NSWiki:Community decisions

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This page is for making decisions about NSwiki. Remember that NSwiki:Village pump and talk: pages are to be used for regular discussion. A topic should only be here if a decision is likely to be made as a result of it. After an issue is decided, move it to #Decided issues.

Current issues

New Infoboxes?

I have created a new template Template:Infobox User is it ok to make new infoboxes? I just thought it would be good to add some consistency to the user pages. You can see it used at my user page. Gingerblokey 2 August 2005 01:39 (GMT)


While I doubt everyone would want a user infobox as thorough as my own, the one you've provided seems a bit smallish. Mayhaps you should check my profile linked here in my signature to see what I'm talking about. Galdago 04:12, 15 August 2005 (GMT)


Its fine to make new infoboxes, linkboxes, or any other templates. its something I do all the time. --swilatia 12:41, 2 March 2006 (GMT)

Battle Info Box?

Hey sorry if this isn't in the correct place but I'm planning to write up a series of articles for the War of Golden Succession because it's too long to be put into one thread. In effect, the main thread will be an index thread to the different battles and such. And, with that said, I was wondering if we could make an infobox that looked a little like this one for the Battle of Kursk, although I guess the bottom links aren't needed. Frankly, I don't know how to make tables too well, and since we have a lot of articles concerning battles I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to add a new info box. If not, then go ahead and delete this, but I would appreciate it if someone dropped in the coding [in my usertalk page] to make that table, if it was at all possible. Thanks. 68.101.132.72 00:44, 17 November 2005 (GMT)

There's a box on Wars already >> Template:WarBox << that, in my opinion, has been constructed in a way that it can double as a summary infobox on an individual battle. --Pacitalkia 01:24, 17 November 2005 (GMT)
If we wish to list other casualties such as wounded and missing, how do you suggest that we include them? Entsteig 04:33, 9 November 2006 (GMT)
Qif strikes again! Use the milwounded, milmia, civwounded, civmia, totalwounded, and totalmia parameters to enter your very own extended casualty statistics today! Ceoranta 05:51, 9 November 2006 (GMT)

Island Infobox/Template

Is there a template or inforbox for islands? If not, could somebody please make one? I've searched for it, and can't find one. If possible, could it show: Island Population; Biggest City; Nation It Belongs To; An Image; It's Name; It's Natural Resources;

Every thing would be optional except for it's name, population, and the nation it belongs to. Could it please be done? --Havvy 13:13, 3 January 2007 (GMT)

Perhaps one could import Template:Infobox Settlement, but without the ParserFunctions? Blast 01:49, 22 June 2007 (GMT)

Population updates

Bringing this over from the Village pump

Population Updates... Well, not needed

It's annoying. Seriously, there is no need to update the goddamn population of $Alliance or $Nation every week (Or day, for that matter). One can get around that (Well, I do, anyway), and it prevents ludicrous editspamming. And 'RAWR! BIG POPULATION! I R BIG!' masturbation, while I'm at it.

So, I wonder if that could be, uh... Stopped? Voluntarily? Or not?

Sorry, this should be somewhat more elaborate, and possibly nice, but its past midnight. Might elaborate further, tom... Today. Rezo 23:17, 20 Nov 2004 (GMT)


Agreed. I feel this constant population updating should be banned on grounds of being immensely irritating. People can put down "around three billion" or something. It is annoying. Until we find a way to directly show population, that is. -- |Knoot|KNOOtalk 23:22, 20 Nov 2004 (GMT)

I'd love to find a way to use the XML feed for populations, delegates, flags, all that sort of thing ... but it doesn't look like MediaWiki will accept translation. If anyone can find a way to do it, I'd be delighted to update the templates so there is no further need, ever. → Fris Θtalk 23:40, 20 Nov 2004 (GMT)

With the Quebrada Ban as precedent, I believe we can consider regular (daily or otherwise frequent) population updates to be spam. Unless someone objects fairly soon, I'm going to add it to NSwiki:Policy. → Fris Θtalk 21:28, 22 Nov 2004 (GMT)


I've been doing a bit of hacking at the code (thank you MetaWiki for the help) and I wrote an extension that ought to do the trick. Unfortunately, when I attempt to run the code in the Sandbox, I get Warning: fopen(): URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/sc434/ns/wiki/extensions/NationPopExtension.php on line 36 and I'm not exactly sure how to enable it (or how it's disabled for that matter). Hopefully it's not server-side. --Goobergunch|? 22:01, 22 Nov 2004 (GMT)


To be honest, if people see something wrong, they will correct it- I agree that daily updates is ludicrous, but the link to NSEconomy is present in the Infobox:Nation at the bottom anyway. People urgent to view the population figures could just look there if it cannot be dynamically updated. Also Goober, about the php file-access - have you CHMODded the file on the server to 755? (Or enabled read and execute for all users if you're not running this on a UNIX server) That might help. IdioC- ?????talk 17:51, 6 Jan 2005 (GMT)

About using the XML translation, I think that you could just run a Perl script via CGI. Perl has built in XML translation. I'm not really sure though. I'm a rank beginner at Perl. User:Jjuulliiaann 00:36, 10 Mar 2005 (GMT)


Perhaps we could just use population ranges like 5 million - 500 million. 500 million - 1 billion. 1 billion - 2 billion and so on... User:ITD

We sort of do unofficiallly already, with '>' and '<' signs, but ranges is a good idea. Rechze(talk) 05:29, 9 Apr 2005 (GMT)

Couldn't agree more with ranges. This might be ambitious (If I could do php, I'd have a stab at it myself, in honesty), but if we could make the Nation input box solely form-generated (ie, people type in text fields, and select things from combo/list boxes) we could force population to suit the set ranges that would limit the updates. IdioC- エドの狂いtalk 15:45, 10 Apr 2005 (GMT)

I doubt this is feasible code-wise. Templates are sort of the wiki-version of forms, and I don't really know how such an interface could be created that wouldn't interfere with normal page editing. --Goobergunch|? 16:55, 10 Apr 2005 (GMT)
Fair enough. Can't argue with that. IdioC- エドの狂いtalk 18:32, 11 Apr 2005 (GMT)

With regard to your earlier 22 Nov 2005 post, Goobergunch, yes that's a server-side issue. My guess is that you used something like "fopen('http://www.nationstates.net/whatever','R')", which you're not allowed to do. In order for such things to be allowed, your server administrator needs to edit PHP.INI and set "allow_url_fopen" to "1" (as per PHP docs). Alternatively, you could use fsockopen() and read past the HTTP header. Sorry, I'm a computer programming nerd; I tend to say things like this... --LostLotheria 17:41, 14 Jul 2005 (GMT)

Thanks muchly, that looks like it will be very useful. I'll try implementing that and bringing back the extension after I run the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.5. That seems to keep getting pushed back due to personal RL issues, but I'm scheduling it for Sunday afternoon (Eastern Time). --Goobergunch|? 18:59, 15 Jul 2005 (GMT)

Religion and NPOV

There have been a number of discussions about specific doctrinal questions palying out on various member's Talk pages. Rather than having those discussions all over the place, I added the suggestion to Category:Religions that such conversations could be centralized on Category talk:Religions. I figure we'll never reach consensus on Religion, so might as well have a dedicated Talk topic for it. Frisbeeteria Θtalk 19:36, 22 Oct 2004 (GMT)

This may be a little slow on the uptake, but I just saw it, so no harm done. Anywho, I couldn't agree more, Fris. It astounds me that, even for a game that's not real-life in any way, shape or form, people still have the ability to argue over it. It's ridiculous. Let's hope the dedicated talk topic works to our advantage on the subject. Pacitalia >talk2me<

Blank and "To Be Continued" Pages

There have been some blank articles and TBCs at NSwiki:Deletion. But what can you come to a consensus on with a blank article? I think that we ought to make a decision here on whether to make blank articles speedy-delete candidates or permissible to stay, unless I haven't thought of a reason to have them as inclusion material. Personally, I believe we ought to delete them, as they don't bring any content to the wiki. → Ceo\squawk 01:15, December 4, 2005 (GMT)

I agree with speedy unless there was content before the article was blanked. Then I usually revert to the last version with content and pop an inclusion tag on it if it wasn't vandalblanking. --Goobergunch|? 00:36, 25 December 2005 (GMT)

Overcategorization Revisited

I'm seeing categories such as and that were created to put a resolution written by those authors in. The problem is, they only have one article (the resolution) and there isn't a nation page for them. It seems like an extention of alliance category decisions might be in order, to only have factbooks when there is a nation page for that nation? → Ceo \ squawk 02:40, 11 January 2006 (GMT)

I fully agree with this policy. There is no point adding a proposal to a category which does not exist. If the author later makes a category, it can always be added. Gruen2alk 03:32, 11 January 2006 (GMT)
I would also argue that a UN resolution is outside the scope of somebody's Factbook, as it becomes the UN's to do with as it wishes as soon as it's submitted. --Goobergunch|? 05:08, 11 January 2006 (GMT)
I could agree with that, although it might be hard to put by proposal authors, especially those proud of their proposals. → Ceo \ squawk 05:15, 11 January 2006 (GMT)
To be honest, I just find it handy to keep a track on who's submitted what. I don't think inclusion in a category implies 'ownership' to the extent of that resolution being exclusively part of that person's factbook. Nonetheless, it is for them probably an important part of their contribution to NS, and I don't see any reason to specifically exclude them from categories which do exist. Gruen2alk 05:28, 11 January 2006 (GMT)
It just seems to me a little like a minimization of the resolution, to add it to someone's factbook about the nation. → Ceo \ squawk 14:20, 11 January 2006 (GMT)

Decided issues

Alliance Categories

Do we have to make a new category out of every single multi-regional alliance just to list who the members are? It makes so much more sense to make a single page about that alliance, include the members, and then in that member region's page include that it is part of that alliance. The current system is a waste of bandwidth, cumbersome, and quite an eyesore. Canisius 03:09, 10 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Seems logical to me. I'm tying to come up with a standarized way of listing multiregional alliance memberships on region pages - categories seemed like the best way to do it at the time, but a better way is probably possible. Not sure how, though. --Goobergunch|? 16:37, 10 Oct 2004 (GMT)

I created the NSwiki:GenericInfoBox Member template specifically for the purpose. It's a bit cumbersome to set up the first time, but if there isn't a lot of movement in the membership it would work fine. I already did one up for the ADN - have a look. -- Frisbeeteria 21:37, 10 Oct 2004 (GMT)

I've substantially simplified the NSwiki:GenericInfoBox Member table and applied it to alliance pages where it looked like a good fit. Hope this resolves the issue. Frisbeeteria Θtalk 19:36, 22 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Copy-paste

I've just finished deleting (per consensus) a bunch of UN resolutions that were simply copy-pasted from the NationStates website. In my opinion, you shouldn't create an article that's simply copy-paste. However, articles on UN resolutions are fine if they have background information, in my opinion.

Taken from Talk:Fight the Axis of Evil:

Frisbeeteria: UN resolutions were copied en masse to the wiki, then left unlinked and un-wikified. Rather than taking the time to edit and upgrade all 77 resolutions to wiki standards, I'd suggest linking to the resolutions in the game. This is a simple process, thanks to the repeal provisions. By using this code:
[http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_past_resolutions/start=0 Fight the Axis of Evil]
becomes Fight the Axis of Evil. There is no need to clutter the wiki with this duplicate of game material when links are relatively easy. - Frisbeeteria 14:50, 10 Oct 2004 (GMT)
I concur, it's far easier to link then create an article for each resolution. If somebody wanted to make an article about each resolution (the story of its passage, etc.), that would be one thing, but this is just a waste of space. *waves a Save My Server Space sign* --Goobergunch|? 15:49, 10 Oct 2004 (GMT)

I'm proposing a policy along the lines of Copy-Paste Policy: In an effort to save NSwiki server space, please do not copy-paste complete texts unless they are either in the context of a more in-depth article or are hidden behind a forum registration requirement. --Goobergunch|? 17:16, 16 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Can't help but agree with this one... -- crimmer(Talk) 15:59, 17 Oct 2004 (GMT)
I've seen several nations grab the text from their NS nationpage as the sole text in their Nation page. Thanks to the news article, we're seeing a number of Nation pages for nations of less than 10 million. Not surprisingly, they don't have a great deal of RP history to post. While I happen to think this tactic is rather pointless (as it's already linked), I don't see any great harm in having three paragraphs per nation, hopefully as a placeholder for future additions and edits. Beyond that, I am in total agreement with Goobergunchia's position. Let's add it to NSwiki:Policy. Frisbeeteria Θtalk 16:19, 17 Oct 2004 (GMT)
I wanted to clarify the previous post. I don't see any harm in copying the NS nation description once as a placeholder. Having seen several nations making frequent updates to their wiki pages by simply copying today's list (or NSEconomy stats, or Region members, etc.) and updating their population, I'd like to stress that I do not include that as acceptable. If you're only replacing copied material with other copied material, then it shouldn't be edited at all. → Fris Θtalk 20:29, 9 Dec 2004 (GMT)

Regional Nation Spamming

We've noticed a recent increase in the creation of whole crops of regional Nation pages. One nation from a region will try to "help out" by creating basic infobox pages with a few fields copied from the NS site. The NSwiki:Administrators have ruled that this is also considered copy/paste spam. Let everyone experience the joys and trouble of creating their own pages, please. You're all more than welcome to advise them, guide them, even fix their errors once they get here ... but please wait until they get here to do so. → Fris Θtalk 23:28, 10 Dec 2004 (GMT)