Project:Editing Discussion/Archive 02

This is an open forum for people to discuss this wiki, ala the Wikipedia "Village pump". This is not for general discussion of Second Life. For that, please refer to the forums

Feel free to add your comments below.

What should this be called?

I used "Village pump" as a working name. If it sticks, that's fine. I thought about using a Second Life themed name (e.g. The Telehub), but then realized that there could be confusion between that page and a future Telehub page which actually describes what Telehubs are. Maybe the "Hippo Pond"? -- Rob Linden 18:29, 13 May 2007 (PDT)

That names sounds ok, but what should the namespace be? -- Strife Onizuka 18:44, 13 May 2007 (PDT)

I'm using the same guidelines as other wikis (like Wikipedia's village pump, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project:Village_pump ), though I'll admit it's a little confusing in this case. One really irritating thing about MediaWiki is that it assumes that the name of the wiki ("Second Life Wiki") is a term that is appropriate to use as a namespace identifier, because it works for Wikipedia. So, we either have to shorten the name of the wiki ("SLWiki", which I think was already being used by someone else), or use "Project". I opted for the latter in configuring this wiki. -- Rob Linden 10:55, 14 May 2007 (PDT)

Guidelines

Given past experiences with the forums, some moderation will need to be done. -- Strife Onizuka 18:44, 13 May 2007 (PDT)

I suggest keeping it simple. If it is the only SL Forum call it 'SL Forum'. If it is the SL People's Forum then call it that.Errol Carter

Purpose

How does this 'forum' differ from the Second Life Forum? (except that this one is accessable by free-accounts)--Vernes Veranes 18:14, 1 June 2007 (PDT)

This is specifically a place to discuss the wiki itself, not Second Life generally. -- Rob Linden 18:19, 1 June 2007 (PDT)

Policy Section

To discuss existing and proposed policies

Licensing

Q. Residents have begun to share sculpt maps, textures, and sculpted prims on the wiki. According to the General Disclaimer, "Linden Lab will make your contribution available under the Creative Comments (sic) Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license". (cf. Contribution Agreement and the Copyrights Project). Will residents be able to choose other licenses (a different Creative Commons license, GPL, or the Free Art License for example) if they wish to do so? — Yuu Nakamichi 01:08, 4 June 2007 (PDT)

A.: No, not if you host it here. It's just too complicated. You may link to differently licensed material, but please don't expect to choose your own license for information you upload here. -- Rob Linden 11:35, 18 July 2007 (PDT)

Project page vs. Project discussion page

Discussion should occur on the discussion page; with this project page itself being an overview rather than the actual discussion.

Is this correct? --JetZep Zabelin 20:01, 27 September 2007 (PDT)

Well, this page is kind of the exception to the rule, since it's specifically identified as a discussion page. But yes, in general, discussion should go on the discussion page. I thought about putting a redirect from here straight to Project talk:Editing Discussion, but thought better of it. -- Rob Linden 20:59, 27 September 2007 (PDT)

Persistent Logins

Q. Can we please have persistent logins here? I really don't see the need for having to log in each time, it's annoying; but even more annoying is being in the middle of an edit, getting called away, coming back, finishing the edit, clicking the Preview button...only to be told you need to log in to edit, and all the work you've done is gone. Siann Beck 16:57, 9 October 2007 (PDT)

A.: Logins should be persistent for 24 hrs. It could be that our sysadmins needed to reset the sessions, which could lead to the probelm you describe. A workaround for the problem (in Firefox, at least) if it happens again is this:

Leave the "you need to log in to edit" screen up
Open the login link in a new window
Hit reload in the first window. In Firefox, this causes you to get prompted to repost form data. Click "ok".

Sorry that you lost your edits. I know that's frustrating. There are also form saving plugins for various browsers, as well (Firefox Auto Save, for example) -- Rob Linden 17:18, 9 October 2007 (PDT)

Why expire them at all? Can't we have a "Keep me signed in" checkbox on the login page? I'm the only person who uses my computer; I see no need for me to have to log in every day. Siann Beck 04:54, 11 October 2007 (PDT)

NewbieNotes

For some time a call has been made to the general public to modify and simplify the Wiki. NewbieNotes is a response to that, a section for new and experienced scripters alike that is dedicated to explaining LsL in simple English. While in some instances NewbieNotes duplicate some information, it attempts to do so in an easier-to-understand manner for inexperienced scripters (or experienced scripters who are tearing their hair out over some glitch or quirk). NewbieNotes speak plain English and attempt to overcome the "techno-geek-speak" syndrome so often found throughout tech manuals. The NewbieNote Motto: "One simple phrase is better than twelve complex ones".

Barring a counter proposal I will work this into the LSL page style sometime in this week. -- Strife Onizuka 15:30, 26 February 2008 (PST)

Sandbox namespace?

At the open source meeting on 2007-11-08, we spent a fair amount of time talking about how wiki.secondlife.com would be used for Architecture Working Group proposals.

A problem that we have right now (and one that existed before AWG, but became more acute now) is that we at Linden Lab host the wiki primarily as a resource to collaborate with the community on documentation and code designs. As a result, we think that people are coming to the wiki with the hope that they're going to find either material that documents Second Life as it is or soon will be, or with roadmap material that Linden Lab had some hand in creating. While a wiki is always more of a "reader beware" zone than many places on the Internet, we'd like to aspire to keeping the main namespace as an area tailored to our intended audience.

That said, we don't mind providing an area for people not affiliated with Linden Lab to collaborate on material that they hope to get Linden Lab's buy-in of, but haven't gotten it yet (within reason). We just want to make sure that material is in a different spot, and is clearly marked as such. Our current solution is to move that type of material into the User: namespace for the person who started the document. However, there are a number of shared documents that don't have an obvious home.

So, I'm dabbling with the idea of creating a new "Sandbox" namespace, where this material would be, and where Lindens can move things rather than delete them. This wouldn't be an unbounded area; we'd still expect people to follow the Project:Editing Guidelines, but would be a little more open to technical proposals that we don't agree with but were made in good faith.

Thoughts? -- Rob Linden 18:28, 8 November 2007 (PST)

How about a "kitty litter" namespace? :)

Are things in Category:Design Discussions problematic as well? If I look at LSL To Client Communication it's pretty clear to me that this is a proposal. With AWG, everything is a proposal, so maybe it's not clear on every page.

I don't think adding a "Sandbox:" to the page title would really make a difference to someone unfamiliar with the Wiki. Unless it says "User:" it's not clear that this is one individual's unsupported vision. Wouldn't it make sense to move the stuff to the "Discussion:" page though? Mm Alder 16:01, 12 November 2007 (PST)

I may revert back to my original proposal, which is to start tagging things with a {{unofficial}} template, and ask people to do this (and to chip in on the tagging effort). The template could be something along the lines of:

This is a Resident-authored proposal, and does not necessarily represent the current state of Second Life or Linden Lab's immediate plans for Second Life.

It seems like we should try to provide some clue to help distinguish the two types of content. "Sandbox:" might still be handy. To a newcomer, it would likely connote that something is a little different about this page. They may not know exactly what, but they'd hopefully be a little more inclined to investigating further before internalizing the information as factual information about Second Life. Would "Proposal:" be a better name? I think in either case (Sandbox: or Proposal:), there would be cases where Linden Lab would use this namespace, too, but would move the document out of "Proposal:" when the document represents the plan of record. -- Rob Linden 17:01, 12 November 2007 (PST)

WikiHUD

Hello, I've begun creating a utility for reading wiki pages in world to fully support this wiki I need to know where the api.php is, so that search and other functions against api.php work. Presently only reading articles works (summary and full modes) because these are against index.php. The code is open source and the object in world is full permissions.

Lillie Yifu 18:15, 15 February 2008 (PST)