User talk:Harry Wood

Leave a message for Harry Wood here

Hi, I have posted a response to your question on Help:talk Portals. I realise it was not obvious why I put that material there as I didn't post a reply directly on the Project:Support Desk. Anyway I am really interested in your comments about ways to expand and organise a wiki as that is an area I am actively working towards too. --Zven 20:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Domain Transfer Question
Hi Harry,

I have a small technical questi.... Moved to Project:Support desk/Sections/System

Cellpadding Table bug
Per, the bug is in the local MediaWiki:Common.css... [snip] --Splarka 03:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Aha yeah. I'll move your full comment to Help talk:Tables, and get a sysop to take a look. Thanks! -- Harry Wood 14:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Redirects/shortcuts to a namespace
Hello. I was hoping you might have an answer to a question I have (or maybe some guidance). On a small-community wiki I'm developing, I want to add a 'shortcut' to pages within the wiki's namesake space, in the same sense that pages in Wikipedia's namespace (ex: 'Wikipedia:Spam') can be shortcut with two letters (ex: 'WP:Spam'). How do I establish those initials, short of creating a redirect for each page within that namespace? --LeyteWolfer 03:54, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * So you have a wiki called 'BlahBlahWiki', with a namespace called 'BlahBlah', and you want to be able to link with an abbreviated two letter code, so for example  bb:ThisPage  would link to 'BlahBlah:ThisPage', from any page on your wiki. Is that right?
 * I don think it's a normal thing to do. Probably you have seen 'interwiki links' in operation somewhere, and your confusing this. Interwiki links are (normally) for linking to other wikis, elsewhere on the internet, with an abbreviated syntax (sometimes with two-letter codes)
 * ...but come to think of it, you can probably point the interwiki mechanism at your own wiki, to achieve abbreviated links into your own namespace. To do that, you have to follow the instructions to add a row into the interwiki database table: Help:Interwiki linking
 * --Harry Wood 09:38, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the idea. 'Preciate it! --192.207.114.20 23:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.css fixed
Help talk:Tables seems to have been fixed by Bdk while I was away. Thanks for the heads up. --Rogerhc 04:44, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting
The material on this page should be covered in Help:Deleting a page, shouldn't it? I've refrained from marking this page for deletion, but it seems as though you should merge any pertinent information onto the other page and then redirect the one you created. —Emufarmers(T 01:06, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * My idea was to create a bunch of pages for sysops, a little bit separate from the main help information directed at normal users. My main concern is that normal users should not be presented with a lot of information about features which aren't even available to them.
 * Help:Deleting a page is information for normal users. It includes a brief mention of sysops, but mainly explaining the idea that often a wiki page doesn't need to be deleted, and that normal users can get by just fine without a delete feature.
 * Help:Sysop deleting and undeleting information for sysops. Mainly explaining the actual delete functionality (which doesn't take much explaining. It's quite simple) but also things a sysop should be doing, and considerations before carrying out a delete.
 * I must say I thought that was clear, from the way I had written it. If you can think of any way of making the purpose of the pages clearer (without compromising the fulfillment of that purpose)... Maybe different page naming?
 * -- Harry Wood 09:45, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't like the idea of fragmenting help pages into separate normal user and sysop versions except when distinct, substantive roles are built into the software for that subject for each (which, given the janitorial nature of sysop rights, isn't a lot of places). With deletion, sysops (or whoever has the appropriate permissions) can delete pages, and nobody else can.  We can document how a sysop goes about deleting a page ("press the delete button, enter a reason") and common practices that are pretty much built into the software ("check what links here first"), but it seems silly to try to document things that vary greatly from wiki to wiki.  Normal users need to know that they (probably) can't delete pages, and that admins can and are (probably) available to help.  Beyond that, it's up to a project to decide how best to determine procedures and considerations.


 * I actually agree with you that normal users shouldn't be presented with information about features they can't use: I just think that splitting this page into two pages is a really bad way of going about that. I would rather reorganize the existing page to make it clear from the outset: "Generally, only administrators can delete pages.  See Project:Deletion for information on the wiki's policy on deletion [which would likely include the steps that non-sysops can take]."  I just don't think there's anything for us to document about deletion by people who can't delete pages. —Emufarmers(T 00:53, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * hmmmm. I think this comes down to different ideas about who these help pages are targetted at. I'm thinking the primary use case to aim at, is the thousands of wiki installations out there (probably hundred of thousands), the vast majority of which have just a few pages, a very inactive community, but perhaps some potential. In these cases, there's no energy to spend developing a 'Project:Deletion' page. In fact, even in quite large wikis communities I have seen, they haven't got around to writing those kinds of meta pages.
 * Going beyond providing a cold hard statement of what each wiki feature does, I wanted to explain a little bit about how the features typically fit in with the processes which make a wiki work. I think for something like page deletion, you have to explain that in order to be helpful. This isn't a technical manual. They're 'Help' pages. They're supposed to be helpful.
 * It seems unfair to say that it is currently "really bad" way of doing it, but I guess there are other ways we could organise this. We could try to explain features without explaining any wiki processes behind them (I actually think that would be impossible, but we could try), and then extend the scope of the help bundle, to kick start pages with names such as 'Project:Deletion' where we detail typical wiki processes. Of course that would land us with a page naming problem here on mediwiki.org . Another idea would be to limit the scope of the help pages to normal users, and refer sysops to the manual on mediawiki.org . That would eliminate the immediate problem of having two different pages about deleting.
 * I'm open to these ideas, although in general I was just trying to get on and build something, so that we are closer to a 'complete' set of help pages. There's just few more blanks to fill in Help:Blocking users and Help:Assigning permissions. And we need to remove all server administration/configuration variable information (and check if it can be better places in the Manual)
 * --Harry Wood 10:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair enough: It's more important that we make the pages complete and wrangle about organization later. I meant no disrespect with my "really bad" comment: Those were just my feelings. —Emufarmers(T 02:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that some basic help on sysop features is appropriate. Sysops are end users too and not necessarily the people who installed the wiki or who understands how it worked. Indeed I've given sysop status to all 4 of my colleagues on our new wiki, but only 1 of them currently has any sort of clue about Mediawiki. --Kingboyk 10:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Help:Copying
Hi Harry. I think Help:Copying isn't really an end user help page, and it's presence in the Help namespace is causing it to sometimes get added incorrectly to Help:Contents. Might I suggest a move to something like Project:Copying the Help pages? No reply needed, you'll act on this or not as you see fit :) Cheers. --Kingboyk 10:23, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. It shouldn't be in the help namespace. I've proposed a move. -- Harry Wood 13:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)