User talk:Jack Phoenix/Archive 3

Humor/Satrie Category

I noticed that several humor Wikis are put into the 'Other' category. Since there are several of these types of Wikis like Hereticpedia or Wikihumor we should make a 'Humor' or 'Satrie' category. Ktxbai.--Agent Johnson (talk) 00:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I am bringing my creative wikis over and I was thinking the same, I am actually adding three new categories for wikis with original content, just hoping some staff can make them accessible from the createwiki category list. Fan Fiction, creative and Humor are quite thriving categories in wikia Pegasus (talk) 08:25, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for the suggestions! I've added the three new categories (Creative, fan fiction and humor) to MediaWiki:Createwiki-category-list. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 19:58, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Problem

What is the problem with this page? http://icehockey.shoutwiki.com/wiki/1981_World_Junior_Ice_Hockey_Championships The logo and sidebar are all messed up. --Hockeyben (talk) 22:59, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

http://icehockey.shoutwiki.com/w/index.php?diff=210265 --187.153.53.100 03:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it, anonymous user! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 15:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, Thanks! I had no clue what happened. --Hockeyben (talk) 19:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

extension version

what shoutwiki's version of DPL2 and Semantic MediaWiki or a wiki where they are installed so I can see at Special:Version --187.153.53.100 02:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

We normally use the branched versions of MediaWiki extensions; once we upgrade to 1.16, we'll be using the versions that can be found on the REL1_16_0 branch. As for DPL, we're offering the version used by Wikimedia sites because the other, third-party version has security vulnerabilities. Currently we have no wikis that would be using either DPL or SMW. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 15:27, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

great article

RE: "Moving your wiki from Wikia to another host (off-Wikia)" http://ashleywiki.blogspot.com/

great article.

You maybe interested in this page, which incorporates what you wrote:

http://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Retaliation

Anno1404 (talk) 00:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad that you liked the article! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 18:16, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Some extensions

Hi I would like to know of it is possible if the extensions below, could be installed on the HP Wiki. They are very helpful extensions.

• mediawikiwiki:Extension:CategorySuggest
• mediawikiwiki:Extension:Link Suggest
• mediawikiwiki:Extension:CustomTitle
• mediawikiwiki:Extension:Chat phpFreeChat
• mediawikiwiki:Extension:CSS MenuSidebar

I hope they will be installed. I also liked to know if there is a bot of someone wich I that persoon would let work on the Hp wiki. Samben (Talk) 22:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Quick comments (although usually our tech team reviews extensions before they are installed):

• CategorySuggest — the code is over two years old. I think that explains everything, really.
• Link Suggest — the idea is good, the execution...not really. I'd like to see this same functionality, but implemented in a better way (i.e. typing [[ on the textbox on ?action=edit triggers link suggestions). Wikia's LinkSuggest extension isn't usable either, as it uses Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) instead of the jQuery JavaScript library. We're planning to write a link suggestion extension that uses jQuery in 2011 (unless someone beats us to it, of course!).
• CustomTitle — looks like an epic hack. You don't need PHP for this functionality, you can just use Template:Title for that. It requires some JavaScript though; let me know if you need help in setting up that template.
• Chat phpFreeChat — ugly, probably full of security vulnerabilities and not necessary. We already have our CGI:IRC client.
• CSS MenuSidebar — this is yet another thing for which you don't need PHP, you just need some JavaScript and some CSS. See Halopedia (an off-ShoutWiki wiki) for an example. If you need help in setting this functionality (called MonobookSidebar) up, feel free to contact me or Ciencia Al Poder, the developer of the MonobookSidebar script.

As for the bot question, I'm afraid I didn't understand the question. Can you please rephrase it or ask Jedimca0 in Dutch? --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 23:54, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Misza not answering

Hi, Jack. If you remember, I asked you about the possibility of having a custom domain, and you redirected me to Misza. I contacted Misza a few days ago, and I have still not received an answer: Is there any problem? Maybe should I contact other person? Scarbrow (talk) 00:23, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Please give him some time. He's very busy with his real life and wiki imports on ShoutWiki; I'm sure he'll answer your question as soon as possible. You can, if you wish, contact another member of our technical staff, but I'm sure that Misza's the one who can help you most with that question. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 01:00, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki and Security Concern

Hi Jack,

I've a couple questions. First, who would I talk to (if anyone) about making changes to the interwiki map for one of the wikis I manage? Secondly, when I inquired about enabling Special:Invite on s:w:neukolumbia, you mentioned that you had to re-disable it after enabling it due to a bug. While it's still disabled there, it is enabled on s:w:grossgermania, so I thought I'd pass it along in case the bug in question was a security concern which should have it disabled.

Thanks for your time, 〆vonPreußen／talk

It isn't really possible to make interwikis for only one wiki due to the way how interwikis are set up. Interlanguage links, like fr: and en:, are local to one wiki, but everything that isn't a language code (like commons:; in other words, interwiki links) are global, in other words, shared between every ShoutWiki wiki. I don't think that this is much of a issue, though, as usually new interwiki prefixes can be global; for example, it's very useful that commons: interwiki works on all wikis instead of only selected ones. If you want to request a new prefix to be added to the interwiki table, ask me or another staff member and we'll look into it.

As for the Special:Invite issue, thanks for the reminder! I'll ask Misza to enable it for s:w:neukolumbia. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 10:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

That makes sense, then. I doubt my requests would be useful for anyone else, so I'll stick to template-plainlinking them instead. Thanks again for your time, 〆vonPreußen／talk

Special:Invite has now been enabled for s:w:neukolumbia. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 18:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Draconian captcha

I accidentally typed a bad password and had a hell of a problem to log in because of unintelligible captchas. I think they may be limiting the growth of the wiki, people are unlikely to join if they cant figure out what is the captcha to create a new account. May be you need a new captcha provider, or consult people if it is a problem only me is having or it is something else

I also think you may want to make required for wiki starters to have a confirmed email adress. I just discovered that if you lost your password and you cant recover it by email then you are pretty much screwed unless you ask for assistance to a staff memberDionysus (talk) 21:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Just my own input on the CAPTCHA matter: I don't think the CAPTCHAs being used here are overly bad; they're much easier (for me) to read than reCAPTCHA ones, or those used by a number of other services. However, a 'refresh' button to provide a new one may be nice. 〆vonPreußen／talk

If you can't read a CAPTCHA, you can refresh the page to get a new CAPTCHA, one that hopefully is more readable.

And I agree with you regarding the e-mail address issue and new wiki creation; I'll poke Skizzerz about this whenever he's around. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 10:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I also had alot of problems creating an account. It took me at least 30 tries. One thing to note, the first letter in your username and password MUST be capitalized. --Hockeyben (talk) 18:07, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Passwords do not need to be capitalized, and MediaWiki will automatically capitalize the first letter of your username (i.e. if you tried to register an account called john smith, MediaWiki would transform that into John smith and your userpage would be at User:John smith, not at User:john smith and so on). --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 18:19, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, it must have been a coincidence that the first time I capitalized the first two letter, account creation worked. Thanks for clarifying that. --Hockeyben (talk) 22:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Server speed

Hello, i have been having some problems with site loads pretty much anywhere on the shoutwiki site, occasionaly i get maybe a page or two before it slows down and simply loads without actually loading. It occurs for me on any of my wikis. Is there some sort of maintenance going on that is slowing them down? ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 04:00, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

We've been importing some wikis listed on our wiki import queue so the imports may have been stressing the server temporarily; sorry about that! We hope that we can do the imports as soon as possible so that everyone can get back to editing their wikis normally. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 10:52, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It has been incredibly slow for me too. I have averaged between 15 seconds and a minute to load a page. It has made working on my wiki very difficult. --Hockeyben (talk) 22:50, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ice Age 3 Wiki

I have founded an Ice Age 3 Wiki here and have asked for the content to be imported from my Wikia Wiki. This was about a week ago and I still don't have my imported pages.

Toothless99 (talk) 12:07, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

There is now a dump done, about 5 days ago, so it should be happening soon. ☆The Solar Dragon☆ 13:16, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

This wiki has now been imported. Happy editing and let me (or another Customer Support Team member) know if you need any help! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 15:39, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Cannabis Wiki

Hi. I was wondering how this was coming along:

• http://bugzilla.shoutwiki.com/show_bug.cgi?id=99

Thanks. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:36, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The basic rule of thumb is: if it's on our Bugzilla, we're looking into it. This is especially true when it comes to wiki imports; they are our #1 priority right now! Even though we may not reply anything on the actual bug report, we have added your wiki to our internal import queue and it'll be done as soon as possible. There are various factors on which it depends when a wiki is imported; human resources (importing a wiki isn't a press-button-and-sit-back thing, unfortunately; we'd like it to be, though!) and the actual dump (we'd like to use an up-to-date dump instead of using one that is weeks or maybe even months old), for example. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:30, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Great! The Dec. 2, 2010 dump is fine:

http://cannabis.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Statistics

I have done very little editing since then. Mainly on 2 pages that are regularly updated. I can update those manually without problems. I can fix a lot of problems. I will have to convert the embedded Youtube wikitext on various pages since I believe ShoutWiki uses a different embedding extension. Wikia has messed up their Youtube sizing lately. See my comment here. The video embedding extension ShoutWiki is using does not have this sizing problem. I tested it on my user page: User:Timeshifter.

Feel free to add ads in content space. I don't mind as long as they are labeled as ads. I really prefer the wider content space here to Wikia's narrow content space lately.

Is it possible for a MediaWiki farm such as ShoutWiki to use a big server host like 1and1.com? --Timeshifter (talk) 23:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Monacco?

I am seeing monacco, everywhere! did i have a stroke? ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 22:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Nope! Check out our Christmas-themed blog post to find out more about Monaco! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 23:46, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

oh goody! I was planning to get monacco. Question: Does getting premium only work on one wiki or all whom i reign terror over....i mean admin over? ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 23:55, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Currently we've been planning that a premium feature is a per-wiki thing; i.e. an admin pays for a premium skin (say, Monaco) and the skin is enabled for their wiki so everyone visiting the wiki as an anonymous user or opting in (by changing their preferences) will see that skin on that one wiki. However, as noted in many places earlier, very few details have actually been finalized and pretty much everything is still subject to change. Stay tuned! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 00:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

cool, ok then. Also I seem to be having a difficulty having the sidebar display what i want it to (as seen here) it doesnt seem to want to display itself on the actual sidebar. perhaps a glitch? or am i missing something? ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 00:12, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Monaco's stuff, such as sidebar and toolbox MediaWiki: messages, are cached for 4 hours. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 00:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

ah ok, thanks ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 00:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

another annoying question, is the Monaci theme able to be set as the default for everyone unless they choose otherwise (such as anonymous users) or does the theme have to be chosen? ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 04:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's possible to set Monaco as the default skin of a wiki (see below for an example). --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 22:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Sapphire

How do I change the theme to Monaco sapphire on my wiki? Hockeyben (talk) 02:14, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Contact a member of the customer support team or file a bug on our Bugzilla by yourself; remember to mention the wiki's URL. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 02:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)\

OK, I would like to change the theme to Sapphire on http://icehockey.shoutwiki.com/wiki/The_Face_Off. Thanks --Hockeyben (talk) 22:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

This has been done now, enjoy! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 22:59, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there a cache for this? Because i'm still not seeing Sapphire. --Hockeyben (talk) 23:45, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure. However, I just visited the Ice Hockey Wiki on my IE8's InPrivate mode and I saw Monaco as the default skin. You might wanna check your local CSS overrides for the Monaco skin, too. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 00:00, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Im seeing Monaco, just not the Sapphire theme. --Hockeyben (talk) 00:29, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

If you take away the local customizations (MediaWiki:Monaco.css), what's left is the Sapphire theme; it's the default Monaco theme. Every page load with the Monaco skin loads a bunch of CSS files from http://www.shoutwiki.com/w/skins/monaco/css/; these files serve as the base of the skin (in a similar manner to Monobook's main.css, except that main.css is one file that contains everything necessary, with the exception of browser-specific fixes and that Monaco doesn't have one main.css file, it has many files) and this base is the Sapphire theme.

If you are using a custom theme, an additional CSS file (http://www.shoutwiki.com/w/skins/monaco/theme name here/css/main.css) from the theme's css directory is loaded right after the core Monaco CSS files. Thus the theme CSS files are rather short; they don't have to duplicate much code, they can just override some previously set values and that's it. For example, the CSS file for the Romantic Pink Monaco theme (which is located at http://www.shoutwiki.com/w/skins/monaco/pink/css/main.css) is only 60 lines long (and 11 of those are comment lines!). --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 00:50, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

So just blank the Monaco.css page? --Hockeyben (talk) 01:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC) I am now seeing Sapphire. Thanks for all your help. --Hockeyben (talk) 16:41, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Licensing Confusion

Hello. I'm planning to create a wiki that relies heavily on copying pages and images from another (now offline) site. It used a GFDL free license, and I'm not good at translating the legal babble on sites like those. You know like 10 languages, so I'm assuming you'd be able to tell me whether or not I'd be breaking the law by publishing the articles without proper credit or something like that. Infomercial (talk) 04:36, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The rule of thumb is: if it's copyrighted, you can't use it (without naming the authors etc. at least). And if it's not in the public domain, it's copyrighted.

That being said, I'm not an expert on Legalese in any language, although working with wikis has taught me a lot about all kinds of copyright issues and related things. I believe that in order to use GFDL-licensed content, you must:

1. Make a copy of the GDFL available on your wiki
2. License your wiki under the GFDL (not too sure about this one)
3. Attribute the authors of the copied content

Regarding attribution, linking to the source wiki is obviously out of question if and when the said wiki is offline. Was the wiki a public one? If so, it might have been archived (to a degree) in the Internet Archive; you can use the Wayback Machine to see what a given site looked like in the past. It might be a possibility to link to the archived version, if the wiki can be found in the archive. If not, maybe you could make a template like s:w:commandos:Template:Wikipedia, stating something like "This page uses material from X wiki, which is released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). As such, this page and all subsequent edits to it are considered to be released under the GFDL too."

tl;dr: copying stuff you didn't originally create and that isn't in the public domain is always a copyright violation. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 15:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, the authors are completely anonymous, and my attempts to contact them hasn't seemed to work so far. If I attribute them with their key names and link back to the archive I got the content from, would that be fine? Or would it still be necessary to license the wiki under the GDFL? Infomercial (talk) 01:00, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe that linking back to the archive and attributing the authors is enough, but as I'm not a lawyer, please don't quote me on this. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 01:06, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

One last thing. If I want to disable account creation on a wiki, will I need to make it public or private? The pages for the two types didn't make it very clear. Infomercial (talk) 03:04, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Disabling account creation on a public wiki is relatively pointless, as anybody wanting to have an account could just go to another ShoutWiki-hosted wiki, create an account there and use it to edit (etc.) your wiki. A private wiki is better if you want to control who can read/edit your wiki. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

wikia monaco help pages transfered to shoutwiki

If I were to create an xml file of all of the redirected monaco help pages, [1] Once they are added here, I could revert the redirect.

Would you import them here? I can get all the images also. {{subst:User:Anno1404/signature}} 18:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

here is an xml file, with all of the redirected pages and full history of those pages. {{subst:User:Anno1404/signature}} 18:23, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

We won't be importing the old help pages used by Wikia, we'll instead write our own help pages as soon as time permits. Some of the images aren't necessary either (Wikia logo comes to mind) and I have the header button images on my laptop. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 18:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Caches

How often are Special Page caches (ex. Uncategorized pages, Wanted pages, Unused categorys) updated? --Hockeyben (talk) 01:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

As a bureaucrat, you can visit Special:RefreshSpecial on your wiki to update these special pages. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 13:31, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Help

Help. I was wondering if you could help fix the problem at Wikicars or at least tell us what the problem is. The logo doesn't show up and the galleries are blank. Please don't you say it is not ShoutWiki. Wikicars is desperate. I beg you to at least help. (My account there is Silver Knight) --Knightrez^(Talk) 09:43, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, firstly...it's not a ShoutWiki wiki, so I have no obligation to help. There are better sources for general MediaWiki help, such as the MediaWiki-l mailing list, MediaWiki.org and the #MediaWiki IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

That being said, I did take a look at it. As soon as I enabled JS debug mode on my IE's developer tools and refreshed the page, the logo showed up and the JS error I saw previously was gone and I was unable to reproduce it.

I'd suspect that a part of the problem is that the site is using a horribly outdated version of MediaWiki, version 1.6.5, which was released back in 2006...it hasn't been supported for ages and probably has security vulnerabilities (among maaaaaaaany other bugs). The version lifecycle page on MediaWiki.org states that the current, supported version of MediaWiki is 1.16; version 1.15 will reach its end-of-life in December 2010 and all older versions of MediaWiki are unsupported. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 13:31, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! :-) Your a life saver. You don't need to go over and fix it, could you simply tell me how I could fix it? --Knightrez^(Talk) 03:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikicars wants to merge with Autopedia

Urgent message. Wikicars wants to merge with Autopedia! Could you please import everything from there? Its got 6000 articles+ --Knightrez^(Talk) 04:36, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe that Misza is looking into this. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

What! Please dont ignore this. Wikicars is a major wiki. Please do something about it!! Our user spent 3 years to build it! --Silver Knight (talk) 13:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

You are not being ignored. Please realize that today is Christmas and tomorrow is St. Stephen's Day; many of us are taking these days off from work and spending time with family (and possibly friends) instead of watching what's going on in here; it's highly unlikely that the wiki will disappear from the internet before the next Monday. We understand how much the users' contributions mean to them and we respect them. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

MultipleUpload Error

Hi Jack,

Just thought I'd point this out, though I'm not sure what if anything could be done about it. I was attempting to use Special:MultipleUpload earlier today and encountered this error. Pressing my back button and retrying succeeded.

Hope this helps somehow, 〆vonPreußen／talk

That's a new one, haven't seen it before. Maybe you should report this bug on our Bugzilla, it might be a good idea to take another look at the MultiUpload extension source code now that our technical staff is working on the 1.16 upgrade. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Will do; I encountered it a second time today, though it seemed to upload the images this time despite showing the error. Merry Christmas! 〆vonPreußen／talk

Thank you; have a Merry Christmas, too! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Steward rights

On Autopedia my user account Knightrez is a steward. I changed my account name to Silver Knight. Could you please give me back steward rights and remove all Knightrez's three rights? --Silver Knight (talk) 11:29, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

• Hey there Silver Knight, I have given you the requested Steward rights. But, could you post here or on my talk page using the Knightrez account confirming you want the rights for that account removed? Thank you. --Jedimca0^(talk) 18:27, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

--Knightrez^(Talk) 01:06, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

• and done, thanks... Merry Christmas. --Jedimca0^(talk) 10:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Jedi, you rock! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Edit counts

I have noticed that my edit count (the actual number that i can have on my profile) appears to be any and all edits I have made on Shoutwiki not specific to that wiki. Eg. i have almost 2000 edits on Stargate Wiki and that number also shows up on Escyos wiki. Is there any way to not have that or is that impossible. ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 12:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

There are a few open bugs regarding the Editcount extension, see bug #87 and bug #93 on our Bugzilla. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 12:45, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

ok cool, also could you enable the social tools on the Stargate wiki. thannks ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 00:04, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

I've asked the techs to do that. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Images not loading

See http://icehockey.shoutwiki.com/wiki/ECHL Hockeyben (talk) 02:45, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your message Hockeyben. I've notified our technical team of the issue. — Lynton ^{talk • email} 02:55, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Lynton. Its occurring on more than one page.http://icehockey.shoutwiki.com/wiki/User:Hockeyben/Test_Page --Hockeyben (talk) 02:57, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Misza appears to have fixed this. Thanks --Hockeyben (talk) 18:50, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Name changing

Could you please change the name from Autopedia to Wikicars? This should help for importing --Silver Knight (talk) 07:48, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Hold that for a while, Red marquis whats to keep the name Autopedia --Silver Knight (talk) 10:47, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Server error

There's something wrong with Autopedia. It's not opening. Knightrez has the same problem. I'm wondering if it might have to do with the importation. Is it finally taking place because Wikicars is also acting a bit weird. Suddenly everything is in dutch.

--Red marquis (talk) 16:20, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it was just a temporary glitch? Everything seems to be working now. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to let you know, we've been blocked at WIkicars with out rights stripped. What can you do for us now? :( --Silver Knight (talk) 03:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

While that's unfortunate, I'm quite sure it won't slow us down. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Blocked

Sorry to tell you this... Me and Red marquis have been blocked at Wikicars along with our rights stripped... We're both counting on you & your staff to import everything from there. --Silver Knight (talk) 03:45, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry, Misza knows what he's doing. :-) --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

You sure? What is he currently doing? --Silver Knight (talk) 02:08, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Please do not think that you are being ignored, but this is not a task that can be completed easily. You do not have a dump of the wiki to be imported, meaning the process is complicated. As the wiki to be imported is using an extremely outdated version of the MediaWiki software, it is presenting numerous challenges. Misza is likely going to have to write a program to assist in the import process. All of this is going to take some time. Please understand that Misza is taking on this task in addition to his other responsibilities, and he cannot halt all of his other work to solely assist you with this. We would appreciate your patience in this regard. When Misza has updates for you, he will contact you. Thanks, — Lynton ^{talk • email} 02:21, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand it will takes some time and I'll be patient :-) --Silver Knight (talk) 02:35, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Vandal

Hello, there is a user, first he was Terra584, now he is Terra585, i have banned both as his comments suggest he is planning to vandalise the Stargate Wiki. Is there anyway you could place a more permanent ban, say an IP range block on those he uses to stop him. Thanks ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 01:44, 29 December 2010 (UTC) Also im pretty sure he is Jaymach just under a different name ESCYOS - YOUR GOD! ^{talk | contribs} 01:49, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I've blocked the IP used. It does not match Jaymach's IP. — Lynton ^{talk • email} 02:01, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Forum

Hello, Could you please activate the forums at Autopedia? That be great, thanks! :-) --Silver Knight (talk) 08:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you also activate them on Ice Hockey Wiki ?--Hockeyben (talk) 16:03, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I've pinged Misza about these requests. In the future, it might be better to open up a bug on our Bugzilla to ensure that the requests will be tracked properly and that they won't be forgotten (because errare humanum est). --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 01:48, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

These requests have now been done. Enjoy! --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 19:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If there done, how do I get the forums to work? --Silver Knight (talk) 09:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at the extension's page on MediaWiki.org and an example of the extension in use. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 17:27, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Vector and v1.16 of MediaWiki

Happy New Year. It seems the staff has a lot to do for 2011.

I was wondering if the Vector skin would be possible as the default skin for a wiki? I edit on several wiki farms. After all the craziness at Wikia and elsewhere I was hoping to edit on the latest plain-vanilla skin used by whatever version of MediaWiki was installed here.

I think in the long run many wikis may opt for this since it is easier for many editors, staff, many users passing by, and probably scales more easily, too. The official MediaWiki skins are tested fairly thoroughly too, I believe. Also, I read that the custom skins start varying more and more from the standard MediaWiki wikitext, and their wikitext becomes more incompatible over time. This can defeat the open standards ideal of wikis, and the sharing of info between wikis. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:34, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

There's always plenty of stuff to do, considering ShoutWiki's size and the amount of users using the site. :-)

Our techs are working on 1.16 upgrade, it's a high-priority issue, but there are still some bugs to be addressed before we can deploy it on the live sites. When that's done and 1.16 is live, the Vector skin will be available. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 19:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Lag

Recently the lag on this shoutwiki.com has been unbearable. Several times the site has gone down completely. I don't know if anyone is addressing this, but I just got an email from an influential member of our two communities posing the question whether we should move. Is this lag going to be addressed soon, and when? {{subst:User:Anno1404/signature}} 17:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

The tech team is looking into improving the site performance. There shouldn't be any special reason for the slowness. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 19:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Chat box

RE: No, BlogArticles extension will not be available. Firstly, MediaWiki is a wiki software, not a blogging software. For real blogging functionality, we feel that you should use WordPress or some other dedicated blogging tool (it's what we do, too!). Wikis, however, have been using user subpages and their talk pages for things like essays, rants, and other things that reflect only the opinion of its author as opposed to the whole wiki community.

In my experience, the biggest feature which makes editors hesitant to leave wikia is the blog feature. No matter what you may think of wikia, they are great at marketing, and have put a lot of thought into this.

Okay, so you will not offer blogging, for several reasons.

Would you folks consider something even better, which will make shoutwiki much more attractive than wikia? Currently you offer the shoutbox extension which is not very good. Instead, you can offer your communities http://chatango.com? It is an incredible chat box, the most powerful and innovative on the web. I really want shoutwiki to flourish and wikia to not. 17:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

As we discussed on #ShoutWiki, it's certainly an interesting idea and something to consider in the future. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 19:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Load balancing worldwide with many wikis

Can ShoutWiki handle the load from all the wikis that are going to be added? I think more wikis will ask to be copied here, especially as people see Shoutwiki succeed with all the bandwidth increases.

I have read that big hosts like 1and1.com can handle almost any bandwidth needs, and can instantly allocate bandwidth as needed. I believe they offer virtual servers that can do this. I see their multi-page ads in PC World magazines frequently. I do not understand these things, and thought I would mention it. You may know all this already.

I have learned one thing concrete though that may be relevant to ShoutWiki. I suggested a Russian-language cannabis site use 1and1.com when they got kicked off servers first in Russia, and then in Ukraine, due to government pressure on the hosts. They have since had no problems after moving their site (with the same domain name as before) to a big international hosting service (1and1.com). I was just guessing they would not be intimidated by any single country since they have servers in multiple countries. I also guessed that this is good for fast load times in spite of crossing national borders. Multiple servers in multiple nations can get around almost any blockage or problem, I assumed. I assume this ability might help an international wiki farm, too. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:51, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Here are some direct links to virtual and dynamic cloud server info:

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/Server;TCpfix141b

http://order.1and1.com/xml/order/CloudDynamicServer;TCpfix141b --Timeshifter (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not that techy, despite being a MediaWiki developer; I'm sure that our tech guys would know more about this than I do. :-) --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Import?

Hello, I don't really know if your staff member Misza is importing or not because he hasn't responded on his talk page and it is already 2011. Me, Red marquis and other admins are clueless about what your doing with the situation. I'd really like to know. --Silver Knight (talk) 10:48, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Our first and foremost priority at the moment is improving site stability and response time. This is our highest priority at the moment and our techs are working hard to resolve those issues. Unfortunately, this means they have less time to work on a way to export your content and get it ready for importing. Once this problematic situation has been resolved, the imports will once again be our highest priority, along with the MW 1.16 upgrade. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah thanks. --Silver Knight (talk) 05:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Vector

Will the Vector skin be paid or free? --Hockeyben (talk) 19:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

It will most likely be free. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi there

Hi there Jack Phoenix. My name is Shrev64. I am an active admin on the Sly Cooper Wiki (more commonly known as Slypedia). I got an email about the old monaco skin and how the wiki could get it back. It linked me to a blog post (the same link that is advertised at the top of every page). I click on the link, but it seems to be broken, as it will say the page is not available. Is there anything you can do about it? Thank you! 174.23.149.168 01:21, 4 January 2011 (UTC)Shrev64

Hi Shrev64, let me begin by saying that the message which was sent out was neither endorsed nor approved by ShoutWiki. We have our suspicions about who did it, however.

The reason why you saw the "page not available" message while trying to view our blog was that the server hosting blog (and a few other services) was temporarily down. It's back up, so you should be able to view it now. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I got one of those emails too. It was actually quite flattering towards shoutwiki. I like to tell people that shoutwiki has monaco too! (I also steal away editors from the incomplete, uncanon, unrealinale Stargate Wikia!)

Well, I have been speaking with the person who sent the emails and he said that he will no longer be sending them out. Although I spammed Wikia's blogs replying to comments about Monaco yesterday... ☆The Solar Dragon☆ 06:26, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Deletion wikis

3.古詩文學百科

6.官員百科

7.學校維基館

8.台中景點百科

9.福爾摩沙百科

10.奇摩知識+共筆

11.msnhinet8的書櫃資料查詢

12.中文汽車百科

↑the wikis is deletion,thanks.

• Happy new year and chinese new year!--Msnhinet8 (talk) 06:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'll delete those wikis later today. Happy New Year to you too! :-) --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 14:54, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Non League Wiki

Can you please delete this wiki because I've no time for it. And Happy New Year! Doh5678 (talk) 21:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Happy New Year! I hope you'll have more time for wikis in the future, but I must admit that maintaining a wiki is quite time-consuming. I've deleted the requested wiki. --Jack Phoenix _(contact) 01:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank You. Doh5678 (talk) 13:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)