User talk:EvanProdromou/Jul-Aug-Sep-Oct-2005

See also User talk:(WT-en) Evan/Archives

Reuse of WikiTravel on my website

Hi Evan. I would like to know if there is a way for me to reuse the contents on Wikivoyage on my website. I would of course give the credit and reference to WikiTravel and authors. Is there an easy way to do that? Thank you.

See Project:How to re-use Wikivoyage guides. --(WT-en) Evan 07:52, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I have seen this page already. Is there any progress about downloads? Thank you.

No. --(WT-en) Evan 11:05, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Do you have any plans to work on it? Can you make the SQL dump available for download? I do not want to be irrespectful or annoy you, but I just think that sharing the contents could help both WikiTravel and the community, and me. Thank you for your reply.

How so? I don't see a good case.

I don't plan on doing a database dump, since a) it'll be humongous and b) I don't think we can meet both the terms of our copyleft (esp. attribution and history) while still meeting the privacy policy (not exposing personal info like email addy and such). I could probably figure out a way to do both, but it's low on my list of priorities. Sorry, but Wikivoyage mirrors haven't been a real boon to the project, and I don't plan to dedicate my really limited free time to making it easy for you to mirror.

That said, there's an HTML dump utility in MediaWiki 1.5.x, and when we upgrade to that, I'll be making HTML dumps available. --(WT-en) Evan 15:37, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I can't be that hard to dump the DB without email addresses and passwords. This would not be a problem with regard to the CC license (If it was, there would be no point in having a copyleft license in the first place). I might want play around with the DB, but not make a mirror.--(WT-en) elgaard 16:10, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

It's not that hard. It's just hard enough that it's going to take more of my time than I want to put into it. The reason it's a license problem is that Wikimedia sites typically just do a dump of the most recent version of an article (the so-called cur table). This won't have any history info, and all the N people who've contributed to the article won't get credit. Wikivoyage can't do that-- we don't have any more right to distribute contributors' works outside the license than anyone else. So we'd also have to include historical versions and user info (real name, etc.). This stuff is packed into a user table that also included your password (1-way crypted, but subject to attack at leisure) and your email address. I can write a script to pick out the sensitive info from the database dumps, but with the time I have to devote to Wikivoyage, I'd rather work on fixing bugs than making database dumps. Bug fixes make for a more pleasant experience for contributors, which makes for more content and gets us closer to our goals; database dumps for mirror operators doesn't have an immediate payback. --(WT-en) Evan 20:20, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Is there anything preventing someone from writing a dumper script and submitting it for your review? Like is there anything special about Wikivoyage's tables vs. Stock MediaWiki? -- (WT-en) Colin 20:24, 4 Jul 2005 (EDT)

No, it's exactly the same. I think a dumper script would be fine, although I'm still not crazy about serving the dump (about 200Mb for the en file). Again, this is a low priority for me. --(WT-en) Evan 10:13, 5 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Whatever you might say, but its evident that you don't want to share the content and don't want others to come up with a complete copy of your wikivoyage site. anyways, you are restricting the content give by people to you for free. Not a good idea though

Contributors like myself license our contributions with a specific legal license that puts conditions on Evan just as much as you. You have no more conditions placed upon you than have already been placed upon Evan. And let me be clear: I, for one, intended that to happen. It is not an accident that I am contributing to a site where all contributions have conditions placed upon them. And please keep in mind that each and every contributor has legal standing to take action against anyone who fails to live up to the license put upon the contributor's work. -- (WT-en) Colin 03:28, 10 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I agree with the anonymous critic, Evan and his selfish attempts to bottle up Wikivoyage content by publishing it on a site that is accessible only by those connected to the internet is the purest form of evil. Together we should form a coalition of anonymous web site operators and begin a campaign against Wikivoyage, not letting up the pressure until full dumps of all Wikivoyage data are provided in SQL, XML, Braille, and Morse Code. And even then, until Evan is willing to provide feeds of incremental updates in RSS and over AM/FM frequencies (as narrated by (WT-en) Jpatokal and (WT-en) Colin) I think his motives should be questioned. DOWN WITH EVAN!

Is this one a joke? --(WT-en) Evan 11:32, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Sorry, I should have signed it and used lots of smileys. I thought it was a bit outrageous for a user who doesn't contribute here and won't even sign in to criticize you for openness when you're running a site that is accessible to the entire world under a free license. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 11:43, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

It was good humor. Started out deadpan, and built up to some ridiculousness gradually. You totally had me. --(WT-en) Evan 12:21, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

No, I don't want to keep all the data to myself. Obviously, anyone can take the rendered HTML data (or XML data from Special:Export) and use it as they will, following the requirements of the Project:copyleft. The main thing that is difficult right now is doing a bulk download of all the Wikivoyage content. SQL dumps, HTML dumps, and/or XML dumps would be helpful for this.

Working on making dumps is a priority (see User:(WT-en) Evan/TODO), but it's a low priority for me. I'd much rather devote my time and energy to technical tasks that will improve the user experience on wikivoyage.org; experience shows that those kind of improvements cause spurts of growth in the guides themselves. I'm sure that working on making third-party mirrors easier would also help, if indirectly, but I guess I just haven't put that time in.

Let me finally say that it would be foolish of Wikivoyage to hold back these dumps to prevent third-party distribution of the content. That horse has already left the barn, as you can see on Project:Mirrors. It would probably even be easier on the servers, since less thoughtful mirror-makers tend to hit our servers pretty hard with Web spiders. --(WT-en) Evan 11:32, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Its not about being anonymous, i can list my email and all contact but i didn't have any intention to register on a website of a person who takes content for the world and then makes it his own, its not his content, and as per wiki foundation, they provide their content and the content that has creative commons on it, can be used by anyone, just one condition, they shouldn't restrict the content from being re used.

As Colin said, users who contribute have their rights on content, i do not agree, cause its written that one who contributes, his content will be used by anyone else on the internet, with or without modifications.

Let them restrict the content. i dont think that will be having any good impact.

Hi there. I really seriously think this is just a simple mis-understanding, possibly owing to language difficulties. You seem to be mistaken about the terms of the license. The content is free for anyone to use with just two simple restrictions: Credit where credit is due, and contribute back your changes. How terrible is that? It sounds fair to me. Perhaps follow the link to the Creative Commons licenses, and read the version for your own native language. Cheers! -- (WT-en) Mark 04:53, 15 Aug 2005 (EDT)

I think all the people who are supporting Ivan must be his cock suckers. but this content doesnt belong to IVAN at all, he just started this website. and am the same anonymous, i have got a crawler developed and will make a clone using the scraping. and i was just asking for dumps as people doing screen scraping will slow there servers. But i have the crawler. so now i dont need u to make any dumps. enjoy. u will soon see a clone of wikivoyage

Hey. When you say IVAN do you mean Evan? If so you are quite right that he doesn't own the content, rather the individual contributors do. This is why you will need to give credit to each individual contributor on your mirror of Wikivoyage, and why we probably shouldn't be discussing it on this page. Other than that please do feel free to use the content.

Anyhow I think we all assumed that you knew about crawlers and things like that already sorry that we didn't pick up on that before. I suppose in hindsight that it did seem pretty odd that you thought the lack of a db dump meant you couldn't use the content. Anyhow, if you need any tips on using the crawler please feel free to come back and discuss it, probably on Project:How to re-use Wikivoyage guides. Oh, one thing, can you make sure it follow the robots.txt rule for the delay between page-hits? -- (WT-en) Mark 03:22, 19 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Cache 404

Speaking of which, I'd love to help work on bug fixes, but my stock Mediawiki installation doesn't behave at all like Wikivoyage. Do you have a patch set which will get me to the point where I see the same bugs locally? Are there other issues (apache config?) Thanks! -- (WT-en) Mark 01:15, 5 Jul 2005 (EDT)

The key difference is the 404-handler caching system, which flops plain HTML files out onto the filesystem when a file isn't found. This way, Wikivoyage serves mostly flat HTML files. This is our "medium-sized" solution -- generating every page every time is too costly for us, but we don't have an array of reverse-squids, like Wikimedia does.

There's a read-only arch repository for the Cache404 extension at http://bad.dynu.ca/~evan/arch/ (category mw-cache404). It should have at least some of the info you need to get it set up. It's an extension, not a patch-- you should be able to cp -R everything to your MediaWiki setup.

The key thing for Apache is to set up MediaWiki as an ErrorDocument for a directory, so that if a file isn't there, MW+Cache404 will try to put it there. The one in /en/ looks like this:

 ErrorDocument 404 /wiki/en/index.php
 ExpiresActive on
 ExpiresDefault M0

 RewriteEngine On
 RewriteBase /en/

 RewriteRule ^(Special:.*) /wiki/en/index.php?title=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]

 RewriteRule \.html$ - [L]
 RewriteRule ^$ Main_Page.html [L]

 RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.html [L]

I think the Rewrites for .html aren't terribly necessary -- they could be done with MultiViews. The Rewrite for Special: is to make sure that e.g. Recent changes isn't cached.

For LocalSettings.php, you have to include the extension, and set a couple of variables. The most important is to turn off file caching in MediaWiki (else you get a redirect loop).

 $LP = "$WEBROOT/$wgLanguageCode";
 
 # ...
 
 $wgCachePages = false;

 require_once("extensions/Cache404.php");

 $wgCacheDirectory = "$LP";
 $wgCachePath = "/$wgLanguageCode";
 $wgCache404MaxCount = 800;
 $wgCache404MaxSize = 25600000;

Here, "directory" and "path" are the filesystem and Web path, respectively.

The key thing that I want to do is fix the username.js so it doesn't falsely show your username when you're not actually logged in anymore. But I haven't dug far enough into the user setup code to figure out what the difference is.

Looks like the problem here is that the cookie is not reset when the user is logged out accidentally (probably because of Watch List bug). Perhaps Mediawiki would correct this on the next pageload under normal conditions, but of course Apache does not know to do this when serving a flat file. I imagine you'll see the same effect with an expired cookie.

So I guess there are a couple of approches to this:

• Fixing the Watch List bug will solve the worst problem

• Adding code which checks the validity of the cookie and resets an invalid one every time index.php is called would at least show you as logged out once you access a special page.

• Maybe it would be possible to find some way to verify the validity of the cookie locally?

Any other ideas? I'll continue to investigate meanwhile. -- (WT-en) Mark 12:14, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

The other thing I want to do is replace the nav-builder functions in the Skinterceptor with one that ignores security levels, and then flip things on and off in the Javascript. And I want to add an array of admin IDs to the pages, and compare the cookie to an admin ID, to (optionally) turn on and off the admin links.

(Obviously, the link turning on and off is only for convenience. If someone managed to get around the checks, all they'd be able to do would be see a link that would be rejected when submitted).

The makeRoomForFile function, and friends, could use some optimizing. And I disabled sub-pages (Foo/Bar) entirely, which could probably use some changing.

I'd also like to set up an admin-only special page to flush the cache for one, some, or all pages if necessary.

Image: pages for images used in an article need to be invalidated when the article is saved (since they link back to the using article).

Lastly, I'd like to set up a MediaWiki skin that allows client-side skins, a la

Alternative Style: Working With Alternate Style Sheets on A List Apart.

Lemme know if that's enough to get you started. --(WT-en) Evan 07:05, 5 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Cool! I'm going to be on the train (swiss trains have outlets!) for 5 hours or so tomorrow, and will see if I can get the 404 rigged up then. Meanwhile I'll set up a copy of the repository in my arch mirror at http://mark.sdf-eu.org/arch. Thanks! -- (WT-en) Mark 08:17, 5 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Would you have any objection to starting a page such as Project:Software setup or something similar that discusses how a developer/tester could get their own mirror of the Wikivoyage Mediawiki setup going? There are enough technically-minded contributors and future contributors that could help with bug fixes (such as (WT-en) Mark did with the watchlist bug) that making this info available in a place other than your talk page could be valuable. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 15:57, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Mediawiki Branch

FYI, I've found that I'm going to have to work on the 1.4.x branch for the moment, which I guess is what the Mediawiki developers seem to want patches against anyhow (I read that thread back in March). For the moment the trunk code doesn't quite work with the version of mysql 1.4 in sid, plus they've eliminated $title->getBrokenLinksTo(), which will eventually require a patch to Cache404.php. -- (WT-en) Mark 08:23, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

URL creation

I've also noticed a pretty big difference in the way vanilla mediawiki (either REV1_4 or the trunk) constructs URLs from the way Wikivoyage does it. Would this also be a change to LocalSettings.php? -- (WT-en) Mark 08:39, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Nevermind. Found it:

 $wgArticlePath    = "$wgScriptPath/$1";

-- (WT-en) Mark 08:46, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Patch for Watchlist bug

Since the username.js bug seems to mostly be a side-effect of the Watchlist changes boot you out bug I decided to tackle that one first. It's a one liner (the patch is against the REV1_4 branch in CVS).

 Index: includes/User.php
 ===================================================================
 RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/User.php,v
 retrieving revision 1.104.2.23
 diff -w -u -r1.104.2.23 User.php
 --- includes/User.php   12 Jun 2005 18:12:09 -0000      1.104.2.23
 +++ includes/User.php   12 Jul 2005 14:03:48 -0000
 @@ -987,6 +987,7 @@
                 if ( wfReadOnly() ) { return ; }
 
                 $this->saveNewtalk();
 +                $this->setCookies();
 
                 if ( 0 == $this->mId ) { return; }
 

I'll email it to both the Wikivoyage and Mediawiki lists as well. I have no idea if they'll accept it since this bug is only manifest when using Cache404.

The problem turned out to happen because the user's EditToken as saved in the session, the cookie, and the db sometimes stop matching. Changing a user's watchlist causes $user->saveSettings to be called which syncs the one in the session with the db, but not the one in the cookie, when the db EditToken and the cookie EditToken fail to match on the next page load the user is considered logged out, even though she still has a cookie.

Setting the cookie at the same time as saving the user's settings to the db cures this problem. -- (WT-en) Mark 10:13, 12 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Added JavaScript Tabs builder

So, I did the easier task first (after the watchlist fix). I've added an override for the function that creates the URL lines for move, protect/unprotect, etc... and have added functionality to username.js to add them back on the fly for a list of admin user ids, as you suggested above.

The patches are available in my arch mirror at http://mark.sdf-eu.org/arch.

I still have to do the watch/unwatch tabs. I haven't decided how to attack the problem though. I suppose that a list of article IDs could be stored in a cookie, but it won't take long for more prolific users to hit the 4k cookie size limit. Another option I suppose would be to write an XML or JavaScript file containing the list for registered user whenever the user changes their watchlist, and to read it in on pageloads with a function in username.js. Which do you think would be better? Is there another even better way?

Meanwhile I've been thinking more about the problem of seeming to be logged in when actually logged out. It does still happen, but now only when the user's session has expired or something like that. I'm investigating whether I could do something with the apache session stuff somehow working in lockstep with the PHP session. If by some miracle this could be made to work it would be another good place to put the watchlist IDs. What do you think? -- (WT-en) Mark 12:39, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Oh, I forgot to mention that I've tested this for Firefox, IE6 and Konqueror. -- (WT-en) Mark 11:36, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Recommendation?

I read your page describing your experience with using MediaWiki on WikiTravel. I'm going to be developing something like a wiki for historical places, and I'm at the point where I'm trying to decide between taking a snap of MediaWiki and modifying it or building what I need from scratch. The thing I'm building has some features in common with a wiki: anyone can edit pages, view histories, subscribe to changes, etc. But other features are different: each page must be about a particular historic place (country, state, province, county, region, city, etc.) - other pages are not allowed. Also, there are specific metadata fields for each place that I'd like to keep pretty structured: latitude, longitude, type (country/county/city/etc.), year founded, year ended, alternate names, along with a big text box describing the region (which would be in MediaWiki format). In fact, I'd like to create a special template for turning these metadata fields into a separate "fact box" on the page, and a special Edit script that would put up individual HTML form fields for each of these metadata fields along with the traditional textbox for editing the description.

There are other differences as well, but these are the main ones. Given your experience using MediaWiki in a slightly different environment than it is intended, do you think it would be faster to develop what I need from scratch, or to take a snap of MediaWiki and modify it? I would want to launch on a small hardware base initially - say two MySQL boxes arranged in a master/slave relationship and two MediaWiki servers, serving around 100K pages/day, and I'd prefer to hire someone else to make the modifications (someone with experience hacking MediaWiki) rather than to modify MediaWiki myself.

Note that although I think it would be ideal to make minor enough changes to the MediaWiki codebase that I could fold in new MediaWiki releases as they became available, I expect that the changes would be significant enough that I wouldn't be able to fold in new releases, so the decision is either to develop from scratch and maintain the codebase myself, or start with the current version of MediaWiki, modify it, and then maintain it myself.

dallan _at_ quass dot org

I don't think what you're talking about would be at all unreasonable for MW to handle. I think that there are some great opportunities for using metadata markup e.g. Turtle which could factor into presentation. I think you'd be mistaken to think that your "fork" would have to stay separate from the codebase forever. I know that there are other semi-structured projects inside and outside Wikimedia that would benefit. --(WT-en) Evan

Thanks! --dallan

French translation

Hi Evan,

Could you update the page Project:LanguageFr.php because there are few mistakes I would like to fix for the french translation. Thanks in advance. --(WT-en) Quirk 07:18, 7 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Done! Let me know when I should re-install it. --(WT-en) Evan 08:44, 7 Jul 2005 (EDT)

It's ok! I've also removed the Support link from the navigation box (Project:Bug_reports#Donations) and fixed this error (fr:Project:Rapport d'erreurs#Un article de ...). --(WT-en) Quirk 10:10, 7 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Wikipedian Meeting on July 11

Shall we have the honor of your presence? (RSVP at the new page here) --Liberlogos

de:Project:Nominierungen zum Administrator

Hi Evan,

there was an election for two new sysops od de. last week. Do you agree with these two candidates and can you sysop them if possible? -- 84.182.91.246 01:45, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

I have no idea who any of the elected admins are. I'd like to at least get a vouch from one of the existing admins that they're appropriate, that they understand Wikivoyage, and that they're going to improve the communications and cohesiveness with the rest of Wikivoyage rather than weaken it further. I've posted some questions; looks like the 2-admin margin wasn't reached. --(WT-en) Evan 08:38, 11 Jul 2005 (EDT)

User:(WT-en) Sexy Fried Chicken

Um, this user's talk page and user page should be changed because of its content. --(WT-en) Admrboltz 22:16, 14 Jul 2005 (EDT)

If you think a page needs to be changed on Wikivoyage, please, plunge forward. --(WT-en) Evan 13:21, 15 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Taking over InterLangBot

I'd like to resurrect User:(WT-en) InterLangBot, but I don't know the account's password and HansM is AWOL. Can you hack me in or should I just create a new account under a different name? (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:59, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Do you have the software? And, yes, just create a new account with a different name. --(WT-en) Evan 11:09, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Different software but exactly the same functionality: [1]. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:22, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Great. Please post on Project:Script nominations. --(WT-en) Evan 15:29, 17 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Circular redirects (esp. Redang)

Could I ask you to work some magic to solve the long-outstanding circular redirects problem, in particular for Redang? I'll be paying it a visit this weekend and would dearly love to write it up, but at the moment I can't because the page is uneditable <deep sigh and salty tear rolling down cheek>. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:30, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Yeah, I hate that bug. I'll see what I can do about the code, but for now I just went into the DB and twiddled one of the redirects. I think Galveston is OK now, and I'm not sure about Houston. Redang should work. --(WT-en) Evan 08:20, 19 Jul 2005 (EDT)

German Admin

hi evan, today i had a look at de:Project:Nominierungen zum Administrator, where the nomination round for Steffen M. and DerFussi has ended at July, 7 with at all six pro-votes (2 admins, 4 users) for both of them, so it seems to me as if you could "switch them" now.

as you might have seen or heard, i am not able to be as active here as i have been before, personal duties (got a baby son now :) ) reduced my time drastically, thus i will show up here only once or twice a month to have a look. if you want me to withdraw from my admin status, i'd agree, though i believe it might be of use to let me be kind of a "background-admin".

furthermore i'd like you to remember the account of de:Benutzer:(WT-de) Hansm. his edits ended drastically at Nov., 20 2004, nine months ago, let us hope, that he might be still alive and kicking. but it is questionable if his admin-status should still be active, maybe you might think on this.

regards, de:Benutzer:(WT-de) Denisoliver 19:43, 24 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Congratulations on the baby, Denisoliver! That sounds exciting. We've got a baby coming next month; lots of anticipation.

As for Steffen M. and DerFussi: according to de:Spezial:Listadmins they're already admins. I think I switched them a week or so ago and noted that on the nominations page.

I'd very, very much appreciate it if you can take the time to drop in once in a while to provide experience and mentorship to the de: admins. I think that we have you to thank for so much of the success of that language version, and I'd hate to lose that well-earned experience and knowledge without your presence. --(WT-en) Evan 22:16, 24 Jul 2005 (EDT)

thanks for your friendly words, evan, and all the best for your baby to come. especially enjoy the first few weeks, they are really astounding. sorry, i haven't seen, that you already switched both, as the nomination-page was still present and de:Project:Administratoren hadn't been changed. regards, 84.60.99.243 08:47, 26 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Hi Evan, thanks for sysoping us last week, but we (me and de:Benutzer:(WT-de) DerFussi) have a problem with this function: we're missing the deleting and the protecting button, so at the moment, there is no possibility to delete or protect a page. Is there a software bug? -- (WT-en) Steffen M. 03:55, 29 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Yes. You have to hand-construct the delete URLs right now. Sorry, but it's an artifact of our caching software. We do deletes and protects so rarely on Wikivoyage, it hasn't been a high priority to fix it. I'll let you know when it's back in order. --(WT-en) Evan 08:48, 29 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Well, this was my tought, too. But I can't find the correct URL, f.e. for my user page:

http://de.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Delete&target=Benutzer%3ASteffen_M. or

http://de.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Protectpage&target=Benutzer%3ASteffen_M.

What is the correct input? Is there a help page for admins on en.wikivoyage? -- (WT-en) Steffen M. 05:49, 2 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Evan seems to have temporarily gone missing, so here's a quick answer: so long as you have admin privileges you can click on the history tab of any page, and in the resulting URL just change "action=history" to "action=delete". Note that this only works for articles - for images just use the "Delete all revisions" link from the image page. -- (WT-en) Ryan 23:15, 4 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Your RSS feed is on Planet Wiki now, and how can I wrap up the credits?

Hi! I included your RSS recent changes feed in Planet Wiki, an online news aggregator about wikis. If you have any more RSS feeds or any maximum-hits policy please contact us. BTW: I also use MediaWiki, and I noticed you have made some changes in the page footer where the names of the editors of a page are shown. Could I have the changed code and in which file it is? specifically, if you look at this page on my wiki using Konqueror 3.4.1 and this page from your wiki you will see that you need horizontal scrolling in my wiki to see all the names, but this isn't needed in your wiki because it wraps up. How can I do this on my codebase too? (WT-en) Www.wikinerds.org 05:53, 26 Jul 2005 (EDT)

If you look at the main Monobook skin CSS file, you'll see that I commented out a line that looks like:

head:first-child+body #footer li { white-space: nowrap; }

(I'd like to give credit to the person who figured out that this was the problem... I can't remember who it was, though!) I should probably re-commit that to the MediaWiki codebase, but to be honest I have no idea why it was added in the first place. --(WT-en) Evan 08:51, 29 Jul 2005 (EDT)

California map / SVG download

Thanks for the comments on the California map. Regarding the SVG upload, see my comment in Project:Mapmaking Expedition#SVG Uploads - there currently seems to be no way to download SVG files once they've been uploaded. I'll upload the SVG files that I've created, and since I'm very new to the whole SVG thing it would be great if someone else could clean up the work I've done, but at present I don't think there is any way for people to utilize these files. -- (WT-en) Wrh2 15:38, 2 Aug 2005 (EDT)

thank you

thank you for your welcome Evan, I hope I can contribute with my humble knowledge and looking forward.. 62.180.164.183 19:08, 9 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Image copyright

I don't understand what I'm seeing on the image history for Image:Compass_star_emblem_coolvetica_logo.png. -- (WT-en) Colin 00:33, 19 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Is this okay?

I worry that the pages like User:(WT-en) Cjensen/project/hotelmaker/California are very harmful to the Wikivoyage CPU. Is this type of thing okay to do? -- (WT-en) Colin 03:39, 21 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Absolutely. They're supposed to eventually get folded into the city articles, though, right? --(WT-en) Evan 10:00, 21 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Ok. I was just worried that making the wikimedia engine look up 800 different hyperlinks (to decide what color to paint them) would be bad. And yes, I'm only putting them up so other folks can make use of them now instead of waiting for me to get around to writing some kind of bot for that. -- (WT-en) Colin 11:34, 21 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Labrador City

It looks like much of User:(WT-en) Melking's contribs were copied. I'm not well right now, so I can't fix it. -- (WT-en) Colin

I'll take a look. I think she meant well, but didn't quite understand. As far as I can tell, those are her photographs. --(WT-en) Evan 22:32, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Some of the text is hers too. -- (WT-en) Colin 22:34, 22 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Redirect

Luang Prapang is one of those messed-up thingies. Also, I seem unable to email you at evan@wikivoyage (bounced on Aug 23 and Aug 19). Did you receive email from me either of those times? -- (WT-en) Colin 16:03, 25 Aug 2005 (EDT)

OK, I'll take a poke at Luang Prapang. Are you sure about the bounce? I've received a lot of mail at evan@wikivoyage.org in that time. If you're sure, resend to evan.prodromou@gmail.com; that's really rarely down. --(WT-en) Evan 18:26, 25 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Reverted my edit, why?

Hi Evan, you reverted my change to London/South Bank, where I added the 'Design Museum' under Museums and Galleries. Any reason why you've removed this? I'm new to this, I don't want to waste another hour writing a review if it's going to be removed. Cheers. (WT-en) Brixtonian 15.44 26 August 2005, UK

Mental sloth on my part; my apologies. I was reviewing edits and reverted the addition of the links to Wikipedia; see Project:links to Wikipedia for the reason why. I missed the Design Museum addition; I've re-instated it. Sorry for the shock, thanks for going back and getting things going again. --(WT-en) Evan 13:31, 26 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Thanks Evan, you've restored my faith! I still learning all the rules. Cheers. (WT-en) Brixtonian 23.00 26 August 2005, UK

Meeting in Montreal

Greetings from Lilongwe, Malawi. I can't access my mail here (bloody firewalls), but am slowly barrelling towards Montreal and on schedule to arrive around 5.9. — please drop me a line by e-mail or the Talk page to arrange a meet-up (assuming Maj-Evan Jr allows). I presume the phone number on your user page is still valid? (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:55, 30 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Yep, that's the best way to get me at this point. --(WT-en) Evan 10:28, 30 Aug 2005 (EDT)

Drinks at Nick's tonight, Sept. 1

Hey Evan, just wondering if you knew that Dave's leaving our favorite former employer and they're having drinks at Nick's tonight for him. Hope you can make it. Sorry I missed your last day, by the way. I got mixed up about days and thought it was on that Friday. Hope things are going well. Are you a Dad yet? -Tom D.

VFD's needing your attention

Hi Evan, I was trying to clean up some of the older Project:Votes for deletion, but a couple of them need your attention. Specifically Luang Prabang (double redirect) and Template:Foo (linked from your workspace). If we can get those two out of the way I think it should almost be possible to get the VFD page back up-to-date. -- (WT-en) Ryan 21:48, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Hi Evan, any update on these two? Currently the VFD page contains only items newer than 14 days, with the exception of the two issues above. It would be great if we could resolve those. -- (WT-en) Ryan 13:34, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)

see and do

I have a question, I don't really understnad the difference between 'see' and 'do'. Is a museum something to see or do for instance.

Labour Day

Congrats to the two of you! Best of luck over the coming years familiarizing the new delivery with the goals and non-goals :-) -- (WT-en) Ryan 14:58, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Good luck and be well! -- (WT-en) Colin 20:06, 5 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'm late, but congrats and good luck! -- (WT-en) Ilkirk 16:18, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Interview request

Hi Evan,

I've emailed you with a request for an interview for a story I'm writing on wikis. Just flagging it here, as well (to demonstrate passing familiarity with the medium.)  ;-)

Bart

My attempt at site redesign

Hey Evan, as you might know I've been working on a new skin. It's not really ready yet, but I've set up a mediawiki demo site so people can tell me what's wrong with it that I haven't already noticed. Here are a couple of things that I still want to change:

• I think the line around the tabs is too dark. I'm going to tone it down to a mid-grey.
• The logotype should probably get bigger, especially the text part.
• I don't yet have list icons for Get in, Contact or Stay healthy.
• There are a couple of odd bugs in the version of mediawiki on Geekhive; the language links don't work and the thing makes too many tabs selected. These bugs don't exist in the version on Wikivoyage.
• I haven't started on that JavaScript skin switcher we talked about, but I want to try to get that done so people can have more options.

Anyhow, have a look and let me know if there's anything else that bugs you about it. -- (WT-en) Mark 12:49, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I hope I'm not intruding, but I noticed the demo site link and thought I'd jump in. I'm using IE6, by the way.

• The search box extends out over the copy.
• The article title does not display correctly. All I can see is the very, bottom of the letters... only barely enough to hazard a guess at what they are.
• The logo has a blue background, but maybe thats not really up for comment...
• The table of contents along the right side seems squeezed. By that I mean words are wrapping very often.
• I dig all of the bullets except the big blue ones for See and Do... they seem to be a little overpowering. Maybe they are just out of line?

All in all, though, I think its a great start. And again, I hope I'm not intruding! -- (WT-en) Ilkirk 14:23, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Sorry I forgot to mention: Please look at the demo with Mozilla, Firefox, or Konqueror. Getting the css to work right with IE will require browser detection and some corrections which I'll do later after the design is nailed down. -- (WT-en) Mark

The width is fixed, which looks awful. I want it to fill my window (FireFox 1.0.7 and Konqueror 3.4.2) --(WT-en) elgaard 19:52, 25 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Me too! So ditto on all the above — I love the themed icons! — but a few more:

• I don't like the mixed green-blue scheme, at least for the logo itself. The blue-gray version which actually won the contest looks better to my eye.
• The table of contents should be kept on the left, not shunted off to hide on the right side.
• There should be more space between headers and content (esp. since there's a lot of, perhaps too much, space in the listings now).
• Having all links (internal and external) bolded is unnecessarily distracting and non-standard practice. What's wrong with underlining, or at least just coloring them differently? (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:23, 25 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I think we should probably move this conversation somewhere else. For now I'm putting it on my talk page. -- (WT-en) Mark 04:34, 26 Sep 2005 (EDT)

My demo thing works again

The Lausanne page at least does. -- (WT-en) Mark 11:16, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Very nice. I am happy about the "full" styles. What does 50 and 80 mean?

Of course now that you have those small icons for Buy, Eat, etc then District and Contact looks boring in comparison. --(WT-en) elgaard 11:41, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)

As you know I hate the full screen width style, but I figure that folks really want to go blind from looking at full screen texts that I might as well try to figure out a way to placate them. So long as it's not the default. 50 and 80 are character widths for the main column. Yes they are character based. If you increase the font size the pixel width of the column increases with it A list apart has been calling this elastic design.

Anyhow, we should probably find a better place for this discussion than on Evan's talk page. I just meant to respond to his pointing out that the demo had stopped working. -- (WT-en) Mark 15:12, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)

And now it's new and improved. I've created a little icon in the upper right corner of the content for toggling between the fixed width layout and the open unfixed layout that some folks seem to prefer. I've got more section icons too. -- (WT-en) Mark 17:03, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

external links & BRC

Sorry about my faux pas on the BRC page with external links. We probably don't need to link to the official site from an External Links section now, since the official site is already linked in the article. What do you think? 70.112.19.246 15:41, 12 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Vote to run InterLangBot in the french Wikivoyage

Hi Evan, we've starting a vote to have User:(WT-en) InterLangBot running in the french Wikivoyage. Could you have a look on the script nominations page? Regards. --(WT-en) Quirk 04:01, 28 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Done; looks like a good idea. Maybe we should run it on all versions? --(WT-en) Evan 10:11, 31 Oct 2005 (EST)

Take a look at this?

When you get a second, will you take a look at the discussion going on in Project:Articles needing attention? Thanks! -- (WT-en) Ilkirk 13:26, 28 Oct 2005 (EDT)