User talk:Evilkolbot/archive2

Search results in the wiki with regard to capitalization of query vs result

For lack of a better place to ask, I thought I'd ask here. In recent discussion in another forum with regard to the choice adventure Getting a Leg Up, it was noted that the original poster couldn't find info in the wiki regarding this adventure because he was searching for getting a leg up. The search results yielded nothing helpful or otherwise to direct him to the proper link. Another user found the info the OP was looking for by searching through the choice adventure listing by number. What a roundabout way to find something, but great that it worked.

I myself have had issues with finding what I was looking for as a result of capitalization inconsistencies between what I was searching for and what the page was specifically. Is there a way that the search results for such things could list the expected links without regard to capitalization and let the user at least have options to click and check rather than nothing at all as a result? I do realize that capitalization matters, such as in the cases of urchin urchin vs Urchin Urchin and groupie groupie vs Groupie Groupie. Each of which has a redirection to the other to help users out in finding what they are looking for. But in the case of the above-mentioned choice adventure, when nothing shows up, how does one know what went wrong with their query? It was suggested that this might be an issue with the wiki itself, is it? I have no idea.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree, my apologies. Thanks in advance for any insight or solution. --Spiny Twizzler 00:21, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

• (Apologies to EvilKolbot, but I saw this on RecentChanges) The problem is that MediaWiki's search/file system don't always work well together. It really kind of pitches a fit whenever there's a lowercase word before an uppercase letter. You'd have to get in touch with someone on the ColdFront staff to upgrade MediaWiki since later versions of the search aren't as bad.--Toffile 00:56, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
• Ordinarily I'm a fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, searching for something viable and not finding a result of any kind simply due to capitalization failure is not intuitive in general and that seems broken to me. On the other hand, I've no idea how difficult or disruptive an upgrade would be, so I'm willing to let this be if need be, though it would be helpful if it were repairable without too much trouble. As for asking on Evilkolbot's page... he is someone that I associate as "the face of the wiki" and I guess that's not entirely fair, but that's how my query ended up here and not on another admin's page. Thanks for the response Toffile.--Spiny Twizzler 02:03, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
  • toffile, no problem.
  • "face of the wiki?" aw shucks, you're too kind.
  • the wiki search is probably about the worst one that's still functional i've come across. from a lot of experience and a little guessing i think what happens is this (Quietust knows as always what really happens but he's not here: i'm sure when he gets here he'll correct me)
    1. it searches for a page with the exact text as its name;
    2. if not found, it does a search for pages whose name is the proper case version of the text (i.e. with the first and every letter after a space capitalised: this is not how tptb do it, they use title case, where prepositions and articles are left lower case);
    3. if not found, it does a search for pages whose name is the lower case version of the text;
    4. otherwise, it removes all words of three letters or less, and any prepositions and/or common words (e.g. then/about) and does a search for all the remaining words ORed. that is, any page name containing any of the words.
  • your search for "getting a leg up" fails on two grounds. firstly because the page name is title cased (the a is not capitalised) and secondly because none of the words is included in the wiki indexing.
  • this really blows.
  • in this case it's ok to add a redirect for the lowercase version of the page. in fact, although my hatred of rules prevents me from saying this, if you search for the lower case version of a page's name and the wiki doesn't find it, add the redirect there and then. being very, very careful that it's not your misspelling that's the problem.
  • still, wiki searching is better than it used to be, and i'm all for upgrading everything as soon as possible. IIRC there's outstanding issues with templates that an upgrade will fix too, so perhaps you could find the ear of one of the coldfront admins and whisper a little.
  • hope this all makes sense. --Evilkolbot 10:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
    • sorry to double post, but it occurs to me that the original complaint was about not finding a page. i needed to use google, searching for getting a leg up site:kol.coldfront.net where it is the first result. --Evilkolbot 10:34, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
      • A while back, I determined exactly how MediaWiki did its searches and documented it somewhere on this wiki (exactly where, I don't know). Suffice to say that if a page name is "Completely In Title Case" (i.e. every single word) or all lowercase, then you can search for it with any type of capitalization you want (even random caps in the middle of words) and it'll figure it out. --Quietust (t|c) 14:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
    • Thanks for input all. I can try to whisper to a coldfront admin (assuming I knew who they were), but it might be better coming from a Wiki admin who can be more compelling with a plethora of reasons as to why such an upgrade might be warranted.--Spiny Twizzler 20:48, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Leaving a clan

Per your question in the changelog of the colorful plastic ball page: You can leave a clan by going to the 'Clan Members' page, scrolling to the bottom and clicking the "Leave Clan" button. --AtroPhied 12:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• thanks. booting removes you from the witelist, too, so that's especially welcome. --Evilkolbot 12:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Nightvol

• Your attempt at humour only confused and threatened. I completely appreciate the effort you're putting in, but sometimes it's good to speak softly since you've already got the big stick. --CG1:t,c,e 00:00, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
  • i feel chastened. an new year, a resolution to remember that with great power comes great responsibility. --Evilkolbot 11:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Snapshot

All's well that ends well, I say. It is more convenient for the user like this, and it's totally cool making a script that so many people use. Now all I have to do is fix the surprisingly high number of bugs in it. Life, eh? --bumcheekcity 23:33, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Standards

Evilkolbot I apologize for breaking standards. I must confess that i did not completely read all the rules and that in itself is a bad thing. I figured that since it was a discussion page and not the main article that it did not matter and thinking back on that it was stupid action. I was not intentionally trying to be rude or difficult. I am unsure if it is ok to post this here also. Please delete this if so. I have started appreciating the Haiku format the more i read the page and probably should have just posted that comment then trying to remove my previous. I will strive to be much more compliant in the future if i make any posts. Also if possible could you point me to the appropriate standards page. I see the one for the main article editing but want to make sure i understand all the rules. Again sorry Rovorcen 13:11, 9 September 2008 (CDT)

• that's ok, as the comment said it's a heads up, not a reprimand. as far as i know most things here are done by consensus and precedent, so i'm not sure i could point you to the rules. hang about, listen to what's said and try to fit in. --Evilkolbot 14:08, 9 September 2008 (CDT)

Thanks for the warning, I was not aware that I was breaking the rules, Thanks for the advice too. --Drok 4:50 PM 9th, September 2008 (MST)

Re: Talk:Drunkenness - the unsigned comment you've tagged as mine was from User:Xmakina, not me (diff). I've not been around the wiki as an editor for very long so I figured it's better to mention it to you rather than potentially incur bad karma by fixing it myself (not sure of the etiquette, given that it's on a talk page but not an actual comment). Cheers. --GalenKemensen 12:54, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• gah, sorry. should be more careful. i'll fix it. --Evilkolbot 16:57, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Recent Changes cleanup

Just thought I'd mention a slightly easier method of cleaning up user page edit spam from the Recent Changes list - rather than delete the page and then re-create it with the text of the last edit, just delete it and then undelete it with however many revisions you prefer. It's much simpler to just restore the latest revision (since you don't have to check all of those checkboxes), but even if you restore every single revision, it won't list any of them in the Recent Changes list; as an added bonus, your name won't be added to the page's revision history (for users who might be sensitive about that sort of thing). --Quietust (t|c) 23:33, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

• thanks for the heads up. --Evilkolbot 07:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Stench

I think we're going to need to contact the Coldfront admins to get this one fixed - I've tried undeleting the article (not the first time I've seen this happen - the last time was by my own hands, so you're definitely not alone), but every time MySQL returns error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (mysql.coldfront.net)". I've never seen any other site do this (at all, let alone how frequently Coldfront does it), and undeleting an article with 144 revisions should not be that big of an operation. --Quietust (t|c) 21:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Ah, I see you've managed to get it undeleted - still, Coldfront really needs to do something about these database performance problems (first they were causing bulk updates to kill the site, which was "solved" by making the queue only process one single page per 100 pageloads, resulting in a big template edit taking days to propagate). --Quietust (t|c) 21:45, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

What do you mean by "That's not how it's done" when you talk about archiving? I used the archives of Discussion as an example, since I couldn't find an established standard or policy or anything for archiving. If that's not "How it's done" then how is it done? The whole point of an archive is to maintain the old talk page information while keeping the main talk page readable. --Lordebon 22:18, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

• i was wrong. sorry again. --Evilkolbot 22:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The Fresh-faced Young people in the Neighborhood

I was very much aware of that reference. I just couldn't bear the pain of typing out something involving them. Thanks for doing that for me. But what's with the "Pop culture references are hard" line in the actual page, though? --Flargen 19:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

• because the reference seems to imply that whoever wrote it thought that "the right stuff" was a new kids album. --Evilkolbot 19:13, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Personal page

Please note that the edits I have been making have been safely ensconced on my personal page. There is no way anyone could find them other than by linking either a) directly to them or b) clicking a link that exists only one place: my personal page. They therefor do not interfere with the operation of the wiki, and are created for a contest currently being run by Senams Provocable Nice Guys.--Icelight 20:19, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

• you're mistaken. they exist in the main space and are therefore everybody's business. see your talk for some ideas on how you can go about what you want to do. --Evilkolbot 20:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Re: PythagoraSwitch

Hi - it's a bit pedantic to point this out, but in fact the Wikipedia article isn't internally consistent because "Pitagora Suitchi" also appears a little further down the page. Suitchi / Suicchi are more accurate romanisations; it's possible to sit down and laboriously match each syllable to its "letter" even if you don't read Japanese. But, on reflection, I realise the transliteration was pretty pointless anyway, so I won't try to add it back. Sorry for any confusion about the discrepancy. ~ Redwinger (talk) 17:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• the beauty of wikis is that if you spot something sub-optimal you can change it. its tragedy is that there are not enough people with exactly the right flavours of ocd to tidy up effectively. maybe some other time. --Evilkolbot 19:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Money in KoL

I don't think the Spanish flies count as money, because you can only get one thing from them (an Around the World). The other currencies can be used to purchase multiple items; flies - and, last Crimbo, fat stacks of cash - can only be bartered. You give the NPC the flies/cash; he gives you something of his choosing back (around the world/some kind of Crimbo crate). True money can be used to buy something of the customer's choosing. -Captain Video 21:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• i disagree. currency is something which has no value in itself, but can be swapped for something else. so flies count. the "loads of stuff" criterion is just laughably lame. --Evilkolbot 21:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  • Fair enough - let's go to the dictionary! Dictionary.com defines money, among other things, as "any article or substance used as a medium of exchange, measure of wealth, or means of payment, as checks on demand deposit or cowrie." Dictionary.com defines cowrie as "the highly polished, usually brightly colored shell of a marine gastropod of the genus Cypraea, as that of C. moneta (money cowrie), used as money in certain parts of Asia and Africa, or that of C. tigris, used for ornament." Dictionary.com needs to get its house in order, honestly. However, I believe the assertion that "any article or substance used as a medium of exchange" is a good benchmark, and so flies do, in fact, count. I'll let you add that one to the list in your own wording. -Captain Video 22:09, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Question

• How does one become an Admin? --Icon315 20:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
  • i don't know. in my case User:Jinya asked me. i would imagine you get a certain number of edits accepted, show yourself to be committed and useful, you get asked. as with chat-mod-dom, asking "How does one become an Admin?" is probably disqualification in itself. --Evilkolbot 20:56, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

sword oopsie

I knew for sure that I messed up when I checked my inventory after I did the 'undo' and couldn't edit my undo message to let everyone else know I had it straight. Thanks, tho. :)--Tingly 20:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

• that's ok. had i thought it was more than a slip, i'd have been more explanatory. ;) --Evilkolbot 09:21, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

User talk editing

For what it's worth, even wikipedia allows a user to blank their own talk page.

"Editors are granted considerable latitude over editing their own userspace pages (including talk pages), and blanking one's own user talk page is specifically not prohibited. A policy of prohibiting users from removing warnings from their own talk pages was considered and rejected on the grounds that it would create more issues than it would solve."

Editing someone else's comment, even on your own talk, is clearly jackassery. But I think we should allow user's to remove comments they don't like from their user pages. (Even if their motive seems a little silly/childish.) --Starwed 21:24, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

• i disagree. well, not entirely. wikipedia are better at this than me, i guess, and perhaps i should back off forcing people to have my finely crafted prose on their talk forever. if you blank it then you've read it. i stand corrected. --Evilkolbot 21:41, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Banana Lord

Uh, how exactly would bumcheekcity be able to help him assemble a farming guide? Especially when you gave him a link to a Mafia script that has absolutely nothing to do with what's on his user page...(oh and not to mention, the page is actually less than 10kb).--Toffile 21:45, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

• it's a big page, which, it was agreed, would no longer be tolerated. the message is generic, as is its message. if the first seems inappropriate then the second still holds. user pages under 10k in total. perhaps had he put it in a clearly labelled sub-page (User:Banana_lord/FarmingGuide, perhaps) there wouldn't have been so much confusion. i'll apologise in his talk page. --Evilkolbot 12:23, 16 October 2010 (UTC)