Herocopia:Community portal

Introductions to General Policies

This page is the meeting ground for Herocopia.com topics that are more global in scope. A place to ask generic questions, raise concerns, discuss design and content issues.

A couple of slight difference for the veteran contributors to be aware of please.

1. Don't delete a policy item (like this one) when it has aged or answers have been provided. Instead, we will be archiving them to the bottom of this page.
2. Take advantage and use the "special page: Recent changes" to see where people are commenting on specific characters, topics or whatever. Don't promote a local issue to this Help Talk Page unless you feel strongly that it is global in scope. Even then, think twice about just how strongly you feel about that global nature of your topic.

--Infobroker (talk) 18:08, 8 July 2013 (PDT)

'bots

I have been trying to get 'bots working for some time. It has been an on again, off again project that I do as I have time. For whatever reason, it is just not taking for this web site provider that Fenyx4 and I have set up. Still working on it. It will be handy for things like sort-order for all the "The" entries. But for now don't hold your breath waiting for it. It is proving very stubborn and the standard how-to guides aren't working. I am thinking it might be a permissions problem, but I can't figure out where or why. Still working on this. --Infobroker (talk) 10:58, 23 February 2014 (PST)

Mister Smartie (tip)

Just so everyone understands, those EditMark boxes with Mr. Smartie in them are not permanent. They are bookmarks for commentary and keeping track of places that need work. In most cases, anyone is welcome to use them. I don't recommend wasting your time putting link markers inside them. Eventually the boxes will be edited away.

- jb the ib -

The Mister Smartie template will be the tool of preference for keeping track of "to do" items. The will be especially effective for requesting help from system admins.

[edit] section

I am bringing to everyone's attention that I have changed things so that the '[edit]' section no longer display by default. It was visually annoying. This is now the default setting. You can still edit, just not by sections. If you want it back, you can change it in your 'Preferences' section. (Upper right area on this very page). --Infobroker (talk) 16:13, 2 October 2013 (PDT)

Suppressing Table Of Contents - now default

Title says it all. Another visual distraction of mediaWiki. If you want to see the Table Of Contents, you can override it in your Preferences. --Infobroker (talk) 07:38, 27 August 2014 (PDT)

Timelines coming back

It has always been in the back of my head to bring back the Timelines. When up to date, they were a nice list of character appearances, events and some notations to certain aspects (minor and major) that involved Astro City in general.

   They are event driven.
   They focused on characters.
   There was always a problem keeping them up to date though. 

The mechanisms for annotating them are tied to a Database (Microsoft Access in this case). That limits them to non-wiki data entry in the initial stages. Being in a Database (relational of course), fully third-normal form, made managing the data a breeze. There wasn't any multiple data entry and bookkeeping to maintain or get out of synch. One event entry, with links to characters and such. There are ways to mimic some of this using #LABELS here in mediaWiki-land, and plans are in place to move more so towards that model for a lot of our pages currently in play. But that still doesn't replace full third normal form data organization.

However and yet, the offline annotations/timeline/event entry systems has the problem of being offline, and only one person (me in this case), being able to do the entry work. Add in the work to do the updates, and the corrections, and yea somewhere in the early months of the Dark Age books, my personal life veered heavily and time became something more than just chaotic and precious, and entered into some absurd overdrive. The Astro City timeline was one of the causalities. Worse, in the three-four year time span that it has been unattended, the computer it was on is pretty much a decommissioned brick. It might still work, but it will require an weekend or so to bring it back from the dead.

I am looking at modern alternatives, that might even include some form of online entry. But that is an even more involved time investment.

I would like to jump start the project soon. Just wanted to let people know...

--Infobroker (talk) 11:38, 3 April 2014 (PDT)