Talk:Main Page

Rob tells me the CSS on this page looks horrible. I'm going to try simplifying it. There's no way div heights could be a good idea here. -- David Welbourn 04:48, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

The change is a definite improvement from where I'm standing. - Maga 05:38, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

And I figured out that the <center> tag is turned into <div> tags and messes with CSS stuff. I removed them. --David Cornelson 12:10, 15 Jan 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Is there a place yet on this site to discuss what features we would like to see in the future? For instance, I think it would be nice to have a page that lists all of the users of ifWiki. -- --Gtwade 13:19, 15 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

To Gtwade: That feature's already here: Special:Listusers. I found it by clicking on the Special Pages link over in the "toolbox". -- David Welbourn 21:25, 15 Feb 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Greetings everyone. I have some time to offer, and am a IF supporter and archiver. Instead of using <center> tags, try using "align=center" within tags, eg. use <h3 align=center>My Title Here</h3> instead of "<center><h3>xyz</h3></center>" I would suggest two points- make the Community Portal into an active discussion forum. One good forum package is at http://www.invisionboard.com/. Second point- add a short IF community links page, giving credit to well-run websites that link to here, eg. Baf's Guide at http://www.wurb.com/if/ currently links to ifwiki.org. Thanks. regards ;) --Eric.xyzzy 09:29, 6 Mar 2005 (Central Standard Time)

greetings

Nice site! Perhaps you should consider hosting some WikiIF as well. Uncyclopedia has rather stolen the march on this with their Zork Game. What do you say the real IF community does something to catch up? --Nerd42 20:01, 1 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)

• Personally, that's not the sort of thing I'd want on the IFWiki, but that's just me. Incidently, this idea has come up before; see Wiki Based Interactive Fiction System (Talk). Although now that I look at it again, that's not really the same thing as you're suggesting. -- David Welbourn 04:21, 2 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time) (edited)
• Well ... all wikiIF pages could have their own namespace so it could be kept seperate from the actual encyclopedia articles ... oh never mind. It's your site, do what you like with it. ;) --Nerd42 16:08, 2 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)

by the way, I heard somebody over at wikicities has already suggested having a wikicity entirely devoted to writing WikiIF ... but I don't know if it's actually going to happen. That'd be neat though --Nerd42 11:36, 7 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)

• NEW: I see that Nerd42 has found the Novelas fiction wikia for hosting works of WikiIF; see http://novelas.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Interactive_Fiction which Nerd42 has created to host his short 3Wishes game. -- David Welbourn 22:13, 15 June 2006 (EST)

Well, yeah, but 3Wishes wasn't really intended as, like, a publishable work of IF - I mean, it was like a demo/example of how to write stories - like a template for people to copy. And then someone did but if you're going to count those, there is also a large Homestar Runner Wiki IF writing group that has new games coming out all the time. --Nerd42 15:07, 13 October 2006 (EST)

Porter's Section

Could we have a page for those of us trying to convert old adventures and old adventure systems (e.g. Scott Adams, Magnetic Scrolls ad nauseam - akin to a wiki form of if-legends). As I have a few scribbles of code and notes that may benefit others, but don't fit within any of the if-legends sub-pages. --David Lodge 20:12, 16 Nov 2005 (Greenwich Meantime)

• Sure, I don't see any obvious problems with that on the wiki. Go ahead and create them. If there are license issues, make sure you change the license of the relevant pages from the default public domain declaration to something more appropriate. We already have Category:Scott Adams and Category:Magnetic Scrolls to put pages in. We could also create a Porting category, if that would be useful; we already have a similar category called Category:Rakontointeraktiva for Non-English porting efforts. I don't know how to advise you properly on how to name your pages without more details, though. I'm guessing you'll want pages like "Examples of Magnetic Scrolls code", "Magnetic Scrolls to Inform", "Porting advice", and so on. -- David Welbourn 18:03, 16 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)
  • Okay, What I'll do is add the pages under the publisher section, and then link notes to the Category, I've started with the Robico Software Section. --David Lodge 19:37, 19 Nov 2005 (Greenwich Meantime)

Wikibugs

The login/account creation system seems kinda buggy. I forgot my password so I hit the "Mail me a new password" button, which results in an error message (Error sending mail: mail() [<a href='function.mail'>function.mail</a>]: "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing)

Then I tried crreating a new account, but since I was using the same mail address as with my original account, another half page of page occurred (A database error has occurred Query: INSERT INTO `ifwiki_objectcache` (keyname,value,exptime) VALUES('wikidb:messages:Sitenotice','+¶2°RR²?\0','2005-11-30 16:16:54') Function: MediaWikiBagOStuff:_doquery" and so on)

Anyone willing to fix this? PDD3 10:17, 30 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)

I have several tasks on my list and plan to get to this at some point. I don't see anything happening before 2006 though. --David Cornelson 11:21, 30 Nov 2005 (Central Standard Time)

Current events notice?

I think I have a good idea. I have an ulterior motive for giving it, but I think it's a good idea just the same.

Below the "Land of FAQ" area, there was recently a box giving a notice about the XYZZY Awards winners. I was just thinking, wouldn't it be cool if that box were there year-round, with its contents changing based on current events of the IF community?

My ulterior motive is that I'd like people to be aware of my Spring Thing competition, which is going on right now. But there are also other things to announce... IntroComp is coming up, LoTech Comp is coming up, just to give a couple of comp examples.

My thought is that that box need not contain big text. If the text were smaller, it could more easily contain announcements about more than one current event, whenever appropriate.

Anyway, take this idea and do what you want with it. I'd be interested to hear people's reactions. -- Greg Boettcher

• I have thought a teensy bit about this kind of idea before, and of course, the info you want is already at Current events#Competitions & Contest News. It's just a matter of a) how do I summarize that really succinctly, and where on the Main Page would it squeeze in? My current thinking is to squeeze the bottom section over to the left and put a comp news summary to its right and under the Feature Article section. The summarization question is more difficult to answer. -- David Welbourn 16:19, 3 April 2006 (EST)
• Okay, I've tried to add a new section to the Main Page. It's not very pretty, but it's a start. -- David Welbourn 17:24, 3 April 2006 (EST)
• I think it looks really good. I didn't have in mind just comp news, but maybe that is most of what news there is, after all. You solved both of the two issues you mentioned really well. Yay! -- Greg Boettcher 19:45, 3 April 2006 (Central Daylight Time)

I'm wondering if there shouldn't be a section on the front page for the current month's news -- for example, current happenings like IFMonth could share space with the current competitions? Events and competitions seem equally 'current' but the competitions get the benefit of the front page as it is. George 18:47, 17 February 2009 (PST)

• It's the 23rd of the month, and IFMonth doesn't even have a page on IFWiki yet. I only got around today to announcing XYZZY Awards are in second-round voting. The BINGO board still proclaims 'Summer fun' even though it's now February. And I haven't been keeping up with the Current events page either, which is supposedly where events are primarly announced. Frankly, I personally don't have the time to keep everything current; I'd rather analyze and document things in my own time. Yes, I could make a section on the front page for current news, but who will edit it? We only have a small number of dedicated editors around here, and I'm sure they're already doing as much as they have time for as it is. -- David Welbourn 14:55, 23 February 2009 (PST)
• IFMonth did have a mention on the current February news, on the 17th. I wasn't asking for people to do more than they're doing now, but if it makes sense for the competition news to give up some space for the current month's news -- I thought the main page was created somehow automatically, but it sounds like someone would have to change links every month, rather than the Main page pulling from a 'current month' section? George 20:34, 27 February 2009 (PST)
• Parts of the Main Page are built from templates (Template:Main announcement, Template:Feature article, etc.) but the only 'automatic' part of that is how the content of Template:Feature theme appears to cycle, based on a day-of-the-month system variable called CURRENTDAY. So, it's possible to do something similar with a news template using a system variable for the current month -- and making sure both the Current events and Main Page pages use them, because otherwise there's no savings at all if the content isn't identical. But I kinda hesitate to do all that since the content is already there on Current events. Why duplicate that info on the Main Page? It bothers me already that we're duplicating competition news info; that wasn't my idea. Obviously, why not duplicate the games released this month section as well? If we're going to put all the news on the Main Page, why bother to maintain Current events? -- David Welbourn 03:47, 1 March 2009 (PST)
• Yes, I see your point. So the question is whether there is a workable scheme whereby the 'most current' of current events in recent competitions, upcoming competitions, game releases, and news and reviews could be displayed on the main page in such a way that people would only have to edit the Current events page (and not be worried about breaking something). I think this has value because as far as I know there isn't any other IF page that has this kind of latest news in one spot. However it doesn't seem possible without a complete restructuring of the current events page as it stands. George 11:04, 11 March 2009 (PDT)

CGDC deadline

Re: judging CGDC #7, paste from an email sent to the registered judges: Deadline for judging is: Monday, February 22nd at 12:01AM (GMT-5:00) Mordred 11:03, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I've made the changes. --Eriorg 12:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Requests

Could someone with permissions add CreatureComp to the list of upcoming competitions? The deadline is September 22nd. Thanks ! - David Fisher

• Sure. I should perhaps mention that that section is currently done by editing Template:Comp news; you don't need to directly edit the Main Page for that. -- David Welbourn 04:17, 22 August 2006 (EST)

TADS 3 announcement?

Considering the way in which Inform 7 was trumpeted on this page in a big bold box last spring, I think it'd be nice to do something similar for TADS 3, now that its general release has finally come out. -- Greg Boettcher 16 September 2006

• This message is way too late, but I just wanted to say that I did notice the fact that you responded to my request, and I wanted to say thanks to all concerned. -- Greg Boettcher 16 November 2006

wikipedia

i've been creating individual pages on en.wikipedia.org for all the XYZZY "Best Game" winners [1] and all the IFComp winners [2] down the years. they pass wikipedia notability requirements by virtue of winning the 2 biggest prizes in IF. but they're just stubs so wondering if they could be expanded somehow?

also, a lot of those game articles dont have corresponding game articles here, so would it be possible to just copy and paste those to ifwiki? Nespresso 18:00, 15 December 2006 (EST)

I can't really advise you very well about expanding Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is a bit out of my league and I have no experience editing articles there. I would first study other (non-IF) game articles on Wikipedia for ideas on what sort of info they like and try to do the comparable stuff for the IF articles. Since Wikipedia likes citations and doesn't like "weasel words", you'll probably want to back up any assertions with links to reviews or r*if threards about the games, I think. If you're merely asking for manpower to edit those articles, well, personally, I'll have to decline. I've got enough on my plate with this wiki right here.

As for copying info from Wikipedia to IFWiki, there's two issues that have to be addressed: the layout differences and the copyright issue. I'm not going to be too dictorial on stub files that are incorrectly formatted. After all, they're stubs; they're meant to be edited later anyway. (If it's not a stub you're copying, we'll probably need to slap a Needs work template on the page to remind us to fix it.) The copyright issue is more stomach-churning, since IFWiki is public domain and Wikipedia is not. Which means that either the copyright has to be brought over with it OR you can't do a simple cut-n-paste and you'll have to reword it over here. Unless I'm misunderstanding the whole thing, which is entirely possible. -- David Welbourn 08:41, 16 December 2006 (EST)

Editing the main page

I recently found out that the main page is (maybe?) made from several templates. Is everyone welcome to edit those templates? As they seem rather valuable I assume not. Thanks in advance. ---- Cassandra Palop 08:04, 13 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, the main page is made from the Main Page templates.

I don't really know if people are welcome to edit those templates (I'm not an IFWiki administrator). But I did edit one or two of them and nobody complained. In particular, I think it can't hurt if we make the Competition News template as up-to-date as we can. But the others should probably be left alone... although, once, I couldn't resist adding a shameless self-advertisement to the Feature article, but at least it was definitely on-topic.

I suppose you can edit them if you're quite sure of your changes -- if you want to correct typos or out-of-date info, for instance. Otherwise, it's probably better to use the Template Talk pages. --Eriorg 14:29, 13 February 2007 (EST)

Yes, people are allowed to edit the templates, especially if they are adding content, improving them, fixing typos, and so on, just like any other page. (Spammers, however, are not welcome to edit them.) If you want to make drastic changes to a template, it would be a courtesy to discuss the proposed change on the template's talk page first, though. And if you want to change icons or graphics in a template, I'd like to be asked first, please. But in most normal cases, you can just go and edit it without asking. -- David Welbourn 19:02, 13 February 2007 (EST)

Thanks, I learn by induction. :) -- Cassandra Palop 04:29, 15 February 2007 (EST)

Er, I just added "Innovation Comp" to Template:Comp news - it works fine if you view the template page directly, but on the main page it appears as a non-existent link (and puts you in Edit mode if you click on it). The "Innovation Comp" does actually exist, though ...

It's a normal link now. I'm unclear on exactly how the wiki software works, but I've always noticed that there's some delay in changes in one part of the wiki getting recognized by other pages in the wiki that refer to the changed page. I've seen red links for newly created pages, categories that still list pages that were just deleted, and pages still using an older version of a template that was just changed. As far as I know, time fixes these "errors". It's just not as instant as we would like. -- David Welbourn 19:48, 7 March 2007 (EST)

Adding References Support

Please consider adding references support to this installation. The instructions for adding it are here. It is a simple addition but makes citations many times easier. --Jason Scott 13:01, 4 October 2007 (PDT)

Forgotten Talk Pages

I think the comments on the Talk pages tend to be forgotten when they aren't answered quickly enough (i.e. before they're no longer in the Recent changes page).

There are lists of all the Talk pages, including the old ones, in All pages (Talk namespace) and similar pages, but they're not very readable, because they also list all the comments which were answered.

I suggest that we could create a page with an index of all the Talk pages (or sections from Talk pages) which still need answers, and another index of all the Talk pages which were satisfyingly answered (or didn't really need an answer).

But maybe there is a better solution I didn't think of? --Eriorg 17:57, 4 February 2008 (PST)

On the Recent changes page, you can change the namespace to, for example, only look at recent changes in the Talk namespace. Personally, I have no interest in trying to handmake an index of unanswered Talk pages; it'd be far easier to just answer them! If questions aren't being answered, it might be because no one wants to answer it, doesn't have the time, doesn't know how to answer the question, or some other reason. Sometimes I don't answer questions because I want to see if someone else will answer instead. Like, see Talk:AIF where it was suggested that the article isn't balanced etc., that we should solicit AIF people to rewrite it etc. Considering the history of that article, it didn't seem right for me personally to answer that one. At least not until other voices had weighed in. -- David Welbourn 03:34, 7 February 2008 (PST)

FAQ License

The section on the main page about the FAQ should say that it's licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license. --Sopoforic 06:23, 11 March 2008 (PDT)

Okay, fixed. Hope that's better. -- David Welbourn 12:53, 11 March 2008 (PDT)

More Game Information

The current framework for a game page contains useful information for people who are looking for a game to play, but almost nothing else. We don't have section on synopses, on the reception of the game, lists of NPCs, possible endings, and so on. Is there some kind of policy against spoilery information, or is it just something we haven't gotten around to yet? VictorGijsbers 13:14, 19 July 2008 (PDT)

I'm not sure, but I think that such spoilery information is allowed, as long as it's on a separate spoiler page (on the game page itself, there should be no spoilers, only a link to that spoiler page: see Games (style guide)#Spoilers) and there's a {{spoiler}} template. There are already two spoiler pages, created by Cassandra Palop: see Category:Spoilers. (I don't think "User:Cassandra Palop/(etc.)" is the best choice for the page names, though...) --Eriorg 03:11, 20 July 2008 (PDT)

Very general non-spoilery synopses (ala the "About the Story" at IFDB) can go near the top of a game page, just under the genre icons. I should edit the style page to show that's permitted. However, a full spoilery synopsis belongs on a spoiler page.

Spoilers are mostly something we haven't got around to yet. And yes, they should go on a separate spoiler page, e.g: "The Gostak/Spoilers" and put in the Spoilers category. I've been wanting to make, for example, a "Worlds Apart/Spoilers" page with all the vocabulary in it, and a Who's Who or Dramatis Personae for various other games for quite some time, but, well, I just haven't done it yet. Look how many games don't even have pages yet, or don't even have "How It Begins" yet.

Reception to the game may go in either the Notable Features or the Trivia and Comments sections, I think, depending on what you're actually commenting on. General comments like "Galatea was rated 4.5 stars on IFDB as of February 30, 2008." or "1-2-3... offended several players by insulting another author." may go in the Trivia section. Comments about game features may be appended to the paragraph about that feature in the Notable Features section. -- David Welbourn 13:02, 20 July 2008 (PDT)

Dead links on the IFWiki

The IFWiki contains many many links to other websites, and that's a good thing. But inevitably, some of them become dead links sooner or later, and that's a problem.

In general, when I find dead links, I try to fix them (with the new address or a link to the Internet Archive, if possible). But I'm sure we miss many other dead links: we can't manually check every single link from every single page regularly!

So, my question is: is there a tool for automatic search for dead links on a whole wiki? If there is, an administrator could use it from time to time and publish the results on an IFWiki page, and the contributors could try to fix at least some of them. --Eriorg 20:50, 31 October 2008 (PDT)

• I don't know of such a tool -- I don't see something like that listed on the Special Pages page -- but maybe there's one out there somewhere on the web. I suppose we can at least start a page for documenting when a site disappears or moves. How does IFWiki:Dead links sound as a suitable page name for it? -- David Welbourn 07:51, 1 November 2008 (PDT)

IFWiki:Dead links is a good page name.

There seem to be many such tools available on the web; I've found several with Google, at least. But most of them were for websites in general, not particularly for wikis, and I don't know if they were appropriate for a really big site like IFWiki.

But the link I've found which looked the most interesting is there. Apparently, a bot had searched for dead links on that wiki and automatically mentioned them on the Talk Pages; and it even mentioned the relevant Internet archive links! This bot seems to use Python wikipedia robot framework.

Warning: I never used it, so I have absolutely no idea whether it's safe (I hope it can't cause damage!) or whether it's any good. It might be a good idea to ask someone who actually knows about such things before using it!... --Eriorg 13:15, 1 November 2008 (PDT)

Gnusto

Hello. I'm the original author of the Gnusto Z-machine-based terp, on which you don't have an article, though you do have one on Parchment, which uses Gnusto's engine. I can expand the page on Parchment a good deal, but most of the questions asked on that page concern the Gnusto engine rather than Parchment itself. Is it all right if I break it out into two pages? Marnanel 00:43, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Of course that's all right. I'll take all the help I can get on understanding interpreters better. And thank you. -- David Welbourn 10:32, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing icons

Is seems a log of icons are missing for some reason:

http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Category:IFWiki_icons

What happened to them? It's now extremely common to find articles using at least one missing icon and having an empty box appear instead. RealNC 00:50, 17 July 2011 (PDT)

• Huh. That's disturbing. I have no idea why they'd vanish. -- David Welbourn 11:00, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
• Hm. It's not just icons; some cover art is missing too. There doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern to it and there's nothing obvious in their histories; no one's been deleting them on purpose. I do remember that the IFWiki logo itself vanished for a while until I pointed out its absence to baf; perhaps this is more of the same thing, where it didn't get backed up somehow or whatever it was. Sigh. Guess I'll have to ask baf to look into it. -- David Welbourn 11:10, 17 July 2011 (PDT)
• Thank you, baf! baf said, "I don't know what makes the files disappear, but I'm seeing a grand total of 164 images in a backup made in March that aren't in the current wiki." So he copied them back over. Our best guess at the moment is that it was a side effect of upgrading the wiki software. Maybe. -- David Welbourn 14:55, 19 July 2011 (PDT)
  • Well, now other images have disappeared. This wiki has obviously been hacked. See: http://www.ifwiki.org/images/ (it even says "Hacked By W-n0K" :-P) RealNC 15:26, 21 July 2011 (PDT)
  • ACK! That's just cruel. [Expletive.] I'll talk to baf again, see if we can fix it. I have no idea how that happened; I don't even know how to access that myself. -- David Welbourn 02:34, 22 July 2011 (PDT)
• Was the problem solved? It seems that there are still some images missing... --Eriorg 05:41, 29 July 2011 (PDT)

Suggestion for a date/time widget for the front page

Thursday 20 March 2025 17:32 UTC Welcome to ifwiki.org, the Interactive Fiction Wiki

The code in this section (only visible through Edit), if placed at the beginning of the front page, would place the date/time box which appears to the right of this message, on the right edge at the top of the front page. Tdarcos 23:23, 8 October 2011 (PDT)

• I fail to see the point of this widget. We already have the date in larger print on the front page. There's no particular reason to have the time of day displayed, and if we did, I'd like to have a better contrast so it's more readable. And what would it be to the right of? There's not usually an empty space on the right-side of the main announcement. I'd prefer not to fill the space with cruft. -- David Welbourn 21:52, 9 October 2011 (PDT)

Fun with the spam protection

When you make a new external link, you have to type in a Catchpa to show that you are not a spam bot. Even if you are a registered user; even if you have been a registered user for years; even if you have already done the Catchpa test 27 times that day. This is, of course, supremely irritating, and if something can be done about it I would be delighted.

In the meantime, though, let me show my favourites among the Catchpa tests that IFWiki asked me to type in today:

Catchpa 1, Catchpa 2.

At least we can be sure that no spambot will ever make it through this test! -- VictorGijsbers 05:12, 22 October 2011

• hm, I'm sure this topic has come up before, that is, to create a category of trusted users who can bypass the captcha requirement. And obviously, we haven't implemented that yet. I'm willing to add such a category, but I can't implement it myself. I'll have to ask baf. I'll go send him an email about it. (Also, please remember to sign your posts via the ~~~~ trick. Thanks.) -- David Welbourn 17:19, 22 October 2011 (PDT)
• and Hooray, baf has come through! We now have IFWiki:TrustedUsers, members of which should no longer be deviled by captchas on IFWiki. (And, of course, I've made you a member of that group.) Let us know if there are any further problems like this. -- David Welbourn 02:11, 23 October 2011 (PDT)
  • Great, thanks! VictorGijsbers 02:47, 23 October 2011 (PDT)