User talk:Eliria/admin slate

I don't really want to have just a forum for this kind of stuff. Though there should probably be a general forum for exchange of information about the wiki itself.

I'm hoping one page will suffice, since it would be cleared occasionally and updated with new info, which isn't that often anyway. As a single page it would provide a very simplistic and easy method of posting and receiving items which either need to be acted on, need to be known, or just to alert people to a discussion (such as Blurb - the restriction on anonymous editing could have simply been linked to in the Admin's slate, and if everybody watches the page (and it's locked so only registered users can edit it, of course), then it serves as a news stand and agenda for the wiki.

Suggestions would be nice, as are critiques and comments. Thanks! ~ by Eliria 17:39, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Your proposal seems to have some value, and the layout looks distinctive and interesting, but it should be part of the help desk so that people who bother to look for it can see at a glance whether there's anything on it that they haven't read. But I feel that "need to be acted on, need to be known, or just to alert people to a discussion" are matters that the mailing list is for. If you go ahead with it, I suggest that a proper name would be Forum:Admins' slate so as not to appear to be restricted to a single admin. And I trust that you meant "simple" when you said "simplistic"! Robin Patterson 02:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I read your reply on my talk page; wondered why it was there and not here; but no matter! Mailing list is a standard option but needs to be asked for (whereas it used to be part of the initial package for each new Wikia, but that was discontinued after the majority just sat unused except for spam). I can't get alongside your concerns about complexity and simplicity. I can't understand your phrase "just a forum" at the start of this page; and as for "there should probably be a general forum for exchange of information about the wiki itself" - there is, called the Watercooler; maybe you haven't really looked at it. My programming history stopped when Commodore stopped producing computers, though I've learned a little html and XML since. But I love MediaWiki and I hope you can get to love it too. First, try to use just two or three carriage returns instead of "p" tags! Now to the main subject - see Forum:Admin slate. I decided that it was best under Watercooler instead of Help desk because very little of what you've said it should contain is about asking for help. Robin Patterson 06:17, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The intention is to have a single location for casual, though important/useful/community related posts. A forum is overly complex in the sense that you cannot go to a page and see exactly what someone has said - the forums are a list of posts with various answers and states of being updated. The Admin Slate is not meant to be responded to, per se, but be more akin to leaving notes on a 'fridge. Things such as new admin voting/anonymous editing/ and even the proposal for the Admin Slate itself shouldn't have to be posted on everyone's user page, nor should it be necessary to require a person to sift through a list and decide at a glance of the subject what to read, when a short, simple post on a "post board" consisting of a couple sentences and a link to the appropriate area of discussion/page review or asking for an action to be taken, or merely telling everyone a bit of info - like how the main page was changed, or such and such was updated, or that a new template was created would suffice.


 * The watercooler is good for a forum, but does not perform the function adequately which I see the Admin Slate being a solution to.


 * As for wiki scripting vs html, if I don't need to spend days studying and memorizing a scripting language because I can already do the same things using a language I already know, then I prefer to not bother with it when I don't have to. HTML is cleaner, and for me, faster and more intuitive and less confusing (for syntax) than wikimarkup. Because I have memory difficulties it is not prudent to use wikimarkup due to the fact I must look up the syntax and pertinent characters in order to do something simple, when it takes less effort, time and frustration to do it in html for me.


 * The reason I replied on your talk page is because I am unsure of what you read on a regular basis. If I had posted it here, I would have no way of knowing whether or not you would even see it, before I had posted it.


 * ~ by Eliria 22:48, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, I follow all or most of that, I think! (I'm pleased you have now used the double return instead of "p" tags. If you pick up one trick like that per month you will make progress! And the edit buttons above the edit box have a lot of frequently-used tasks built in, as I trust you have discovered.)


 * Your admin slate, now that it is clearly explained, could fit in very logically as a subpage of the Community Portal. I've set it up there, linked from the intro paragraphs. See what you think of it. Advantage: users (if they don't want to bother linking to it on their user pages) can always find it in the same place with a few easy clicks, instead of at  a semi-random location usually but by no means always near the top of a forum listing. Disadvantage: there's no automatic indication of who last edited it and whether the viewer has read the latest version. I can edit the forum to send readers to the new location.


 * Another option for important messages is MediaWiki:Sitenotice, which is the message that should appear near the top of every page unless dismissed by the viewer.


 * Robin Patterson 01:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)