage of yours which deals with you as a smasher, it must be written in the same formal style that a normal article requires." Does that make sense? --Sky2042 17:40, January 13, 2008 (EST) Now, you've lost me. It would be a stupid amount of administrative overhead to sift through smasher articles, redirecting to user pages and making unfair assumptions about the notability of players based on that list of Pros. I intend to delete that page eventually and streamline it into something that makes more sense for the current state of competitive play. That is not a reliable list of smashers who "deserve" to have an article in the main namespace. All smash-related articles go in the main namespace. Once again, I must stress the differences between the front-end of SmashWiki, which records smash-related information, community history and pertinent details for a player, and the back-end of SmashWiki which is an entirely separate entity that works as its own community to produce the front-end. The purpose of the user page and the User namespace is to have a place to identify yourself as a member of the back-end community and offer a place for other users to contact you. The differences between User:Randall00 and Randall00 are pretty clear in my mind. I think there are more pressing matters at hand than entertaining an idea like this. --RJM Talk 18:03, January 13, 2008 (EST) Not really. A page history check, and we immediately know who the author is; the page is usually about said author. Then it's simply a matter of a page move. Once you've got all the articles in their correct places, then it simply becomes a task of watching either a) special:recentchanges or b) special:newpages for articles which should be subpages rather than main pages.I clarified my ideas on it (maybe you missed it). Instead of having the information located at Randall00, have it located at User:Randall00/Randall00, with a redirect from Randall00. You still have your own user page at User:Randall00, with a more professional page at User:Randall00/Randall00 regarding your smasherness.The reason I bring this up is because this is supposed to be an encyclopedia. It honestly doesn't look like one, with random Joe Schmoe in the main space. The articles on random Joe Schmoe are poorly written and and more often than not assert that they have "very good" characters.[1] That one's just an example that was created in the past couple of days; I've seen others.As to deciding who's notable and who's not, judgement isn't hard. Most of the names on Pros I recognize. I'm sure there are a few other names out on-wiki that are recognizable to the majority of people. This is only backed up by checking the page history; if there's more than one person editing a certain person's page, odds are, it's an ego thing, not a notability thing. To decide who stays and who goes is thus based on both of these things. Another idea related to that would be to redirect smasher articles to the crews they're in, if applicable.All of this is part of running a wiki. You said it yourself; there's a "front-end" and a "back-end". Making SmashWiki look good through such tasks as these is part of the back-end. I don't want to be BOLD (to use a wikipedia term) without someone's blessing, as I know that the articles are allowed here for the time being. --Sky2042 21:18, January 13, 2008 (EST) PS: Is there someplace or someone I can talk to about getting a few MediaWiki extensions installed? :( --Sky2042 21:18, January 13, 2008 (EST) You're still talking about creating a whole bunch of extra work for no particular reason. Why would we want to actively commit ourselves to constantly watch for new pages and recent changes just to monitor what should and shouldn't be in the main namespace?? Then, as players become more notable through their competitive achievements, do you really expect us to go back and maintain a list of which ones should be moved back into the main namespace once this is all done?? Sorry, man, this idea is totally bureaucratic and accomplishes nothing. You make a lot of assumptions about the competitive community that are largely unsubstantiated. The "reason" you've cited is because this is "supposed to be an encyclopedia," which is true, but that's a broad definition. More specifically, this is supposed to be a smash-related encyclopedia and smash is a game that people play--how is it that the people who play the game and bring it to life are not notable enough to be sitting in the main namespace of a smash-related encyclopedia? You also say that "judgment isn't hard," with regards to their notability as smashers--as though the fact that you can recognize most of the Pros names means that you and other diligent editors are the authority on who deserves a recorded history of their competitive achievements. I'm not sure what you're trying to convince anyone of by saying things like "the page is usually about said author" and "odds are, it's an ego thing" when both specify subjective parameters that clearly don't have enough substance to be making community-wide procedural decisions. At one point, I had written about half the smasher articles in the main namespace, so checking your page history won't help much there; and as to the ego thing, well I've already pointed out that no one person has authority over who is a notable smasher and who isn't. I don't know where you got the notion that this is "all part of running a wiki," but there has to be a good front-end result in order to carry out a back-end procedure--moving things around namespaces and creating needless redirects doesn't change the front-end presentation so there's no need to do it. I know that there's a lot of horribly written smasher articles in the main namespace, but sitting around monitoring the recent changes page isn't going to stop them from getting written. Leave them where they are, and tag the bad ones with {{cleanup}} and I'll try my best to get to them eventually. That way, we're left with articles that are identified as needing a clean up, plus all the good articles; instead of all the good articles, plus a bunch of redirects to terribly-written user pages. --RJM Talk 11:59, January 14, 2008 (EST) Whatever. If it must be, it must be. And no, it's not a lot of extra work. It really is quite easy, once the overhaul occurs. But w/e. "maintain a list of which ones should be moved back into the main namespace once this is all done?" Nope. We don't touch a thing. Firstly, the editor must be active, else we just have a bunch of dead articles, one way or the other (you can tag user pages as cleanup... -_-). If the editor (usually the self-author) wants his "smasher" article back into the main namespace, and can demonstrate that he has actually made a decent notability (set it at 1st place at a regional level tourny, or whatnot; this can be decided upon elsewhere), then he gets back in the main space by moving his article back. If he does not manage both of these items at the same time, then his article stays in the user space. It really is part of running/contributing to a wiki; the majority of it is presentation, rather than content writing, whether that presentation is copy-editing, categorizing items, or simply making new templates (not even using them). Again, whatever. I'll live either way; I didn't come here to article-write, but actually work on that "back-end (as you so term it)" which has seen little to no development and implementation. And as for extensions and serverside stuff, should I contact Kirby directly, or not? Through PM or talk page? --Sky (t | c | w) 06:09, February 3, 2008 (EST) You should work for a city office or something, they'd love you. "Firstly, the editor must be active" is misguided right off the bat, so to open with a faulty argument only further buries a subject that is and always has been a dead one. Encyclopedias, even online ones, have nothing to do with whether or not the article's original author is active. What if the editor isn't active? What if he comes on, writes an article and leaves? How does it become OUR responsibility to MOVE his article off the main namespace based on some bogus notability criteria, all without his consent or awareness, which ergo deprecates his position as a smasher in the eyes of this fantasy SmashWiki community you speak of...? Then suppose he magically wins a regional tournament or something, comes back to find his article moved (which means "gone" to someone who's not an active editor), can't figure out how to update his results and then all of us SysOps end up with angry messages from users squealing about how their article was deleted. Those who are particularly disgruntled go on vandalism sprees on websites that push their buttons the wrong way. This also doesn't account for any smasher article written by anyone other than the smasher themselves; am I to presume that this responsibility of tracking the notability of smashers and "managing both of these items at the same time" extends to the author then? What about ones written by someone else, but heavily edited and perfected by an additional seven people? Some of us have written HUNDREDS of these articles, some well over a year ago and many that we haven't touched since. I've probably written like fifty articles about smashers who, as far as I know, don't even know that SmashWiki exists, never mind visit it frequently, have knowledge of the backend community and a good understanding of how the namespace structure and policy relate to one another. Listen, you have a thought process that is very valuable in communities like this and thinking in that manner can go a long way to making an encyclopedia what it should be. However, you have to account for what the end user is seeing and ensure that you don't get buried overthinking things that have no place in a project that demands effort in other areas. You said it yourself that you didn't come here to "article-write" and prefer to work in the back end. That's fine, I guess. But you have to be careful where you're stepping and distinguish between what you're seeing and what the readers of the wiki are seeing. If you don't write articles and don't really read them (which is the entire front end), are you really in a position to be making decisions about how to build the back end framework of a community whose finished product is largely of no interest to you? It's great that you think that the back end has seen little to no development or implementation, but I take it personally in this case because I've seen it go from having less than ten active contributors in a non-existent back end community to having thousands of decent articles produced by an active user base that cares enough and is large enough to make a difference. You're still talking about wasting the efforts of that user base on building a beautiful back end community for a below-average front end encyclopedia. It's like sending 4 mechanics to clean the engine on a car, when really all it needs is some more washer fluid. --RJM Talk 17:16, February 21, 2008 (EST)
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