Talk:Main Page

To Do List

Dear co-conspirators, I don't have all that much time. I don't know how to handle this wiki yet. I don't know what to do. So I am suggesting the following for me and for anyone who feels the same: Let's make a to-do-list. This could include the following:

• Creating articles for every comic page (is there a way to make that happen automatically, maybe even for pages to come?)
• Transcribing comic pages
• Categorising these pages with characters, places, ships, species etc.
• Creating articles for characters

Ideally, it would be something like the explain xkcd wiki, right? Anyway, I really hope there won't be a lot of spam bots ruining our work... Ret Samys (talk) 03:20, 28 March 2016 (PDT)

Spoilers

I don't know if I should reveal everything when discussing certain things in articles. Any ideas on whether or not we should cluster this wiki with the maximum amount of spoilers possible? Ret Samys (talk) 10:58, 29 March 2016 (PDT)

Copyright

At one point or another, one might be tempted to copy information from the comic (especially the species information sheets) into this wiki without Dave Kellett's consent. Maybe he's fine with that, maybe he's not. Note to self: Ask him about this in Disqus comments or on Patreon. I will update you on this matter. Ret Samys (talk) 11:12, 29 March 2016 (PDT)

Update: I have asked him about this and he has answered me:

• Ret Samys: Oh, also, I know you're busy, but: I am now very, very slowly going through every page of the comic to extend the skeleton wiki. I have now reached the first encyclopedic page and I worry about copyright. I would like to write everything about the Makers there is, but while the wiki has a CC license and your comic does not, I can't just copy everything, right? Also, that means that I can't transcribe comic pages just like that. So here is my thought: If you give me permission, I can transcribe the pages and use text from the comic, but also I will mark these passages as non-CC content (making some wiki templates just in case).

• Dave Kellett: I think that would be acceptable within the confines of the wiki, yes. Thank you for asking!

The matter has thus been resolved. Please use Template:Copyright whenever you take something directly from the comic. Ret Samys (talk)

Suggestions for admins

Dear admins, you wonderful Makers, here are two things I would like to propose - since I can't do that as a normal foot soldier:

• Delete pages appropriately marked with the delete template! Here's a full list.
  • I have the honour of being an admin now and I will take care of this. Ret Samys (talk)
    
    
• Add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css:
  .starry{background-image:url(/images/6/69/Alnilam-Stars-Pattern.png);}
  This should allow us to use <div class="starry">content</div> with Media:Alnilam-Stars-Pattern.png as a background. This would be nice for templates such as the Template:Copyright.
  • Added. Ret Samys (talk)
    
    
• Please add the following to $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom:
  $wgAllowExternalImagesFrom = array( 'http://drivecomic.com/', 'http://cdn.drivecomic.com/' );
  This should allow us to embed the comic pages to their corresponding wiki articles - of course, only while also using Template:Copyright.
  
  Unfortunately, I'm not too clear on how to do this. It is described in this MediaWiki article and as far as I understand, you need to edit the LocalSettings.php file, which, according to this MediaWiki article is located in / of the wiki folder. There, you can add the code to the last line.
  • Solved with MediaWiki:External image whitelist

Ret Samys (talk) 07:59, 4 April 2016 (PDT)

With the recent update, external images don't work correctly any more? Investigating.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 01:00, 13 January 2020 (PST)

I noticed this as well. Troubling. Potential fix: upload all comic images?
Sensorfire - Jinyiwei (talk | contribs) 01:17, 22 January 2020 (PST)

Wiki Migration

This is the place to speculate about the migration of this fine wiki from drive.mcslp.net to drivecomic.com, since that is one long-term plan Dave has proposed, as can be read on his Patreon.

Integration on comic pages

People have been asking for a tag or category system on drivecomic.com to better navigate and find stuff. The wiki categories would be ideal for this kind of thing. I have discussed this as a comic on the latest blog post, I'll copy it here:

(As a reply to Chrisssssssssssssss's comment)
Hi there! I don't know about Dave's plans other than maybe integrating the Wiki on this domain. However, the Drive Wiki uses all sorts of tags categories and everyone is free to add new ones as long as it makes sense. An overview of the plots can be found in this category. As soon as the pages are moved in the archive, I will add all pages past "Shirtings" and all pages of "Esteemed Gentleman ..." to the wiki.

Other than that... the Tales of the Drive guest strips will be re-ordered on this page so that you can read the single stories uninterrupted by the main plot (much to the dismay of anyone who wants to read the corresponding comments because they will be under a different comic page). If this goes like it always goes, for Esteemed, this will happen sometime this week, maybe next week.

There might be a possibility to pull categories from the wiki and put it on here, but this would be technical and I haven't really looked into it yet. Definitely possible, but I'm not sure if I want to put all of the work into that unless Dave tells me he would at least consider it. It would be a wonderful extension to readers. And it would bring more people to the wiki. =)

I mean... thinking about it, it should be possible with something as simple as PHP, but I don't know if Dave has access to that kind of thing or the technical knowledge to insert a code snippet (sorry, I just don't know his level of expertise in these things). Something like...

<?php
$name="Page 0001";

$wiki="http://drive.mcslp.net/?title=";
$file = 'http://drive.mcslp.net/api.php?action=query&titles='.$name.'&cllimit=100&prop=categories&format=xml&redirects';
$xmlDoc = new DOMDocument();
$xmlDoc->load($file);
$cats= $xmlDoc->getElementsByTagName("cl");
$result="<a href='".$wiki.$name."'>Drive Wiki</a> ~ Categories: ";

if (is_array($cats))
{
foreach($cats as $cat)
{
$title=$cat->getAttribute('title');
$result.="<a href='".$wiki.$title."'>".substr($title,9)."</a> | ";
}
}
else
{
$result.="No categories yet.";
}

echo $result;
?>

Yeah! It works!

Of course you'll need to [...] 0001 with the actual page number.

Also, I'm the worst at coding efficiently! Saving this comment for later purposes.

I had some fun editing this a bit. The number of categories is limited to 100. Default was 10. There are 60-ish categories for the two maps.

Redirects are resolved. That means, if it's easier for Dave to call the page "*Dapp*" and put this into the code instead of working with the page number (this would mean that all titles have to be unique) or if he prefers to use the numeric version, such as 160924, we can simply add a redirect article to the wiki and the target article's categories will be displayed. All I have to know is what he settles on.

There is of course the matter of integration to discuss. But I don't know what Dave wants and how he manages this website. Is it a CMS? Does it allow editing in this kind of thing? Does it provide caching? Should it be integrated into the navigation bar, maybe as an icon (in which case we'd need to add JavaScript)? Or should we do it all in JavaScript and leave out PHP (which could reduce stress on both servers - wiki and drivecomic and caching isn't necessary, since it doesn't get loaded until the user requests it by pressing the wiki button and then only client and wiki will have to process - personally, I prefer not to use JS)? What about the visuals, should someone design some mockups? Where should the Categories be displayed, with the menu, under the comic page, as a popup? What about a search bar (which can only search the wiki)?
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 01:02, 11 October 2016 (PDT)

Considering it is now nearly 2018, have these plans been abandoned or postponed? I unfortunately am not a patron of DRIVE and so I cannot contact Dave through Patreon. I would very much like to see this wiki migrate to the drivecomic.com domain and hopefully be promoted more so we can get some activity going. Sensorfire - Jinyiwei (talk | contribs) 19:02, 19 December 2017 (PST)

I can ask.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 15:16, 22 December 2017 (PST)

Ret Samys Appreciation Post

Wow. Just, wow. In my short time on this wiki, if there's anything I've discovered, it is that User:Ret Samys basically created everything here that's not directly from the comic. My own library of contributions has been growing, of course, but it's nothing compared to all the pages and categories and transcripts and organization done single-handedly by Ret. This wiki is absolutely a hidden gem, and it's thanks to all his hard work that it is what it is today. So thank you, Ret Samys. You, sir, are one of a kind. Sensorfire (talk) 22:11, 13 November 2017 (PST)

Aw, thanks! I needed the transcripts, to be honest, I had no other way to search all of the little wonderful details in the comic.

But this wiki was only able to take off with your help. Your contributions are great and actually more in line with what the original intent of the wiki was! We really needed those extra pages and you're the one kicking my butt when it comes to making improvements here. Thanks for all that you've done, it's awesome.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 00:49, 14 November 2017 (PST)

New captcha system?

As you might notice if you go through my contributions, I've just gone and marked several pages created by spambots for deletion. Most of them had external links, which seems to indicate that they're slipping through the captcha. Is there any way of improving our captcha system, or is that built into the Wiki? Sensorfire - Drive Corps Engineer (talk | contribs) 22:12, 2 December 2017 (PST)

The captcha is a plugin. If everything else fails, a completely different plugin would be installed, but as far as I can see, the current settings for ConfirmEdit are a little outdated. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the server myself, but I'll contact MC to see what he can do. As long as I was the only editor, deleting and blocking bots every day was fine, but now it should change.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 02:45, 3 December 2017 (PST)

Major reduction in spam

There has been very little, if any, spam these past few days (that I've noticed). Has there been some sort of software update or something I should be aware of that would be responsible for this? Sensorfire - Jinyiwei (talk | contribs) 09:13, 12 February 2018 (PST)

Sorry for not telling you sooner, I was hoping for this to get where we wanted it to go first. There have been a couple of changes that were supposed to work against spam, but ultimately, the main reason for no spam at all is that unfortunately, user registration is no longer possible. The reason for that is the captcha not loading into the registration form. I'll test if we can manually create accounts while logged in via Special:CreateAccount.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 00:51, 15 February 2018 (PST)

All problems have long been fixed, by the way.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 23:38, 12 May 2018 (PDT)

I've added us to WikiIndex

Here. It kind of feels wrong to call it "active", but for what is essentially a two-man operation, I'd say this is a pretty impressive wiki.
--Sensorfire - Jinyiwei (talk | contribs) 20:26, 12 May 2018 (PDT)

Oh, neat! Thanks.
Ret Samys - Jinyiwei (talk) 23:38, 12 May 2018 (PDT)

MediaWiki update

I noticed we're running an older version of MediaWiki, the current version being 1.31. I suspect we need to contact Dave or MC to get it updated. This really isn't urgent at all, but it would be nice to run the latest version.

Also, I admittedly am mainly bringing this up because I've fallen in love with the Timeless skin, which is bundled with 1.31, so I would also be satisfied with just getting that installed.
--Sensorfire - Jinyiwei (talk | contribs) 20:39, 15 August 2018 (PDT)