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)

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)

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)