Wiki Q and A

[Daniel Beardsmore]

tactica—there's a blast from the past. (I didn't realise how terrible that Amiga page was — I can see the fanboy drooling as he wrote it. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it was at least properly illustrated.)

I envy anyone for whom photography is so easy and natural that merely uploading an image to MediaWiki is the difficult part! Such people would not have my huge backlog of switch pictures to upload/clean up/shoot.

[seebart]

tactica—there's a blast from the past. (I didn't realise how terrible that Amiga page was — I can see the fanboy drooling as he wrote it. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it was at least properly illustrated.)

I envy anyone for whom photography is so easy and natural that merely uploading an image to MediaWiki is the difficult part! Such people would not have my huge backlog of switch pictures to upload/clean up/shoot.

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Basically there is no illustration. Lots of text, fanboy or not I cannot verify that information either right now. Considering how many Amiga's are still out there it should not be impossible to get some good pictures that we are allowed to use. I know some Amiga fanboys locally I'll see if they let me take some pictures although photography never comes "easy" to me.

[snuci]

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Basically there is no illustration. Lots of text, fanboy or not I cannot verify that information either right now. Considering how many Amiga's are still out there it should not be impossible to get some good pictures that we are allowed to use. I know some Amiga fanboys locally I'll see if they let me take some pictures although photography never comes "easy" to me.

I happen to have every Amiga model except for the Amiga CD32 keyboard (still looking for one) so if we need sample pictures, I can help.

[seebart]

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Basically there is no illustration. Lots of text, fanboy or not I cannot verify that information either right now. Considering how many Amiga's are still out there it should not be impossible to get some good pictures that we are allowed to use. I know some Amiga fanboys locally I'll see if they let me take some pictures although photography never comes "easy" to me.

I happen to have every Amiga model except for the Amiga CD32 keyboard (still looking for one) so if we need sample pictures, I can help.

Great thanks. No rush.

[snuci]

Here's what I';ve already posted.

Amiga CDTV
Amiga 1000
Amiga 2000/2500

I am unable to do anything this weekend and nights are too dark so it might be a bit before I can take more pics. I'll see if I have any taken already. I definitely have not done a 500, 600 or 1200 yet.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Yes — tactica had made a change to it.

Basically there is no illustration.

The images are on the pages for each individual model of computer. There are still numerous models and keyboard variants without photos at all, but there are also extensive photos on the model pages. The amount of variation is sufficiently great that I felt that each model of Amiga should have a dedicated page.

[tactica]

tactica—there's a blast from the past. (I didn't realise how terrible that Amiga page was — I can see the fanboy drooling as he wrote it. It wouldn't be quite so bad if it was at least properly illustrated.)

Well... Nobody is perfect

BTW, regarding this change of yours, you might want to edit infobox dswitch and friends and replace

Code: Select all

{{#if: {{{website|}}} | {{URL|{{{website}}}}} |  }}

with just

Code: Select all

{{#if: {{{website|}}} | {{{website}}} |  }}

That way you can show an arbitrary URL and still point anywhere you like, just like any regular external link works.

Code: Select all

website = [a_very_long_URL  my_nice_shorter_form]

I'd apply the change myself but I suppose it's only nice to ask for input first.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I always aim to make the templates do all the hard work. Ideally the URL template would have a means to trim the address down to some number of characters, but there are two problems: the relevant module in MediaWiki isn't enabled (and I'm not even sure what should be enabled now as string handling got complicated), and the URL template is so complicated that I can't even see where I'd add string truncation even if it were possible. Since there are no local variables, I assume I'd need to nest templates, so that the inner one would remove the protocol part of the string or whatever it does, and the outer one would check the length and truncate only the display portion.

Part of the objective for making the template do the work is to maintain consistency and allow global adjustments.

Another option is to split the parameter up, and have a "website link" parameter that lets you format it manually without needing to adjust every other page. Or, website and website caption, where without the caption it defaults to the URL.

That Greetech page is an exception because the URL was so absurdly long.

There is in fact another option still — there is a CSS facility to force text to break and wrap even if there are no natural wrap points, which I've used before. Applying that to the infobox styling would allow for no other changes, but long URLs would simply wrap around. It might need one or two other tweaks considering that it's being used in a table, but I've made a very similar change before.

That or we just punch Greetech in the face repeatedly until they sort their ghastly website out. They still refuse to separate out GT02 and GT04 properly!

[Findecanor]

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Basically there is no illustration. Lots of text, fanboy or not I cannot verify that information either right now. Considering how many Amiga's are still out there it should not be impossible to get some good pictures that we are allowed to use. I know some Amiga fanboys locally I'll see if they let me take some pictures although photography never comes "easy" to me.

Yes, the lack of references on the first version of the Amiga page was my fault. I managed to lose my list of sources: mostly links to several forums where people were showing disassembled Amigas and refurbishing them. Each variation that I listed is one that I have seen a picture of.

I would not say that I'm fanboy. I used the Amiga back in '90s and I still have my A500 and A1200 in the basement -- it is not like I collect them and run them but that is fun to hear about sometime.
What I did on the page was basically an infodump. The fanboyish intro about how it was before its time yada yada was added later by someone else.
I do however find interesting details where the Amiga keyboard layout and way of use differ from the Windows style guide norm that reigns also on Linuxes today.

[tactica]

@Daniel

Up to you then, but I still think my solution is simpler and a lot less work

Besides, I'm not sure you can make Template:URL work as you want both in infoboxes *and* in Template:imagedesc, in fact the latter never worked IIRC. My vote still goes for replacing imagedesc and friends with UploadWizard anyway, even if it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.

[tactica]

What I did on the page was basically an infodump. The fanboyish intro about how it was before its time yada yada was added later by someone else.

In fact I was assuming Daniel meant me when he mentioned fanboyism. You're right of course

[seebart]

I assume you mean this: wiki/Commodore_Amiga

Basically there is no illustration. Lots of text, fanboy or not I cannot verify that information either right now. Considering how many Amiga's are still out there it should not be impossible to get some good pictures that we are allowed to use. I know some Amiga fanboys locally I'll see if they let me take some pictures although photography never comes "easy" to me.

Yes, the lack of references on the first version of the Amiga page was my fault. I managed to lose my list of sources: mostly links to several forums where people were showing disassembled Amigas and refurbishing them. Each variation that I listed is one that I have seen a picture of.

I would not say that I'm fanboy. I used the Amiga back in '90s and I still have my A500 and A1200 in the basement -- it is not like I collect them and run them but that is fun to hear about sometime.
What I did on the page was basically an infodump. The fanboyish intro about how it was before its time yada yada was added later by someone else.
I do however find interesting details where the Amiga keyboard layout and way of use differ from the Windows style guide norm that reigns also on Linuxes today.

Well if this came across as some sort of critique I'm sorry it was not meant as such, I know you are one of the few people here who regularly works on the wiki. Thanks for your input, as you know very few wiki pages are really ever complete.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

@Daniel

Up to you then, but I still think my solution is simpler and a lot less work :)

Up to me to …? I'm not planning on changing anything, especially not for one absurd Greetech URL.

Besides, I'm not sure you can make Template:URL work as you want both in infoboxes *and* in Template:imagedesc, in fact the latter never worked IIRC.

Template:Filedesc (and its alias, Imagedesc) doesn't use Template:URL anyway, so what doesn't work?

For the infoboxes, I would implement something like {{URL|{{{website}}}|50}} to set truncation at 50, which would only apply to that specific infobox template. (It's true that each infobox template would need adjusting separately.) This would have no effect on using Template:URL anywhere else. However, this requires understanding the complexities of making string processing available in MediaWiki.

Personally I think we need a proper wiki logo, to replace my silly interim logo.

[seebart]

Personally I think we need a proper wiki logo, to replace my silly interim logo.

Agreed. I'll be submitting some ideas for that...although I kind of still like your current effort. I hasn't been up that long if I recall.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Mine's … vague. But cheerful.

[tactica]

Template:Filedesc (and its alias, Imagedesc) doesn't use Template:URL anyway, so what doesn't work?

True, it doesn't. But whenever you try to embed the template to specify e.g. a source, the result is a load of wikitext in the Summary field and the url isn't converted to a working link. See for example this page.

Personally I think we need a proper wiki logo, to replace my silly interim logo.

Agreed... I do like your "black" theme though.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

My "black" theme?

The Template:URL bug is just the = sign limitation. MediaWiki templates are an abomination.

[tactica]

That Greetech page is an exception because the URL was so absurdly long.

Here's another one, there may be more...

wiki/Datacomp_DFK191

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Don't add anything else to Category:Keyboards with Hi-Tek linear switches — that category should not exist.

The correct name is /Hi-Tek Hi(gh)?[- ]?Profile/ but I still have no answer from either D'Milo or Susan on how to correctly format that name, nor whether the successor was "Dovetail" or "Dovetail Series". D'Milo and Susan have written the High Profile name differently and I don't know which one is preferable — it was a retronym used to distinguish the old design from Series 725, and I can only guess that it encompassed dovetail too.

I'm holding off updating the Hi-Tek stuff until there are clearer details.

[tactica]

Yessir!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

As for the idea of an upload wizard — it's not a wizard that we need, it's true metadata. For example, you can already specify a licence when uploading, but you can't go back and add a licence to an existing image. Licences aren't metadata, they're just extra bumf added to the description, and that UI is simply missing when editing.

At least a wizard should help with everyone leaving the date as "YYYY-MM-DD" (it could actually default to the EXIF date).

[tactica]

UL does support EXIF of course. Besides, it also makes it easier to upload multiple pictures at once, and you can specify a different license for each one if you so desire. Face it, the stock upload system is at least as old hat as your beloved talk pages

I was entertaining the idea of supporting audio files too (this involves a minor change in the MW config and installing an extension to play them) to let people contribute sounds of different keyboards, but I guess unless someone owns 100 different keyboards and is willing to record them all under *exactly* the same circumstances it wouldn't help much because of the different recording environments. It already happens with those typing tests on Youtube, the same keyboard tends to sound different in most videos.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

There are masses of existing images that can't be fixed as the UI for editing is totally different to the UI for uploading. I have to open a more recent image, edit that, pull out the category I'm meant to be using, and edit the old image and add that category. For some of the more fruity licence categories this is a real pain.

MediaWiki is so utterly wrong for this entire project, on every level. For example, there is a horrendous level of redundancy. On a switch page, each keyboard is manually entered, because:

a) category entries cannot be inlined into a list on a page
b) category entries cannot be annotated with reasons
c) category entries cannot be paired together, e.g. "Foobar KB123: SKBL Green, SKBL Cream (space) (1986)"

So the same or similar data is entered for categorisation, infobox and on the switch pages.

There's no way to query or filter on infobox contents, and Semantic MediaWiki is entirely the wrong direction to go in.

For this to work properly, we need a custom CMS, and if that's done right (made generic) it could be perfectly applicable to every other product-based hobby and more. Although some of these problems can be mitigated with more and more add-ons, it will still never be the CMS that it needs to be.

[tactica]

There are masses of existing images that can't be fixed as the UI for editing is totally different to the UI for uploading. I have to open a more recent image, edit that, pull out the category I'm meant to be using, and edit the old image and add that category. For some of the more fruity licence categories this is a real pain.

I understand your other points and for the most part I agree that MW is much more complicated than it needs to, but the above eludes me. Can you describe a real example where this has happened? I'm not sure if this is the typical scenario where MW lags behind updating categories (owing to the infamous job queue handling) or something else.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

002 figured out how to make the Licence dropdown work, so from that point on, I've been using it to tag uploads with licences (where possible). However, nothing prior to that point used the (not-yet-existing) licence categories. To tag prior uploads, you have to look up the precise category name and apply that to the image description, which is tedious. You also can't do it in bulk. (In fact, even bulk File namespace renaming using Special:Rename doesn't work, as it renames the description pages but not the images, as the two aren't even physically connected — the whole File namespace is a horrendous bodge.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yessir!

I've written one final request to D'Milo and Susan to try to get the optimum names for Hi-Tek series. If that fails, I will give up on Hi-Tek and will let you do whatever you want with it.

[purdobol]

What about image resolutions and the plead to "not crop to much"?
The wiki seriously needs some well written guide, that specifies the basic rules about ordering stuff (alphabetically?), resolutions of uploaded pictures, quality of said pictures, how to's of how to do them and so on.

Some clear rules of what's allowed and what's redundant or not needed so average joe like me can participate without unnecessary hurdles along the way.

At this point adding stuff to the wiki really is overwhelming. And one person cannot do it all...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I don't want to be excessively prescriptivist because I don't own the wiki or control it.

What about image resolutions …

Whatever your camera is capable of.

… the plead to "not crop to much"?

My feelings are:

a) Try to maintain the same aspect ratio across each set of images, so that galleries don't look ragged. For example, in IrfanView, press ctrl+A (Select All) and then ctrl+resize the selection rectangle to retain the aspect ratio, and then crop the image (ctrl+Y).

b) Try to maintain some space around the edge of the subject, i.e. don't crop the image right up to the edge of the subject.

…the basic rules about ordering stuff (alphabetically?) …

In what context? I would suggest looking to existing pages to see what's already done.

… resolutions of uploaded pictures …

As high as possible.

… quality of said pictures …

In what sense?

… how to's of how to do them …

In what sense?

It just needs some common sense, such as clearing all clutter out of the frame so that only the subject is in the shot. If you're getting bad reflections from the flash, change the camera angle until the light is reflected away from the camera instead of straight back into the lens.

I am not a professional photographer, but I've tried to make my photos as clean, tidy and ordered as I can.

It's a case of taking some time and paying attention. The hardest part is always getting enough light, which is why I do all my keyboards photos outside, as it's the only way for me to get anything resembling reasonable lighting.

… what's allowed … what's redundant …

Again, in what sense? What do you imagine is disallowed or redundant?

Generally, you should be able to get a good idea from simply looking at existing pages.

[purdobol]

I don't want to be excessively prescriptivist because I don't own the wiki or control it.

Any help is appreciated.

… the plead to "not crop to much"?

My feelings are:

a) Try to maintain the same aspect ratio across each set of images, so that galleries don't look ragged. For example, in IrfanView, press ctrl+A (Select All) and then ctrl+resize the selection rectangle to retain the aspect ratio, and then crop the image (ctrl+Y).

b) Try to maintain some space around the edge of the subject, i.e. don't crop the image right up to the edge of the subject.

Well here's the thing if i crop the image after resizing, the aspect ratio will go to hell. If I do it before, the image may become crooked. Just don't see a way to reasonable crop the image (to present what's required) and at the same time maintain the same resolution as previous image in the "set".

…the basic rules about ordering stuff (alphabetically?) …

In what context? I would suggest looking to existing pages to see what's already done.

Just general rules. How the keyboard/switch variants are presented at wiki pages. Are they ordered alphabetically, by the model number? Ansi first Iso later and so on...

… quality of said pictures …

In what sense?

Do I need to desolder whole switch and present every single part in "dissasembly" photo for example (including housings). Or just focus on "different" parts. Or in case of PCB's witch parts are preffered to take a closer look etc. Again some general guides.

… how to's of how to do them …

In what sense?

Basic guide of good practices while photographing small parts and whole keyboards would be nice. How to improve lighting, best camera settigs and so on. Just basic tips, easy to follow or just common mistakes easy to avoid while doing this stuff.

[tactica]

I don't want to be excessively prescriptivist because I don't own the wiki or control it.

I don't think it is realistic to expect Webwit to set the rules here. The people who edit the wiki the most should, IMO.

a) Try to maintain the same aspect ratio across each set of images, so that galleries don't look ragged. For example, in IrfanView, press ctrl+A (Select All) and then ctrl+resize the selection rectangle to retain the aspect ratio, and then crop the image (ctrl+Y).

b) Try to maintain some space around the edge of the subject, i.e. don't crop the image right up to the edge of the subject.

As purdobol pointed out this is a sure way not to ever have a set of pictures with the same aspect ratio. I'd say do NOT resize or crop at all, which means having a clear area somewhere for photo shooting instead of following the "shoot-anywhere-and-then-mutilate-the-stuff-as-you-see-fit" technique. I'm not a professional photographer either, but at least my photos are consistently sized.