Discussion/archive10

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Combat Template

It seemed to me the {{Combat}} template is a little bloated. There's a lot of redundant info, and each piece is on it's own line.

  • Do we really need the safe moxie anymore? It's just exactly 10 higher than the attack, so what's the point of listing it there?
  • Likewise, while it's kind of useful to list elemental weaknesses, does it need it's own line? That could go (parenthetically) after the elemental type of the monster.
  • Ditto for phys resistance; this line should just be omitted if the monster doesn't have any.

On a related note, why is the Combat template set up the way it is? When designing the monster data pages we created them such that you didn't need to use these constant calls to the {{Data}} template; each data page is capable of calling a template that you pass to it, populating it with the parameters on the data page. There might be some reason we're not using that approach here, but I can't figure it out.  :) --Starwed 23:05, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

  • Your first point is invalid for a lot of monsters, such as gremlins. And not everyone knows the "attack + 10" formula. The elemental thing is a matter of how the presentation looks. And the problem with trying to use the data page as a dynamic template call for this template is the various note parameters and other things that are essentially used only by the one template. ALL inputs have to be accounted for on the data page somehow or another if you want to use the non-{{Data}} way, though there are "dynamic" ways of doing that (see Data:Test). --Flargen 23:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Ah, that makes some sense, though we already do allow some data to be passed anonymously through the data page. Given that the Combat template is already written it might not be worth figuring out how to get around it, but it does make the template damn hard to read.
The elemental thing is a matter of how the presentation looks.
Right, that was my main problem with the template: they simply take up too much vertical space, often with redundant information. I'd be fine with the safe moxie level being embedded on the same line as attack, for instance. --Starwed 00:13, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

After tinkering for a while I have a proposal that I'm happy with. You can see it at User:Starwed/Combat. There are a lot of changes, so I'll explicitly list each:

  • Bounty, Quest and Pickpocket items are on the same line as item drops. Quest items are denoted with italics, BHH and Pickpocket items with superscript letters that link to the appropriate page.
  • I added CSS to indent the list of items if it wrapped over onto more than one line
  • Substat and Safe Moxie are now displayed on the same line as monster level
  • Changed "Elemental Resistance" to "Elemental Alignment" which makes more sense overall.
  • Weaknesses are now listed on the same line as alignment, if they exist
  • Physical Resistance is only listed if exists.

This version presents all the same information as the old template, but typically will take up 3-4 lines less, and can in extreme cases reduce the size by 7 lines.

There are a couple of other changes I've thought about making, such as adding tags in the style of the new noncombat template. But since I've done everything I could think of to streamline the {{Combat}} template, thought I'd see what input folk had. --Starwed 23:17, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Elemental resistance thing looks fine, not liking the Monster level line. Suddenly smaller text is harder to read and parse. Indenting of over-long lines seems good, too. --Flargen 00:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Smaller text is harder to parse, but it's a trade-off: making those fields less prominent makes the rest easier to read. And since those particular two bits of information can usually be calculated from monster level, for me that trade-off is worth it.

Oh, one thing that I wondered while editing the template: is there anywhere on the wiki where we use the {{Combat}} template without feeding it a data page? (Other than the example on the template page itself.) A lot of boilerplate code could be excised from the template if we don't. --Starwed 00:48, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, conducted a quick informal poll in chat (/hardcore) on whether small text or regular size text should be used. Responses were mixed 4-4, so with the lack of consensus that one size looks better I'll err on the side of readability and use regular font size.

Please keep on eye out for weird errors and either fix them or let me know I screwed something up!  :) --Starwed 06:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I like the smaller version. Two things to watch for: for data that we can no longer ascertain (mainly with retired monsters), we've been using !. Under Elemental Resistance, it needs to check that and just display Indeterminate. Also, if the monster is a scaling monster, and attack and defense are set to "scales", Substat gain gets messed up.--Foggy 15:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Found a weird error. In Opera, the very first bullet is misaligned. --Flargen 23:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Ah, I'd assume that this is caused by the CSS that indents the second line of items. (This is done by adding a margin to the whole paragraph, and then a negative indentation to the first line.) I tested it in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, but not Opera. (The original page I got the method from said it even worked in IE 6, so I hadn't been too worried about compatibility.) I'll install opera and see if I can figure out a work-around, though don't let that stop anyone else from taking a stab at it. --Starwed 00:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Ok, after a bit of investigation it seems this is simply a bug in Opera, and one that's been around for quite a while. The situation, then, is that the indentation makes it look somewhat better in a handful of cases for the majority, while annoyingly broken in all cases for the minority. So I'll take out the indentation for now, while I continue to look for a work around. (I posted on stack overflow and got a workaround that worked in Firefox and Opera, but broke in Chrome.) --Starwed 06:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Retired content

I propose moving retired adventures from main location pages to subpages. (Like The Haiku Dungeon/Retired.) They take up way too much space and are only of historical interest. Having a link in the infobox would help us not lose track of them during page moves. --Starwed 06:19, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'm going to take silence as approval and go ahead and move these as I see them. --Starwed 01:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

On a slightly related note, in the "Obtained From ->Obsoleted Areas/Methods" sections, we seem to have accidentally standardized a formatting mistake. For comparison see here. (I guess the initial problem was that indenting the :; formatting doesn't work if you try the most straightforward approach, but just inserting a blank line is a better solution.)


Changes

I created a new page called simply Changes. The idea is the same as the old Tuesday page -- a place to quickly and concisely get up to speed on new content. New content can be linked to and put into context from here, with short and hopefully helpful descriptions of what things are and how they're connected.

History of Loathing doesn't serve the same purpose, because (1) it doesn't describe changes in any detail and (2) neglects any changes that aren't announced.--Starwed 16:38, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Copying UR Monsters

Can we touch up the Copying article? I believe it has been proven that UR Monsters cannot be copied: User:Annoying_nerd/Spading/Ultra_Rares --Annoying nerd 06:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

That's evidence enough for me, given that copying URs wouldn't make sense in the first place, hehe. --Lordebon 17:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Categories!

Proposed categories/pages:

  • Dance skills (i.e. skills affected by +Dance Damage and +Dance delevel)
  • "Content from X", such as items from pirate locations (since you can be locked out of that), items from the agua quest, and items that drop from the Antique quests. Basically items that are based on certain interesting special conditions, like "It's Crimbo 2010!", Halloween, other events, items which unlock quests...

Previous discussions (or lack thereof):

  1. Discussion/archive7#Subcategories_of_Combat_Skills
  2. Discussion/archive7#Skill_Navigation.2FCategorization
  3. Discussion/archive4#Category_Changes

inb4 someone explains to me what a wiki is. --Raijinili 11:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

QuamperLeaks

Anyone know if QuamperLeaks is "KoL Official", like site-pimp.com was? Or the work of a player/fan? The domain lookup gave me "Oneandone Private Registration" as 1&1 Internet is a hosting company. I's would have expected something along the lines of Zachary Johnson c/o Network Solutions like both KoL and site-pimp (the site is down, but the domain is still registered until 2012). So I don't know. I saw no announcement, trivial update, nor tweet about it. And wtf is a quamper? Either way, it's a fun (and quick) read. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 06:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Snakehead Charrrms

On the page for the Quest for the Holy MacGuffin in the Palindrome part it mentions getting snakehead Charrrms. I'm new to the game and I didn't get Charrrms. I got keys that I had to use to get the snakehead charrrms. I think there's a note about it on the game when you log in actually.

Sorry if I've posted in the wrong place, but I'm not really up to speed on how to edit a page and put in links or anything else that's required.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gazman (talk • contribs) on January 3, 2011

  • I guess that they have not updated that page----Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 04:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Moon/announcement template changes

I’ve messed around with Template:Announcement and the moon templates (Template:Moons, Template:Moons/today) a bit. The main idea is that since rollover occurs at 03:30 UTC, the templates shouldn’t show the next day’s data until that time, instead of switching at 00:00 UTC. So I’ve changed the calculations there. I’ve also made an auxiliary template Template:Regular holiday that should take care of most of the things Template:Announcement shows without human intervention.

If I got everything right, the only difference should be that Template:Announcement will prefer Template:ANNOUNCE IotM to Template:ANNOUNCE Fridaythe13th; my rationale is that the latter has less gameplay importance (as far as we know). I’d like to ask everyone (or, someone… anyone?) to keep an eye on the announcement banner and moons on the main page, though, in case I made typos or miscalculated something and things break. --Xyzzyn 02:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess it works, except that the page caching for anonymous visitors means that the Main Page has yesterday’s information until somebody purges the cache manually. So, would it be feasible to run a cron job on this server (or somebody else’s server) around 03:32 UTC every day that does the same thing automatically? The command would be something like

wget -O - -q --post-data='submit=OK' 'http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Main_Page?action=purge' >/dev/null 2>&1

I don’t have a box of my own to use for this. --Xyzzyn 11:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Is the page caching in the new template somehow different that what was done before? I can't see why the old code would not be subject to caching (and thus requiring someone to refresh it every day) but the new code would. --Lordebon 14:27, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
The caching mechanism is the same; with the old template code the main page sometimes was more than a day behind real time due to this issue. This issue is (hopefully) orthogonal to the changes in the template code, but if there’s a widget that does things on a daily basis, it’d be nice to see the current day’s data. Also, my understanding of the Mediawiki documentation is that cached pages are only served to anonymous users, so if you’re logged in most of the time, YMMV. --Xyzzyn 20:39, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Ah okay, I thought it should be separate from the template being used but wasn't sure since you brought it up. As for caching only being used for not-logged-in users, I honestly don't know enough about how MW works (and most importantly, how this particular install of MW is configured) to say whether it serves a cache for anon users only and refreshes for logged-in. It shouldn't be too difficult to experiment and figure out, all you'd need is something to display the time and then view it as an anon user vs as a logged-in user and see if there's a difference. --Lordebon 21:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Well, this is weird. I went and put the (current) time on my user page and looked at it when I saved it; it said 21:44. I reloaded the page a couple of times and it still said that. Then I accessed the page via wget without providing login data, and got 21:50, and fetching the page this way again yielded the same time. But when reloading it while logged in, it still said 21:44. (I used ctrl+refresh in Firefox to bypass the browser cache and also tried using another browser; same results.) I asked other people and they saw the 21:50 time, while logged in. Then I loaded the page with ?action=purge while logged in and got a new time, but accessing it anonymously still yields 21:50. Accessing the page with ?action=purge and the POST data for that ‘OK’ button anonymous visitors get to purge the cache, I got a new time; but after that, accessing the page anonymously without ?action=purge again made it say 21:50. Sorry if this isn’t very structured, but all I can say is I now know that I have no idea of how this stuff works… --Xyzzyn 23:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
This is how I think it works. If in page X you include a template Y, when you edit or save X the cache is purged and a new version of page X is generated and viewable. However, the mere fact that page Y changes (ie time changes) does not cause page X to be regenerated each time you load X. Instead, when Y changes an update to page X is scheduled for some point in the future. Thus re-viewing the page, even refreshing it, is not sufficient to get a new time. There is also another layer of multiple, caching servers (try wget --no-cache), which allow different attempts to see the old X even after X has been updated. --Fig bucket 00:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
That works, thanks. Then the cron job, if anyone can be found to run it, would be
wget -O - -q --post-data='submit=OK' 'http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Main_Page?action=purge' >/dev/null && wget -O - -q --no-cache 'http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Main_Page' >/dev/null
This also seems to schedule an update for logged-in users, when they view the page. --Xyzzyn 00:45, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Bizarre vandalism/spam...

Some weirdo is vandalizing the Zinc Delta of Tranquility page by changing all the links to lead to some "ameritrustshield" thing that I didn't bother to check what it was. What do? (aside from reverting of course) also, is he doing it anywhere else? --billybobfred 05:37, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

The first two accounts were already blocked, and I just blocked the third. (Weird that a spammer would use an account exactly once, even though it wasn't blocked.) If you catch spam-bot type vandalism and revert it yourself, feel free to ask an admin to block them. (Although don't bug Jinya for stuff that the rest of us can handle! :) ) --Starwed 23:36, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Copyright Notice

At the bottom of any wiki page still says "© 2005 - 2008 Coldfront L.L.C." --Gadaree 10:03, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

  • I can't find it in the wiki to change it, so it is probably hardcoded in the wiki skin, there for it takes more than just a wiki mod to change it, but a colfront admin. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 05:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

What is considered a reference?

Over the time here I have seen my fair share of bad references, I may have been one of those :P. I've seen things like puns in reference sections as well, which to me doesn't seem to fit. --Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 17:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

  • the references are laughable is an accusation often levelled at the wiki. seems a little unfair, since these things are not immutable. which is another common complaint, that active users (by that they probably mean me) treat the wiki as their personal feifdom, ruthlessly protecting their pet imbecilities. i've not seen it personally. and if i see a crap reference, or have it pointed out to me, i'll take it out.
  • you ask what counts as a reference. kol's writers include stuff that was thought of by someone else. wilde's great writers steal, and all that. the wiki has given itself the task of identifying those sources. obviously jick and co aren't the only people raking through the middens of cultural significance, and one of the rules is that we don't identify things that are themselves references to other things. which means that the simpsons and homestar runner are pretty much entirely excluded, but, hey.
  • my justification (yours or theirs may be different) for doing this is that pop culture is not universal. i'm an aged brit, to my shame i had never heard of negativland or the dead milkmen. i am eternaly grateful to the wiki for pointing me in the direction of the awesome ponderousness of "christianity is stupid." similarly, not every one knows what cake or tool is.
  • i'd say the same with the puns and double meaning. some of us are hard of thinking (toot oriole, heh) and just don't get them, others don't have english as a first language. this is a harder line to draw than references per se, since even learned language includes shade and nuance. how far we go to point out that jick only draws genitalia, and skully's love of masturbation euphemisms is harder still.
  • it's all precedent and opinion, though. if you like it put it in. if you hate it take it out. if you're not sure use the Template:NeedsReview or bitch about it on the talk page. suffering in silence, or, worse being sneery in chat or on the forums gets us nowhere. --Evilkolbot 20:41, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Ok I see what you mean--Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 20:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
    • What about "references" that simply define what an object is?--P4n1q 00:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
I'd say the section is for information that puts the game text in context -- whether it be pointing out puns, explaining pop culture references, or defining semi-obscure terms. (Though anything which explicates game mechanics belongs in Notes.) --Starwed 01:03, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
    • What about "references" that are just links to tvtropes, explaining very common literary devices?--P4n1q 22:14, 22 January 2011 (UTC)


Splitting location pics

Not sure how to phrase this better. Anyway, lately most of the new locations don't use segmented pictures with clickable and unclickable links, and are just one whole picture. Would it be a good idea to just splice it up ourselves so that we can hotlink the clickable parts, or is modifying the original image a big no-no? --JohnAnon 05:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

  • When there were only a few locations with image maps, I think I split them up so the wiki could link them, but there have been increasing many locations using one large image and an image map, so our best option would be to get the wiki upgraded (so we don't need to use {{click}} anymore) and get the MediaWiki Image Map extension installed. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 07:26, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Even w/ image maps, we still might want the isolated images on the location page. (In the infobox, for example.) Not sure how much that matters, though. --Starwed 08:40, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I think that we should only separate images like that when it is needed for the info boxes.--Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 16:18, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
A workaround for infoboxes would be to use CSS tricks to crop a big image from the game to the desired rectangle, like in wikipedia:Template:Css Image Crop. --Xyzzyn 22:51, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Item to add

Why isn't Hardened slime pants on the Fumble Chance page? --Annoying nerd 06:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

  • Because rather than adding it, you decided to post here, instead? --Flargen 06:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

IotM threads?

Could/should they be linked on the item's page? Would that give context or whatever? --Raijinili 14:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

  • It would give a dozen pages of useless comments.--P4n1q 21:36, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
    • Yeah, that would be the problem. When the post is created by Jick and contains useful mechanical information, such as when the item is complicated and needs a good explanation, then we already link to that thread. When the thread is little more than dozens of uninstructive comments surrounding the rare interesting/useful one, I'm less inclined. --Flargen 23:56, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
      • Or a flamefest about what the item could've been. But I mean more for history and context than for mechanics. --Raijinili 02:37, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
        • Make-a-KoL is not interesting, from a historical perspective or otherwise.--P4n1q 07:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
          • Who said anything about Make-a-KoL? Just because that's what some people do in some of the topics doesn't mean that all of the topics are stupid flamefests. Try to stay on track. --Raijinili 14:20, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Fixed table widths

I don't know about the rest of you, but I am a bit of a style freak - as you can tell by my recent edit to Chat Guide: Miscellaneous and one of my older edits to Toot Oriole Quest. I think fixed table widths, specified in pixels, not only look ugly, but don't scale well to different monitor resolutions. Percentage widths, on the other hand, possess both these desirable properties. I am proposing that somebody, if not myself, goes through all the pages that have tables and fix 'em so that they look better. Anyone opposed to this? If so, please state your reasons - I want to know both sides of this. --Wrldwzrd89 00:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

  • It does look a lot better, if i knew what percentages to put on the tables, then i would help as well--Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 01:26, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Would using "min-width" be at all useful, as it would keep cells from becoming too small, yet would scale up ok far larger screens? As a fixed 10% may not look right when scaled too small? --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 04:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes, the min-width property would indeed be helpful for solving these sorts of problems. As for the other question, figuring out the proper percentages to use is a matter of doing a little math - take 100 and divide that by the number of columns in the table, that's your "average" width per column. Of course, some columns need to be wider than others, so take that into account when redistributing the percent widths. --Wrldwzrd89 10:30, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Cobb's Knob Menagerie

The individual pages for the menagerie seem to need some work. I think they all reference the old images instead of the makeover images. --Jest Phulin 21:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

"Unique Booze" Category

If one isn't focused on the best booze for adventures or stats, can we get a category on here for booze such as white Canadians, tomato daiquiri, and around the worlds which have certain unique qualities to them and possible alternative goals which can gain one a trophy. Canteen of wine, slimy fermented bile bladder, nanite-infested eggnog, and Dusty bottle of wine Glyph 2 and 3 wine for the buffs and effects, jar of fermented pickle juice for cleaning spleen, Schrödinger's thermos for a random booze etc etc. Then all of these would get marketed with a unique booze category so its easier to find the booze that have side benefits to them. --Annoying nerd 18:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  • That would be extremely vague and difficult to define, and thus subject to inciting edit wars over what does and does not belong there. Also, I can't imagine very many people start at booze and look for applications. First they'd go to pages like Monster Level or Trophy if they are looking for such a thing, and from there find out there are certain booze items that might help them. I suppose there are probably a few people who think "I wish to do all things booze!", but I don't think it's a big enough matter. They could probably go into chat to solicit information on what fun things can be done through booze (in-game or otherwise). The item pages themselves should also mention these things; effects granted are listed in the consumption section, trophy qualifications are listed in the notes, etc. --Flargen 19:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Problems With Collection Database Data and Special Characters

I think the technical term may be "non-Unicode," but whatever. I mean things like the trademark symbol and accented vowels.

For items such as Alewife™ Ale, Ben-Gal™ Balm, Black Body™ spray, Breathetastic™ Premium Canned Air, Can of Ghuol-B-Gone™, Coily™, Fancy canapés, La Hebilla del Cinturón de Lopez, Meleegra™ pills, Oreille Divisée brandy, Retenez L'Herbe Paté, Schrödinger's thermos, and Zu Mannkäse Dienen, there is no collection data displayed on the page.

However, there are some where the collection display works properly, such as Bugged bön±Ã©t, Das Überkühlraum trading card, Dramatic™ range, Familiar-Gro™ Terrarium, Frost™ brand sword, Genalen™ Bottle, Gold lamé pants, Knob Göblin lòve potion, Lockenstock™ sandals, and Meat st‰¿bing club.

I can't guarantee that either list is comprehensive. Is there a (sensible) fix that Wiki editors can do, or is it something that needs to be modified on the JWDCDB's end? Sorry if this question has been asked before. I looked through the discussion archive and didn't see anything. --Orbrisa 20:06, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

  • It's kind of both. The wiki can't handle them being sent in their default form. If the database is adjusted to send the data differently, then the problem will go away (for those items). --Flargen 22:55, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
    • I'd be curious to see a dump of this wiki's database schema (structure only, no data) - it might reveal the source of all the character set problems we've been having (and possibly some of the performance issues as well)... --Quietust (t|c) 02:22, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

This should (hopefully) be fixed shortly. The rss generator was not escaping characters on the plural forms of the items. If you go through the list, each of the non working ones has a plural form that involves more than adding s to the end. Once the script finishes running and regenerating all of the RSS feeds, the collections should work on the item pages with unusual plurals. Let me know if it doesn't. --jin 16:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  • I just noticed that this is fixed for the Hebilla, and many of the other items I listed. (Didn't check them all.) Very belatedly, thanks! --Orbrisa 18:07, 27 July 2011 (CEST)

Atom

I was trying to edit the Atomic Comic page, and got the following error: "You don't have permission to access /thekolwiki/index.php on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request." I got the same error when trying to view the document's history, when trying to edit the talk page, and when searching for "Atom" using the search function. Anybody know what's up with that? --Turing 20:48, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Mod security. You can find the exact same issues mentioned with things like the atomic vector plotter in one of the Discussion archives. You have to do some fiddly workarounds to edit those pages. You'll get the same problem just trying to search for them. What'd you want to change? --Flargen 20:56, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
    • Just wanted to change the "Obtained From" section to match the other 2011 April Fool's Day items, such as the obnoxious riddle. --Turing 20:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
    • To work around it yourself just use an escape code for one of the characters in the word "atom", such as %6F instead of the "o". --Fig bucket 21:02, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
      • That gets me to the editing page, but submitting the changes yields the same error, and I haven't figured out how to alter the form's action so it works. Bleh. --Turing 21:19, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
        • You have to alter the source code that the page is using (as far as your browser is concerned) so it submits to the escape'd address. Opera can do this by default, firefox probably needs an add-on, and I'm not sure if there's a way for other browsers to do it. --Flargen 22:21, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
          • I've forwarded this to Mag so he can take a look at the issue with mod sec. --FrostByghte 12:30, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This also should be workable now. We removed the offending problem. Let us know if there are further issues with pages that include "atom" in them. --jin 16:54, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Worked just fine right now. Thanks! --Turing 17:31, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Familiar abilities and equipment.

Right now Rogue Program says:

Ability: Takes HP from enemies to restore your MP like a Star Starfish, acts as a Levitating Potato with portable motorcycle equipped, drops Game Grid tokens

I propose this:

Ability:

Except that the first two lines really be something like this:

  • {{famability|fam=Star Starfish|power=100%}}
  • {{famability|100%|fam=Levitating Potato}} when equipped with portable motorcycle

Pros: - Standardizing descriptions. - List format.

Cons: - W**k.

Also, it'd be nice if there was an eqdesc= (or something) slot to briefly describe the familiar equipment's effect. --Raijinili 19:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Timeouts

Trying to add swarm of ghuol whelps to the Monster Data page for S-T and getting a timeout message. Any suggestions? (Here's the error message: Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/coldfront/domains/kol.coldfront.net/public_html/thekolwiki/includes/parser/Preprocessor_DOM.php on line 632)--Foggy 14:09, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

  • I remember that with the Crown of Thrones page. I think (as a non-wiki admin) the problem is the page is too large. Sure the wiki source is small, but there is a lot of template expansion going on there. Maybe a split into Monster Data (S) and Monster Data (T) is in order. Better would be redoing them with N per page, but that's not the sort of thing humans are good at keeping up-to-date. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 14:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
  • As Club says, this is most likely a sign that the page needs splitting. It's not at the maximum number of template calls, but the sheer amount of processing needed to construct the page is exceeding what the wiki will normally allow. Ideally, you would split somewhat evenly as Club suggests. But be sure to move existing pages to new targets, in this ideal case. So, for example, if you were splitting an E-J page into E-G and H-J pages, you'd move the E-J page to the E-G page, and before or after that cut out the information that's going to the brand-new H-J page. This will make sure the edit histories are preserved. Oh, and then request the old pages be deleted once you've updated links appropriately. If this timeout error prevents you from doing these things, post here about it and I or another admin will do the splits you desire. --Flargen 18:14, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Whining about External Links CAPTCHA

For those who don't know, there's a CAPTCHA when you try to add an external link.

  • Some templates unintuitively use external linking. I just got a CAPTCHA for adding the {{AcquireEffect}}, {{NeedsContent}}, and {{element}} templates, none of which should be external-linking. I'm still looking for the culprit to fix it.
  • Adding a link to forums (any forums) is more trouble than, it seems, is necessary.

It's perhaps a small bother to get an extra pageload and submit and have to read an intentionally-obscured image, but it's one that will occur over and over, and there doesn't seem to be a point. If possible:

  • Clean up the templates to not use external linking unless necessary.
  • There are certain domains that could be trusted. At the least, kol.coldfront.net, www*.kingdomofloathing.com, and forums.kingdomofloathing.com / asym.kingdomofloathing.com can be considered safe. At the most, certain spading forums often have reason to be linked to.
  • After, say, a few hundred edits, we should be immune from CAPTCHA, no?

--Raijinili 22:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Looking into {{click}}'s fullurl usage. --Raijinili 22:47, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
    • Two options are available to fix the fullurl usage: an extension], or upgrading to at least MediaWiki 1.14. In either case, this would allow more advanced linked images and not require the workaround of fullurl. --Raijinili 23:02, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
      • Yep. --Flargen 23:04, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
        • I saw that. There's still the issue of unnecessary CAPTCHA. --Raijinili 23:49, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
          • The image linking business is discussed there. The entire thing is stalled because a coldfront admin is MIA. As far as whitelisting other sites goes, I'm not sure who exactly can do that, but my pessimism says it's probably the same person. --Flargen 00:45, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

To note: hitting several CAPTCHAs in the span of a few hours is really annoying and gives a frustrated feeling of "completely redundant and also stopping me from being able to save the page in time to not hit yet another edit conflict." --Raijinili 06:38, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

More Crown Work

And almost as much fun as a dental crown. The Crown of Thrones is missing from many of the Dressing For Success pages. Some do have the crown (eg, Meat from Monsters and Maximizing Your Meat Drops) which provide a the template for the Crown on others. Probably the Mad Hatrack should be entered similarly, but I'm not as sure of the spading confidence in some of those numbers. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 17:25, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Faxbot page

Arguments for:

  • It's, like, really part of the game. The Pool Cue was modified to allow a 100% Kung Fu Fighting run, but the only way to get white pixels in such a run is to fax in some monsters.
  • As a wiki effort, it's easier to correct and keep up to date. That's the whole point of a wiki, isn't it? To apply the force of wikieffort.
  • This is already a start: [1]

Arguments against the arguments against:

  • I won't bring up KoB if you don't.

--Raijinili 01:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I, for one, vote nay. The fax machine is part of the game. You can do a 100% Kung Fu softcore run with pulled pies or you can get a clanmate to fax in a monster for you. Faxbot is a convenience, not the game. It warrants mention here but not detailed instructions. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 03:30, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Faxbot (not faxes) are part of strategy now. If a buffbot goes down, you can always find another buffbot. If Faxbot goes down, then most of those using Faxbot will be crippled on the faxing front, not being resourceful enough to just finding a clanny to fax, say, a spangly sombrero in, or a Ghost, possibly wasting a photocopier. --Raijinili 08:45, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit page - stat days warning

The edit page warns, "Are you updating stat gains from adventures or items? Make sure today is NOT a Stat Day." Should it warn about percentage increasers, such as the new moon signs and the clan shower, and remind people that stat days don't apply when you're in Hardcore? --Johnny Treehugger 20:24, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Wait, stat days don't apply in Hardcore? Why is there absolutely no mention of this on Stat Days or Hardcore? --Quietust (t|c) 20:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Because stat days did affect Hardcore and Ronin up until yesterday. The Valhalla revamp has removed the stat gain effect from stat days when under ascension restrictions. --Melon 20:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Jeez, you scared me. I thought I imagined the whole "no stat days" thing until I found Jick's post confirming it. Off to update those two pages now. --Johnny Treehugger 20:58, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Only the Choicest of Monsters To Fight

There are several monsters that either only result from choice adventures or can result from choice adventures. On their individual pages, I think it's easy enough to specify this in a standard format. On the Location pages, we seem to have a couple different styles:

  • List the combat among the other combats, but with a note that this only occurs as a result of a choice in such-and-such adventure
  • Do not list the combat, but under the choice adventure, include the Combat template for that monster (which I honestly think looks awkward)
  • Do not list the combat, and simply list "Fight ______"

Has there been a standard established for this? Should there be one? My preference is for the last one, unless someone has a convincing argument otherwise.--Foggy 14:32, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if we have a standard, but I'm all for choice three being a standard. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 22:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Generally I'd prefer the second choice, unless the monster also appears as a regular combat in that zone.
Strongly oppose choice 3. If you argue for that, why bother having any detailed combat info on the location page? My take is that, as much as possible, you should be able to make all the choices you need by looking only at the main location page. Needing to click through to an individual monster/adventure page just to see monster stats is badness. Aesthetics need to serve usability -- removing information because it doesn't look nice is the opposite. --Starwed 22:55, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
My personal preference is the second option. If it's also a regular combat in the zone then I think just a link on the same page to the combat entry on that page is enough rather than repeating it. I strongly dislike option 3 as well. --Lordebon 23:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
Starwed with a convincing argument for the win.--Foggy 14:26, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Game Messages

I'm put a lot of messages into Game Messages, but as time goes on, I feel it is the wrong place to put many of those. Some of them, like "Adding Yourself as a Friend" maybe have no other place and do belong there, but why should "Not Donating Enough Meat at The Dungeoneers' Association" be on that page instead of The Dungeoneers' Association? With the recent invasion I started to put errors on appropriate pages, in particular misuse of the A. W. O. L. commendation. I propose that errors of the sort currently on Game Messages get moved to the most specific pages for those activities. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 22:43, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

  • Fine by me. --Flargen 23:00, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
    • This is a great idea, and needed to be done a long time ago. Game Messages is getting crowded, anyhow. --Wrldwzrd89 23:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
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