Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum

This is the page for current discussions. Archives can be found in Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 1, Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 2 and Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 3

I didn't get a confirmation e-mail, although I seem to have an account. Did anyone get the e-mail? --Old Dickens (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2012 (PDT) It works now. --Old Dickens (talk) 18:50, 29 September 2012 (PDT)
Oh wow...I just noticed that this version can display the ampersand in the title! --Old Dickens (talk) 16:32, 27 September 2012 (PDT)

Spam here already! How do they even know it exists? --Old Dickens (talk) 09:16, 6 October 2012 (PDT)

Funny thing I just discovered, I can prevent new users from creating new pages. They will have to wait a set number of days unless they confirm their emails. Now i just need time to implement it. --Osiris (talk) 11:03, 6 October 2012 (PDT)

Is it not written: "We live and learn"? --Old Dickens (talk) 20:56, 6 October 2012 (PDT)

Strange goings-on back at the original wiki: no editing, apparently. A sign of progress, I trust. --Old Dickens (talk) 18:33, 7 October 2012 (PDT)

He backed up the site and sent it to me. He disabled edits because any new edits wouldn't get moved over to the new site --Osiris (talk) 20:14, 7 October 2012 (PDT)

...and it's driving the spammers MAAAAAD! Over 250 today and the day's not over. I don't feel up to that; I hope there's some way to purge or re-start the user list. --Old Dickens (talk) 14:42, 9 October 2012 (PDT)

I wouldn't bother, none of those new users will show up here since they're not included in the database backup that Sanity gave me. --Osiris (talk) 22:13, 9 October 2012 (PDT)

We now have the best part of a thousand spammer accounts arranged in one long neat unbroken list. I'm wondering if there is any way of simultaneously highlighting and deleting them all with two or three clicks of a mouse? (Select all to a certain point on the list and then hit block and delete, ideally, once each..) This would be so satisfying.... AgProv (talk) 11:12, 13 October 2012 (PDT)

On this wiki a spammer has to pass two steps before they can make an edit. First they must pass the capcha, sadly some to them can do that. Second they must verify their email address, very few seem to be able to pass that second test. I wouldn't worry too much about deleting spam accounts. I plan to develop a script that will run monthly to clean them up. Basically, any user which hasn't confirmed their email after 30 days gets deleted. --Osiris (talk) 12:04, 8 November 2012 (PST)

Oh. It was sort of fun shooting them individually, seeing the terror in their beady little eyes... --Old Dickens (talk) 14:37, 8 November 2012 (PST)

Feel free to shoot away, just don't worry if you miss. --Osiris (talk) 13:39, 9 November 2012 (PST)

Starting over

The notice at the top isn't available for editing or I'd fix the spilleng; anyway, there are some more bits missing:

• discussion pages
• categories (the list is there but not the page itself, heading and comments)
• The de: links (The Czech version seems to be gone anyway)
• and especially the wiki.lspace link

Other questions:

• Will there be a custom skin, wallpaper?
• Why is my ISP address different?

If there's a chance of losing any of this material, might we know what so we could download as much as possible while it's available? I've done my own stuff and some bits of history but there are many discussion pages I'd hate to lose, back issues of the Mended Drum, etc.--Old Dickens (talk) 15:35, 15 October 2012 (PDT)

I do have everything, i just need to get it working properly. RL issues have gotten in the way. I wouldn't edit this too much since I may replace quit a few pages. Also, the cabal will be updating the wiki.lspace.org link soon. --Osiris (talk) 19:15, 15 October 2012 (PDT)

BTW The spammers can create users all day long but they cant post anything without email verification. --Osiris (talk) 20:06, 17 October 2012 (PDT)

So one verifies his email, WTF! --Osiris (talk) 10:36, 18 October 2012 (PDT)

Amazon Outage

Since this website is now hosted on the Amazon Web Services cloud, any outage to Amazon will affect us. Hence the brief outage today. I don't think Amazon is back up to full capacity yet though since the server is still super slow. --Osiris (talk) 19:44, 22 October 2012 (PDT)

Spam Accounts

Hopefully, ReCapcha will continue to block the creation of spam accounts. It's been 15 minutes and no new accounts were created but I was able to create a test account.

BTW: You shouldnt see a capcha if you have an account and have confirmed your email. If ReCapcha continues to work well, I may allow anonymous edits again. Next item on the TODO list. Image files... --Osiris (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2012 (PDT)

It seems about 99% effective so far. --Old Dickens (talk) 16:09, 27 October 2012 (PDT)

Files Work Again!

FYI: Pictures are back to working again. Also, sorry for the outages, first a slight hiccup because of a hurricane and then I got called away while in the middle of upgrading the hardware profile. --Osiris (talk) 22:09, 2 November 2012 (PDT)

External Links Work Again!

...you might boast about these things a little. --Old Dickens (talk) 20:45, 3 November 2012 (PDT)

The link from Doubleday's Terry Pratchett site is still wrong, though. --Old Dickens (talk) 09:55, 10 November 2012 (PST)

Moving In

So are Talk pages going to be uploaded or are we starting anew?--Zdm (talk) 23:25, 5 November 2012 (PST)

Eventually, I'm having a small problem bringing up the copy of the system that Sanity gave me. That combines with real life considerations means I havent had the time to spend on it. --Osiris (talk) 10:40, 6 November 2012 (PST)

I was just worried about what might happen if I created one and then the old one was added in later. --Zdm (talk) 14:56, 6 November 2012 (PST)

Keep a copy. I've made a couple of new entries, but on the basis that they might disappear. --Old Dickens (talk) 15:03, 6 November 2012 (PST)

The dense Cloud seems to have lifted; I've had smooth communication for a while now! --Old Dickens (talk) 17:41, 6 November 2012 (PST)

I increased the size of the server and fixed an email issue. --Osiris (talk) 18:37, 6 November 2012 (PST)

Excellent, I had an issue with saving edits take five minutes and then fail to save but that no longer seems to be happening. I am also really glad that we have the little signiture button on the top of the editing screen again, it is really convenient. --Zdm (talk) 21:52, 6 November 2012 (PST)

Hello

I just wanted to introduce myself; I'm Joe, I was kind of active on the old wiki but since the wiki's been refreshed I'm going to try and be a lot more active! If there's anything I can do to help ten please drop me a note! --Krysophrase (talk) 03:58, 7 November 2012 (PST)

It is good to see that people are making their way to the new wiki, also, what was your name on the old wiki?--Zdm (talk) 07:41, 7 November 2012 (PST)

I was called ArchchancellorJoe on the old wiki but I decided to change to my general internet name. -- Joe (talk) 05:39, 9 November 2012 (PST)

Blocking IP's

Please do not block IP addresses. This site is now behind a load balancer so the site sees everyone coming from the same IP address. The load balancer was necessary to avoid having to have the Cabal update domain records when I resize the virtual server. --Osiris (talk) 13:18, 18 November 2012 (PST)

Quick question:

Is anyone else having difficulty uploading files (jpeg artwork) or is it just me?

Also, I may be slow on the uptake here and I'm sure nothing's actually been lost, I'm sure the Main Page on the old site said we had over 3,000 articles/entries. This one tells me we only have 1,707. But nothing of primary importance seems to have been lost? (All the Discussions, yes, but rather lose those than the main entries.) Is it just a different way of counting things? AgProv (talk) 14:36, 1 December 2012 (PST)

I noticed that too. My thought is that it comes from losing the discussion pages and most other special pages such as the Catagory pages. Also it appears that not all pictures transferred correctly, many of the ones with symbols such as 'Ã' seem to be giving errors.--Zdm (talk) 15:07, 1 December 2012 (PST) (Also is anyone else unable to paste text into the editor?)

Yep, I get a "Fatal exception of type UploadStashFileException". I mentioned the wonky counter before. (I just pasted the error message there.) --Old Dickens (talk) 16:37, 1 December 2012 (PST)

My recurring error message is Could not create directory "mwstore://local-backend/local-public/a/a3". AgProv (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2012 (PST)

Try now. I changed something and managed to upload a file. --Osiris (talk) 08:06, 8 December 2012 (PST)

Hey, thanks! Works perfectly, although the artwork (just a bit of amusing whimsy. Is Matt Smith still around?) came out a lot bigger than I anticipated! AgProv (talk) 08:38, 8 December 2012 (PST)

I would also like to see the Small Gods Question talk page fixed even if the other talk pages aren't. --Zdm (talk) 19:42, 1 December 2012 (PST)

I wasn't aware of that issue. I'll try working on it tomorrow. --Osiris (talk) 20:39, 1 December 2012 (PST)

1,524 articles today, despite having added at least twenty. Most strange! AgProv (talk) 01:43, 8 December 2012 (PST).

...aka the Fred Colon Memorial article counter? --Old Dickens (talk) 05:34, 8 December 2012 (PST)

How about 4,208. Apparently, Sanity had this setting configured differently. --Osiris (talk) 07:27, 8 December 2012 (PST)

4,208 now... hey, that's an interesting plug-in! AgProv (talk) 07:47, 8 December 2012 (PST)

It seems pretty clever; it doesn't include any redirects or other extraneous pages that I can see. It matches the count in "Oldest pages". --Old Dickens (talk) 16:19, 12 December 2012 (PST)

It's a kind of Magic --Osiris (talk) 21:49, 12 December 2012 (PST)

Lspace Skin

The old default skin is available in your preferences area. I haven't forced everyone over to it because it needs a few fixes in the sidebar. --Osiris (talk) 11:21, 2 December 2012 (PST)

It only works in the preview, though; I can't save the setting. In fact, I can't save any setting. --Old Dickens (talk) 11:40, 2 December 2012 (PST)

I get a message saying my changes were saved but nothing actually happens.--Zdm (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2012 (PST)

New Rant

It seems slightly odd that absolutely no one from the foundation of the wiki remains active (except perhaps Death, who remains at the German Discwiki). OK, DaibhidC has chimed in a few times; not really active. The denizens of afp who thought it up in the first place have been conspicuously absent. The few of us on the staff now have remained since the second generation, but it seems we dwindle and rely on AgProv's input more than ever.

Why do we:

• not attract more useful contributors?
• not retain useful contributors (we've had many come and go)?
• not attract better illustrations, as AgProv just mentioned?

The current rough look and missing pieces of the wiki are another hindrance but the problem goes back years. Many of us have done good work over several years to produce a comprehensive and often amusing source of information but we seem to lack something in marketing.

One on my issues is that for some reason I always expect a small group of new contributors to join after Terry publishes a new book but for some reason they never materialize. Another thing is that when one searches 'Discworld wiki' we are pretty far down on the list, even lower then another wiki that has only 500 or so articles. This may be partially because of the site move but it defiantly isn't helping us. --Zdm (talk) 22:22, 14 December 2012 (PST)

I don't find that problem with searches. If you Google the characters in the current 'Recent changes' this wiki comes first or second, generally. Major characters and names with other Roundworld meanings will have more competition and may push us down the list. Googling 'Discworld wiki' shows us on the first page, following only Wikipedia. This is part of why I wonder about the shortage of contributors. --Old Dickens (talk) 07:54, 15 December 2012 (PST)

TODO List

I should have some time to work on the wiki here in the next week since I'm off work. Of course, that can change at the whim of the lady and kiddo. So what's the top items you think are missing and that i need to work on? --Osiris (talk) 23:47, 22 December 2012 (PST)

I am still unable to save any preference changes and I would like to see the Small Gods Question talk page restored. Those are the only major thing I can think of right know. --Zdm (talk) 00:05, 23 December 2012 (PST)

The only thing that comes to mind is (perhaps selectively) restoring the Discussion pages, if this is at all possible. Currency, Sock Under The Mattress, and the one about everyday economics of Ankh-Morpork, all had interesting discussions going and additional notes, as I recall. AgProv (talk) 03:37, 23 December 2012 (PST)

• ALL the discussion pages (well, nearly all; a few seem to have wandered off.)
• Page histories
• Other language links (de:)
• The Help namespace (mostly Help:Editing)
• Whatever is wrong with the templates. The templates are also mostly free from gibberish and editing themselves again, except the cover look-up from Amazon in the Book Data template. It still doesn't work and leaves an unsightly swath of code across the top. I can remove that but it leaves the image off-center and the box too wide. --Old Dickens (talk) 16:00, 27 January 2013 (GMT)
• User preference settings.
• A minor oddity: the contributors appear in code, or just as the universal IPA in the Gallery of new files, although they're correctly identified in the individual File: pages.

And what have you done to the poor spammers, by the way? There don't seem to be any legitimate sign-ups either. --Old Dickens (talk) 07:30, 23 December 2012 (PST)

Also it would nice to have the old Mended Drum archives back. --Zdm (talk) 09:32, 23 December 2012 (PST)

I have those myself. I can put them up again if Osiris can't extract them. --Old Dickens (talk) 10:10, 23 December 2012 (PST) They're there now. --Old Dickens (talk) 12:42, 27 December 2012 (PST)

Also the getting started guide is still missing. It is the only major red-link on the main page that I can see. --Zdm (talk) 14:05, 23 December 2012 (PST)

Also done. --Old Dickens (talk) 12:42, 27 December 2012 (PST)

Merry Christmas: Here's most of the old wiki up and running. Still no access to anything in the Book namespace though. --Osiris (talk) 13:15, 25 December 2012 (PST)

New element

...and happy Hogswatch and Hogmanay. Hoo! This is getting confusing. I guess you mean there's no Book namespace in the "old wiki" (gods know why), but then in the "old wiki" there's a Talk page for "Bergholt Stuttley Johnson' but no actual page (likewise 'Broomstick'; of course it was only the Talk pages we were missing). Will it be possible to assimilate the Discussion pages into the "new wiki" or will we have to do that manually, as noticed or required? Casual viewers certainly can't be expected to find a nested "archive" wiki. --Old Dickens (talk) 16:56, 25 December 2012 (PST)
I have some archives and Talk pages copied here, but I need to know whether it would be useful to paste them up now, or would that just get in the way of a general restoration? --Old Dickens (talk) 17:30, 25 December 2012 (PST)

Talk pages have been imported.--Osiris (talk) 19:21, 25 December 2012 (PST)

Very impressive. --Zdm (talk) 20:04, 25 December 2012 (PST)

...what he said. --Old Dickens (talk) 20:19, 25 December 2012 (PST)

Go here to export and here to import --Osiris (talk) 20:24, 25 December 2012 (PST)

Weird. Talk:Bibliography exists but Talk:Book:Title doesn't. --Old Dickens (talk) 21:08, 25 December 2012 (PST)

Here are the BOOK pages... And the BOOK TALK pages... --Osiris (talk) 07:41, 26 December 2012 (PST)

Things are looking up, but Discussions for Soul Music and Thief of Time seem to be missing (both significant, I would have thought). --Old Dickens (talk) 11:36, 26 December 2012 (PST)

Neither of those are in the database. --Osiris (talk) 07:52, 27 December 2012 (PST)

They're baaack!

Speak of the devil and in crawls a spammer under just the common IP address. How did that happen? --Old Dickens (talk) 16:54, 27 December 2012 (PST)

Reverted his vandalism but I don't seem to be able to delete the bugger - keeps going to an error page. Can you help?AgProv (talk) 17:01, 27 December 2012 (PST)

You can't do anything to the spammer: it's just the common IPA that everyone converts to for reasons known only to denizens of the H.E.M. The question is how he got to edit at all without an ID. I just tried and just submitting an email address won't do it, you have to be logged in. --Old Dickens (talk) 17:25, 27 December 2012 (PST)

My fault, for some reason people cant confirm email addresses at the moment so I was trying to find the cause and opened everything up for a few minutes. --Osiris (talk) 18:45, 27 December 2012 (PST)

Sneaky buggers. --Old Dickens (talk) 19:05, 27 December 2012 (PST)

ref, user Gigano: not only the wrong language but totally irrelevant too. I ran his blathering through the Babylon translator and it comes out as Thanks to its type design each even smallest room in our flat may become not only interiors functional, but above all pleasant).I'd put it in better English if I could be bothered, but I'm not. Can't see that as being Discworld-relevant, somehow! AgProv (talk) 12:59, 8 January 2013 (GMT)

Is it just me or are account creations not showing up in the recent changes?--Zdm (talk) 04:26, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

Account creation is broken. I still haven't figured it out yet either. I manually activated TC01's account. --Osiris (talk) 13:23, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

A toast

At the year's end, I suggest that our little band has made it to Florida, if not the stars.
I propose a Brindisi (surely you have a glass of something handy at this time of year) to the Founders,
Osiris, those who have hung in over the long drive, and all the valuable contributors over seven years.
Here's to us, and the return of auld acquaintances and the arrival of article 4000.
Happy Hogswatch, Happy Hogmanay, Bonne Année, Gelukkig Nieuwjaar, l'chaim and lang may yer lum reek!
Old Dickens - Editor Quod Nemo Vult ... 31 Dec 2012

Database Crashed

Sorry for the outage, the db crashed when i wasnt looking. FYI: You can reach me at disc@osiris-web.com anytime to let me know of issues with the site. --Osiris (talk) 17:01, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Yay! You probably had to go back to work today and I empathise, but spare a thought for those of us snowbound in the frozen north with nothing else to do. --Old Dickens (talk) 17:33, 2 January 2013 (PST)

Crude remedy for messy templates

Not as good as fixing the stupid template, but to remove the weird code in place of the unused "photo" field, use "Blank.jpg|". See Bashfull Bashfullsson. --Old Dickens (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

Question re editing/previewing

Hi! I've just noticed when I was setting up a new entry: I went to the Preview screen as usual to proof-read the piece and to seek to eliminate any glaring crass compositional errors, as you do. This is probably a case of All-Discworld-Slow-On-The-uptake syndrome, but I've realised the one thing you cannot preview in this screen is the Category. Therefore you can't see until you've saved the page is whether the details for Category are correct. it'sonly when it comes up as a redlink that you realise it isn't - I had a frustrating time with <<Category: Discworld Flora & Fauna>>, for instance. I don't suppose there's any way this can be amended? Cheers. AgProv (talk) 22:22, 12 January 2013 (GMT)

Ah, the new-style preview at the top of the box, no. It doesn't allow you to carry on editing, either; I don't see the use of it. The same old preview button at the bottom beside "Save page" works the same as ever. --Old Dickens (talk) 22:39, 12 January 2013 (GMT)

Back in business?

A tentative hallelujah for new users confirmation. Who's still out there? --Old Dickens (talk) 04:57, 26 January 2013 (GMT)

Looks like Vandals 11, Contributors 0 so far. --Old Dickens (talk) 15:55, 26 January 2013 (GMT)

Also, I was about to delete the dead link to "Biers" in the sidebar, but I wondered if there were some reason for it. ?

Turns out there was a bug in the 1.20.1 version of MediaWiki that recently got fixed in 1.20.2. So I upgraded. As for Biers, I don't care about it. Did you notice the default skin changed? And user preferences work again. --Osiris (talk) 05:51, 26 January 2013 (GMT)

I don't care if nothing works after this, we have the old skin back and that deserves a little party. :) --Zdm (talk) 06:37, 26 January 2013 (GMT)

Discworld Diaries?

Hi, I wanted to ask about the Discworld Diaries (Assassins, UU, Reformed Vampires etc) Is the information in them considered cannon?

I have several of these and they have extra information not detailed in the books, such as a Ramtop kingdom which has embraced the Way of the Cospolite (and even the Black Cult that worship her evil neighbour Mrs Golightly), they name the Vampire Count that Greebo ate as a bat, and the previous Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography who was eaten by Thunderlizards on Mono Island.

Let me know if you'd like any of this added,

regards

--Dromandkass 27 January 10:43pm GMT

As an example, Mr John "Not-A-Vampire-At-All" Smith first appears in the Vampires' Diary, as does Pamela Betty von Jones: they cross over to Thud! as the vampire committee pressuring Vetinari and Vimes to add a vampire officer to the Watch. Alice Band's first appearance was in the Assassins' Guild yearbook: she crosses to the opening chapters of Night Watch. There are so many examples of information passing over from the Yearbooks to the novels that it's a pretty safe bet to assume it can be treated as canonical! Even more - but as I know to my cost, not all - information from the yearbooks has been copied over to the Companions. Would you have the Assasins' Yearbook, dromandkiss? I'd love to see the incidental info in that in more detail! Cheers AgProv (talk) 22:36, 27 January 2013 (GMT)

I think we've always assumed that anything with The Author's name on the cover is canon (note spelling), even if it might have been Stephen Briggs or others' idea; we rely on The Discworld Companion and The New Discworld Companion, we've wikified them for years. --Old Dickens (talk) 01:34, 28 January 2013 (GMT)

Picture Rules?

Do we have any official rules on which pictures can be uploaded and used and which can't? (copyright, artist request, ect.) Also is there a list of artists who have allowed their pictures to be used? --Zdm (talk) 05:13, 28 January 2013 (GMT)

The accepted rule on copyright is that to use a picture, it requires the explicit and preferably written permission of the artist first. I have retained emails and PM's from artists I have contacted on deviantArt and other sites so that documentary proof exists and can be cited in the event of subsequent inquiry. Most artists are absolutely pleased for their work to be used here - if you ask nicely - so long as they are credited, a link is put up to their website or dA (or similarly hosted) gallery, and of course a rider is added about it not being copied on without permission nor used for commercial gain.

"Public domain" images are acceptable if used and do not require permission - my adaptations of currency notes that have been reproduced here and there, for instance.

There is also a rule about "fair usage" - ie, if part or all of a copyright image is used in the context of an academic argument or critical discussion. For an example, refer to illustration on the Alice Band page, where "fair usage" would justifiably apply to both illustrations as they are cited to demonstrate a point about the character's origins.

Of course, any member of this site who posts their own artwork - Matt, puggdogg, me - has implicitly given consent by posting their own intellectual property here, although this is of course protected from copying on by the same copyright protocol!

And, as Old Dickens has pointed out, it is common courtesy to get the artist's name exactly right in the credit...whoops...

I'm not sure about the provenance or right-to-use of screen grabs from the various Discworld animations, though. I note there's a Dibbler illustration on his page that is taken direct from the animation of Soul Music. If we can't justify "fair usage", this may need to be taken down. Votes on this? AgProv (talk) 08:25, 28 January 2013 (GMT)