Discussion/archive13

New accounts and spam links

shoo! bad spammer!

• i just banned 20-odd new accounts with suspicious names. it seems the spammers can get round the "create a new account" safeguards, but not the "email verification" ones. boo! and yay! i'd say the one or two who manage to make an edit aren't botted about which we can't do anything. i'm happy to keep banning (although the likelihood of false positives increases the longer i go on, which makes me far from happy) but isn't there something else we can do on the "create user" page? --Evilkolbot 13:55, 8 August 2012 (CEST)
  • is there some ereason why there's no CAPTCHA on the create account page? it would be a good idea if it's not technically impossible. --Evilkolbot 14:00, 8 August 2012 (CEST)
    • Bump. Not that it costs me effort or anything, but watching an endless stream of obviously-spambot accounts being created only to be blocked seems like something about which some technical solution could surely be crafted, and thus not something our hard-working admins should need to keep addressing manually. --Fig bucket 01:47, 1 September 2012 (CEST)
      • Bump again. Is editing the questions on the account creation page something that admins can do, or does it require a bureaucrat? --Johnny Treehugger 17:22, 13 September 2012 (CEST)

Questy does allow captcha questions on sign-up. I put 10 game related questions on the Die2Nite wiki sign-up and its kept spammers out for over a year already. Whoever set up questy here hasn't finished the setup properly. Generic questions are easily answered by bots or human spammers. Subject specific questions make most of them give up. Example questions:

• What class is commonly seen beating baby aquatic mammals?
• What class is a friend of the animals, especially reptiles?
• What class casts spells based on noodle magic?
• What class casts spells based on gravy/dressing magic?
• What class casts buffs with his stolen bellows-driven musical instrument?
• What class is most at home on the dance floor?
• Who created KoL?
• Who is the head writer for KoL?

Discordance 13:27, 16 December 2012 (CET)

It seems like someone added more bad generic questions the other week? Those don't work because stupid bots, and human spammers answer them all the time. Just put my subject specific questions in (and preferable some more from other people). Discordance 20:47, 11 January 2013 (CET)

• The default behaviour of confirm edit is in fact to have its catapchas on account creation with "$wgCaptchaTriggers['createaccount'] = true;". Whoever is in charge of it here has turned it off. Specifically this one I have been talking about [1] and according to Special:Version thats whats running here. Can we get the name of who has access to make these changes so I can bug them on their talk page? Discordance 21:34, 11 January 2013 (CET)
  • the coldfront admins have the rights needed to make such changes. Quietust has the most luck with getting them to do stuff, but he's gone a bit quiet. --Evilkolbot 21:50, 11 January 2013 (CET)
    • The spammer accounts seem to have stopped dead, did we implement this? Its like I can breathe again!--Tombot (talk) 12:43, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Actually, new account creations now have to be manually confirmed by an admin. So they're probably still filling up that queue at the same rate as before, just now it's not visible, and they can't edit in any spam if they don't have an account. This will slow down any legit new users wanting to contribute to the wiki, but hopefully not by much, or that often. --Flargen (talk) 16:12, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
        • the queue is looking pretty empty at the moment, actually. not that i'm complaining. --Evilkolbot (talk) 17:31, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

papa got a brand new spambot

• seems that we've gained a new set of parasites. ones that appear to have botted the email confirmation. not tricky, i'm surprised (and i was relieved) that it took so long. or did something get relaxed? is there anything else we could do? the next step i can see is to follow the kol forums and go in-game invite only. anyone against? i quite liked the idea of drive-by edits. email confirmation killed that anyway. should be fairly simple to bot up. at last a use for ekb. i don't know if i'll have time, though. --Evilkolbot 11:47, 12 January 2013 (CET)
  • If we could, rather than in-game invite, I'd prefer to see account creation just ask you for your name and ID in-game and use a bot to verify the pair. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 20:28, 14 January 2013 (CET)

Speaking of spambots, the New spambot users are getting out of control. They are taking over the recent changes page, hundreds of new users every day and its just getting worse. For the love of god could sombody do somthing about this, there has to be some way of deleting their accounts after they join or somthing. Its like nobody cares.--Tombot (talk) 13:25, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

• it's not that no one cares. each new account tries to deface the wiki. that so few succeed is testament to the success of the preventative measures. i am very concerned that so many new accounts could cause us to be overrun. only when it happens does anything need to be done. or so they tell me. makes me sad, too, though. --Evilkolbot (talk) 16:43, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Personally I'm just sick and tired of wading through hundreds of dumbass spammers to see whats updated, also they may be stealing potential usernames from other people who actually want to contribute. Just how come they can make new accounts so easily anyway?--Tombot (talk) 01:31, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
    • 2709 of the most recent 5017 changes were SpamBot creations, if that's relevant.--Cannonfire40 (talk) 02:07, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
      • Namespace: User; check invert selection, go, enjoy no spam users. :D Kreds to some person on kol chat in /games or maybe /hc. Or for the lazy link — Cool12309 (talk) 11:28, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
        • Nice, but sadly its still treating the symptom and not the disease. Though if there was a simple, easy solution to all this we probably would have already implemented it.--Tombot (talk) 13:20, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Dealing with lists: Semantic MediaWiki?

There’s a chronic issue here with lists lagging behind game changes. In terms of whether this is an avoidable problem, there are several kinds of lists:

• those which rely on simple, automatically extractable facts, and really should be kept up to date by a computer, e. g.
  • items by name, items by number, food by fullness, booze by drunkenness etc.,
  • for an item which is an ingredient, the list of things craftable from it in the Uses section (e. g. Pumpkin#Uses),
  • one of:
    • list of possible adventures in an area or
    • list of areas where an adventure is encountered;
• those which require human thought and cannot be completely automatic, e. g.
  • Hardcore Skill Analysis,
  • Items from Monsters;
• those which rely entirely on wetware involvement, e. g.
  • Maximizing Your Item Drops,
  • quests;
• a kind that we don’t have, but might want: custom queries about data which are already available as template parameters on individual pages or could be easily made available, e. g.
  • Which drinks of at most three drunkenness give, as a maximum, at least eight adventures?
  • What are the best monsters by meat drop which aren’t clover, SR, UR or one-time encounters and appear as combats in an area which is currently in the game and allows olfaction?

Especially for the first kind, I find the present method of hoping that somebody will remember to update all the lists (I usually don’t remember about them) inelegant. My proposed solution is to ask for the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) extension. This has been briefly discussed before, and Flargen noted server load as a possible issue if it was used, but I’d like to ask about it again.

• Is there agreement about the problems with lists? (Or am I being pedantic?)
• Does anyone have user experience with SMW? Do you think it would work well here? Are there significant applications where it would still fail?
• Does anyone have experience with installing and maintaining SMW? How bad is the extra database/CPU load of SMW really, compared to plain MediaWiki?
• Are there alternatives which could do the same things? (DPL or one of the other extensions also called DPL?)

--Xyzzyn 16:18, 14 December 2011 (CET)

• I don't see how the first kind of list really would benefit from any extension; somebody needs to enter new items properly into the wiki and once they do, the category system largely takes care of it. Wikitemplates can handle the rest. The other kinds of lists need enough human input that we might as well have humans do them; at least that way everybody understands how the pages are built and we don't need to figure out if/how to override a computer-made content decision. My 2¢, anyhow --Improv 19:40, 14 December 2011 (CET)

Improv, you're incorrect about that. The easy example is items by no: each item stores it's number on the data page, but then must also be entered by hand in items by number. Autocat couldn't handle this, or, if it could, would do so with truly terrible formatting. I have no idea about semantic-mediawiki (the idea sounds good, at least) but if it isn't practical, perhaps some extension to make categories more flexible would help.

The other solution is to get a bot to handle these things -- wikipedia has all sorts of "janitorial" bots that automatically do these sorts of tasks. Again using items by number as an example, someone could set up a bot to, once per day, update those pages by watching for edits in the data namespace. --Starwed 19:53, 14 December 2011 (CET)

• I like the bots suggestion. Not that items by number is a good example, that one is well maintained. Items by autosell, however, only gets serious updates when I recook the pages. I put my script on one of the talk pages. But I'm not running true wikibots -- that might be fun to learn how to do. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 20:13, 14 December 2011 (CET)

So let's make a list of everything that is easily bottable:

1. Items by Name (list)
2. Items by number (list)
3. Food (By Fullness) (category)
4. Booze (By Drunkenness) (category)
5. Booze (By Level Requirement) (category)
6. Items by autosell price (list)

It seems like items by name would be better served using a category- just modify Template:item to categorize each page based on the metadata. Nadando 20:56, 14 December 2011 (CET)

There are also category like things that couldn't be easily botted, such as the list of hats. But a bot could generate a report of items that are in Category:Hats but not listed there, to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. If we wanted to be really obnoxious it could even add an "unlisted" category to the item, or something. --Starwed 00:41, 15 December 2011 (CET)

Categories don’t really work for anything more than an index of article names (the default ones are way too restrictive; MW extensions of categories still leave stuff to be desired). As for bots, I see some drawbacks:

1. Bot code belongs to the bot owner. The only one who can change something (the layout of a list or the criteria) is the owner. This is not ideal in a wiki.
   • Stated another way: the code for everything that makes up wiki pages should live in the wiki and be editable by anyone (with reasonable restrictions, as usual).
   • As a corollary of implementing a bot that uses structured data from wiki pages (meaning mostly template parameters) for some task, it becomes impossible for anyone to change the structure of those data without coordinating the change with the bot’s owner or breaking the bot. (TL;DR: suppose I have a really great reason for changing all item numbers to Klingon ternary but there’s a dozen bots that depend on them being in hex.)
2. If the owner doesn’t find the time to handle them, faults in a bot don’t get fixed.
3. The technical barrier to entry of writing and running a bot is rather higher than that of writing semantic properties and requests.
4. Semantic markup, when used pragmatically, is pretty in ways that bots aren’t. (But I’ll concede this is a purely subjective view.)

The advantages of bots, as I see them, are:

1. They can be written to do pretty much anything. SMW can only do some things.
2. Bots are much less invasive from the server administators’ point of view than a new MW extension.
3. A smartly written bot might solve a task with much less impact on server resources than an equivalent solution with SMW.

Of course, the two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. --Xyzzyn 01:34, 18 December 2011 (CET)

I don't see why Items from Monsters and Maximizing your Item Drops can't be automated. --Raijinili 08:08, 18 January 2012 (CET)

For the first, duration, cost, prerequisites and some of the notes would be tricky. For the second, I don’t know how to turn the choice and order of items into an algorithm, considering that there’s a mix of straight +item% bonuses, weight bonuses, Hobo Power and odd stuff like stickers. --Xyzzyn 23:44, 18 January 2012 (CET)

Duration, cost (as in item or spleen?), prereqs, and the "other effects" part of the notes can be algorithmically determined with a different data entry setup (i.e. instead of copy-paste effect text, label the effect and generate effect text; this is problematic since e.g. familiar experience isn't consistently texted).

The rest of the notes can usually be put in as a shortnote attribute, since they'd likely be the same note on every page they happen on.

Choice and order of Maximizing pages are: straight-up, weight, other. Hobo Power is a special case, but it can somehow be marked (for software) as "can be converted to item", which would make it appear at the bottom of a slot's list. Sticker sword would just have an entry as "potentially: 25-75%" rather than "always: 25-75%", where "25-75%" is a variable and "potentially" is a property of that variable. --Raijinili 15:28, 24 January 2012 (CET)

Okay, it could all work, after some effort at converting/moving the data. --Xyzzyn 01:37, 30 January 2012 (CET)

I did some reading around the semantic extension the other day, it would be so incredibly useful and fairly non-invasive, but it looks like semantics are being added to the mediawiki core this year (late 2013) so kinda missed the window on this, wish it had been done back in jan 2012. Discordance (talk) 09:15, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Games channel pages

Some pages specifically concerning /games were recently deleted. The channel and its mods are a little upset/surprised it seems, saying they use those pages all the time. Regular use is good, and while I was always a bit wary of them being here I don't think they ever got out of control. Do we mind having them here? Should we request they host them somewhere else? Or just move it to some user page (I think there's at least one user who has rules for one or more particular games on his page, and Omegle has made a copy of the deleted rules page on his user space)? I think I'll go ahead and restore those pages for now and see if we can get some opinions going here. --Flargen 06:49, 12 May 2012 (CEST)

As a KOL-Lifelong member of /games chat, I cant attest that these links do come in handy quite often. We have new people enter the chat all the time and it is much easier to send them to the Wiki for rules for games and etiquette than it is to have a number of people type the same thing and make the new person feel like they are being ganged up on, which discourages players from sticking around. --Grimmy 04:32, 13 September 2012 (EST)

"View In-Game" link for Mafia?

Can has?

I mean, I know how to make one from it, but there used to be one for each server. Can there be one for Mafia users? --Raijinili 03:09, 2 August 2012 (CEST)

There's no way to make a link here that will always work with Mafia: it depends on which port it binds to. I believe 60080 is the default, but if, for instance, you have multiple sessions running, different ports may be used and the link here could be useless. This may work as a link to the description for a lemon, or it may do nothing. Heh, actually, Firefox is refusing to load that for me anyway since it detects an attempt to access local content from the Internet (which makes total sense, if you know what's going on). I don't think your suggestion is going to work out. --timrem 06:56, 2 August 2012 (CEST)

• That sounds like some odd setting on your Firefox. I don't use Mafia, but I set up an http server on port 60080 (http is my job, spinning up a test server is nothing) and then clicked the link. It worked fine for me (FF14.0.1). I'm curious what benefit there would be to having a Mafia link though. Does it change the item description popup? --Club (#66669) (Talk) 19:47, 2 August 2012 (CEST)

• I believe the purpose Raijinili had in mind was to allow Mafia users to use the wiki to simply open the in-game descriptions the way that vanilla users can. If I'm logged in through Mafia and am look at Lemon on the wiki, clicking the link to the description would take me to the "This script is not available unless you're logged in." page. At that point, I would have to log out of mafia and log in via Firefox, or log a multi in through Firefox for the link to work. Having a link to the description page on localhost:60080 would usually work, but not if Mafia was using a different port (which does happen). --timrem 04:07, 12 August 2012 (CEST)

• I tried that link, and Mafia says "Request from bogus referer ignored". You'd have to take it up with them, for starters. —Yendor 20:24, 2 August 2012 (CEST)

• (Last I checked) Mafia limits you to two concurrent logins, so 60080 and 60081 are the only ones that matter.
  Bogus referrer can probably be negotiated if we are otherwise willing to add these.
  NoScript stopped me with ABE, but turning that off allowed it to go through, so (from my experiment) it doesn't seem to be a base Firefox thing. Not that I recommend turning it off, but for those who either want to try to figure it out or just don't use NoScript, it should be useful. --Raijinili 04:46, 31 October 2012 (CET)

• It's possible to get past 60081 (without touching mafia's source code), but there's no good reason to do so (someone with 10 mafia instances open probably isn't opening the relay browser for most of them), so nothing past 60081 should really be considered if this was otherwise going to move forward. The bogus referer check is there to prevent arbitrary commands being sent to mafia. It might be possible to allow desc_ pages to load without causing issues, but I won't be the one making that change in mafia. --Lostcalpolydude (talk) 17:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

• I was working with that code anyway, so mafia now skips the referer check for desc_ pages. It will probably take a little bit of time before most people have the new code, but if this gets added to the wiki I doubt it will happen instantly anyway. I expect that just using 60080 would be good enough for the majority of people (someone would have to open multiple instances and close the first instance for it to not work). --Lostcalpolydude (talk) 17:45, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

I've been wanting this forever, so I did. See examples on the top of my User page. I couldn't get unnamed parameters to work, but you'll just need to specify mafia=1 to get it to switch to this format. As described above, this should work for everyone unless they open 2 instances and close the first one, or do some trickery in the source code. — Cool12309 (talk) 12:12, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Small idea for tables

Tables. They're a problem, because of redundancy.

Here's an idea for how the source of a table CAN look, without adding new wiki extensions (based on Special Monsters:

==Special Monster Statistics==
{|cellpadding="5px" cellspacing="0" border="1px"
|- style="background:#EFEFEF;"
!Monster
![[Weapon Damage#Monster Damage Formula|Attack]]
 ([[Monsters#Monster Level|ML]])
![[Hit Chance|Defense]]
![[Advancement|XP]]
![[HP]]
![[Combat Initiative|Initiative]]
!Notes
{{Special Monsters/tablerow|Feast of Boris|Feast of Boris Monsters}}
{{Special Monsters/tablerow|El Dia de Los Muertos Borrachos|
 El Dia de Los Muertos Borrachos Monsters}}
...
{{Special Monsters/tablerow|Baron von Ratsworth}}
...
|}

Still incredibly ugly, but at least:

1. The ugly part is copy-pasteable.
2. It's easier to deal with without knowing how to use tables. Low barrier of entry for editing is very important.
   • Meaning, you don't need to know format syntax whatever.
3. When adding new cols to the table, you just need to manipulate the specialized template for creating rows. Also to make sure that the pages' data page have the data.

This probably requires some changes to the Data: backend, but at least some of it can be automated (by which I mean, grabbed from existing tables). It would also be a lot easier to maintain once the work is done, and the table changes can be done once that's set up.

Problems:

• More template processing on the part of the server, because it needs to look for all the fields that aren't the ones that you're interested in (i.e. for hats: name, lettercount, pvplettercount, power, requirement). Is CPU usage a problem?
• Won't work well on the food/drink/spleen tables, which are BETTER with multi-row cells. This might be fixed with template parameters, but it means raising the barrier a little higher again.

It's not a perfect solution, but --Raijinili 04:33, 28 December 2012 (CET)

Major con that I see is that many tables include different values, color coding, etc. This would only make sense if we had a lot of pages with very similar tables. And in those cases, we do use templates, see for example the discovery template. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 07:47, 28 December 2012 (CET)

Not sure what you mean. If it's about formatting, the row template could format different data different ways, and each table page gets its own template. I mean to leave the tables visually the same, but make the source easier to manage. --Raijinili 02:11, 29 December 2012 (CET)

Monster data and caching

I know the wiki is wonky with caching data and the likes, but monster data seems especially weird, and I want to know why. For example, The Server. Yesterday, I edited the data from HP 1000000000 / Atk ? / Def ? to HP 999999999 / Atk 90 / Def 90. When you look at the Manuel entry, it says that. When you look at the monster page it says 999999999 / 90 / 81. That's not the first time I've seen this, and I think something's wrong and needs to be fixed. What's going on? ~Erich ^t/_c 20:44, 3 January 2013 (CET)

Monster defense is usually 90% of (buffed) monster attack, rounded up to the nearest integer. I guess the wiki does it automatically. Someone else might know more. Anyway, it's not a caching bug, though I guess you should be able to enter an override. --Raijinili 04:38, 4 January 2013 (CET)

The problem is in Template:INFOBOX Combat, which should be changed to show the actual Manuel value. The Manuel shows plenty of cases where defense isn't even close to 90% of attack. —Yendor 08:12, 4 January 2013 (CET)

The origin of that scaling factor can be found by reading through archived discussions. It is not because of trying to scale defence to 90% of attack. As far as I understand it, NS13 reduced monster defense to 90% of what it was previously. However, this was done slightly inconsistently, in that any +ML addition is performed prior to this 90% reduction, and so Defence = ceiling[(Base_Defence + ML_Mods)*0.9]. The "defence" field specified in the template is thus actually Base_Defence, and the displayed value in the infobox is Defence (at 0ML).

Solutions that come to mind:

1. Add a base_defence field, mass-move all current defence values to base_defence, perhaps allow specification of defence as an override. This has the disadvantage that +ML calculations may be wrong, and will need to be adjusted to use Base_defence.
2. Add a big note/comment that defence should actually be entered as 1.1 * observed. That has the disadvantage of being extra confusing, and introducing weird-looking round-off errors.

I think I prefer solution 1 myself. --Fig bucket 23:33, 11 January 2013 (CET)

Defence in monster data should just be the defence shown in manuel. If people want to work out scaled defence from that its just Scaled defence = ceiling[defence + ML*0.9]. Why should it be hard to edit/read the wiki just to save a few people from making a simple equation change. Discordance 00:31, 12 January 2013 (CET)

Does anyone else have any input we need to make a decision on this. The same goes with migrating power>damage on weapons. Discordance 20:53, 1 February 2013 (CET)

There is no longer a 90% factor at all. Adding +ML gives 100% of its effect on defense now rather than 90%. That was all simplified when Manuel was released (or maybe shortly before). --Lostcalpolydude (talk) 16:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Is this still unhandled? If not, could we just remove the .9 entirely and everything would be peachy perfect? Or would we have to then edit most of the old monster defenses down to 90% of what they currently have stored? For example, if we used to say a given monster had defense 100, after accounting for the 90% (so defense 90 effectively seen with +0 ML), does the game now give it a defense of 100 with no 90% at all, or does it give a defense of 90? You mentioned ML doesn't get the .9, but what about the rest? --Flargen (talk) 18:38, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

In that case, the monster would have a defense of 90, and the wiki would need to be updated. I had to change hundreds of defense values in mafia when I removed the .9 factor. I imagine it would be the same for the wiki, except a lot slower with the numbers not all being in one place. I also used a script to compare mafia values with manuel values when I was finished to at least double-check all the normal monsters. http://sourceforge.net/p/kolmafia/code/11665/tree//src/data/monsters.txt?diff=511a74582718460a66f5e437:11664 has all the values I changed, if it's useful. --Lostcalpolydude (talk) 20:14, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Ugh, okay, so people are going to have to double-check and update monster defenses a lot. How bot-able would that be, do you think? If you have a pre-existing list, sounds like you could scrape the monster data pages, see if the defense is right (or would default to the right value from attack; is the default still consistently .9*attack?), and then update or continue as appropriate. Removing the .9 should be an easy change, just curious how long it's going to take editors to get things consistent across all (verifiable) monsters. Guess there's not a reason to not do this, other than potentially having a lot of wrong-looking information being displayed (unless Manuel has caused most values to be set correctly, leaving just the wiki's calc adjustment being the error). --Flargen (talk) 21:42, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

And on further review, it seems the .9 was removed from the template back in January by 142. Well, that's easy. Hopefully defense values have already been adjusted appropriately. Was there anything else on the wiki that was doing a 90% calculation that it shouldn't be doing anymore? --Flargen (talk) 21:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

It looks like location pages are still applying a .9 factor. I just noticed it when comparing Shub-Jigguwatt, Elder God of Violence and Mer-kin Temple, at least. --Lostcalpolydude (talk) 21:32, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixed that. Actually, should it still take 90% of attack if a defense is unprovided? Because I'm pretty sure I just stopped it from doing that. --Flargen (talk) 00:30, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Content summaries

I've heard several people wish for lists of the content -- items, permable skills, familiar hatchlings, etc. -- that you can get from specific quest lines or areas, especially when new content rolls out. Would such lists interfere with searches too much to be feasible? Is it too meta for the wiki, and should live on a user page? If I did this, what would be the best way to break it up? A single "Content Summary" page with sub-pages for each content group ("The Sea", "Nemesis Quest", "Jars of Psychoses", etc.)? --Lilac 21:38, 24 January 2013 (CET)

• I'd suggest you come up with a sample one to help others judge what should be done with it. Right now, I'm seeing this as probably a new section on a zone page, say after "Notes" an "Available Here" heading. The hazard of targeting things for new content specifically, is that it takes time for the uncertainty to clear up. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 23:19, 24 January 2013 (CET)
  • Word, I'll get on that. I hesitate to put it on pages as popular as a zone's, since it's a bit of a data dump. (Though if we had divs that started out minimized and could be expanded...) I'll think about it some more and come back when I have concrete proposals. --Lilac 01:43, 25 January 2013 (CET)
  • Category would work. I feel like you could make a category for things that are, say, part of the headjar content. Or at least things like Category:Crimbo 2012. --Raijinili 06:33, 28 January 2013 (CET)

Stat requirements

Need a template for stat requirements for zones. Also maybe historize the messages because they're dead and they're never coming back. --Raijinili 15:55, 11 February 2013 (CET)

CAPTCHA revisited

(Am I wrong to say that this would be more of a priority if the sysops had to deal with it every time they tried to edit things?)

The CATptcha thinks I am not a person. I think I disagree. New users also disagree.

Alternative proposals:

• CAPTCHA URL whitelisting. The problem is spambots spamming other links, so just have a whitelist of domains. kingdomofloathing.com, the forums, and fan forums upon request.
• CAPTCHA user whitelisting. The problem is spambots, right? So once a user is verified as a player, you don't have to worry about it. I don't think the admins are really worried that I will turn rogue and spam drug site links, even if it is a possibility.
• Different CAPTCHA: Due to the unique outlook of this wiki, there is the possibility of linking account creation with in-game account. It will take some work, but you can have players enter their player ID and player name, and IF the ID/name matches, a bot sends a verification code to that.

--Raijinili (talk) 22:15, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I think the first 2 should be implemented. The third would be better, but that could take too much work. On a sidenote, the CATptcha doesn't want to work, at all. I've tried it like 10 times, and no work. Also, there was a dog and a cat in the same picture, so I was like "what do I do?" — Cool12309 (talk) 22:24, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

The URL whitelisting can work like the Wikipedia links do. A namespace for [[ingame:desc.php?blahblahblah]] and such. --Raijinili (talk) 22:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I can't properly submit edits with the CATpcha. There's no save change button. This should be fixed, please.--Cannonfire40 (talk) 23:19, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Yep, not letting me make changes either. After three attempts to fix the perfect sandwich page, I'm inclined to agree "fix that stops users editing wiki isn't an fix". --Chyld (talk) 23:45, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

• • i'm really sorry about that. i don't have anything to do with the captcha, kitties or otherwise but i'll get on to someone who does. a little more detail about what exactly is or isn't happening would be splendid. --Evilkolbot (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

It says to select all the cat pics. Well, I do, and then it just tells me to do it again. It doesn't say I'm wrong or give an error, just tells me to do it again as if I clicked save the first time. — Cool12309 (talk) 20:59, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I've just tried repeatedly when adding an item and kept getting told to select the cat pictures. I've spent a lot of time on this wiki, and I'm pretty much ready to give up on it.--Foggy (talk) 14:49, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

There's a long standing CAPTCHA issue involving it triggering on things it shouldn't trigger on. Changing certain template parameters (item pages do this a lot - see the example earlier) does it almost 100% of the time, which is weird - that definitely does NOT introduce new external links. --Wrldwzrd89 (talk) 11:44, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

• Specifically templates that have the standard link-to-the-in-game description. Or with templates that add images. Mediawiki really wants images to link to the image's File: page and hoops need to be jumped to get around that (AIUI). Whitelisting would help a lot by eliminating those two cases. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 06:07, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  • This wiki's MediaWiki was just updated, right? You should celebrate with some beer. --Raijinili (talk) 09:47, 21 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Wait, it's been done gone: [2] --Raijinili (talk) 10:03, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Color-blindness/CSS

So, I'm partly colorblind, and I've been having some difficulties telling the differences between some of the color-specific meanings. For example, the difference between decent and good on Jarlsberg's Cosmic Kitchen, and the different reds/blues/greens on Advanced_Cocktailcrafting. I've been willing to live with it for the most part, but it's just bugged me today enough to do something about it.

I've looked into it a bit, and I think the easiest way would be to create a CSS page with the colors, which can then be overridden by a User:<username>/skin.css. Does this make sense to anybody else? If I started this, would other people use this?

(If nothing else, it can make editing/adding to food pages easier, as rather than having style="background-color:#EEEEEE", you could use style="decentConsumable".) --Parse (talk) 16:29, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

• I'd be happy to see this happen as using styles for the colors instead of names will make it much easier to make them consistent and know when to use them. As I recall the colors just started being used on someone's whim and stuck. It was not well planned out. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 20:14, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

X by Number pages auto-update?

Example Page I've noticed users have been forgetting to update these pages when they add new choice adventures. Is there any way these could be automatically updated? If not maybe a bot could add the links instead of someone needing to do them manually? --Rinn (talk) 04:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Zone names

I propose that zones names on the wiki should match the actual name of the zone in the game (and not what's drawn on an image linking to it). E.g. changing it to be Cobb's Knob Kitchens instead of Kitchens, The Bat Hole Entrance instead of Entryway, etc. --Eleron (talk) 14:06, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

• The Laugh Floor is already correctly called The Laugh Floor, and not Go Inside as it says in the image, which provides a good example of why the actual names of the zones should be used. --Eleron (talk) 14:14, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

This is a good idea, and onefortytwo has been moving zones that were named this to the image name, which I think is wrong. I think it should be linked to the white text on the blue bar when you click on the zone. — Cool12309 (talk) 20:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I definitely agree with Eleron's proposal here, but I think that all of the existing names should redirect to the new (or actual KoL) names. For example, if Entryway was changed to The Bat Hole Entrance, Entryway should still redirect to page. --Robmon (talk) 22:27, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

• I approve of this idea, and I doubt any admins disagree. Hopefully there aren't too many instances anyway? Go ahead and start moving pages (and making redirects where necessary); if I see any pushback, I'll champion the cause. - Lilac 20:22, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

• • Huzzah! I've moved zones in the castle, cobb's knob, and bat hole to match their known canonical names, and will move others as I see them. I haven't worked on non-zone names like "The Casino". --Eleron (talk) 21:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Drops Text on Fight Pages

On every monster page, the meat/item drops location is pretty awkward. They sit there right under the fumble message, and I'm like, no, you do not get a drop every time the monster fumbles. I think we should add a nice, clean, simple "Drops:" text under every fumble message and above every meat and item drop.--Robmon (talk) 22:43, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

• Works for me. Or just add horizontal bars everywhere. --Raijinili (talk) 02:04, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

• I agree, it would be better to have a separation between messages and monster loot. A description like "Drops:" to say what's going on in that section sounds good. --Eleron (talk) 20:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
• This is a result of meat and item drops not being handled by the {{battle}} template directly. Which is largely unavoidable for item drops, since there's no convenient way to story both item names and drop rates in the data page, which can all be handled individually and for which there is no effective cap (Jick is sure to add a 40-item-drop monster one day). Meat drops could actually be handled by it, unless there are cases where a monster has a base drop which does not obey the usual distribution rules. The template could be coded to simply end with a Drops:, without attempting to format any meat or item drops. Would this be really weird on monsters with neither meat nor item drops? Are there any such monsters in this game, actually? Or weird on monsters which have special victory text (which is also added in on each page after the battle template call)? Otherwise we'd have to go to every single monster page that has a meat/item drop and add in whatever the chosen separator is to each page. Which is laborious, though hopefully easily botted (look for item/meat templates after battle template ends, and throw in the separator before the first one). --Flargen (talk) 00:56, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Indeed, should the separator actually be more like "On Victory:"? There are stat gains and the aforementioned special victory texts for some monsters. --Flargen (talk) 00:58, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
• I added a horizontal separator line at the end of the battle template. I used "After Combat" as text on the line---it's true that in most cases the after combat stuff requires victory, but victory has always been presumed for the drops etc to happen. The separator is present by default, but can be turned off for special monsters that have no drops or more complex post-combat descriptions. --Fig bucket (talk) 16:46, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Monster Safe Moxie on Data Pages

Monsters 1-F are done, except the scaling monsters, monsters with unknown attack values, and monsters that always hit you. A template update to Combat/meta is still needed (the new parameter I've been adding is nohit) so that this information shows up. --Wrldwzrd89 (talk) 13:46, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

• Done. --Flargen (talk) 00:48, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

"Physical" Resistance monster stat

Monster data pages have long had a physical value to indicate the presence of resistance to physical damage, and a separate element to denote elemental type (which in particular gives an invulnerability). This was fine back in the day when monsters either had an element or were ghosts that took a single point of damage from physical attacks (which at the time were also guaranteed to have the spooky element). With the advent of Hobopolis monsters (and many others), though, this physical parameter has been bloated to cover all forms of damage resistance, while still being called "physical" resistance when displayed through certain templates. It wouldn't be hard to just go through some templates and change what they display to be more generic. And we could get Quietust to change the data pages to switch from physical to something else (probably resistance or something similar). What I really want to know is if there are any ideas on how to display or store this data properly, beyond these minor cosmetic and background changes? Could hobopolis-style resistance formulas benefit from having extra parameters of their own? Like softcap? Things like that. --Flargen (talk) 21:25, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Best Brooze

... why does this redirect exist? I didn't want to mark it for deletion in case there was a valid reason for it, but... wut? It makes no immediate apparent sense. ~Erich ^t/_c 14:26, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• good catch i'd say. i could be missing something. we don't do misspellings or jokes, though. i'll be back in three hours. if there's been no movement i'll remove it. --Evilkolbot (talk) 16:37, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
  • damned ninjas and their time-travelling. --Evilkolbot (talk) 16:41, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Statistics Notes

This page is currently linked to (via an asterisk) on monster pages whenever there is a meat drop or item drop. The page is severely out of date, and possibly no longer worth having. Yiab, for example, hasn't been active in the game (or the wiki), in a long time, and I have been the primary spader of drop rates in the kingdom for a while (apparently so even during my many-month-long breaks where I am doing nothing at all). It would seem it would be better to link to a page concerning spading methodology; a page which itself could use some updating and further fleshing out (little is provided on how to figure out monster statistics, including item drop rates). Any thoughts on if this page should remain, and if so what it should be revamped to look like? --Flargen (talk) 20:00, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

• move to historical subpage, have the star link to spading methods and statistics formulas. the more spading method info people stumble into the better. --Raijinili (talk) 20:10, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist

When will the watchlist go back to displaying currently unread edits in bold? I was away from KoL for a few months and find catching up with the new wiki-edits not only extremely difficult, but also rather frustrating. --Yatsufusa (talk) 15:07, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

• I've noticed this, too. I will ask the site admins about it. --Flargen (talk) 19:05, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I did a little inspection today. It looks like it might be a stylesheet issue. Both Watchlist and RecentChanges seem to be applying a "mw-changeslist-line-watched" or "mw-changeslist-line-not-watched" CSS class to every item. On the Watchlist page, the "...-not-watched" means no changes since last visit, on Recent Changes, the names are accurate. I don't see those classes defined in any of the included style sheets. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 20:08, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm guessing that the css changes to support this weren't included during the mediawiki upgrade. The actual missing css is just:

.mw-changeslist-line-watched .mw-title {
    font-weight: bold;
}

That is trivial to add to Common.css or Monobook.css if no one objects...

On a related topic, it would be immensely helpful if user css (and ideally js) could be enabled. That only requires adding/modifying two lines in LocalSettings.php:

$wgAllowUserCss  = true;
$wgAllowUserJs  = true;

That would make testing things a lot easier, and would also let individual users could customize the look (just for themselves) however they want if they want something different. --Fig bucket (talk) 19:34, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I notice today that something was done to fix this. Thanks! --Club (#66669) (Talk) 22:41, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Why are WE still dealing with CAPTCHAs?

Tell me if any of this is wrong:

• We can whitelist certain URLs, such as KoL, its forums, and this very site. Furthermore, we can add commonly-linked fansites like the KoLSpading forums which have reasons to be commonly linked. Ref: [3]
• CAPTCHAs are for dealing with spambots, not malicious users.
• There is a setting that allows users with some number of edits to bypass the CAPTCHA. (Reality is, it might be time-based.)
• Someone with, say, 100 edits is, with extremely high probability, either a real person or a bot that can bypass the CAPTCHA. In either case, the CAPTCHA helps nothing. --Raijinili (talk) 20:21, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
  • I can't say I enjoy answering a question every time I fill out a page. Never mind the fact that most of them require a google search at least once. "Who starred in Pale Rider?" I don't know, let me ask the internet. Only good thing is that the same questions get used over and over so I only have to learn 4 or 5 answers.--Cannonfire40 (talk) 20:26, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
    • we can't whitelist, but we can interwiki. i'll ask people who can do something about it. --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:22, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
      • Are you sure? It looks like the feature's been in since 2009, and 1.1 (this wiki's version) is later than that. If they're playing around with it, why not update to 1.18? (Yes, yes, I know there are reasons not to update.) --Raijinili (talk) 15:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

100% + rejection

• at least one item is a 100% drop with a rejection rate.
  1. unlike other drop rates, should this be reported on the item page?
  2. should we template the text for the zone and item pages?
  3. do we need an (auto-?) cat? --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:26, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Should be a property of the monster, not the item. Monsters with 100% Drop Rates And Rejection. --Raijinili (talk) 15:05, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Crafting category

• There's no "Crafting" category. I noticed this while browsing Category:Basics and finding all the Crimbocrafting pages (Spooky Toymaking, Toolmaking, Toymaking, Assimilating, Crimborg Toymaking) in there. I doubt it's going to cause a problem, but... it certainly doesn't seem right. Everything in the "craft" template could really be categorized. Agree/disagree/mackerel? --Johnny Treehugger (talk) 19:27, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • There's two sorts of crafting, IMHO, in this game. And a lot of inconsistency on the wiki about organizing them. All the "Crimbocrafting" and things like Grandma are one sort and Meat Pasting and "Star Combining" are another. In the first you are required to use an NPC intermediary in the second you do it on your own. The first should probably be considered NPC stores, like Art Class (After School) is (but Toolmaking and Pixelcrafting are not (currently)), the second (Weaving, Cooking, Cocktailcrafting, etc) should all go into a Crafting category. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 00:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Monster ID numbers

• Now that, as of a stealth update yesterday, the HTML of a manuel entry includes a monster's ID number, I think we need to make a "Monsters by Number" page. Here's a list of every monster in the game with its ID number: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AidPVP0Qr49udDhuUHlPM0piQnA1eVNpNldYSklQdGc#gid=0

(Bolds are speculation based on context). --Cannonfire40 (talk) 00:25, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

• With more than a thousand, I'd say several pages, a la Items by number, but yes. We should have. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 00:40, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Page preloads

• When creating a page for an item, effect, skill, etc., I usually end up looking for a previous example to cut-and-paste in as a starting point. I don't need to do that when creating a new data page (except for locations), since the link to "Create metadata" results in a page that is nicely preloaded with the full structure to start from. Why don't we do a similar preloading when creating the actual item, monster, location, effect, skill, etc. pages? (Or do we somewhere?) I did some offsite testing, and this is easy to do, and would be very convenient: a list of preload types can be added to MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new so the different page types could be there to choose from when you go to create a page, appropriately preloading your new page with one-click. --Fig bucket (talk) 13:42, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
  • What would it be useful for? The only thing that would be common to every item is this: — Cool12309 (talk) 14:01, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

{{item|
itemid=|
descid=|
desc=}}

==Obtained From==

• I am usually adding much more than that (collection, when used, autosell, see also, etc). I don't see why it would have to be just the intersection of all possibilities---it's generally much easier to delete unused bits than to find the correct syntax/arguments for all the basic things which are not part of the common denominator (cf data pages). There are also different common cores for skill, effect, location, monster, etc. pages.
  Note that I am suggesting this as an additional feature in creating pages, helping those who do it less frequently. The ability to start from a blank page would not be affected. --Fig bucket (talk) 14:34, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
• I'm all for this. I remember when I was adding in the shit ton of Aura drinks, and having a pre-made template would have saved a decent amount of time. Also, as figgy said, it would make it a little less intimidating for wiki newbs to add in new items. Sign me up. ~Erich ^t/_c 15:32, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Yea, ditto for tiny plastics series 3. I just copied and pasted a template and edited the description number, description, and series number. I guess this would be useful. — Cool12309 (talk) 17:31, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
• The problem is that the data page thing can exist because there is a page to put the link on already. For a new item there is no pre-existing page that you can put a "create new item page for this" link. --Flargen (talk) 16:35, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
  • No, but it can be done within the MediaWiki:Searchmenu-new message. That code has the page name to be created, and it's easy to add a list of links with different preloads (same idea as with the Create metadata links, but using $1 instead of Data:{{FULLPAGENAME}}).
    I suppose I'm assuming you start to create new pages by first searching for them, and so end up at that message, which is how I typically do it. But a similar thing (based on {{FULLPAGENAME}}) could be put into MediaWiki:Noarticletext for those who edit the url, and into Mediawiki:Newarticletext to catch those who get to page creation from a broken link (in that last case you already see a blank edit window and so it's slightly less elegant, but you would still be able to get the preloaded pages with one more click). Are there other ways people try to create new pages? --Fig bucket (talk) 17:02, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Ok, I made a prototype version, since that makes it easier to see how it works (and that it does work :)). I realized that all the page creation messages end up showing Mediawiki:Newarticletext, so there's really no need to add the list of preloads to the other messages anyway. Anyway, try it out---try and create a page and once it shows you the empty edit window you should see a list of preloads above it. Clicking on one of the links primes the empty edit window with an appropriate page structure. More types and more-refined structures (see the preload list template, and the current preload templates) are needed to make it more usable...will get to it over the coming days/weeks if no one else does..feel free to modify/add/delete?). --Fig bucket (talk) 23:08, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Seal Clubber Revamp Introductory World Event (Infernal Invasion) Big Bad Name

• we need a name. really need. the GameInformPowerDailyPro magazine big bad is Video Game Boss. how about Infernal Invasion Boss? --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:07, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
  • We should take into account that it's a high ranked military officer in the invading forces. Unfortunately, I know nothing about the military and English isn't my first language... "Emperor Sparky's Invasion Officer"? Does that make any sense? --Yatsufusa (talk) 12:18, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
    • that's a pretty fair description given the battle text. should we then have to rename Infernal Incursion to Emperor Sparky's Invasion? given that it's incursion my previous suggestion should read Infernal Incursion Boss. --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:23, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
      • When Nightvol made that name change to Infernal Incursion, he added that it's the official name. I did nothing than work the wiki since I sat down on my computer today, so I haven't checked. But in my experience, Nightvol knows what he's talking about. ;) --Yatsufusa (talk) 12:31, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
        • Infernal Incursion is the name that appears (Capitalized, as a proper name) on the front page of KoL right now. Seems official to me!--Nightvol (talk) 12:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

How about Infernal Incursion Leader? Just because they were armed with Emperor Sparky's equipment, doesn't mean Emperor Sparky himself called for the invasion --The ErosionSeeker (talk) 13:04, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

• Radical idea: How about, given the image filename is "generalseal.gif", we call him "General Seal". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cannonfire40 (talk • contribs) on 14:02, 27 September 2013
  • Because it's not necessarily a general, it can actually have all sorts of ranks. --Yatsufusa (talk) 14:11, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
    • It's still the closest thing to an 'official' name, and superior to just making something up. I'd say go with General Seal. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 14:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
      • KoL image names are a terrible "official" source for a name. There are plenty of instances where they don't match up. General Seal is a goofy thing to call a monster who has a randomly generated rank.--Nightvol (talk) 15:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
        • Update: Jick said that in the database it's listed as [general seal] but he has no real information or preference as to an "official name" for the enemy, so I say we just get a consensus and stick with that.--Nightvol (talk) 16:02, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
• I like infernal officer. pithy, descriptive, and it scans nicely. no objections here. I'm guessing Manuel has nothing to say. --Evilkolbot (talk) 16:12, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Well-Tempered Anvil

Not sure where else to find this info or ask this question: who(m) is maintaining the Well-Tempered Anvil since Gemelli has moved on from the project and Coldfront has taken it over? I am trying to provide some item data; the help and smash report pages on the site are out of date.--MageRed (talk) 02:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

• Is it even necessary? Pulverization yields are determined by item power, which I understand you can find for any equipment through the API (including things like accessories and shields, which do not show the relevant number in the item description). --Flargen (talk) 16:33, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
  • I'm missing something, not unusual for me. What/which API? Does that help with items that may be boss/non-boss/other? With the advent of the Dread yields, does that show? When I am looking at my inventory or I do not have the item that will produce the desired result, do I need to guess which item it is that I am going to need to get a specific yield? I always thought the Anvil was indispensable, but maybe there is a better/different way?--MageRed (talk) 17:47, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
    • http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/api.php, it is not documented anywhere on the wiki. When you access that, at least logged in, it gives basic instructions for using the API. And API is "application programming interface", useful for people like the KoLMafia authors. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 18:00, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
      • Cool, thanks Club. I still believe the Anvil is worth maintaining. Maybe I am in a minority?--MageRed (talk) 18:48, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
        • I never use the WTA, but it might be very useful for less experienced players. Or maybe they don't use it either. Do we have any way of measuring how much people consult it? --Club (#66669) (Talk) 03:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
• Still looking for who(m) is maintaining the Anvil site, or is anyone?--MageRed (talk) 02:19, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Going to the WTA site, and clicking the [Help] link, I see this:

Getting Help: If you have any questions or comments on this tool, other than 'z0mg can I have your babies!!1' (briefly: No), send kmail to Gemelli (#384532). Heavens, he's tasty. And expeditious! Thanks.

• • So, I'd say that's where you should start. Gemelli is an active player. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 03:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
    • I started there before coming here. The reply from Gemelli is that he no longer maintains it; he no longer has the time and it is now part of Coldfront. That was what prompted me to ask the question here in the first place.--MageRed (talk) 05:51, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
      • There is a list of Coldfront admins on TheKolWiki:Administrators (which is where you end up if you try the page Admin). Lilac, one of the wiki admins, just took care of moving the Display Case db here. He might have tips for who to talk to. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 06:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
        • (The following was posted elsewhere and moved here for continuity, MageRed) I asked Nightvol, who is normally in charge of Coldfront content. As far as he knows, no one is actively supporting the Well-Tempered tools anymore. :( What functionality in particular are you looking for? Is it something that could be baked into the wiki? --Lilac 18:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
          • I was just looking at providing some updated data based on new items (nothing unexpected though). As far as functionality, the Anvil was perfect for figuring out what items to look for/farm for specific powder/nuggets/wads. I know it is fairly easy to look at an item in the game and figure out what it will pulverize into (some exceptions of course), but when you are looking at making something (say spooky wads) and want to know what sources can provide this based on all the in-game items, not just what you have in inventory, the Anvil seems to be the only place to look. Or maybe just the easiest; I understand the API may be able to provide the same information but there is not a lot of support for how to use it. Thank you for looking into this Lilac.--MageRed (talk) 19:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

down

• is the main site down or is it just me? --Evilkolbot (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Not just you. I can't access the game or the forums (or the radio show archive or basically anything that uses kingdomofloathing.com in the web address) --Melon (talk) 16:41, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
    • There are many services, eg www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com, that can help you answer that sort of question faster than random people on a wiki can. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 18:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
      • isup.me is my favourite, yes. you don't need telling but you ask it is "this site" down or is it just me? the site mostly replies "it's just you" or sometimes "it's not just you." sorry about the in-joke. i posted more as a public service. first i go to the forums and then i come here. i thought others might do the same. if we're really lucky then someone will post some kind of a reason. i hope it's not burn out. --Evilkolbot (talk) 19:33, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
      • forums are up and apparently cdmoyer is on the case. yay! --Evilkolbot (talk) 19:34, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Monster Compendium pages

So these pages have been in the wiki, but nobody really pays attention to them. Basically, I want to discuss if these pages are worth keeping. Monster Compendium is just a list of monsters and their drops, and Monster Data is a mostly defunct version of the Manuel pages except it lists meat drops and physical resistance.

Are these pages worth keeping around? Whenever someone decides to update it, they're about a year or so outdated, and these pages seem useless as a reference. I mean, who's gonna use the Search function to check what item drops from what in the Compendium? And Monster Data has too few advantages over the Manuel. Plus maintaining 3 lists is a bigger pain in the ass than maintaining just one. I vote for nuking those pages and just fill everything in the Manuel. --JohnAnon (talk) 01:06, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Fascinating! I don't think I ever noticed those, maybe because there aren't that many links to them. While they might have a certain beauty in themselves (like a collage or something), I'm currently unable to see much use in them. There's no information that couldn't be found out in a more efficient way and if you knew a monster, zone or item name, you would look it up directly. Several users might have spent a lot of time maintaining it... But I just can't tell why. I have no objections about deleting those pages, but would like to wait for a week or so to hear if anyone else has. --Yatsufusa (talk) 02:53, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, it was like Monster Manuel, but before Manuel existed. Both of which appeal to any D&D nerd's desire for an organized encyclopedic bestiary; it's just not a game without one of those! Now that Manuel exists, I would be okay with eliminating the compendium. --Flargen (talk) 02:56, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
    • "Organized encyclopedic bestiary" makes sense to me. Since destruction is so much easier than creation, I asked myself "How many wiki users have looked at those pages?", so I looked up the "This page has been accessed X times." on the bottom. It's all time, but it's data nonetheless.

Main Page: 40,480 times

(1 to E): 80,222 times

(F to M): 12,102 times

(N to S): 24,571 times

(T to Z): 7,522 times

Actually, that's not too shabby overall. The Hardcore Skill Analysis and Familiar Analysis which I both regard as highly important have been looked at 131,188 and 58,279 times respectively. So I think it's fair to say those pages where fairly popular at some point. Since keeping meta-pages up to date wasn't exactly our strongest point during the latest years maybe we should wait a bit longer to see if anyone reacts. We could hang a "scheduled for deletion" template on the top of these pages, so people who have an interest in them won't miss out on this discussion. If no one gives feedback here or updates the Compendium, it can still be deleted in a month or so. --Yatsufusa (talk) 05:36, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

• Something to take into account: both largely unmaintained Monster Compendium AND Monster Data pages account for monsters that Manuel cannot account for, such as the Arc-Welding Elfborg. I think a maintenance of a non-manuel compendium is worth it, and it can still be used (the final seal invasion boss with a tongue depressor, for example). Both the data and compendium pages can merge with the deletion of all the Manuel monsters, and things like item drops can be kept to the individual monster pages. Thoughts? ~Erich ^t/_c 14:46, 8 October 2013 (UTC)
  • On a somewhat related note: We could create a disused monsters category and tag monsters that you can't encounter by regular methods anymore. Does that sound like a useful idea or is it just exhaustion-induced crazy-talk? (The category name had to be better, of course.) --Yatsufusa (talk) 06:51, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
    • TBH, I think all non-Manuel monsters should be put into an "Exict" (or extict monsters, etc) page / category, set up like the Manuel pages, and the compendium / data pages subsequently deleted. ~Erich ^t/_c 11:42, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Horoscope Summary Page

Looks like there's been some duplication of content between myself and Pieapple of Dispair as we were both working on things at the same time. I made a summary page for these new items at Horoscopes and pineapple made one at disco horoscopes. Maybe we should come to a consus on what we should call these before we all end up linking to and working on different pages. --Melon (talk) 12:34, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

• I think we should use Horoscopes. No point in adding a useless 'disco' in front. If, for whatever reason, we need to have another Horoscopes page, we'll move it then and then only. If there's no disagreement I'll move it in 3 days. — Cool12309 (talk) 13:47, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Facial Expression Buff Group

Evidence is mounting that shows that Snarl of the Timberwolf (skill), Scowl of the Auk (skill), Disco Leer (skill) and Disco Smirk (skill) are all part of the same mutually exclusive group of buffs, and it's possible that other class revamps will have more of these facial expression buffs where that you can only have one active at a time. Any suggestions on the best way to explain this on the skill pages? There's got to be a better way of dealing with it than having something like this on each page:

You lose an effect: Snarl of the Timberwolf

You lose an effect: Scowl of the Auk

You lose an effect: Disco Smirk

You acquire an effect: Disco Leer (duration: 10 Adventures)

especially as if every class gets at least one we'll be looking at a long tower of 8 or more effects. --Melon (talk) 21:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

• How about a Category and a template creating a simple line of text, similar to Template:Uncopyable, to make sure said text is always the same and updates with increasing skills? For something a bit more graphical we could add something similar to Template:Meat-Producing Items as well. --Yatsufusa (talk) 23:16, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Suggested text

  This [[Facial Expression Buff|facial expression]] is mutually exclusive with all others. Using this will remove any other expression in effect.

  • And then make the named page with a list of the buffs and examples of gain/loss pairs. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 05:21, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
• i've added the template and the category. the text suggests it should go only on the skill page. should we add it to the effect as well? perhaps the wording could be altered slightly to encompass both. this also needs rolling out across the other skills/effects. my lunch is coming to an end, however. any naming quibbles (i picked a short name, ok) should be added here and will possibly remain unaddressed. --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:13, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
• the named page with a list of the buffs and examples of gain/loss pairs should be the new category page. --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:20, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Upload file and {{kolimage}}

A lot of the images that were uploaded for the recent new content had to be fixed, because people (including me) have not used the directory part of the kolimage template. I don't think this is the first time, and probably not the last time either.

Probably, most people that don't edit/upload on a very regular basis see the text '{{kolimage}} is used for images coming directly from the game itself.' on the upload page and just copy/paste the template into the textbox, without looking at the template any further, and thus miss the whole directory part.

So I think it would be a good idea to make a mention of this (and possibly an example) in the text on the 'Upload file' page. --Nappa (talk) 12:41, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

• An excellent suggestion. --Fig bucket (talk) 14:35, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
• I second that. Uploading images and knowing what to put where is a bit confusing, at least to me.--MageRed (talk) 00:36, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Best Foods/Drinks

• So, I updated and revised the best foods/drinks pages. The tables are things I can generate easily (if slowly) entirely from scripts at this point, so they should be easy to keep up-to-date. (note to self: upload scripts somewhere). Some things I intend to do shortly:
  • Delete Best Foods (stats) and Bad Moon Best Foods, as they are subsumed by the revamped table. I also want to delete Hardcore Best Foods, as out of date and ignored, but since that isn't actually obviated by the revamp I'm less sure.
  • Rename Best Foods (adventures) to just Best Foods; delete/replace the disambiguation page currently squatting on this sweet page name.
• Objections/alternative-suggestions should be noted if you care deeply. --Fig bucket (talk) 23:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
• Nice work! RE: Hardcore Best Foods: The Bad Moon column in your tables could have a third color to represent "available in HC but not BM". --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 00:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

when discarded

• i just removed a "when discarded" section from pocket lint (green). as noted here, the text when discarding is not generally recorded. i am a packrat, so i've not done it. is the text always "you discard your <thing>"? is this noted anywhere? the only page with a "when discarded" section appears to be banana peel. the text itself isn't different so i'm not sure why it's there. Instant Karma has an "on discard" section. i'd vote that that be the standard for things that have different text on discard. --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:17, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Isn't the number of things you can actually discard now pretty limited? should we put them in a category or make it part of the item template? Discordance (talk) 16:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
    • It would probably be easy to auto-categorize and then we could just have the category page discuss this. Things are discardable if: have autosell of zero, and not marked quest item or marked do not discard. There are, off the top of my head, number of things in this category. Worthless sewer items, useless powder, the ashes your penpal sends you in badmoon, instant karma, banana peels, and these new lints. Two of them are intended to be discarded, at least sometimes. Some of them it is a trap for the unwary (sewer items got me when I was new to KoL). Some of them it's the only way to decrease inventory. Lint is probably supposed to be do-not-discard. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 17:06, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
      • i'd say "can be discarded" and "can not be discarded" are anomalous enough to warrant auto-catting. the latter would have to exclude quest items, obviously. are there associated game messages for remote forms naughtiness? --Evilkolbot (talk) 17:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
        • It appears that most things can be discarded with "remote forms naughtiness":

          You discard your dense meat stack.

        • And it really was discarded. If you don't have any more, eg, dense meat stacks:

          You don't have the item you're trying to discard.

        • Trying a reassembled blackbird (a quest item I cannot use this ascension):

          That item cannot be discarded.

        • I tried with several other quest items and none were discarded. Gift packages also seem to be "cannot be discarded." Pink candy heart? Bye-bye. Pink candygram? "Cannot". --Club (#66669) (Talk) 19:05, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
          • That's pretty interesting. Maybe bug report that? --Flargen (talk) 20:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
            • Neither dense meat stacks nor pink candy hearts are marked "cannot be discarded", while pink candygrams and reassembled blackbirds do have the text "cannot be discarded"...so all seems to be behaving as expected...is the oddness/bugginess just the lack of a discard link on things which can be discarded? --Fig bucket (talk) 20:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
            • It doesn't strike me as a bug, just a quirk of implementation.
              discard(item) { if (no_discard(item) { show_no_discard_msg() } else { change_inv(item, -1) } }
showinv() { ... if (autosell(item)==0 && !(no_discard(item)) { show_discard_link(item) } ... }
              --Club (#66669) (Talk) 20:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
              • I think we should still have the category, but only put it on pages that have a [discard] in your inventory, and have a note on the page that pretty much any (except for ones that go against said conditions) item can be discarded. — Cool12309 (talk) 22:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
                • I'm kind of surprised to find we don't have a category (categories) for this already. Anyway, "Items with a discard link" seems like a sufficiently interesting category to create, although it would have to be implemented as a new field in the item template, and then added to the appropriate items. Actually, I don't see why we wouldn't also add "Undiscardable items" and "Discardable items" as well then (in which case "Items with a discard link" is a subcategory), since these could be done purely through auto-catting in the item template. Then I also wonder if we want a category for pvp-stealable items, which could be easy to do at the same time...(although a good name for that is less obvious to me). --Fig bucket (talk) 22:50, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
                  • Discardable is (no discard flag NOT set) AND (NOT quest item) AND (autosell price == 0). PvP stealable, I'm pretty sure, is (NOT quest item) AND (autosell price != 0). Both of them are probably doable without a new setting in the item template just from what we have already. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 03:16, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
                    • Is the pvp one correct? I'm pretty sure at one point it wasn't, but I vaguely recall an update that made everything they didn't want to be stolen to have no autosell. Before that there were some high-price rare items that had an autosell value, but couldn't be stolen. I think. This isn't a very helpful comment, but does anyone have a more useful memory in that regard? --Flargen (talk) 03:29, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
                      • According to the PvP page, the actual rule is "Items marked with a special flag (no trade, no sell, no discard, gift items, and quest items) cannot be stolen." PvP/old mentions the hemp backpack theft, but old PvP is old. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 04:24, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

You acquire an intrinsic

• The new TT blessing skills have no flavour text on use, but do spit out something similar to {{acquireEffect}} but the text says "You acquire an intrinsic" instead of "You acquire an effect". Is it worth updating the template to support this? --Melon (talk) 22:58, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • It's a pretty trivial change to add a flag to change "effect" to "intrinsic", so sure. But does it imply anything else---is there no duration then? --Fig bucket (talk) 23:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
    • Basically you get this:

    You acquire an intrinsic: Blessing of the Storm Tortoise

    There's no duration field like a regular effect acquisition.--Melon (talk) 00:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

    • Being pedantic, it's in a table with centre-vertical-align cells, like the normal effect acquire messages. Like so:

      You acquire an effect: Blessing of She-Who-Was

      --Darkcodelagsniper (talk)

      • You're all late to the party: Template:AcquireIntrinsic (points to kolhs) — Cool12309 (talk) 00:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
        • Well that shows me for not getting around to playing KoLHS yet like the terrible player that I am. For shame. --Melon (talk) 00:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Requesting Florist Strats

So can anyone here write up a strategy for the Florist? I mean, I have one, but I've hardly been using it optimally. Great for speeding up Cyrpt and Oil Peak, bu that's about all I know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --JohnAnon (talk) 09:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

• i'm guessing there's no strategy page because everyone forgets to use it. --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)