Doom Wiki:Central Processing

Doom Wiki's first birthday
The doom wiki is a year old from yesturday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! -- TheDarkArchon 15:01, 6 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * happy birthday :) -- Jdowland 21:47, 11 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * Happy birthday DoomWiki! Congratulations to everyone for their work on this wiki for the last year. I hope the next year is a successful one for your community. Angela (talk) 17:38, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Custom Search Icon?
I was looking at the current featured Wikicity (Wikifur. No, I'm not a furry.) and noticed that it's search box had a custom logo instead of the generic Wikicites logo. Any chance of one coming here? -- TheDarkArchon 23:38, 14 Jan 2006 (UTC)

It isn't the current featured Wikicity anymore... for everyone's reference, the Wikifur wiki is http://furry.wikicities.com/. -- Jdowland 20:07, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Ok on further investigation, it looks like the method of customizing that box differs for Mediawiki versions 1.4 and 1.5. I think we're on 1.4 still, and that furry one is on 1.5, although I can't figure out how to tell the version.

For 1.5, You would edit Mediawiki:Sidebar I believe. -- Jdowland 20:26, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

We're on 1.5 now. Look at the top of the screen. -- TheDarkArchon 09:27, 16 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, my edits were failing yesterday, I guess I caught the middle of the upgrade :) Looks like the search box is not defined in Mediawiki:Sidebar after all. You need to browse around Special:Allpages, Mediawiki namespace, to find the relevant page. -- Jdowland 10:05, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

On an upgrade related note, what's with the exclaimation marks next to edits? I've noticed this on the ZDoom wiki and haven't understood what it meant -- TheDarkArchon 11:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * See above. ;>    Ryan W 23:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

You could just have asked! Setting the search logo requires uploading a new image for Search logo.png, as. -- GreenReaper 04:42, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For something boring, how about an image of the word "Search" done in the Doom (intermission screen) font? Fraggle 13:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I created this as a search logo, but when I try to upload it, I get this error: Internal error: Could not rename file "/home/wikicities/cities/doom/images/8/85/Search_logo.png" to "/home/wikicities/cities/doom/images/archive/8/85/20060208131626!Search_logo.png". Fraggle 13:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok, it works now. Check it out! Fraggle 17:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * That looks really cool. I'm glad you did that.    Ryan W 03:05, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
 * But when I click on the "Search" graphic (not the button), why do I go to www.wikia.com? Special:Search would seem more logical.    Ryan W 18:23, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

On a similar note, I noticed that the Doom Legacy Wiki has a custom icon for the "user" icon which appears next to your username at the top right of the page. It has a little picture of a Doom marine's head instead of the generic person-in-green-top icon. It would be nice to do something similar. Fraggle 13:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.5: info links for non-image uploads
All links of the form now appear to be broken. They can be fixed by adding a colon, like links to categories: file info. But should I do this, or is it a bug that the Wikicities people intend to fix? (I can't find a reference to it on their MediaWiki 1.5 help pages.)   Ryan W 00:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Addendum: I added this to the appropriate talk page on Wikicities.  Ryan W 23:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: the instructions on Special:Upload now refer to a non-existent copyright checkbox. (Also, if the above problem was intentional and not a bug, said instructions will have to include the new colon.)   Ryan W 00:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Update: Wikicities says it's not a bug, it's a feature.   :>

I'll change all the links when I have a minute. It remains for an admin to fix the two problems on Special:Upload noted above. Ryan W 01:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Addendum: also, the string MediaWiki:Largefile is a run-on sentence.  Ryan W 21:10, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Redlink template
Use in articles that have a lot of links to non-existant items. E.G Bugs. -- TheDarkArchon 19:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't like this idea: An article with lots of red links has nothing wrong with it, so I don't see why it should be modified to include a template. Where is the precedent - I don't know of any other wikis doing it (certainly not wikipedia). For redlink-resolution, Special:Wantedpages is less intrusive on other articles. -- Jdowland 23:19, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Why would we need a precedent, and why doesn't Special:Wantedpages list red links which only appear once (i.e. almost all of the items TheDarkArchon is concerned about)?


 * US$0.02: I'm ambivalent about this template. (You might guess that from my contributions page, which states that I proofread the template, then added red links to List of Doom community people.)  On the one hand, wikis by definition are works in progress, and as Fraggle sometimes says, the only way to get good articles is to let everyone write about whatever currently turns them on.  On the other hand, in this wiki, articles on highly technical or esoteric subjects (such as node building and Strife) have often received a lot of attention at the expense of topics more digestible to the average reader, and this template would help to combat that phenomenon.


 * I guess if I had to choose, I would say that we have too few active editors to be able to enforce any sort of policy on which areas of the wiki get the most aggressive updates. Most people seem to spend about a month contributing information about what they happen to like most, then disappear.   Ryan W 23:48, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

There are some articles which are nothing more than lists (List of doom community people; Bugs) that have a high red-link density. But I object to those articles on other grounds: IMHO the category system should be used for all such articles which are otherwise content-less. -- Jdowland 09:47, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * But then articles without content wouldn't show up in Special:Wantedpages, since they contained the text " ".  Or should they all be marked as stubs, perhaps?    Ryan W 23:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Articles without content (but which exist with a category) should not exist, imho, and therefore would not be listed in a category. If I come across such an article, It'd be immediately tagged and so you could find it at Category:Stubs instead. They would therefore only show up in Special:Wantedpages if they were referenced or linked from other content-articles, which in my view, makes Special:Wantedpages more relevant than if they are listed in otherwise-content-less list pages. But this is just my opinion :) I value the opinion of major contributors like yourself, and I'd like to hear from other regulars to see if there is a majority concensus. -- Jdowland 11:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * But your method would remove articles from Special:Wantedpages, since they would contain the text " ".  Assuming that you had deleted the "list" articles, there would then be no distinction between articles with 50 red links and 2 red links, and articles with only one red link (or none, as with Uwe Girlich) wouldn't show up in any list/category unless there was a strict policy about putting all red links into Category:Stubs immediately.    Ryan W 23:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, whatever the admins may think of the redlink template or the "list" articles, I daresay there should *not* be red links in protected text.


 * I agree with you there: If you come across such things feel free to list them here to be fixed. -- Jdowland 11:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's another example.   Ryan W 18:27, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

List of doom community people and Bugs are convenient indexes of both existing content and what needs to be done. I personally don't see the problem with red links, or mixing red links with blue links. Fredrik 16:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm-m, do we know for a fact that all major browsers show them in red? (That wouldn't necessarily affect the template's name, but perhaps the second line of displayed text could stand to be a bit more vague.)    Ryan W 23:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I really dislike this "red links" box. Fraggle 03:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) From an aesthetics point of view, seeing a glaring red box at the top of a page gives the impression that there's something seriously wrong with it.  If we must keep it, can we tone it down?
 * 2) Is this really going to encourage anyone to contribute?  It seems that all it does is explain some of the basic concepts of the Wiki software - namely, that it is possible to contribute to the site, and that red links indicate articles that have not yet been written.  Anyone who has seen the front page of the Wiki will understand the former, and the latter will be fairly intuitive to a new user (I can't see it would take most people with half a brain to figure out red = "not written yet")
 * 3) The whole concept of it seems potentially misleading in some situations.  On List of Doom community people, for example, it's implying "we want articles written on ALL of these people".  However, a lot of the people on that page aren't notable enough to have full articles dedicated to them.  We've all seen plenty of two-sentence doomer writeups get deleted.

interwiki
I see doom is on http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Interwiki_map ; I've submitted it to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map (this edit) -- Jdowland 23:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It's live now :) I'm using it at wikipedia:User:Jdowland -- Jdowland 13:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Maps in level articles
Some levels are extremely large and intricate, and I think the textual walkthrough sections (instructions, secrets, powerups) would be much clearer if they could refer to numbered markers on the map, as with (e.g.) the Prima guide for Quake 4. Opinions?

(I realize that this is a ton of work, and difficult to do in a non-ugly way, so it's not like I'm about to change everything tomorrow.)   Ryan W 01:20, 24 January 2006 (UTC)




 * I've thought of it before, and came up with this when playing around. The style used here has the advantage that the markers are visible even in the thumbnail. For more complex maps, smaller markers may be better though. Anyway, I like the purple myself :) Fredrik 07:55, 24 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Very pretty. :D    And we could just add a little note at the top of the walkthrough section, mentioning the markers.


 * Hmmmm, one problem I see is that some editors want to write about secrets/walkthroughs, and some editors know how to work with pictures, and they might not be the same editors. Then the writers and "illustrators" would have to agree on the number and placement of markers, which slows everything down (even if they did agree on the article's organization, which wouldn't necessarily be true).


 * If you're willing to do hundreds of these yourself, great, but I wouldn't want to just assume that. :D     Ryan W 06:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Editing policies for User: pages
Certain small conflicts seem to be arising over the following questions. Since we have no policies on any of these issues, perhaps some conflict is unavoidable, but I am curious what our long-time editors think. (IMHO they are not causing the wiki large problems at the moment... but that's why I'm bringing them up now.)   Ryan W 03:49, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) As long as Wikicities's content policy is being obeyed, does it matter what a person puts on their User: page?
 * 2) Should other users ever edit someone's User: page?  If so, when?
 * 3) When it comes to spam and vandalism, or things that look like spam and vandalism, are "user talk" pages held to the same standard as talk pages for other articles?  (That is, are they considered part of the User: pages, or just part of the overall "discussion space" like this page is?)
 * 4) Do we care if the same person creates multiple login names?  (One name plus one or more anon addresses seems to be okay, since there are situations where logging in is inconvenient or impossible.)


 * My take:
 * 1. Probably not, but the space of possible scenarios is too large to make general statements about. Do you have any particular cases in mind?
 * 2. Corrections are always fine, in my opinion. But the page owner should decide.
 * 3. User talk pages are part of the general discussion space.
 * 4. Unless they abuse it, no. Fredrik 18:36, 30 January 2006 (UTC)


 * (1): Not really.  It's hard to think of something really troublesome that wouldn't also spill over into other articles, or violate the Wikicities policy.  (In fact, I question whether the Impse image is NSFW &mdash; would people who have never played Doom be able to tell what was going on?  But others probably disagree with me, so this actually seems like a good compromise.)


 * (2): What does "corrections" mean in the context of a User page, which doesn't necessarily include factual information?  (And if somebody wrote something on their User page which contradicted a regular article, I personally would let that speak for itself.)


 * I think I know who Jdowland is talking about below, and I can understand his reasoning. But that doesn't explain, for example, why this edit was made.  I myself do not write anything quite that nonlinear on my User page (I hope), but don't we have the right to do so?     Ryan W 00:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I recently reverted some edits to User and User:Talk pages (or maybe just the latter... I forget) from a new author on this wiki who has made no doom-related contributions at all here -- merely pasting a URL to another site on these pages.

I was a bit reluctant to revert these because I wasn't sure what the etiquette would be, but I decided to do so because if I make a mistake someone else can always undo it.

The more traditional spammers often target User pages too, Fredrik is often targetted for example. -- Jdowland 18:45, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Password field of Special:Userlogin
When I misspell my password, the incorrect password is still there after the page refreshes itself. That seems like it would make it a lot easier for somebody to crack an account.

Can we change this ourselves in the script of the page (I'm not an admin so I can't tell), or would I need to ask the Wikicities people about it? Ryan W 01:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I think it's a Wikicites problem. I can't change it. TheDarkArchon 15:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't understand why that might be a security problem: Could you explain in more detail? -- Jdowland 19:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I have never written a program to try to guess someone's password, but I imagine that such a program might run much faster if it could use tail recursion &mdash; not having to re-enter the first N letters each time if they hadn't changed.


 * Looking at it again, I notice that you can also paste text into the password field, which my least bureaucratic ISP once assured me is a big no-no for a login page.


 * Now, I personally know even less about computer security than I do about Doom, but the password blanking thing is used by every other login page I can remember seeing (including that of hotmail.com, not the most vocal of privacy rights advocates). So I figure there might be something to it.  There may already be code in the wiki software that raises a racket when someone rapidly misspells their password 10,000 consecutive times from the same machine.  Or there may not.


 * Ryan W 01:28, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * If someone was able to obtain the password as returned by the server to the password field, they could potentially reduce the password search space from unfeasibly big to a smaller degree of unfeasibly big. But that problem pales compared to if the attacker could intercept the password going the other way -- which, if they were catching unencrypted packets as needed for the first case, they could be doing here too -- HTTPS is not used for the authentication and so the passwords are inherently unsecure. -- Jdowland 19:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Another bug, this time on Special:Log
Searching by user or title does not work. The list of results is always blank. Ryan W 02:16, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

differences between monsters (e.g.) in different ports
No sooner had I posted about this in Talk:Super shotgun than someone started adding expanded universe information to the monster articles. And I already thought it was quite awkward to have Doom RPG stuff on the monster pages, but I didn't object because Fraggle implied that a large amount of Doom RPG information should be on the way, so I figured it was only temporary.

If we need this much technical info about the different ports (and IMHO it is probably worthwhile, but its current organization seems distracting), maybe we should have one or more new articles which are only about the engine differences between ports/remakes, like Ledmeister does. (In fact, a lot of the console stuff in such an article could be paraphrased from his lists!)   Ryan W 01:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Doom level format navbox doesn't work properly
The Doom level format navbox looks like this in my browser. Anyone have any guesses on what's wrong with it? -- Janizdreg 15:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)


 * fixed: sorry, I broke it. -- User:Jdowland 21:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Domain name
This project is great :) I love Doom series. This wiki will help us remember everything about Doom :) but I think it needs a better domain name. doom.wikia.com isn't good. How about doom-wiki.org? 80.243.19.233 14:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * If you are really serious about this, you should probably ask the Wikicities administrators. (Don't hold your breath, though.  I don't remember our being consulted before the last change.)    Ryan W 17:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikia doesn't allow custom top-level domains, except for Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia (see Domain name). But if someone here wants to register a domain for URL redirection, that'd work. Fredrik 17:57, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Doom RPG maps and articles
Hi all. As you may have noticed, I've generated maps for all the Doom RPG levels and added stub articles for them. I've written a walkthrough for Entrance, but haven't written much for the other levels yet.

I've tried to make the maps appear visually similar to the ones Fredrik has generated in the past. There are a few mistakes: gates (like 2 sided linedefs with middle textures in Classic Doom) don't appear on the maps, for example. I haven't worked out exactly how these are represented yet.

I've uploaded the level format information that I've been able to deduce for anyone who may find it interesting. Fraggle 19:30, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Sweet! Fredrik 22:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Bug on Special:Userlogin
Unless I check the "Remember me" box when I log in, the site completely forgets that I am logged in as soon as I return to the page I want to edit. I am using Firefox 1.0.7 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (kernel 2.6.9-34.ELsmp). Ryan W 20:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * What URL are you using: doom.wikia.com or wikicities? I Wonder if it could be a cookie scoping issue. -- Jdowland 20:14, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * doom.wikia.com. It seems to work now, though (hmm, I think there has been another MediaWiki upgrade recently).  But I might keep checking the box anyway, since that prevents the cookie disappearing after ~15 minutes, as tends to occur on this machine for some reason.    Ryan W 18:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Didn't know where else to ask
I got a few textures out of Doom 2's wad with a wad editor, only three or four, actually, and just because I remember seeing them in game and wondering about them. After a bit of searching, I can only find one.

The Baphomet

The other two I was wondering if anyone knew about, and what they were called, if anything.

87bf3178.jpg e8ff24ca.jpg

It's just been bugging me a bit, and I'd like to know what they are on behalf of, well, just knowing. Thanks in advance!
 * The one on the left is probably the Baron, but i think the one on the right is just a "generic scary satanic face". Fraggle 12:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I recall someone on the forums once suggesting it might be an Arch-Vile. - DooMAD 17:40, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, well, I figured they might have had names. I went looking, and I found the Baphomet easy. The next one I think got pretty close to Balrog, and I was thinking of the last as somethingcubsomething, but no luck on that one. I didn't know if they had names and iD just put them in, or if iD made those last two.
 * I think I made the Arch-Vile suggestion (old image), but I also vaguely recall that someone asked Romero (?) to confirm, and that he said it's just some random alien creature. Fredrik 22:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

These pictures were a copyright violation (according to a discussion on some talk page long ago which I cannot find), since they are raw graphics and not screenshots. Also, our policies page says that we cannot display pictures for which there is no Image: page. Ryan W 18:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Two questions about category structure
Opinions are humbly solicited on the following minor issues. Ryan W 16:30, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Should Category:Companies be in Category:Community?
 * Is there really any point to having categories for TNT and Plutonia (whereas there are no categories for Final Doom, Doom II, or Ultimate Doom)?
 * I don’t know.
 * Maybe, there are categories for Vrack2, Thematic Elements, Void… look at the levels category. Ducon 16:43, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd say, there should be a Category:Plutonia Levels which the plutonia levels are in (and *not* in Category:Levels), same for TNT etc., with these more-specific categories being in the less-specific Category:Levels. There's a lot of edits of this kind that I haven't done yet, because I'm working on a program to do it for me. Nearly there :) -- Jdowland 11:30, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * But then what will I do with my Sunday evenings? ;>    Ryan W 15:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of Soul Cube
The spelling of Soul Cube is inconsistant throughout the wiki: Somepeople spell at as two separate words, like I have done, while others make it just one word I.E Soulcube. This needs to be sorted out. However, I've never played Doom 3 so I wouldn't know the correct spelling. -- TheDarkArchon 11:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. Fraggle 13:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Another thing. We have two articles on the Soul Cube, with the difference being the 'c' being capitalized. Soul Cube is a brief article while Soul cube is based on Wikipedia's article. -- TheDarkArchon 16:54, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Alien Vendetta MAP20
How is it named? Mishri Halek? Misri Halek? Mišri Halek? Ducon 10:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Bug in the search results
The end of the page shows this:
 * Fatal error: Call to a member function getID on a non-object in /home/wikia/wiki16svn/includes/Skin.php on line 887

Ducon 10:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Borked user name
A page seems to have a borked name, see here: http://doom.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special:Activeusers&from=Insomniak User:Jānis Legzdiņš, but with latin1 things. The Jānis Legzdiņš page here seems also borked: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Ancientpages Ducon 07:15, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Bugs
Today I see bugs in the wiki: Ducon 12:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * On some pages, for example E1M3: Toxin Refinery (Doom), the column on the left is covered by the text in the big central column. I use the old theme. Megawad is OK.
 * The wiki is slow, very slow.
 * The dates of my last edits are borked, I edited the image pages at 21:32 and 21:33 and not 13:32 and 13:33.
 * OK, the date bug seems to be corrected on my last edits. Ducon 12:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

It still seems to bug: ③ is the first (22:19 at home), ① is the second and ② is the third edit (22:22). The minor edit was just here to correct a =, then I saw that the date was OK and I added some date info. Ducon 20:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
 * ①M 22:20 (actu; dern) . . Ducon (Talk | contribs) (→Bugs - )
 * ②  14:22 (actu; dern) . . Ducon (Talk | contribs) (→Bugs - date corrected)
 * ③  14:19 (actu; dern) . . Ducon (Talk | contribs) (bugs)

Bug on Special:Whatlinkshere
When I log in from Special:Whatlinkshere, the target article is not passed to the "redirect" part of the URL on the login page, so it then tries to load Special:Whatlinkshere with no target, producing an error. Ryan W 20:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Offical line on removal on templates
There needs to be an offical lines on the removal of templates. The delete notice on Hexen II, placed by Jon, was removed. I warned the user that it could be vandalism but without an offical line on it, I can't really draw the line on who removes what?

I propse a basic rule on deletion templates: Anyone can nominate an article for deletion (as long as they're registered) but only admins can remove the deletion templates to prevent, for example, a user removing a vfd tag from an article they created. The deletion tag should last for 1 week or longer if necessary and if the general concensus is delete, then the article gets deleted.

Suggestions/additions?

-- TheDarkArchon 21:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Fredrik says that there is no way for the wiki software to specify who uses or removes a template, so this would require some admin to watch Category:Delete carefully to prevent abuse. (Even the timestamp has to be entered by hand.)  Jdowland may be doing that already, but I'm not sure how extensively.


 * Also, our copyright policy sometimes requires deleting pages, so the following templates are relevant:


 * Template:Fairuse
 * Template:GFDL
 * Template:PD-Self
 * Template:Pd
 * Template:Unverified


 * Ideally, the new policy should be broad enough to cover those situations.   Ryan W 22:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I realise there's no way for MediaWiki to decide who places what. However, we need offical rules on the removal of templates. On Wikipedia, for example, removal of deletion notices is considered vandalism. -- TheDarkArchon 15:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that having a policy would be constructive. I like your proposal &mdash; in fact, if you click the above link, you'll see that I suggested some of the same ideas at the time.  I'm just pointing out that, since there is no automated way to enforce it, a human will need to do so.  (In the past, we've had trouble getting volunteers for tedious, contentious tasks.)    Ryan W 17:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I realise that. It's not really that much work for me since I scroll through the recent edits every time I log on and, in non-obvious cases, use the history to check for changes. A missing template between edits is usually easy to spot, in the first place. In fact, the hardest thing about this would be in case of a close argument and deciding which way to go, though in this case, I would use an "if in doubt, keep" policy, even on articles I had vfd'd -- TheDarkArchon 18:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)