User talk:Chucker

From MYSTlore

Contents 1 Multitude of ways of enjoying the Myst games 2 Proposing a policy? 3 Uploadfunction at german MYSTlore 4 bad color of thumbs and gallery-backgrounds 5 new category 6 Use of images in german MYSTlore 7 Spam 8 Great Zero Coordinates page 9 Connection to Myst-Wikis 10 upload 11 Cyan Infobox Proposal

[edit] Multitude of ways of enjoying the Myst games

The Myst games aren't meant to be enjoyed in any specific way- sure, there are the puzzle-solvers who rush through the games just for the sheer glory of being able to say they've finished the game in however many hours, but it's hardly a bad thing to step back and appreciate just how much damn work went into making these games worth it aesthetically. I kept an elaborate, illustrrated journal for the last few games not because I wanted to to keep track of how the puzzles worked, but because I, the escapist, wanted to turn off all of the lights and completely lose myself in the games and what they represented. What you've contributed to the community speaks worlds more than how you actually played the games, and I thank you for that. Shoomlah 20:18, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

Why, thank you (regarding that last sentence of yours). :-) This has actually been my stance as well; one of the nicest aspects of the Myst games is that they can be enjoyed, played and regarded in several completely different ways. It's just like you said. There's those who are purely in it for the intellectual challenge. There's even those who pride themselves based on how quickly they go through an entire game, and play it again right afterwards if they didn't match a certain benchmarks (not that there's anything wrong with that; a friend and former classmate of mine does it that way — but I couldn't possibly see myself enjoying that!). Some, like me, just look around, relish in the gorgeousness and wish that those locked doors could always be unlocked, so they could roam around freely (much as I love Riven, I would love it a billion times more, even, if there was a way to simply open all doors — not to mention it helps when you need to make screenshots ;-) ). And then there's those, perhaps (hopefully?) the vast majority, who do a mixture of those, i.e. enjoy exploring (like me), but are also intrigued by puzzles, perhaps even some of the harder ones.

Point being, there's something in it for just about everyone, unless you're purely into short-attention-span shooter- or racer-type games. Which, depending on my mood, I have much fun playing as well, for hours and hours. But I don't fool myself into believing that much thought went into creating them.

Ramble ramble ramble.

Chucker 20:30, 23 October 2006 (CDT)

I know I said on your blog "Thank you" for starting it. But I wanted to say on here, too, for posterity, and again, "thank you" from the bottom of my heart. I don't know all the facts either. Heck, I've seen RAWA post differing ideas. But what I do love is the knowledge I do know about the games. They are all great. A wiki is all about everybody helping out. I know that at the moment it seems like it's all you, Chucker, doing all the work. Well, give it time, patience, and some posting by people about it, on forums, and yes, they will come. It will be become fashionable (I hope!) to contribute to the base of knowledge. I know some say that Myst was a phase in their life that they are now grown out of. For me, for my part, I hope that phase never truly ends. I know my presence in Uru waxes and wanes, but the love, and the core feeling never does go away. So, thank you. Danke even. ;)

Wow, that's extremely kind! I'm glad to hear my little contributions to the community at large are appreciated. Some people have been contributing regularly, and some have even started referencing the site elsewhere, though that's still rare.

I'm not surprised that, thus far, activity is limited. I've (deliberately) done little "marketing"; I don't like to promote myself like that (indeed, it took someone dear to me pushing me multiple times to announce it at all). What I am a little surprised about are what appears to be some negative comments, though I may be interpreting far too much into them. Whatever the case, it has only been a quarter (I started building this in mid-September, and it wasn't announced until… I dunno, late October?). Whatever "threshold" there is until the site becomes more or less self-sustaining, I actually have little doubt that it will come. Much like Star Trek-related articles on Wikipedia often have a "more info at Memory Alpha" link, I'm hoping the same will occur for Myst-related articles and MYSTlore — but I won't be the one to do it, because that wouldn't be fair.

In the end, I'm very happy with the people enjoying this, participating in it — whether as visitors or regulars; whether as readers or as contributors. And I'm also happy with those who don't, because no site could be for everyone, and there are alternatives (most notably DPWR), though I'm always open to feedback to steer MYSTlore into a direction that feels more "right" for most.

So, in one word: Bitte. :-) Chucker 01:06, 16 December 2006 (CST)

[edit] Proposing a policy?

Hey Chucker, how does one go about proposing a policy? I wanted to propose a policy on articles about fans (see User:BladeHamilton/Fan_Pages_Proposal) Blade Lakem 15:21, 14 February 2007 (CST)

There's no formal way to propose a policy at this point; MYSTlore is far too small for that, so things are pretty much still handled personally at this point.

In any case, very interesting proposal. :-)

[[MYSTlore:User pages]]should probably be merged into it. I've been meaning to have a policy on this in a while, and your suggestion sounds like a good step in the right direction.

Let me look into the matter a little further. I should have something by the end of the weekend. Chucker 19:47, 14 February 2007 (CST)

Ok, hi there, Chucker, how about proposing a policy regarding supercategories? :P Koena 17:58, 23 July 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Uploadfunction at german MYSTlore

Hello Cucker, I am working at the german MYSTlore, but I can't add pictures to my articles, because the uploadfunction is broken. I know that you are an admin in this wiki, so could you please enable it? Thanks for reading this! Yahvo 10:51, 5 July 2007 (CDT)

Hi,

uploading on international (currently Dutch and German) versions of MYSTlore is deliberately disabled. Images and other files uploaded there wouldn't be available on other MYSTlore versions, whereas images uploaded on the English MYSTlore are available on all international versions. This is a limitation of the MediaWiki software. Wikipedia and similar wikis instead use a "Commons" concept where they have yet another wiki solely for uploads, and then all language versions can access from that one. I've found it simpler to set up to have the English MYSTlore be the "central"/"Commons" wiki.

So to summarize, simply upload your image over here. You and others can then use it here as well as on the Dutch and German MYSTlore versions. Everyone benefits that way. Chucker 11:00, 5 July 2007 (CDT)

Thank you very much, I didn't know that before. I think this is a very efficient way of uploading files, but I've worked at other wiki-projects, that didn't use this method. But at last I can express myself also in a visual way here :D Yahvo 11:06, 5 July 2007 (CDT)

[edit] bad color of thumbs and gallery-backgrounds

I've just put a gallery in the article of Kahlo and I noticed that the background is looking really bad. The grey is quite nasty, because you can't concentrate on the text anymore and you see this fat box, that attracts all your attention. It is also a question of aestethic, because the articles don't look nice anymore. We could just turn it into white and the pictures would look more decent. Please write what you think about it! Yahvo 08:58, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the color was deliberately changed. I agree it's not pretty, but it was done more or less out of necessity. With a bright border, details in screenshots from Myst, Uru, etc. are a lot more difficult to make out. It's for the same reason that wikis such as Memory Alpha generally use a darker background: it makes the text harder to read, but the screenshots (in this case, from TV/movies) a lot easier to look at. Because we want to focus more on text, the text itself is in a more traditional dark on bright setting. Chucker 09:02, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

I don't agree with this, because I think that a picture itself is conspicuous: The different colors of a picture are noticed very easily on a white text, so I don't think that a dark border is necessary. All papers, books, magazines are using white borders, even most of the other wikis do. However, if you don't want to change it I have to accept it, but may I change the color in the german Mystlore, cause there I am the only active user and no one would complain? Yahvo 09:14, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

No, the different language versions should stay the same format. Also, you are not the only german speaking person who contributes to mystlore, although no one else has added german articles yet. As for not liking the darker background around pictures, trust me, it was worse before we changed it. You should learn how to format the articles a little better and the images will look nicer on the page. Check out some of the other articles with images. Captions and layout (not just dumping a bunch of images onto an article) will help some as well. -- Tay 09:46, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I won't argue anymore. People have different opinions, so I propose a democratic voting on changin the color. This would be democratic and fair, wouldn't it? Yahvo 09:57, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

Sorry, I've noticed that I write a bit confusing and unstructured, I hope you still understand me... Yahvo 10:00, 7 July 2007 (CDT)

No, there are plenty of other much more important and valuable things we could spend our time on than voting on a certain color of something. That is not to say it will never change, but right now it is functional. The best use of time and way to help is adding to or writing new articles. -- Tay 11:22, 8 July 2007 (CDT)

[edit] new category

I am planning to start the category category:Before Earth, inspired from this in Wookieepedia. Do you find it too ridiculous? Koena 19:10, 28 August 2007 (CDT)

I'm not sure there's much you can find on that subject, but I don't object. Chucker 19:13, 28 August 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Use of images in german MYSTlore

Hi, I don't know how to use images I uploaded in the english Mystlore and how to use them in the german one. It just doesn't work, if I try to include the picture, there's only the red text, wich means that the file can't be found. Here's a link to one of my articles, as you can see the thumb-template is empty: [1] Thank you very much! Yahvo 09:01, 1 September 2007 (CDT)

Sorry about that; I inadvertently broke it with a recent software update. Works now. Chucker 09:05, 1 September 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, its also nice that the thumbnails are white :D Yahvo 09:11, 1 September 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Spam

Chucker: I see you've been removing a lot of spam and adding IPs to the blacklist recently. Isn't there any way to prevent this? What about requiring a login before editing? --DedHed 05:58, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

I may indeed disable anonymous edits if this becomes too prevalent, but only as a short-term solution. In the long run, I will write an appropriate spam filter extension that should fix this. Chucker 06:03, 27 September 2007 (CDT)

How do you revert spam edits so the edit summary says "Reverted edits by spammer (Talk); changed back to last version by non-spammer? Gorobay 21:15, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

In the diff view, on the right side, there's a [rollback] link next to the name of the spammer, but only if this was the most recent edit. Chucker 23:37, 9 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Great Zero Coordinates page

I didn't know where to put this so I'll put it here: in Special:GZCoordinatesSpecialPage, the words "Location", "Coordinate", and "Relative distance" go to a different place in the list when their arrows are clicked, instead of staying at the top. Gorobay 15:20, 23 October 2007 (CDT)

Hmm, saw that happening earlier, but now I can't seem to reproduce it. :\ Chucker 13:47, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Neither can I. Weird. Well, however it was fixed, I won't complain. Gorobay 14:00, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

It messes up it when you reload the page after you have clicked one of the arrows, I think. That's been working consistently for me. Gorobay 16:02, 24 October 2007 (CDT) Oh never mind, now it's doing it all the time. Gorobay 16:04, 24 October 2007 (CDT)

Yep, I see it again. Now the hard part will be figuring out the why. :-) Can you reproduce it on any of the tables at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Sorting ? Chucker 00:56, 25 October 2007 (CDT)

No, I can't. I also tried with Ranked list of Dutch provinces ^(Wikipedia) and that did not mess up either. Gorobay 05:39, 25 October 2007 (CDT)

Okay, I changed something. Can you still reproduce it? Chucker 13:24, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

No, I can't. While you're at it you should make the word "Elevation" on the second line. It would look better. Gorobay 14:27, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Connection to Myst-Wikis

Hello Chucker, I think it would be far better if we would unite MYSTlore with other MYST-Wikis, such as Mystpedia (french), Myst-Wiki (german and english) and the D'ni Zoologial Society and particularly make some changes. I suggest that the english Myst-Wiki should be integrated in english MYSTlore and the german MYSTlore should be inserted in the german MYST-Wiki. The D'ni Zoological Society also could be a part of english Mystlore. So I propose that these projects (Myst-Wiki.en; MYSTlore.de and D'ni Zoological Society) should be cancelled in order to unite the community. All information of these wikis should be transfered! Secondly I'd connect the remaining Wikis to each other with interwiki-links and links at the main page. I don't know what the members of the other wiki-members think about that, but it would be great if fans wouldn't write articles separatly. We should ask them about this. By the way I am planing to put my articles of german MYSTlore into the german Myst-Wiki, because it's a much bigger site. What a pity that I didn't find it earlier :( Yahvo 10:28, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Are you talking about about this? That is not a much bigger site. As far as I know, the other Myst wikis are either dead (and thus canceled) or in languages we don't have, in which case I don't see the point. The exception is the DZS, but they have a specific scope whereas MYSTlore is for anything, and they also have a forum so they would not cancel it "to unite the community". Gorobay 18:39, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

It is indeed my understanding that MystWiki is dead, and has been for a while. The German version of it is actually much bigger than German MYSTlore (226 articles vs. 14), but that's not hard. I was once in talks to integrate what's left of MystWiki to MYSTlore, but I haven't had the time to go through with such a migration.

I also certainly don't agree that there is any need to "unite" anything, and I think it would do more harm than good to zealously try and merge multiple sites. As the about page states rather clearly, MYSTlore was started knowing full well there's already other sites like MYSTlore, such as DPWR. I believe diversity ultimately benefits the community more than trying to create an umbrella site that hosts everything. Chucker 21:39, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Well I think we could take the articles of MystWiki and put them in MYSTlore, if the members of the MystWiki agree. The only admin there is an explorer called "The Modificator". He has got ICQ so I could ask him. Basically I think some of their members (which could be contacted) would be happy that there's life in our wiki and with their base of articles and those of mine they would perhaps start writing again. The only thing I critizise is that the quality of some articles is very low. Yahvo 07:12, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

Four users of the MystWiki can be contacted via ICQ or e-mail. It would be great if they would write again! Yahvo 07:45, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

Just thought I'd let you know, there is now Rel.to, which is a place to list all these kinds of sites. Gorobay 14:56, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

Ah, okay thank you! Yahvo 17:25, 30 October 2007 (CDT)

Hi again, I've talked to "The Modificator", the only admin at MystWiki and he told me that I could take their articles to MYSTlore, if we would change our licenses from by-sa to by-sa-nc. Can it be done? Yahvo 12:35, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Our license is by-nc, not by-sa. It will not be changed to by-sa-nc. Such a change is unacceptable to me. Chucker 12:36, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Why is it unacceptable? We would gain lots of articles, and that's what matters! Yahvo 13:38, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Do you know what by-sa means? It means "share alike". That means only things with an identical license (i.e. with -sa) can use what is written. Gorobay 21:21, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

[edit] upload

since some days i try to upload an image and i get an error message about non-writable server. What is wrong? Koena 21:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Chucker 19:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cyan Infobox Proposal

Hiya Chuck. I designed a basic infobox to put at the footer of all articles about Cyan's people or technology. You can find it on my page. Let me know what you think. Gehn123 00:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, you should put it up on the template namespace and ask others for feedback. I'd perhaps add Richard Vander Wende to the People section. Also, the color scheme needs work. :) Chucker 04:38, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. I only put some people on as a general idea. I'm thinking we could put it into two rows, the Miller bros. and then others. I'll put it up as a template. Do you think we should go by the standard color scheme (aka what you see with Template:Guilds? Gehn123 15:11, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Template:Cyan is up, everybody start revisions. Gehn123 15:14, 19 August 2008 (UTC)