Discussion/archive15

From TheKolWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Discussion Archives
1  · 2  · 3  · 4  · 5  · 6  · 7  · 8
9  · 10  · 11  · 12  · 13  · 14  · 15

Manual of Transmission

I just used it now for my 4th use, and its been a few days since my previous use, and i got 50 magicalness. I don't know if this is because of an update, or the wait, but i'd like to know if i should update the page or if further experimentation is required. Also, is this the right place to post stuff like this, or is there a better place? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kingskybomber14 (talk • contribs)

  • For things that have been around a long time it is a good idea to verify your perceptions before changing things. Each page has a Discussion or Talk page (tab) associated with it that lets you discuss issues related to that page, and that's usually a better place to ask questions or discuss details specific to a page. Lastly, please sign your posts on talk pages or this page. --Fig bucket (talk) 00:08, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Subscript Issues

I posted this on the forums first because i didn't know that this existed, and i found out how hard it was to represent something from the wiki on the forums. Anyways, so, i was editing the blank diary wiki page, and i ran into a problem. I was noticed the fact that the message from Jick was only on that one date and was no happening consistently so i decided to list the message from Jick in the "Obtained From" section as obsolete. This required making "Other" a subscript and "Jick (via KMail)" subscript to other. I know this is rather trivial, but i noticed that the subscript of a subscript has to be bold, and the line "Jick (via KMail)" wasn't supposed to be bold. I messed around in the page previews trying to get it to not be bold while still having it be a subscript of a subscript but i couldn't. If anyone knows how, please tell me. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kingskybomber14 (talk • contribs)

  • I am assuming you don't mean subscript, but instead the indentation of that section. I am not sure why we use a sloppy version of a mediawiki Definition list (;) combined with mediawiki indents (:) there instead of a bulleted list (*). Maybe MW:Help:Formatting can help you, I usually just copy and paste the formatting of that section from an existing similar page. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 02:51, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Haiku Dungeon Monotony

Before I add it...Is there a reason that "Haiku Dungeon Monotony" isn't mentioned on the wiki page "The Haiku Dungeon"? (as a "Non-combat Adventures"???)

--God is Evil (talk) 14:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Now I think I see the problem. Take a look at the "Obtained From" section of the wiki page "Rusty metal shaft". I'll assume that Obsoleted Areas/Methods is correct. Therefore, I'll also assume that the rusty metal shaft is only available from The Heap. Right? --God is Evil (talk) 14:35, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Fixed it. The Gelatinous cube drops it now. It seems there had been a little oversight when the update was made. Thanks for noticing. --Yatsufusa (talk) 15:41, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Correct! That's probably just a mistake. Interestingly (hopefully), as I was looking at that page, it suddenly said "Gelatinous Cube", correctly. Looks like Yatsufusa ninjaed us.
    • If you'd like, it would be helpful if you would place the {{Retired}} template on all the non-combat pages in The Haiku Dungeon/Retired. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blargh (talk • contribs)
      • OK. I'll handle it tomorrow (it's the end of the day here) unless someone else beats me to it. :-) --God is Evil (talk) 15:54, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
      • skjhaeirugwouigtUHIDUGD LOUSY GODDAMN STUPID TILDES NOT BEING THERE__Blargh (talk) 14:32, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

...but Izchak's Lighting Store doesn't show up

In the "Description" section of the "Zapping" page, this sentence appears:

Adventure at The Dungeons of Doom until Izchak's Lighting Store shows up.

So far in KoL, whenever the wiki states "Adventure until XXXXXXXX shows up", the title of the non-combat adventure in the game has always been precisely "XXXXXXXX".

Zapping, however, is the first time that the wiki says one thing--"Adventure until Izchak's Lighting Store shows up"--but the title of the non-combat adventure in the game says something different--"Ouch! You bump into a door!".

Strangely enough, the markup code on the "Zapping" wiki page is

Adventure until [[Ouch! You bump into a door!|Izchak's Lighting Store]] shows up

Can I change it to simply

Adventure until [[Ouch! You bump into a door!]] shows up

--God is Evil (talk) 18:42, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Sure. It's a whimsical nickname, but if you're anti-whimsy, then go for it. (Clarity is better than whimsy anyway.) --Johnny Treehugger (talk) 19:55, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
Done --God is Evil (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

File:Desert background2.gif

Grrrr. I've wanted to build a Cottage for several days (weeks) now. In my inventory, I already possessed "bowl of cottage cheese", so I still needed to acquire "Anticheese", which drops at A Ruined House in Desert Beach every five rollovers.

Problem: In the "Locations located here are:" list on the "Desert Beach" wiki page, the ONLY location that is not labelled in the graphical map is...A Ruined House.

It only appears every five rollovers, and players have no idea how it will look or where to find it on the map?#@! Grrrr. (I've been "anticipating" it for more than five rollovers now. Grrrr.)

If you examine File:Desert background2.gif, A Ruined House is as inconspicuous as any of the cacti (or cactuses or cactus).

PLEASE, can we edit File:Desert background2.gif to add a label to "A Ruined House"? I can handle it, but I would like to know the font and font size for consistency.

--God is Evil (talk) 04:43, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Editing images when we don't have to is not a good thing, and that is definitely the case here. There is no reason to add a fake label, going against what is shown in-game; not to mention a simple note saying something like "A Ruined House can be found by hovering over one of the houses in the top left corner" will work just as well. — Cool12309 (talk) 06:14, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Done. See Desert Beach and A Ruined House. --God is Evil (talk) 15:53, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
      • You seemed to have misinterpreted me. I said to not make any images, which you just did. It is really not required as "a ruined house" is self explanatory and looking at the image it's really obvious. In any case, if you really super want to, there's a {{CropImage}} template that can be used instead of uploading a file, which is much preferred. — Cool12309 (talk) 16:05, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
      • I'm having a very hard time to tell what your goal and motivation are, God is Evil... So let me start small: My guess would be that you want the Ruined House location to be more noticeable in the wiki, because it's somewhat hidden in the game. --Yatsufusa (talk) 16:26, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
    • I wasted more than five days waiting for A Ruined House to appear because its location is NOT clearly specified in the wiki. (You seriously want players to run their cursor over the entire "Desert Beach" map to find A Ruined House?#@! That harkens back to pixel hunting in the nascent days of gaming. Moreover, this wiki states everything else explicitly; why are you trying to obscure the location of A Ruined House?)
I think my changes are miniscule, unobtrusive, but highly informative. Don't nitpick about a positive addition. --God is Evil (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • Making it more obvious is not a problem in itself, and I thought your change looked ok. Just try and avoid uploading customized images---use the {{CropImage}} template as suggested. --Fig bucket (talk) 17:04, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
  • I added the image to the locations list using the CropImage template. You're welcome. (Unfortunately the templtate forces it onto a new line but I did what I could.) --Melon (talk) 17:47, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Oh, ha, yes, that would happen... I added an option to the template to allow inline-block mode so it's no longer on a separate line. --Fig bucket (talk) 17:56, 16 August 2014 (UTC)

Splitting Combat Skills and Combat Spells

  • The game makes a distinction between Combat Spells and Combat Skills in the skill description. Can the skills template be updated to auto cat all the combat spells into a new category? The major difference is that if something is a generic Combat skill, it's not affected by spell damage modifiers, while combat spells are affected.-Toffile (talk) 12:02, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Retiring Old Skills

We have a few pages of old versions of skills due to major changes, such as Saucestorm/Old. I want to do a few things with these pages:

  1. I suggest we leave a few things as is, that is, don't mark it as unpermable or remove the skill ID. Instead, mark it under autocat=no so that it won't appear in those categories. However...
  2. This leads to them having no category, and we strive to have every page under at least one category. I thought about using the {{retired}} template, but perhaps we should make a template or category for old skills? I'm not sure if it would be worth it.

Thoughts? — Cool12309 (talk) 18:46, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

  • That sounds like a good plan. I noticed we already have Category:Retired and Category:Obsolete Adventures, so I'd like to propose that one of those automated bots run by the admins would move pages from Category:Retired into sub-categories like Category:Retired Skills, Category:Retired Items, Category:Retired Effects, Category:Retired Locations, Category:Retired Adventures (formerly known as Category:Obsolete Adventures) and other things. The name change for Category:Obsolete Adventures would be mainly so the naming wasn't all over the place. Assuming most pages were tagged correctly before, a bot should be able to handle that task. --Yatsufusa (talk) 20:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Yes, seems reasonable. Rather than putting an explicit category in, modifying {{Retired}} to take a parameter indicating which sub-category and autocatting through that would be easy. Changing it manually is tedious, but not really much work if several people work on it. For feasibility of botting through any changes, you'd have to ask QuietBot. --Fig bucket (talk) 22:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Template:Item and Generic Familiar Equipment

Can some administrator edit Template:Item to add items with "familiar=any" to Category:Generic Familiar Equipment? I want to have a category I can link to on the Comma Chameleon page and I don't want to have to make the same edit 39 times. Thanks! --Johnny Treehugger (talk) 21:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

  • Done. May take some time for it to update everything though. --Fig bucket (talk) 22:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Splitting up Spookyraven Manor Quest

Can anyone supply an argument in favour of the miniquests which Lady S charges us with being lumped in with the actions needed to learn a claß-specific spooky skill?_Blargh (talk) 14:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)_

  • It's a more integrated page that way. I would even like the Lights Out Quest to be within that page as well, so we can have all the Spookyraven quests collected within in a single page. As an example I'd like to bring up the Sea Monkees Quest, where Mother, who is more of a hidden optional feature, is listed, as well as everything within the Mer-kin Deepcity and the means to get there. Having everything in a single page there never seemed to bother anyone... --Yatsufusa (talk) 17:35, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
    • I would say the Sea Monkees Quest is quite different. All the quests share a theme (recovering a Sea Monkee), they unlock each other, they are, within the Quest Log, even considered to be one and the same quest ("Hey, Hey, They're Sea Monkees"). That these four Spookyraven quests take place in the same area is a trait they share with, say, the wet stunt nut stew acquisition and the White Citadel Quest or the first-introduced unlocking mechanism of the Hidden Temple and the Spooky Forest Quest, to take two.
      It would be fine, though pointleß and impractical, to keep them all on one page, if they were clearly seperated from one another; but that wouldn't satisfy your desire for integration, would it?
      And while we are discußing the topic of merging questpages, I'd like to petition that the Mayor's aßignments be converged, either onto a new page or into the mayoral office and perhaps further in, into the black mayoral briefcase, if you catch my drift._Blargh (talk) 10:09, 28 August 2014 (UTC)_
      • Like the Sea Monkees Quest the Spookyraven Quests require solving certain parts before you can start the next one. Wet stunt nut stew and the White Citadel Quest can be both accepted and solved without ever seeing the other and they both start in different zones.
        I'm sure that amongst the variety of players in the Kingdom, some prefer it the one way and some prefer it the other. Both of us have one thing in common right now: We're unsatisfied with the current presentation of those quests. I think we both aren't interested in satisfying our desire for a different presentation but rather to help players with those Spookyraven quests – I'm happy as long we're doing more good than damage. Unfortunately we seem to be (currently) the only editors interested in the topic. Since we are talking about one particular page here that would see the major changes, I'm going to write a little something with a link to this discussion over at that talk page. --Yatsufusa (talk) 18:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
      • I also see what you were talking about concerning Mayor Zapruder. On first glimpse the Mayor seems to think of himself as a tiny Council of Loathing. :) On the other hand the pages to the 3 quests are written well. My approach would be to move his texts back to his office and unify the three short quests into a single page, but I'm open to suggestions. --Yatsufusa (talk) 18:26, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
        • Regarding Zapruder: I agree completely, the text has more to do with the Mayor than with the quest, and on second thought, having the quest explanation on his page would probably be unwieldy.
          I don't really have more to say on the topic of the Manor; I still think what you suggest is a bad idea, which isn't particularly useful input, nor usable. I can see what you mean about the first part of Lady S allowing Skill and Spooking, and the second, Lights Out. But the quests are all granted from different sources and are not initiated by their "predeceßor's" completion, nor do they share any theme but "spooky haunted house brrr". I might have agreed with you some months ago, when it was just Spooking and the Skill; in such a case, one could argue that the latter is a small bonus-quest to the former, like the 31337 scroll is to the 64735 scroll.
          I must, however, object to the "(Optional)" tagging; all quests are, per definition, optional. I can only aßume that they were added by a heavily immersed ascender. I am also against the Skill section being located between two Lady sections, for reasons you can probably deduce.
          I've also been wondering; would you want In a Manor of Spooking to be gathered here, too? In addition to or instead of here? What about dusty animal bones?
          -Blargh (talk) 15:40, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
          • I think the whole Spookyraven matter is more of a point of view thing. Our dilemma here is, that there aren't 25 other users giving feedback and opinions, but just the two of us in kind of an information vacuum.
            On your questions (reordered for an easier read):
            1. My guess would be, that on the current Spookyraven Manor Quest page, the optional Spookyraven Skill is sandwiched in the order in which a player can solve the quests. But you're right: There could be some piece of layout that acts as a divider so the reader can tell right away that he doesn't need to get the skill in order to do the third floor. (Like a shared header with a line saying that these quest lines are independent from each other.) As for the "heavily immersed ascender" bit, I'm conflicted: On one hand KoL can be pretty sandboxy and the goal of the game is what the player wants it to be. On the other hand I must say that most of the possible goals that make a player play for longer than just a few months necessitate ascending at one point.
            2. I don't think How to build your misshapen animal skeleton should be integrated into any kind of quest page. It is one of those somewhat hidden things that exist in KoL, but neither does a player have to do it more that once, nor is it necessary for anything else. (My Misshapen Animal Skeleton still has 0 kills...)
            3. The Quest for the Holy MacGuffin page is currently just several sub quests stacked on each other – and that's okay, because that's what it is in the actual game as well. But right in the middle, there's the In a Manor of Spooking quest, giving a side-trail to this quest chain the player has to take care of, before he can proceed. Collecting what is basically the same page in two different places would make no sense to me, because would just double maintenance work and drive readers and editors insane if something was missing or explained differently on one of those pages. From my perspective finding and fighting Lord Spookyraven is story arc-wise part of Spookyraven Manor, but he can only be found with the help of the diary, which is in its own a story. Each could be seen as a sub quest of the respective other. The question here would be how we define the quest: What starts it or how it ends? As a diplomatic approach, I'd suggest that the MacGuffin quest could be seen as the start, but the Spookyraven Quest is so big that it deserves its own page, that we could just link from the MacGuffin quest page. That way we could prevent the MacGuffin page from sounding like it's casually mentioning that assload of stuff you have to get done before you can proceed with what is now somewhat pictured as a short and straightforward part of the MacGuffin quest. (I'm sorry if this is hard to read, but I tried the best to explain my approach and decision making process.) --Yatsufusa (talk) 20:35, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
  • My own feeling is that each individual quest (as defined by either the quest log or the goal) be its own page, with quest chain pages (like the one for Mayor Magruder). One other thing that might be worth doing is creating quest infoboxes that are similar to the location and monster infoboxes. (The infobox would be quest name, giver, reward, previous quest and next quest).-Foggy (talk) 14:10, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
    • I vaguely remember seeing something like quest infoboxes somewhere else and think at the very least for individual quest pages something like that could be helpful. --Yatsufusa (talk) 21:28, 30 August 2014 (UTC)
      • Well, calling others to share their opinion, while a good idea, didn't work, and the current in-between state annoys me. What do you say we flip a coin? Heads, you can move Lights Out and maybe also In a Manor of Spooking over here; tails, I get to rename the page to something pertaining to Lady S and move the skill section somewhere else?__Blargh (talk) 10:41, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
        • I added a link to the L11 quest page, so that solves the issue with In a Manor of Spooking. The only other thing that could possibly need to be done would be to handle the skill sidequest the same way as the Lights Out sidequest. If that's what's annoying you, go ahead and move the skill sidequest to its own page. There, problem solved. --Vorzer (talk) 13:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
          • Erm, no? Problem not solved. Unilaterally editing to suit my personal preferences, and in the presence of conflicting opinions, no leß, would be rude.__Blargh (talk) 11:49, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
            • So you agree that the page is more or less fine as is and changing it would be rude if nobody else wants it to be changed? Great! I'm glad that's over. Let's never do that whole "I will justify making sweeping changes by flipping a coin" thing again, okay? --Vorzer (talk) 14:29, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
              • No, I do not agree that the page is "more or less fine as is". If you take the time to read the thread that you are replying to, you will learn that I want to change it. I do not agree that this change is somehow rude if it isn't supported by at least two persons, either; if this principle was to be applied to all activity on this site, everything would be very cumbersome.
                I proposed chance as a method to decide between two equally-supported desires. Do you have a better way to achieve that?_Blargh (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2014 (UTC)_
                • Blargh, you're contradicting what you said two paragraphs/weeks ago. Do you agree that making unilateral changes to pages to suit your personal preferences against the wishes of others is rude, or not? Or are you going to contradict another previous statement of yours and argue that you aren't the only one who wants the page to be changed? You admitted before that trying to get others to weigh in on how the page should be changed didn't work due to lack of interest. --Vorzer (talk) 18:49, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Since that has been inactive for about 9 months, I decided to act. Ultimately, my decision was based on the fact that obtaining the skill is not an actual quest (there is no mention in Current or Completed Quests) and that the skill is obtained separately from Lady Spookyraven's quests. I also edited the Spookyraven Manor Quest page to reflect the names of the individual quests as opposed to just first, second and third floor.-Foggy (talk) 17:41, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Randomized Names

So one of the projects I've been working on (yeah, I've got too many right now) is creating templates for randomized monster names such as Template:SloppySecondsBurgerName and Template:VideoGameBoss. The templates aren't overly difficult to generate (I've had to be really careful about use of RandomlySelect) but finding a good place to put them has been difficult.

I'd like them to show up on the monster's combat page (e.g., Sloppy Seconds Burger), and I think that's it. This can be done either by have the battle template (which I can't edit) take a parameter "displayname" or having Monster data include "displayname" and the battle template use it (which I'd rather do but again, I can't edit the battle template).-Foggy (talk) 22:32, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

  • can't edit because you're not an admin? Huh. What change would you like made? --Evilkolbot (talk) 22:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
  • There. After some less-than-impressive editing, I think I got it. I added "displayname" as a parameter to monster data, and the battle template will use that if present. --Fig bucket (talk) 01:02, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
    • Awesome. Thanks Figbucket.-Foggy (talk) 01:04, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a follow-up: I've since gotten most of the creatures done, but if you look at any of the DV skeletons (e.g., cold skeleton) you'll see an issue with the formatting. In game, while most monsters have a centered name display (confirmed by looking at the source), skeletons have a left-aligned display for the name. In all cases, the monster pic and name are set up as separate table cells. Can this be easily edited?-Foggy (talk) 18:22, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

  • Probably, although I'm not sure about how easy---right now that's just div block, but I don't see why replicating the game's table structure would be a problem...there's already a table structure used for haiku and hipster modes, maybe that would unify. It'll be a while before I'm in DV again to see exactly what's different there though...can you copy out the exact html or make a screenshot? --Fig bucket (talk) 23:55, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Just a follow-up: here's the HTML code
Normal
<td valign=center>You're fighting <span id='monname'> Enoch Wintershiver</span></td>
Skeleton
<td valign=center><b>Prisoner #372464:</b> "Three Socket" Teague<br><b>Sentence:</b> 19 Years<br><b>Crime:</b> pelting preschoolers with snowballs<span id="monname" style="display:none">cold skeleton</span></td>
Note that the "You're fighting" intro is suppressed with skeletons. The last span is hidden in the browser.

-Foggy (talk) 15:07, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Monster IDs

These have all been added. The Monster Data infobox should now have Monster ID link to the specific set of Monster IDs the monster is in, similar to how Item ID does.-Foggy (talk) 15:32, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

  • Awesome. Infobox adjusted (I hope). --Fig bucket (talk) 22:57, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Cool. There are a couple of cases where we have one datafile for multiple IDs, so I might need to adjust those accordingly. (ancient protector spirit is the prime example, as these are five separate monsters in one file.)-Foggy (talk) 17:09, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorting

I noticed some changes to Mediawiki.Common and now my tables won't sort. What's going on here?-Foggy (talk) 17:09, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

  • Apparently we had 3 versions of table sorting code around in various places, based on either the "sorttable" class or the "sortable" class, and these were stepping on each other in the new/upcoming vector skin at least, so Casey made some fixes to remove all that duplication, standardizing on the newer "sortable" code. I modified his changes to monobook.js to run on both "sortable" and "sorttable" class tables for now so they still sort, but that actually only helps monobook and not vector, so eventually tables should move to "sortable" so they work everywhere. (Although the old "sorttable" code had some custom sorts for stat-reqs etc....probably not actually all that important, but maybe something to look into too.) --Fig bucket (talk) 20:28, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
    • Is the fix just to change sorttable to sortable wherever it appears?-Foggy (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
      • yes, that would fix it. --Fig bucket (talk) 22:42, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Type69 and Jargon

I'd like to make an emphatic case for avoiding undefined jargon in articles. The most recent example I've noticed is usage of "Type69" in pages. "Type69" has a very brief definition on the Lingo page, but that's almost never linked when the term is used in other articles, and I'm quite concerned that using jargon like "Type69" without providing definitions makes the Wiki less useful as a resource, not more.

Does anyone else feel like a page defining Type69 would be worthwhile? --Southwest (talk) 19:10, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

A section on the challenge path page would probably be sufficient but yes, we shouldn't have undefined, unlinked terms, ideally. --Johnny Treehugger (talk) 19:19, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
We could do a Type69 page, consisting out of the official statement (kinda) we were given. From my point of view the main problem here is that Jick casually implemented a mayor ascension game changer without coming up with a proper name for it (resulting in players calling it a name he hates) and implementing it without even a word in the /updates or any other form of documentation. Players would know way more about it if there was a proper explanation in the Bureau of Reincarnation – or a link to an (updated) Official Ascension FAQ. --Yatsufusa (talk) 08:23, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
A while back I moved a bunch of type69 info onto the special challenge path article. However, now that type69 applies to Standard as well, it makes more sense to move it to a separate article. So, what should the page be titled? Unfortunately, it seems like it has to be titled "Type69" simply because that's what everyone calls it and there's no official alternative. --Prestige (talk) 11:28, 7 January 2015 (UTC)
The players called it "Type 69" because that's the actual name used in the URL of the game's "availability schedule". Since Type 69 redirect to a page that explains it all, I don't see a problem. Redirects are your friend. --Greycat (talk) 14:52, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Well, nonetheless I have been compiling an expanded article on this subject, which I'd like to publish, unless anyone actually opposes it having its own page. However, adding a complication to the naming discussion is the fact that in Standard, the item unavailability schedule uses the URL standard.php, not type69.php. --Prestige (talk) 07:40, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
To avoid possible confusion: That I'm both unhappy with the name and think it's in TPTB's responsibility to add some explanation of the mechanic in KoL doesn't mean that I would want to stop editors writing about it by force. ;) Especially if you have already written something, you should publish it. We can live with renaming/moving that page and updating a few links should Jick decide to come up with a name that's more... refined. --Yatsufusa (talk) 10:27, 9 January 2015 (UTC)
OK, I created the page here: type69 and transferred most info from the special challenge path page. I went with no capitalization and no space, because that's how I've seen most people use it. --Prestige (talk) 07:17, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
According to the most recent radio show, the TPTB name for Type69 is Standard Restrictions, and I got they impression they don't really like the name Type69. As a rule the wiki uses the official names for things, and Standard Restrictions is way more descriptive. I'm going to move the Type69 page (leaving a redirect) and change references to it. -Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 18:59, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Pipes

Since we have not gotten anywhere on this multiple times, I'm going to change how this is done. Unless we get a majority vote by October 12, 2014 against this, all pipes will be moved to the right side of each line. I don't like to take this kind of role, but this has been bothering me and I want to get something done about this. — Cool12309 (talk) 15:54, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

  • Pipes?-Toffile (talk) 17:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
    • |descid=xxx versus descid=xxx| — Cool12309 (talk) 18:05, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
      • Ah. Yes, I see why drastic action is needed. Good luck.-Toffile (talk) 19:48, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
        • Personally, I'd vote against this, but I'm not sure if I even get a say here. Aesthetically I find it awkward to deal with. But if someone else is going to do the work in converting any place that has pipes on the left to pipes on the right, then I'll not stand in the way.-Foggy (talk) 18:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
          • The pipe on the right allows one to see a clear end of the line, as opposed to open whitespace that may or may not be continued on the next line. I personally like it more and it's the way I'm used to. I also don't like the end of the template (}}) being on its own line, it just looks weird. Anyways, I'll keep this open for a few days for any more opinions, otherwise I'll begin the Process of Rightification. — Cool12309 (talk) 19:01, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
            • i know quietust likes his at the beginning. i don't care either way as long as it's consistent. if you're sure you want to take this on, knock yourself out. we'd need some kind of signpost to alert people that that's what they're supposed to do, though. even then they'll get it wrong. i'll try not to. --Evilkolbot (talk) 21:34, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
              • I've developed a slight affection for pipes at the beginning rather than the end, since it simplifies selecting and cutting out the rest of the line without having to backup to avoid deleting the pipe. I've noticed that people often inadvertently delete the trailing pipe in data pages etc when the pipe is on the right. In the end though, I'd like it to be consistent, although I don't particularly want to expend much effort correcting things either way. Keep in mind that switching is not entirely trivial, in the sense that while the two schemes are equivalent, the behaviour is not guaranteed to be identical in all cases without properly accounting for adjacent newlines. --Fig bucket (talk) 22:22, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
                • That brings up another great point, the whitespace issue. If the pipe is on the left, each parameter will have a newline at the end. This usually won't affect anything but it could affect some things. — Cool12309 (talk) 01:08, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
                  • Actually, I very much prefer the pipes to be at the end of the line, which is why all of the item data pages are done that way (because I'm the one who created them). And as I recall, the trailing newline was one of the main reasons I went the way I did. --Quietust (t|c) 14:57, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
  • I am apparently "late" to the "party", but if you'll change it yourself, you have my "permißion", even though it would be annoying to edit.__Blargh (talk) 15:59, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

List of monies

As preparation for a KoL-related creative project (actually it's no secret, I've got it in my head to make a kingdom version of the song "Money" from Cabaret) I've started to go through the wiki to identify things that either 1) is meat, in the "meat is currency" sense (so no green hamhocks or whatever), 2) seems to function as currency in (some part of) the kingdom, or to have done so at some point, 3) is obviously based on real world money, even if residents of the kingdom don't recognize it as money or 4) is a fake or play version of one of 1-3. So examples: 1) 1 meat, meat from yesterday, dense meat stack; 2) chroner, hobo nickle, hill of beans; 3) fat stacks of cash, pile of gold coins; 4) chocolate filthy lucre, stuffed meat. It turns out there are a lot of these items (some may not actually be items). It also turns out they don't seem to be grouped together in the wiki at all, which is probably as it should be. After all, this is not an in-game category at all (though arguments could be made for grouping parts of 1 and 2), and it is also often not a very well-delineated category. But I still get the feeling that someone besides me might be interested in looking at these things as a group. So...

1. Could there be a place for some version of this in wiki mainspace after all? If nothing else, maybe a category for NPC store currencies? 2. If wiki mainspace is not the place for the "big list", what is (in this wiki or out of it). Given that I kind of like the idea of others being able to edit it, my userspace seems like an obvious idea (something like User:Notsupposedtobehere/Monies). I'd be grateful for suggestions of places where it might be a little more visible, but on the other hand maybe something like this doesn't need to be all that visible (and for the moment this posting will work as a little bit of advertising for it).

Apologies for wordiness, it is my curse. Notsupposedtobehere (talk) 22:51, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

  • I support a category for store currencies. Though most of the crafting interfaces (like star charts, crackpot mystic) are technically shops now, so that creates some grey areas. —Yendor (talk) 00:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
  • For the second one, the page for Meat lists other currencies. --Vorzer (talk) 02:19, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Vorzer, that's neat, and more or less what I was looking for to start with. Thanks for pointing it out.Notsupposedtobehere (talk) 16:11, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

A General Concern About Modifier Pages

Long story short, our modifier pages need a LOT of attention. I recently tried to update Combat Initiative and Stat Gains from Fights, only to find far more missing items than I would have thought. This is an exercise I've gone through before, and it's a fairly straightforward process:

  • Go to the modifier page (e.g., Damage Absorption)
  • On the left, click What Links Here. It's pretty far down, in the Toolbox.
  • Click 500 to get a full list of pages that link to the modifier page. You may need to click next 500 to get to the end, but most of these pages do not have 500 pages linking to them. (Combat Initiative is the exception, see below).
  • Start at the end, and beginning adding items and effects that are missing to the page. You'll find a lot of missing items towards the end.
  • Note that this does not catch items where the item/effect did not have See Also links.

That will help us get a lot of these updated. There are also a couple of other issues:

  1. Right now, the Monster Infobox links directly to Combat Initative and Items from Monsters. That means trying to use the method above also lists every monster in the game with an Infobox, and this is pretty frustrating. There is a way around this, depending on how we feel about the second item.
  2. For many of the things that can be modified, we are inconsistent with how we name the pages and whether or not there is a separate page altogether...a natural upshot of a wiki that's been developed over time. I'd like to suggest we modify the wiki to go in one of three directions:
    1. We have all modifiers listed on the same page as the thing it's modifying (e..g, HP Increasers would go onto the HP page). The advantage here is that linking to HP Increasers becomes much easier. Right now, it's done as [[HP Increasers|HP]] as opposed to HP. For item 1, this means potentially modifying the Infobox to link to something other than those pages, or not linking at all (neither Attack or Defense do)
    2. We have all things that can be modified have their own page, with a separate page "Thing Modifier". Thus Monster Level would be separated into two pages. Stat Gains per Fight should become Experience Modifiers. HP Increasers/MP Increasers/Bonus Weapon Damage/Bonus Spell Damage would all become X Modifiers. The advantage here is that it's consistent and easier to work with when editing, but would require work to update the wiki appropriately. For item 1, we would not to make any changes to Infobox.
    3. Here's the really crazy go-ahead-and-shoot-it-down-because-its-insane idea, but it's to modify the Data pages for items and effects to include effect fields. Blank fields would be omitted from these files. We then use a template to display the information. The advantage here is that changes are easier to make (such as when an item is nerfed or added), but this would require even more work than either of the other two suggestions.
    4. Finally, the last option is to say f*** it and do nothing.

What I'd like to know from the rest of you is:

  • Are there modifier pages you are willing to take on and update?
  • Are in favor of 2.1, 2.2., 2.3., or 2.4?

-Foggy (talk) 20:10, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not entirely fond of 2.1, as I think those pages (like HP) should just talk about the item itself, as opposed to what modifies it. For 2.2, I think we actually have too many different modifier pages. I don't think we need a "Hot Damage Modifiers" page and a "Supercold Resistance Modifiers" page. I like 2.3, but the work involved would make this nearly impossible unless we somehow got everyone on KoL to do it... which would require coordination, them making accounts, and making sure they know how to properly edit it (and we'd need multiple people to oversee the edits to make sure they're all good), as well as advertising (pretty much only a Game Update would give the required amount of attention). It would make streamlining a bunch of things (e.g. these modifier pages) much easier (and possible in general, really). Basically: Don't like 2.1, 2.2 is meh, 2.3 is best but requires way too much work.
As for the modifier pages as a whole: I don't know what to do with these. These require a lot of time and effort to keep up to date, but we don't really have a good way to keep them updated. If we implemented 2.3 we could make it (almost?) fully automatic to update, but again, the work involved is crazy. If we could get quietust or someone else to make a bot to handle the change, I'm all for it. There is the slight concern of the really weird modifiers that could probably just be stuck into a list that the bot would output at the end, so we could sift through and see if any of them need to be addressed. There's also the concern of variable modifiers. Some are easy, like turns spent and moon lightness/darkness, but some are weird (like number of maps dropped for queen cookies). I don't know how to handle that, maybe just a "special" flag (like * or $ or something). — Cool12309 (talk) 01:08, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
  • A long time ago I spent some effort trying to get/keep some of those pages up-to-date, following the same strategy you describe (I also made a GM-script that would help filter the back-links), but as you point out it's a lot of work, and it's easy to forget something and then have it lost in the mass of earlier or generic back-links. A concerted effort by several us to clean it up would help, but they'll eventually fall out of sync again, so yes a more structured/permanent solution would be really nice. A consistent naming scheme would certainly be an improvement, so I kind of like 2.2 for that, but yeah, lots of link-fixing. Putting the effect list into the data page (2.3) seems like the most forward-thinking way, but irrespective of the editing effort involved I'd like to see a mock-up of how it would work exactly, or at least a plan of the template/control-flow---a fixed number of effect fields won't do (see Video... Games?), so it has to be just one data field, that gets parsed somehow. Each item then needs to be mapped to a specific page/category, which could be done via foxway as the weapon-categories are. Should be possible to generate see-also's with a template then too.....all seems do-able... Keeping the modifier pages up to date by bot or DPL extension might then be perhaps possible too, although that still requires standardizing the presentation, and as cool points out, there's bound to be weirdness to handle somehow too. --Fig bucket (talk) 21:30, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
    • So I decided to try three examples...Video... Games?, zombie accordion, and A Little Bit Poisoned to see what work is involved:
      • I copied the effects verbatim, converted to lowercase and replaced all spaces with underscores.
      • I went through some fairly mechanical changes to convert the underscore before the value to equal signs, add pipes, and drop certain leading words ("damage to", "superhuman", "to all")
      • Moved any leading values (which were a lot) to the end
      • Manually added a _pct to certain fields. This is why I'm glad I started with the items I did. I had originally envisioned a specific modifer just simply holding all possible values, but this and several other items have both a flat and percentage modifier, so this is undoubtedly necessary. Note that certain other fields (e.g., Combat Initiative) do not have a _pct manually added. That could become difficult for automation purposes.
      • Zombie Accordion has two enchantments that require full on conversion: additional songs, and class restriction.
      • A Little Bit Poisoned has negatives.
      • Buy! Sell! Buy! Sell! has a variable modifier. To accommodate, I added _var to the field.
    • I will say...wasn't hard. It's more work than the Monster IDs, but not impossible.

-Foggy (talk) 14:19, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

New Category

So, in my time using the site, i have noticed a group of items that i believe deserve their own category on the site: Items usable only a certain amount of times a day that are not consumed upon use. So, i was wondering: 1. How to make a new category 2. If someone could come up with a name cleaner than "Items usable only a certain amount of times a day that are not consumed upon use" because i can't come up with one that is still fully descriptive. Examples of these item i am thinking of are the Cheap Toaster, the Eternal car battery, and the Sewing kit. Thanks for the help! Kingskybomber14 (talk) 00:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

  • You just add [[Category:Category Name Here]] to the very bottom of a page, then when you save the page, click on the link and give the category a description. As for the name itself, Limited reusuable items or daily use items sound good. (Previous comment sort of not signed)
    • Daily Activities is already a list of things done per day, and includes some of the items usable daily. I actually like the idea of Daily Use Items as a category, but just want to make sure you see what's already there.-Foggy (talk) 04:11, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
    • Woops, sorry for breaking formatting. That was made by me. — Cool12309 (talk) 04:56, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

A template for unclear or lacking wording

I have several times stumbled upon phrasing that is somehow unclear, in places such as;

  • references that do not explain how they are references (here, there)
  • NeedsWork templates that do not fully convey what is needed, perhaps because it was written in a time where that was self-evident (yonder)
  • notes that are ambigiously worded (sorry, no examples here)

It would be nice to have an inline template for those things, somewhat alike Wikipedia's Please Clarify, but with the ability to manually specify the problem.__Blargh (talk) 10:56, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

The closest existing template I found in Category:Administrative Templates is {{NeedsReview}} --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 11:43, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
I was not aware that this existed. We still need one for all other cases, though.__Blargh (talk) 12:51, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
Reviewing and/or removing the NeedsWork templates will resolve the second case; NeedsCleanup with an explicit comment will resolve the third, apparently hypothetical example. We don't need more templates...we have enough as is that aren't being used correctly anyway. (See Current Projects for a list of all of these templates.)-Foggy (talk) 14:27, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean by "reviewing", and removing content from pages because they don't seem to be appropriate tends to anger those who understand its purpose. NeedsCleanup is large and more fitting for entire articles than for sentences. And the third example is not hypothetical; I didn't bother finding an example because I did not expect anyone to be unacquainted with the miracle that is imprecise wording - I ask your pardon on that.
Furthermore, the existence of misused templates is not in any way a valid reason to avoid creating new ones to suit actual needs.__Blargh (talk) 10:41, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

familiar equipment

  • the latest familiar equipment makes me notice that the box of Familiar Jacks is missing from the "obtained from" section. should this be added? I'd probably say that if such a mass edit is being undertaken we should probably use a template, there being two hundred-odd pages and all. any thoughts? --Evilkolbot (talk) 08:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
    • The outcome of using a box of Familiar Jacks isn't randomized so it would be a valid source. On the other hand it would be over 100 pages to update, so I'd hope one of the admins' bots could care of that. I feel like we already discussed this in the past, but I can't remember where... --Yatsufusa (talk) 05:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
    • Done. Mostly automated, so maybe some errors or omissions, but should be mainly ok... --Fig bucket (talk) 01:23, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Are obsolete things retired?

Suggestion to change Retired template

  • I'd like you to take a look at the Angel hair wisp - you may notice that there is a Template:Retired along with a note linking to the thrall. I'd like to suggest a change to the Retired template which will allow adding a comment, just like the Template:NeedsContent has, which in my humble opinion would make it cleaner:
Hammockbrogre.gif This content has been retired and is no longer available in game.

Did you mean the Angel Hair Wisp Thrall?

(maybe the first line could be bolded) I think it works better, all the information in one concise block which is very easy to notice. I am willing to go around and find pages like that while doing what I have mentioned above in Are obsolete things retired? --Skell Blackmind (talk) 13:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

  • There was a discussion of the obsolete/retired issue above, which did not yet produce action, but should: obsolete has been/should be retired. The simpler change of just adding a(n optional) parameter for further clarification or info to the {{Retired}} template seems like a good idea. --Fig bucket (talk) 23:19, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Redirects

My policy when it comes to redirects is that they must be all lowercase as TitleKey or whatever we use fixes the search bar. However, /hardcore has been making a massive stink about this, as there are a couple who type directly into the address bar for whatever reason, and that is case-sensitive, so I proposed that if redirects are to exist, they must be "capitalized like this" or "Capitalized Like This". I can't think of anyone who types directly into the bar who doesn't already make it all lowercase, but I guess that is a thing that exists. Thoughts? — Cool12309 (talk) 11:34, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

  • Not sure I understand...they're manually constructing URLs, appending page names with mixed capitalization to http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/, and not finding pages, and so they want redirects? --Fig bucket (talk) 12:59, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
    • with respect, they can go do one. they hang out in a channel for people who are supposed to be good at knowing what's what. they've learned enough that they can type the rest of the url correctly. if they really want to use that shortcut then they have to learn one more tiny rule: it's lowercase. or they can type the name of the page in full. if they're copying text from the game they'll have to replace spaces with underscores anyway. this is a non-issue. (sorry Fig bucket, i fixed your link.) --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:26, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
      • hmmm. i think this may stem in part from my deletion of AT. research reveals that SC, PM, TT and DB exist. do i get all intolerantconsistent, and delete them, or all hippy and undelete AT? tricky. --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:26, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
        • It stemmed from my deletings in April, and it was brought up recently in /hardcore, which also included how bad the search bar is and how laggy the wiki is. — Cool12309 (talk) 21:17, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
        • These discussions happened before your deleting of AT, but that deletion is exactly the kind of brain-dead bullshit we were talking about, yes: going out of your way to inconvenience people by removing redirects for which they've demonstrated a wish, for literally zero benefit. There's a limit to how many times I'm willing to have this entire argument, though, and that limit is five. Enjoy your wiki, I'll get my information from Mafia's source code from now on. --Cairnarvon (talk) 06:26, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
          • Actually, come to think of it, I can't think of any logical reason for redirects that people are using to be deleted. It's not like we're paying the capital letters a salary with time-and-a-half for redirects. If the only reason is wiki policy, then that policy should be updated to reflect reality, rather than vice versa. --Vorzer (talk) 12:53, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
            • now you've made me cross. before declaring a change in policy, perhaps you should try to reach a consensus. especially since you're not an admin. the reasons behind this policy are discussed in the archives of this page at enormous length. to summarise, "redirects are lowercase" is to stop a proliferation of mixed case redirects. we don't do misspellings (however common) for the same reason. it's a simple rule that brooks no rules lawyering. it is what it is. if you want the rule changed, suggest how you'd like it changed, not declare it to no longer apply.
            • i still don't understand what it is "one or two people in /hardcore" are complaining about. if they want to type whatever casing they want into a URL and expect it to work then URLs don't work like that. what is it about typing "at" and not "AT" that so offends them? --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:19, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
              • I looked through the discussion archives, and this is all I was able to find. It sounds like the "no uppercase redirects" policy was created almost a decade ago to save disk space. Is that seriously still an issue? I can't imagine disk space being a larger concern nowadays than one or two people being mildly inconvenienced for semi-nonsensical reasons. I'd ask you to link to that "enormous length" debate you mentioned, but considering you already restored the redirects in question, I guess it's a moot point. --Vorzer (talk) 05:10, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
                • in one minute searching I found five discussion archives and two of proposed standards that discuss this. I'm on a train or I'd link them for you. another of the things this was put in place to stop was people adding redirects because of their poor typing. they'd see a red link and instead of correcting it they'd add a new redirect. which is what this is about. and that's why I'm as opposed to this now as I was nearly ten years ago. you say you can't be arsed to walk the five yards to put your litter in the bin. i say bin it or you can leave. if you can't be bothered to use the right search terms to get to the page you want on the wiki and this annoys you then don't use it. --Evilkolbot (talk) 08:52, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
                  • I think your argument that people should be willing to put in the effort to use correct capitalization might have carried more weight if you had been willing to put in the effort to use correct capitalization while writing it. As it stands, I'm still unconvinced. --Vorzer (talk) 14:45, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
                    • you're a person. you will understand what I write whether I use mixed case, poor spelling or unnecessary diacritics. the wiki is a machine. you have to tell it exactly what you mean. changing things to tell it more is fine. changing the way you tell is something it already knows is fine, too, unless it's you being lazy or stupid. so no redirects for misspellings, or slang, or common errors, or diacritics, or poor capitalisation. --Evilkolbot (talk) 08:29, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
                      • I'm still unable to understand your perspective, but whatever. Just out of curiosity, what sort of redirects do you consider to be valid? For example, is gmob for Guy Made Of Bees a good redirect, or is it just "lazy"? --Vorzer (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
                        • It is good, because it's commonly used. Basically, commonly used shortnames should be added, but if you're trying to add a redirect for, say, TNC (The Nuge's crossbow), that'd be ridiculous. — Cool12309 (talk) 23:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
  • (←) It is? I thought TGMOB was seldom used; Islewar speed strategies these days seem to involve flyering monsters while doing other quests, and less hardcore players can pull the same empty agua de vida bottle each ascention to flyer Cyrus the Virus. I guess type69 brought TGMOB back into the limelight?
    Anyway, you should probably add the rules for redirects to Established Standards. The rules currently being enforced are apparently buried somewhere in the archives of Proposed Standards; hardly the proper place for them. I'd do it myself, but the rules should be written by someone who understands them, and I'm still struggling with the difference between "lazy redirects" and "commonly used redirects". (It's obviously not based on the number of people who request them. Is there a pageview threshold?) --Vorzer (talk) 16:19, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
    • I know we made a template for this specific purpose but I can't find it. Anyways, I don't feel comfortable putting it there as I don't think we ever really established it, just kind of went with it. But as I've said earlier, my compromise is to allow all lowercase redirects and Uppercase Like Such redirects. I've allowed yojimbos_law to have an account as he will not be "vandalizing" the wiki in doing so. I've also allowed cairnarvon/slaw to make a script that will make these redirects for us. I will make sure the account doing so is marked as a bot but will be watching its contributions closely. — Cool12309 (talk) 02:42, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
      • Guidelines on redirects, at least wrt lower-casing, are quite clearly stated in this text, which is shown at every page creation. I'd prefer there was something closer to clear-majority agreement before mass, bot-driven changes were run through the wiki in this respect. So far I've not seen any compelling argument for changing the lower-case policy, and I find it very hard to sympathize with those wanting mixed-case redirects, as it seems to reduce to an arbitrary refusal to use URLs properly, when multiple other solutions already exist...if you're not sure of the page capitalization try lower case, and if that doesn't work, suffer through the laggy search, and perhaps use that experience as motivation to memorize the result to avoid a similar error in the future. Bookmarks and the pick-lists of modern browsers also help. --Fig bucket (talk) 13:19, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
        • That's just text someone asked an admin to add to the new page template, not an actual established rule. According to Cool12309's post immediately above yours, there are no hard and fast rules for redirects. --Vorzer (talk) 14:39, 24 November 2014 (UTC)
        • Right now, I don't care much about this apple of discord as such, but I want to try and help to resolve this. Allow me to dump this down: From what I gather some people want to type stuff mixed upper- and lowercase into the searchbox, but for good reasons having those would be a bad thing.
          Maybe there's a way to make both sides happy: Could the search be reconfigured to ignore upper-/lowercase or to convert a searchstring to all lowercase before executing a search (like strtolower($search_string))? I mean what counts is a searches result, right? --Yatsufusa (talk) 17:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
          • This is not about the searchbar (which for a few months has already worked with any casing whatsoever), it's about people typing directly into the address bar so they don't have to open "the laggy wiki" when they want to look at something. — Cool12309 (talk) 20:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
            • so what, exactly, are they griping about? their own poor typing? not being persuaded. --Evilkolbot (talk) 20:55, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
              • As near as I can tell, they are griping that they are capable of remembering how to type a valid URL for a wiki page, but they are incapable of remembering the redirect in question will always be lower-case, not upper-case. I hope someone can explain how they have such selective skills because it makes no sense to me. I'd figure anyone capable of constructing the URL themselves could remember the xtremely simple rule of casing. --Bale (talk) 11:17, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Copyright Notice

Right now the copyright notice still reads "© 2005 - 2014 Coldfront L.L.C.". I wouldn't see this as a big issue, but it seems to come up every year. Isn't there some way to automate this? --Yatsufusa (talk) 16:05, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

  • I permanently fixed MediaWiki:Copyright with a CURRENTYEAR, but the one in the footer (by the mediawiki icon) seems to be a empty icon with an alt text defined in $wgFooterIcons in LocalSettings.php, so I can't edit it. --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 07:33, 11 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Is the page footer copyright notice necessary? The content footer copyright notice is guaranteed to be on every page, right? The way that works at the bottom is weird. Let me know if you come up with a solution.--caseyweederman (talk) 02:17, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Item Metadata: Year

Well, it looks like Type 69 is here to stay. We need some way to deal with it. In particular, the summary pages need some way to indicate which items a player can use, and which items they cannot use. And those pages have to be maintainable without requiring excessive manual labor every year.

I'd like to add a new field to the item metadata: year. This field would hold the year that the item was introduced as limited content (e.g. 2012 for the fairy-worn boots). The summary pages can then be written to pull this field for direct display, coloring, or whatever. Items that are not limited can omit the field.

Speaking of which, I don't know how to find the documentation on how you do that, so I reverse engineered it out of the {{item/plural}} template and used trial & error with the Preview button until I got it to work. So I'll just drop this bit of documentation here:

{{data|itemname|fieldname|default}}

is replaced by the value of fieldname from the metadata page for itemname. If there's no such field, use the string default instead.

Or, does someone have a better idea? --Greycat (talk) 15:44, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Familiars and skills need the same thing, right? --Johnny Treehugger (talk) 15:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
Also VIP lounge furnishings? --Vorzer (talk) 16:19, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
As far as I understand it, the 2012 content is still available during Type69 Picky but not during Type69 Standard '15. So there have to be two readouts to handle that. --Yatsufusa (talk) 22:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Since not all relevant things have data pages, maybe just using manually adding categories to classify stuff according to year might be a simpler solution (via a template even to have canned text for the picky/standard distinction). If you want it displayed directly in the infobox though then yes, a meta-data field would be the way to go for that (although even then, categories would allow for convenient aggregations, and are easy to add to include stuff without data pages). --Fig bucket (talk) 23:04, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
    • It'd be much better to store the month as well as the year, as that data would be nice to have anyways. There's a few issues with this whole thing: 1) How do we store the month and year? Do we just count months, where month "1" equals a specifically chosen date? 2) How do we obtain this information? You used to be able to change the date on type69.php, but that was heavily nerfed to prevent spoilers and it seems you can't go before 2012 or past 2015. I don't know how we would find the dates as a non-zero number of items have dates that can be ambiguous (released twice) or are altogether incorrect in the database. — Cool12309 (talk) 23:41, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
    • At the moment, I'm less concerned with putting text on the individual item pages than I am with putting something like a year column in a table, or changing a table row's background color, on the aggregation pages (like Best Booze and Shirts). Of course, putting human-readable text on the individual pages (either in the info box, or the Notes) would be nice too. A metadata field would allow both of those; a category wouldn't. --Greycat (talk) 01:34, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

3 Gates effects gone

There's a bunch of items that have "Can randomly be required to open one of The 3 Gates." notes. I would remove these without further notice (like tomorrow or so) unless somebody thinks having those notes moved to the history section of each item has any particular historic value. I mean we still have the old quest's strategy pages... --Yatsufusa (talk) 03:23, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

  • It could be useful for a newbie reading a non-updated guide and wondering why tower/gate items were important to get in run as most have virtually no other use in an ascension. — Cool12309 (talk) 06:31, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Class and Path numbers

I just explained the mechanic for potion seeding on the page for the continental juice bar. It makes use of kol's internal class and path ids, which is a little obscure, especially as they aren't currently listed anywhere on the wiki. The ids can be obtained via api.php for your current class/path, or a full listing can be gleaned from the source of afterlife.php in valhalla. It would be useful to link to a list of those ids to explain the juice bar mechanic better (I'm pretty sure the same mechanic also applies to confiscator grimoire equipment drops). Where would be the best place to list those ids? I guess new pages for Paths by number and Classes by number, then link to those pages on the individual path and class pages? It's a little weird since paths and classes don't have metadata in the same way as other things that the wiki lists ids for (items, choice adventures, skills). --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 22:34, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

I've added those two pages, but I haven't included links to them on the individual class/path pages. I doubt that's really needed, clearly nobody ever wanted them before. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 21:46, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Spleen Items are now A Thing and Others

Since spleen items are official now, we need to switch over the wiki. Firstly, we need to add support for type=spleen item in the Item template. We need to add toxicity to everything that uses fullness/inebrity/whatever. We also need to update categories and how we auto-cat things. — Cool12309 (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Also items now show how much HP they heal. Perhaps a new category is in order for this as well? — Cool12309 (talk) 23:33, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

  • MP restorers as well.-Toffile (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

re: Blue descriptive text

I assume this changed with the HP/MP restorer transparency update, (as opposed to being something that changed ages ago and we all somehow missed, or always worked like that and the wiki chose to ignore it for some reason) but the blue text in item descriptions is no longer preceded by the little "Enchantment:" bit. I noticed this while adding the new utensils, and it applies to everything, not just things that pulverize into useless powder. Since an update to the item template was in order anyway, I imagine this just makes that easier. --billybobfred (talk) 01:04, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

  • See the bluetext= parameter. — Cool12309 (talk) 04:04, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
  • I just looked at about 20 really old weapons, and "Enchantment:" seems to be gone form all of them (which had ble enchantment text), I guess they could be converted to bluetext=s, but wouldn't it make more sense just to edit the enchantment= part of the template to no longer include that text anymore?, unless of course there are items left that still have the "Enchantment:" text above the blue text enchantments, but I haven't found any... yet? --JRSiebz (☎|§|‡) 05:00, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
    • "Enchantment:" seems to be gone from everything. The bluenote parameter is left-justified by default and there don't seem to be many places that actually use it. —Yendor (talk) 05:16, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Oh wow... how very curious. I think we should probably just keep things as is, minus the "Enchantment:" text, as there is separate justifying for bluetext as yendor explained. — Cool12309 (talk) 05:18, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Ok, "Enchantment:" removed. --Fig bucket (talk) 13:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Spleen Level Requirement

I was under the impression that not passing in a level=1 for food/booze/spleen would make it autocat as level 1, but it seems it's not the case (at least for spleen?). Looking quickly at the Item template, I can't seem to figure out why. Maybe fig bucket can work their magic and see if that can be fixed? — Cool12309 (talk) 11:30, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

  • Yeah, adding nor not adding level=1 was very inconsistent, for all of them actually, so some things got autocat'd and some didn't. I think I fixed it without breaking anything... --Fig bucket (talk) 22:55, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

<playername> the Adventurer

So, I'm under the impression that, when creating pages for monsters with variable names, we use Manuel to decide where they go. Thing is, this won't work with this one, because Manuel actually files them as your account name, under the appropriate letter. So where do I put all this combat text I copied? --billybobfred (talk) 04:57, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

  • I'm assuming the main problem here is that <> can't be part of a page name. A long time ago, the wiki community used $playername instead of <playername>, and $Playername the Adventurer could be created. --Yatsufusa (talk) 06:36, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Likewise the issue of the winged yeti. I think the best solution in this case is to beg them to make a standard name for Manuel create a generic name that we can all agree on. — Cool12309 (talk) 07:21, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I'm for Froaoaarsnarlroar! – The full original name of my yeti mount... Just kidding. But seriously, what's wrong with just calling it "winged yeti"? It's short, evokes the right picture and is less confusing than, say, "yeti mount" or something like that, for players that don't happen to be veterans of the Valhalla Invasion. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
      • dont forget it drops the winged yeti fur which is the equivalent of Groar's fur. This was the reason I moved the page to winged yeti as its reasonably official/cannon. Discordance (talk) 12:38, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The official, internal names are "%playername the Adventurer" and "[yetiname]" minus the quotes. Source: devster. — Cool12309 (talk) 00:05, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

  • %playername the Adventurer it is, then. --billybobfred (talk) 03:59, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Oops erosion seeker already made the Adventurer and i tidied it up. I tried to display the logged in users name but thats not available without a wiki extension. Best we could do is last user to edit the page. Discordance (talk) 07:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Any other thoughts? Someone should delete one of them. Discordance (talk) 22:15, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Please bring back the monobook skin

First: You can set your own personal CSS to whatever you would like at Special:Mypage/vector.css.

Second: You can (edit: suggest) userbase-wide CSS at MediaWiki_talk:Vector.css. Please use this more responsibly than Nightvol has. The only difference, aesthetically, between Monobook and the fork of Monobook called Vector, is CSS. You can configure your own battlesystem however you'd like.

Third: This is not a sudden change. There has been a great amount of warning, including live previews, discussion, implementation of Vector with a call to test it, and the setting of Vector to default. This is a process that has been going on for two years. I'm sorry if you didn't get the opportunity to speak up during that time.

Monobook is not coming back (but - shh! the old CSS is still around if you want to paste it into your Special:Mypage/vector.css: MediaWiki:Monobook.css and http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/skins/monobook/main.css )--caseyweederman (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Pretty much nothing on the wiki looks like it does in the game any more, which I have always thought was the goal. The vector skin, in addition to being harder to read, also breaks lots of layout. E.g. on a page like stone wool, where the text runs behind the metadata. I know vector became the default when the wiki software was updated, but at least in my account settings I could switch back to a non-broken style. Today I see that it got deleted, where I would have expected someone would eventually have made it the default again. --PeKaJe (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

  • Seconded. It was bad enough when Vector was changed to the default. Why was the option to change back removed? Monobook looked better and didn't have the hideous layout bugs that Vector has. The stone wool example is a mild one. I have seen pages where there was a link which ended up underneath the metadata, making it impossible to click. Also, taking choices away from people is never desirable. --RogerMexico (talk) 19:18, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Thirded--Coderanger (talk) 19:44, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • The vector skin was supposed to become the permanent choice over a year ago, but the higher ups are pretty inactive. Vector skin has more functionality and is less limited (it's newer than monobook). The formatting bugs are because the wiki was designed for monobook. Give it some time and the formatting will be fixed. Also, the Vector skin was just improved today (which I enjoy) -- the ads are gone and now it uses the full page. Basically, the skin is not bad, you just need to get used to it. — Cool12309 (talk) 20:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Choice is good. Serif fonts are bad. Here's another vote to bringing back the monobook option. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 20:33, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Also item and effect desc centering is broken again, presumably to 'fix' text running behind metadata. See earlier discussions about this: Discussion/archive14#Items_and_Effects_still_not_centered --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 20:40, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Just tried a(nother) fix for items...seems to work, but I'd like to let it get to more pages to see if there are issues, and it will take a while for all pages to update. If it's ok then I'll do the same thing for skills and effects. --Fig bucket (talk) 20:54, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
        • Thanks for all your hard work, Fig Bucket. I'm looking at items and locations right now, and they look pretty slick. Let me know if there's anything I can change upstream.--caseyweederman (talk) 06:43, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Serif fonts are indeed bad on a wiki, and I specifically override it (and some other updates) on Wikipedia, or I couldn't stomach reading it. Assuming the various layout issues are fixed, I can see 3 things needed to get the readability back to what it was, while (presumably) retaining whatever functionality is so important in Vector. 1) Set base font size to 0.75em instead of 0.875em. 2) No serif font in headers. 3) Set link visited/not-visited colors back to what they were before. --PeKaJe (talk) 23:24, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Add me to this camp that we need to revert the font and font size, and I guess the visited link colors as well. Also, can we have a thing to not auto-tick the "Watch this page" button? — Cool12309 (talk) 00:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
  • +1 for bringing back Monobook, please? --Deus Ex Machina (Talk) 20:45, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • one more. --Evilkolbot (talk) 21:52, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
    • if you insist on being all apple about this then can you at least put the search box back where it was, as the second thing that loads on the page. some of us use mobile devices and scrolling is inconvenient. --Evilkolbot (talk) 21:56, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • Today's vector update is nice and I will probably stick with it if we can just get the formatting issues worked out. Discordance (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
  • At this time there are no plans to sacrifice the usability and compatibility enhancements brought by Vector in order to restore monobook, which was barely functional with modern extensions when we implemented vector two years ago. It was time, and change is scary, and we'll work to resolve what issues exist with Vector, but don't look for Monobook to come back. We higher-ups are not anywhere close to "inactive" - we're perhaps slow to move at times, but we read everything and are working behind the scenes all the time in order to provide the best experience for the most people. --Nightvol (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Why are there no plans? Monobook doesn't need to be fully functional, so long as you claim it's not officially supported. Let's be honest: Vector looks terrible in comparison. I (and I presume many others), would much rather have good appearance with some "broken" functionality than the Vector features and a terrible appearance. This isn't the best experience for the most people. This is garbage. It does not negatively impact anyone to have Monobook as an option that's discouraged (so long as it is agreed no issues will be fixed that arise for monobook users), and makes a lot of people happy. Please re-add it as soon as possible.--Cannonfire40 (talk) 23:59, 22 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I can't deny that I'm pretty emotional about this change – in fact I would go so far as to say I hate it. Nevertheless, I am sure there were good reasons. I would like to learn about these reasons in more detail. Cool12309 said it's less limited. Working with a monobook wiki for so long might have made me blind to its limitations. What possibilities does switching to a new skin offer both for administration and the general user? Second, why was it necessary to remove the wiki's old skin as an option while the new skin is still in a state that... tempts me to say highly emotional things that I might regret later? Third, would it be possible to tweak the new skin to look like the old while maintaining its additional possibilities? --Yatsufusa (talk) 00:22, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Yes, absolutely. MediaWiki:Vector.css for changes that get pushed to everyone, and Special:Mypage/vector.css (will be activated in a few hours) for changes just for you. If there's enough of a consensus that the font is bad and there's a font that everyone agrees on, please throw it into MediaWiki:Vector.css.--caseyweederman (talk) 06:43, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • My personal ideal is to have the look and feel of the old, heavily customized Monobook skin but the functionality and the support of the Vector skin.--caseyweederman (talk) 06:49, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • That sounds great and would most likely shut up everybody who's complaining right now. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:32, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • I much prefer vector to monobook, so your judgment that vector looks 'terrible' isn't really a factor that we're taking into account. The long and short of it is that monobook can't be reimplemented. It no longer exists - it was removed from the wiki software in the 1.24 software update, and we don't have control over that. We're going to work hard to make Vector work for everyody, but there is no going backwards at this point, so the most constructive thing that can be done is suggest what you'd like to see from Vector going forward. --Nightvol (talk) 01:19, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • I checked the MediaWiki release notes, and it doesn't say anything about removing Monobook. It says that Monobook was moved out of MediaWiki to its own repository, but that Vector was too, and that you'd either have both of them already (along with Modern and Cologne Blue) or you'd have to manually install any of them, including Vector. Assuming that you manually installed Vector (since the other three skins are missing), why can't you install Monobook the same way? --Vorzer (talk) 02:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • I cannot find anything anywhere that suggests Monobook "no longer exists" or "was removed from the wiki software". Where are you getting this information?--Cannonfire40 (talk) 03:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • My information is coming entirely from the team that maintains the backend of the wiki - I don't actually do any of that, I just disseminate the information. If I hear that something's changed or that they made a mistake I'll let you know, but for now, they're telling me that monobook is kaput.--Nightvol (talk) 03:29, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
            • Thank you, Nightvol. Cannonfire, Monobook and the old version of Vector were moved out of the core of MediaWiki and we have decided to move forward with the new and default Vector. What does Monobook have that Vector doesn't do? So far everything mentioned has been cosmetic, or problems arising from cosmetic issues (links behind elements). We have been transitioning to Vector for a long time now, and there has already been a lot of work done on MediaWiki:Vector.css to make the site pretty again. Please let us know if there are any problems that can't be fixed with css.--caseyweederman (talk) 06:43, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
              • As far as I'm concerned, the whole "being unhappy with the new look" issue is about the look of the wiki, so of course everything mentioned here will be about cosmetic stuff. If the new skin looked exactly like the old, nobody would be complaining. --Yatsufusa (talk) 06:55, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
              • Casey, that's the thing -- The reason I want Monobook is entirely cosmetic. Features really don't matter to me in a wiki -- I care about how the wiki looks when I browse it. I much prefer the old monobook appearance to the new vector one, and want the choice to sacrifice vector's features for monobook, even if it means that broken floating tables in monobook don't get fixed because it's unsupported or whatever. If you can make the wiki look like this under vector, I'll have no reason to want monobook. Otherwise, I'd like the option.--Cannonfire40 (talk) 17:39, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • I wasn't saying that my personal taste was superior to yours (or anybody's for that matter). I was merely asking, why the changes were necessary in the first place. If there were good reasons, I might agree that those were worth the (hopefully temporary) inconvenience. Not really knowing why the change happened (any why it happened in this fashion) makes it harder to see this whole affair as more than an purely arbitrary act. I'm reasonably sure the update didn't just happen on someone's whim. It's not some kind of natural disaster. It had a reason. I'd simply like to know what that reason was - in more detail. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:32, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • And of course what I'd like to see from Vector is looking like the monobook skin. Or at least to have the option to use a skin that looked like the old monobook. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:32, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • Vector adds collapsible fields and is designed for modern browsers and probably does a better job with the page layout. Monobook is ancient and I doubt it plays nice with browsers. Theres a list of new features at an old wiki extension for vector i've got the link saved at home. If i was responsible for maintaining the site and developing the css i would not want to work with monobook. It makes that job harder and more than doubles the work involved if you have to maintain vector and monobook. This is speaking from my experience running another wiki I cant answer for the kolwiki team. Discordance (talk) 08:16, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • I fully agree with everything Discordance has said here.--caseyweederman (talk) 08:47, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • I feel much more sympathetic about the whole matter now. I also found a (possibly outdated) version of our monobook (or rather MonoBook based) css file on my system, for those who are interested: User:Yatsufusa/vector.css. I already started tinkering around with it, but the earliest version in the history is the unmodified original. Also it seems like there's some tinkering going on on other related parts of the wiki, so it might change its look dramatically by the time you look at it. --Yatsufusa (talk) 09:18, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • All I want is for the wiki to look like it did before, or at least not be an endless expanse of eye-searing #FFFFFF. For the time being, I've solved that problem by simply disabling CSS. (Which also means I'm reading this in Times New Roman instead of Comic Sans.) If I had a way to set my custom CSS to the old look I'd do that, but considering that no one was given any advance warning whatsoever on this, I assume there's no trace of it left. --Vorzer (talk) 12:27, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
  • You can customise vector how you like at Special:Mypage/vector.css. Doesn't that solve most peoples issues? Discordance (talk) 00:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Lacking any other instruction or information, I am assuming that means you can create your own custom css to override settings? You really think that is a solution for "most people"?--RogerMexico (talk) 00:14, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Does that actually work, though? Because a long time ago, I tried to do some user CSS and JS, but found that it was apparently disabled in the settings. --PeKaJe (talk) 00:20, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • wikipedia:Help:User_style, its a long standing feature of wikipedia because you will never get everyone in exact agreement. Don't know if its enabled or not. Discordance (talk) 00:22, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • Seems disabled. Discordance (talk) 00:26, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • Oh, I'll fix that as soon as I get home. I'm definitely in favor of this change. However, I would prefer users change MediaWiki:Vector.css so the changes get pushed out to everyone. FigBucket is doing some great work there.--caseyweederman (talk) 06:24, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
            • I can confirm all my links are now shocking lime green. Anyone who wants to adjust the site wide colors changing them in your user css first is the ideal place to sandbox/test. User:Discordance/vector.css for example css for green links. Discordance (talk) 08:03, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
  • further up i asked that the search box be moved to the left. this has been done. i don't like it. it looks odd now since it breaks the left margin. it doesn't render at the top of mobile pages either. there's also a "search" link that flips to it pretty neatly. i'm very sorry. please could you put the box back on the right? if no one objects, that is. people who want it on the right should futz with css like all the rest. --Evilkolbot (talk) 21:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • Apple is happy to be of service.--caseyweederman (talk) 23:06, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • you are a lovely person, thank you. while we're at it, I'd like a second mouse button, please, and can I have removable media on my mobile device? and, more importantly, I'd like to be able to position the cursor inside a word on iOS by tapping alone? --Evilkolbot (talk) 09:07, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Do you have any suggestions for user CSS to stick the search back in the sidebar? --Cardern (talk) 16:25, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
        • Just in case there is a feasible solution to relocate the search bar, and I don't know if there is, would it be possible to tie the search bar location to a flag in users' profiles? --Yatsufusa (talk) 08:59, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
        • The exact pixel offsets will depend on your other css, and maybe will need adjusting as changes are made to the main css, but something like the following should work: --Fig bucket (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
          #p-search { left: 0; position: absolute; top: 100px; z-index: 1; width: 160px; } #mw-panel.collapsible-nav .portal.first { margin-top: 40px; }

Search suggestions

Search autocomplete suggestions no longer seem to work for me. Anyone else have this problem? -- JaAchan (talk) 09:45, 23 February 2015 (UTC) Gone for me too. Also putting the searchbox on the left is totally broken for me on mobile. Discordance (talk) 11:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

  • Sorry, you caught me in the middle of fiddling with the search bar. Is it any better now? And the search function is temporarily down while we work out some issues with Sphinx Search. Sorry about that.--caseyweederman (talk) 11:12, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • I preferred the clean vector skin ;). But yeah the box is behaving now. Discordance (talk) 11:19, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

If the logo goes on a gradient background then you probably want to use an image with transparency rather than a white BG, or it'll have a nasty white border. Current logo with transparent bg --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 12:33, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

KolWiki Font Change

I'm not sure what the thought process was behind the font change, but please change it back. This font is horrible on the eyes. Just reading what I'm typing here is causing eye strain. I had hoped that it would just be the front page but alas no. --Pithlit (talk) 13:30, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

  • force refresh your browser, it's just been done. --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:32, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
    • The comic sans is part of the upcoming "CDMoyer Appreciation Week" that celebrates KoL's PvP overlord/codemeister - individual users can edit their CSS to op-out early or it should go away in a week.--Nightvol (talk) 13:44, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • I'd say by the end of that week there would barely be any editors left. Also keep in mind there are people on the internet who do not know what stylesheets are... --Yatsufusa (talk) 13:51, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • Luckily there are explicit instructions on the very front page of the wiki.--Nightvol (talk) 13:58, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • Sort of---I guess the css code itself was excluded somehow, and so all it says is to add "*" (unless you follow through to the actual coldfront post). Also, I suspect a large number of wiki-viewers do not have accounts; certainly most have never edited anything, and are unlikely to make the required changes.. I don't think it'll hurt in the long run to have this for just a week, but I also don't think it's helping much...perhaps a less widely scoped homage, such as just using it on the front page would be sufficient? --Fig bucket (talk) 14:17, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
            • Weird, I'll look into why that's getting excluded. I think maybe one day of the whole wiki and then for the rest of the week just the frontpage would be best - that way we can get the full effect for the regular users, scale it back for useability after 24 hours, and still maintain the joke.--Nightvol (talk) 14:21, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
            • When the zany CDMoyer Appreciation Week is over, I'd suggest changing the wiki fonts (particularly including the headings) to font-family "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif", both for readability and to match KoL's visual style. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 14:23, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
        • I don't think I've seen this many new accounts being created so fast, as a recruitment drive, it seems to work suspiciously well.... -- JaAchan (talk) 18:15, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
          • Those were actually just non-approved accounts that had built up because they hadn't auto-approved themselves for whatever reason. I went through the backlog and manually flagged all the ones that didn't look like spambots. --Nightvol (talk) 19:16, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
      • Thanks for the heads-up; I'll start working on a Mafia relay script to preserve KoL's current CSS right away. Pity I didn't get a chance to save a copy of the wiki's CSS, but who could've seen this nightmare coming? --Vorzer (talk) 14:56, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

  • see this. firefox 36, but chrome and ie are the same. the "Main Page" link is much too close to the bottom of the logo panel. could someone with more knowledge of CSS than me (i.e. some) shift it down a bit? --Evilkolbot (talk) 21:10, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Meat Sources

Stumbling around the various links I discovered this page Meat Sources. The page is out-of-date, but would need an inordinate amount of work to get it up to date. It also overlaps the Meat-Producing Items infobox, which would help shorten the page. Is there a reason to keep the Meat Sources page, or can it be deleted?-Foggy (talk) 16:59, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Hasn't been touched since 2012, can't be that many people interested in it? -- JaAchan (talk) 17:24, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Not really updated for over 5 years, yeah, I don't see a need to keep it. --Fig bucket (talk) 13:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Variable Pronouns

How are pronouns, or words in general, that vary by monster displayed? I'm thinking specifically of Spooky music box mechanism, where I have seen him/her, as requested by the confirmation box, but find I have no idea how to display this.--Top1214 (talk) 23:38, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Embedding Youtube Videos

Tropical Contact High embeds a youtube video into the effect description. What would be the best way to replicate that on the wiki.-Toffile (talk) 10:54, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

  • A coldfront admin would be needed to add the EmbedVideo extension. --Fig bucket (talk) 13:42, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Until that happens (or if it doesn't), how about adding a static thumbnail for the video, which links to the video on youtube? With a note that it is, in the real description, embedded. --timrem (talk) 06:19, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
      • Alright, that was easy enough. -- JaAchan (talk) 06:33, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
        • perhaps we should leave it at that. it's obnoxious enough when jick does it. --Evilkolbot (talk) 12:46, 7 May 2015 (UTC)
          • Sounds good to me. --Vorzer (talk) 03:52, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Monster Manuel Counts

Each Monster Manuel page has a counter that has to be updated manually, wouldn't it be better to automate that? The easiest way I can think of is Javascript. You can get the count like this: 

$('#mw-content-text table[id]').length

If you use a span with an ID or something, and on the page load you set it with the count, it would save some tedious editing. -- JaAchan (talk) 09:24, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Having just gone and updated the Manuel with every monster I could find (again), I think there needs to be an easier way of doing this. One suggestion I saw was to include the factoids in the monster data. That way we could more easily find the ones that need updating. —Yendor (talk) 11:40, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Only 1 left in stock!

Can someone with better markup skills than me edit The Mayo Clinic so that the stock warning on the miracle whip displays as it does in-game? --billybobfred (talk) 18:56, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

How does this look? --timrem (talk) 23:47, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Criticals and Fumbles

So both criticals and fumbles are now indicated explicitly in fight text, making that content a lot easier to ascertain. However, instead of adding the (CRITICAL) and (FUMBLE) tag to every battle individually, can someone edit the template to add those to the critical and fumble fields? (FUMBLE!) is in HTML red, and not bold. (CRITICAL) already has a template for how it appears.-Foggy (talk) 14:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

  • Fumble added. Critical needs to be between the hit text and the ouches and elemental indicator, so that can't be added in by default without some other changes (I've been extremely slowly trying that out in {{test}}).. --Fig bucket (talk) 17:47, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Data:Lot's Wife

This data page is weird, in some kind of non-space of existence. I tried to edit it back into usefulness, but got the error "[81742cec] 2015-05-21 00:13:30: Fatal exception of type MWException" when I tried to save it. Maybe it needs to be completely removed, and then I can recreate it from my Notepad file? As a tangent, whenwhen I went to Established Standards: Data Pages to see what fields a Combat data page needed / could have, it looks like that page is very out of date -- missing many of the fields that I've seen on other combat data pages, and showing the pipes on the left. (From a discussion above, it sounded like the preference is to have the pipe on the right to make the end of line clear.) --Terion (talk) 00:33, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

  • That page's weirdness has been reported...it's not obvious what went wrong with it or how...deleting it and recreating it may or may not work... Missing fields only matter if they're used; the pipes are unlikely to ever be consistently located or uniformly agreed upon, so do whatever you want. :). --Fig bucket (talk) 00:52, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
    • Ok, data page is ok now, not so difficult to fix after all. --Fig bucket (talk) 00:57, 21 May 2015 (UTC)
      • Cool, thanks muchly! As far as the Standards page, my "concern", such as it is, was mainly not knowing what fields could be used that maybe I didn't know about, and what the meaning of fields are; I've seen fields like Mval= that aren't intuitive if you're not already familiar with it (seems to be a replacement for meat= I believe), and for newer editors it would be handy to have an easy reference for what bounty=, quest=, pickpocket=, accordion=, manuel=, etc. are used for. But this is straying into a different Discussion topic, so I'll leave it at that, and maybe someone's OCD will kick in and update it. ;) Edit: I also noticed that the "code" portions are different; the Standards page has <includeonly>{{{{{format}}}| ...field field field...| {{{1|}}}}}</includeonly><noinclude>{{{{FULLPAGENAME}}|format=Combat/meta}}</noinclude> while the Lot's Wife data page has <includeonly>{{{{{format}}}|{{{1|}}}|{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}}| ...field field field...| #default={{{1|}}}}}</includeonly><noinclude>{{{{FULLPAGENAME}}|format=Combat/meta}}</noinclude> Not sure if the positioning or the extra 2| and 3| in those curly braces makes much of a difference. --Terion (talk) 01:22, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

flash check

  • the current marketplace page checks to see if you've got flash and warns you if you haven't. Is this really necessary? People nowadays either have it or they don't. I'd hazard that there are two kinds of people that don't. Those on institutional networks where it's forbidden, and those, like me, who are using mobile where it's not available. Neither of these groups are in a position to install anything putting popups in and cancelling access to the parts of the page that do work is just annoying and/or spiteful. Is there any way to take this out? --Evilkolbot (talk) 09:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Tuesday updates

So, it seems that official Tuesday updates are a thing again. From the radio show, I get the impression that this is a measure to make sure they don't forget KOL entirely while they create West Of Loathing, and I suspect that means it's temporary until WOL is finished. Point of all this: should we start updating the Tuesday page again? Or just make a note of their (temporary?) return and leave the actual updates on History? --billybobfred (talk) 22:28, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Jewelrymaking

With the recent change to Jewelrymaking, all of the components used for jewelrycrafting are now marked meat-paste items. However, the process still requires the pliers, so I think the recipes can still legitimately remain as is. Can we use the template to change jewelry=1 to show (Meat Pasting component) instead of (Jewelrymaking component) (or be ignored if paste=1 is already present. If not, I can manually change these pages to have paste=1.-Foggy (talk) 15:34, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Retired?

Now that the Deck of Every Card seems to be giving access to previously-unavailable monsters (I just fought a toy-making creature from the Gray Lagoon, and there were other similar reports in the IOTM's forum thread), should the retired tag be removed from their page? From looking at the circuit-soldering animelf, which is old-but-faxable content without the retired tag, I'd assume so... so they'll just have to be removed as people encounter them?--Terion (talk) 04:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I have been removing the tag from pages, its not applicable anymore. If the area is marked retired and the monster is not that should be enough for people familiar with copying mechanics but it might be confusing for newer players. I think either we need a new banner or just to mention explicitly that its no longer encountered in an area and is only accessible via copies, a link to the page on copying would be useful. We probably want a category to keep track of monsters that can be copied/found in the deck, or possibly monsters than can only be found via copy/in the deck. Discordance (talk) 13:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Mob Penguin goon/Goon

How do we deal with name problems like this?
Mob Penguin goon
Mob Penguin Goon
One monster was 2008, one 2009. To me it seems that there should be a Disambig page that links to "Mob Penguin goon (2008)" and "Mob Penguin Goon (2009)". Having it say "Mob Penguin Goon (Don Crimbo's Compound)" also seemed right though. And then having both "goon" and "Goon" articles redirect to Disambig. I looked through style guidelines and past discussion, but didn't find any good info - so I'd love some clarity. --DoctorWeebl (talk) 16:06, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

  • Usually capitalisation is pretty strict on the wiki from what I can tell. Just having the separate pages would be correct; thought of course a 'did you mean' link at the top would be required. Dunno what other people thing. -- JaAchan (talk) 18:00, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    • A note seems reasonable: that's what's done on Magic Dragonfish and magic dragonfish. Some familiars (e.g. Topiary Skunk/topiary skunk) have nothing at all, but that doesn't aid navigating to the right article. --Ryo_Sangnoir (talk) 18:12, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the clarification. I've added a descriptive note to each. Let me know if there are any issues with it. --DoctorWeebl (talk) 19:01, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
    • The skunk/Skunk is actually a naming convention in KoL: familiar hatchlings are in lower case, and then the actual familiar is capitalized. It's been that way, oh, forever (see fuzzy dice/Fuzzy Dice and mosquito larva/Mosquito.) Goon-wise, the notes look perfect to me, Doc.--Terion (talk) 04:04, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Template upd8 needed

I don't know how to edit templates, but thanks to The Floor Is Yours, Template:Choice now needs to go up to 8. --billybobfred (talk) 02:19, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Spam protection

  • Getting bit tired of answering the same anti-spam questions time and again, maybe we can find something better? Having it ask once per half hour or so tops, I dunno. -- JaAchan (talk) 09:51, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
    • I don't think thats an option in the plugin config. Its firing when external links are added which unfortunately most new pages contain them in templates. I think the user sign up has weeded out the spam accounts by now. Its probably safe to just turn it off for new external links as it does massively annoy when adding new content. Or there is a whitelist, [1] just need someone with access to the plugins to add a few domains to the config. Discordance (talk) 17:03, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Can we add combat items to the preloaded templates?

Cloud to butt

So, apparently, certain members of the dev team don't always remember to turn off their cloud-to-butt extension when editing game code, which occasionally results in game text being changed. Should we like. make a cloud-to-butt page explaining this and a template to link there when the game text contains "cloud" or a clearly-replaced "butt"? Or, what? I don't know what the procedure is for things like this :v --billybobfred (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

  • A page explaining it, and a {{sic}}-like link to direct people to that would be ok, although a bit simpler might be just a templated note on the relevant pages. --Fig bucket (talk) 00:57, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Potions now have bluetext.

I don't know how to edit the relevant template, but potion articles without bluetext need to be autocat'd to Category:Incomplete, and we need. a manual effort i guess to go through all the potions that are also combat items. --billybobfred (talk) 02:58, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

  • Maybe it would make more sense to add the bluetext of effects to their Data pages, so it can be pulled in automatically where needed? Still a lot of manual editing work, but less redundancy in the end... --Fig bucket (talk) 18:06, 27 September 2015 (UTC)
Also, the formatting changed, in that duration is now inline with the effect. Anyway, I modified the item template for the formatting, and made it so it pulls the effect from the effect's meta-data if it is present. I also modified the {{effect}} template so it also pulls the effect from meta-data, if present. The effects that do not have the corresponding meta-data field (effect=) for their bluetext are in Category:Incomplete Meta-data (well, eventually, when the job queue finishes). --Fig bucket (talk) 01:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Something's gone a bit wrong for a number of effects after this change. It seems that where pages originally had the "effect=x" split over multiple lines, this was also how it was edited into the data pages. However, this results in the metadata only parsing the first line, and the subsequent lines disappearing at some point. Consumed by Doubt is one example (currently only showing the first line of the 3 line effect). When I checked the metadata it had all three lines with line breaks. I ran a purge on the effect page, and when I subsequently checked the metadata, the other two lines had disappeared with no change in the page history. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 12:59, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
    • I thought I had previously cleaned those up, but apparently I missed a few. Anyway, the effect template will now (eventually) categorize those in Category:Incomplete Meta-data, so they can be found and fixed. --Fig bucket (talk) 14:25, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Links for purging pages

The "action=purge" link on the frontpage is handy. Could something similar maybe be appended to the bottom of all pages? Or maybe just ones that make use of data templates (pages for effects / monsters / items / skills etc). It'd save having to manually type the url when a data template needs to get updated. I just had to do this a few times for zones which had their recommended stat updated today. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 10:12, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

  • The job queue should eventually get around to updating a page if you update its meta-data, although there certainly have been/are issues with that working well. It would be possible to add a 'Refresh' link to the sidebar---that is a bit technical/specific to live in the main sidebar (under the "Tools" subsection is maybe better, but more complicated). Alternatively, a link could be added to infobox templates, but then it would be good if that was more consistent: monsters and locations have an 'edit data' link at the bottom, but for potions/items/skills there is a 'view metadata' link at the top instead. --Fig bucket (talk) 15:47, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
    • I created some templates based on the kolwikis infoboxes awhile ago. The die2nite wiki is dead so I can't link any of it but design wise I went with lowercase letters to keep the distraction minimal.'v e p'. Discordance (talk) 16:08, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
      • I tried something with the monsters infobox to see how it would look. I left it in words for clarity and easier clicking, keeping edit on the right (as it was before), view on the left (for symmetry), and using 'refresh' rather than purge, as I expect refreshing a page makes more sense than purging a cache to most people. --Fig bucket (talk) 19:13, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
        • Looks nice. The 'view data' link seems a bit redundant though, since you can just click the name at the top of the box. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 19:16, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
          • Ha, seems I never clicked on there. Anyway, now it's just refresh and edit. Also changed the other infoboxes. (Although for items it doesn't seem to look as nice, mainly because it doesn't match the right-alignment used in that style of infobox...maybe a separator line above these links would be better.) --Fig bucket (talk) 20:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Help pages

Whilst the wiki help pages are a tad neglected they'd be a bit more useful if the help link in the left sidebar actually went to them. Anyone know why its pointing at the mediawiki pages? Probably just needs to be changed in the config I expect. Discordance (talk) 21:13, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

  • I've changed it to Help:Contents. (It used to point to that, but the fixmessages script overwrote it, maybe part of the last upgrade.) --Fig bucket (talk) 19:23, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Critical hit multiplier note

Some items still have the old note about critical hit multipliers not stacking. These need to be removed (get rid of critical=1 on the item's page). Also, that parameter is no longer needed in the template. It too can be removed. Perhaps a bot can do the first task, and an admin the second. --Wrldwzrd89 (talk) 15:19, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

  • No bot needed---there were only 4 pages (+ the standards page) actually using it; template option also removed. --Fig bucket (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php?title=Discussion/archive15&oldid=638942"