User talk:Tarkisflux/Archive

Adoptions

• Sup Tarkis. Listen, I never really thanked you for adopting those old drafts of mine. So let me try to fix that. ...Thank you. Really. It's nice to think that a smart guy like yourself took an interest into making those better. I appreciate the effort. Good luck. Peace. --Jay Freedman 10:33, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem Jay, I liked where you were going with them. A less religious paladin and a more civilized ranger, the ideas appealed to me. I hope you will continue to be happy with how they are taken care of, and can still see your creative spark in them later when I make changes to fit them into the Tome of Prowess :-) - Tarkisflux 15:19, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Template

Hey Tarkis. Just curious about the template you were working on for me, and how it's coming along. MisterSinister 05:26, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

The template that you made is excellent, thanks! There's just one little thing - the Component line doesn't register the Slot component (Sl) for short. Could you add it, please? MisterSinister 18:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

This was a limitation of the Component property to avoid nonsense. Added it in. - Tarkisflux 18:57, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Upgraded to Optimus Eiji

Thanks! My golden pants return! -- Eiji-kun 08:51, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Call to Arms!

Your fine suggestion has made you the first to hear my request. I would like to extend that hospitality even further, by asking if you could look at either my: Sith/ Jedi (3.5e Class), Uongo-mijusi (3.5e Race), or Improved Slow Heart Beat (3.5e Feat). Thank you, kind sir, for rational advice and promptness. --Franken Kesey 00:35, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Promptness. Pfft. - Tarkisflux 01:11, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

A Favor

I know I used up all my favors a long time ago, so I only ask of one more. I am personally requesting this favor from Tarkisflux, Eiji-kun, NameViolation, and Ganteka Future - but if any hospitable user wishes to answer the call I am open. I had incorrectly understood that this wiki (meaning the last one as well) was intended as a community work space, and everyone had a voice. One that was not to be squandered over trivial matters. But have found over time that name and name alone separate it from the paleo-wiki. You changed the address, but the bankers are all the same. Most of the users here are not schmucks, but it only takes a few. So I have grown tired of these "rational thinkers", these couch potatoes who don't know squat. So I will be formally leaving this wiki. And am asking if someone could look after what little work I leave behind. You four seem to be the wisest of the lot. Not using this wiki as a front for acting smart. I can take a certain amount abuse - and have played the mad for some time. But the stuff here is utterly intolerable. Thank you, and good luck - the madness has been the only way I've stayed sane. --Franken Kesey 06:15, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Tark's you were more than right about rating requests. The old wiki was a lot more hospitable - should have listened.

For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I don't want anyone to feel pushed out. Good luck to you as well; I'll try to keep your spirit alive in your work. - Tarkisflux 06:23, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, remember madness is bliss. What goes down must come up --Franken Kesey 22:44, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Wiki-Code

Heya, mind helping me create a template for G4e classes? Basically it's similar to 4e classes, but the following need to be in the startup box:

• Role
• Key Ability
• Armor Proficiencies
• Weapon Proficiencies
• Bonus to Defense
• HP per level
• Trained Skills
• Class Skills
• Universal Class Features

Everything else in the 4e box is unneeded; TK showed me this, but I've got no idea where to start. Mind helping me out? Thanks! --Ghostwheel 22:44, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, TK helped me out--though if you don't mind, please keep an eye on the work and let me know if anything can be expanded on, thanks! --Ghostwheel 22:48, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Some Help With Breadcrumbing

As you have noticed, I've (finally!) done all the updates for Chapters 1 and 4. This has led to multiple subpages, for which I believe breadcrumbs would be good. However, I don't know how to write them (I only wrote the basic TOToM one with a lot of instruction), and would appreciate some help if you could. Thanks. - MisterSinister 19:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I actually wanted to talk to you about some of those. If you're happy with the current org I can breadcrumb them, but I think you may have gone a bit overboard on the subpaging. While spell list subpages are good, I'm not sure that anything is gained by requiring people to click through to sub-sub-subpages to find tag stuff. - Tarkisflux 20:21, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I suspect I may have gone a bit overboard, but at the same time, they take up a lot of space, and the pages end up being horribly long if I include them. Ideally, I'd prefer to only have one 'tier' of subpages on my pages, as it would not only make breadcrumbing easier, it would also be a lot less user-end annoying. How do you think I should do it? - MisterSinister 21:13, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm with you on the length, but I think you also have stuff in places that feels weird to me. I think you may want to split SRP4 into two chapters, "Magic Overview" and "Spell Descriptions", and merge a fair bit of SRP1 into them. The "Schools and Tags" stuff really should be together with the spell descriptions stuff since that's where they show up, though schools could possibly be folded into magic overview if you wanted. I see no reason to have the tags split into two different subpages like they are now; if you want them on their own sub (which might be necessary even if I'm not overly fond of that setup) they should be all together. I'd split "Important Ability Elements" into those two sections as well, with any section name that also appears in the spell description being in that section (so, components, duration, etc.). Looking in two places for rules on components is not cool. The rest of the sections there look like they'd play better in the magic overview as either explanation before the process (ability types) or steps in the process (SR, saves, etc). - Tarkisflux 23:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

In terms of schools and tags, the reason I dragged them out of the spell chapter is that they apply to many different kinds of abilities now (not just spells and spell-likes - I plan to use them more with class abilities, for example), which means I wanted to have them put in a place that wasn't tied to spells. Putting the tags all on one page does make sense, so I'll give it a go.

In general, though, I am having organisational issues with most of my content, so I'll get onto addressing those as soon as I can figure out how I want them arranged. - MisterSinister 01:10, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Applying more tags to class abilities and whatnot makes sense. If that's the intent you might want to just make them their own chapter / page / whatever instead of tied to any of the specifically magic bits since it'll be referenced outside of spells. And maybe make it clear that they apply to abilities of all types, not just spells.

And I know org issues. I just resorted ToP because the order was unwieldy. If I have time later / tomorrow I might try to work up some mashups of your stuff in alternate order to help things along. - Tarkisflux 01:34, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Check out the new TOToM pages

You can find them in their own section on my userpage here. I decided I'll let you and Havvy edit them a bit before I upload them.

MisterSinister 20:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Black Lion Powers List

Dude, what is up with my list. I can't figure out why all the powers refuse to show up. Any ideas on what I did wrong? The asked categories should match up perfectly with the desired fetched powers? Man. I am lost. *shakes head* --Jay Freedman 02:53, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I assume you mean the higher level powers? Server just hadn't updated the query results. Sometimes it does it right away, sometimes it does it after a day or two. You can manually refresh it by using the wiki refresh page option (not the browser refresh) or by editting / saving without changes. I think they're all there now though. - Tarkisflux 05:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh thank goodness. I was twisting myself into hexagons trying to figure out what the problem was. Well, all better now eh. Sheesh. *stalks off to find food* --Jay Freedman 09:46, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

You should check out the powers page again. If you really want it to mimic WotC format you can embed the powers in the page instead of just linking them, though you will need to do a bit of noincluding on the powers to make it look pretty (see the 1st level ones I tweaked). It'll make the page long and dense, but I don't think there's any real way around that :-/ - Tarkisflux 16:20, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Speedy Delete

When were you planing on deleting speedy delete pages, here and on the old wiki? --Franken Kesey 22:57, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

One of these days. I've been out most of the week, but don't generally check that category anyway. - Tarkisflux 22:49, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Diminutive or Fine Races

Do you know of any diminutive or fine sized races? --Franken Kesey 17:27, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Not off the top of my head (aside from some homebrew that I wouldn't use). I don't think it's a valid size for a PC without substantial ECL to go along with it, and even then there are entire archetypes that just don't work because of the way 3.x handles size changes to physical damage. So even if I did know of them I probably wouldn't use or allow them unless everyone was playing the same size and they were only fighting super small enemies, they're just not a good fit for PCs without substantial campaign alterations. - Tarkisflux 17:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Viveka Spectre

Could you exume the User:Franken Kesey/Viveka Spectre(3.5e Prestige Class)? thanks --Franken Kesey 18:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Do you have the assosiated talk page on had? --Franken Kesey 19:06, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Nope, can't find it in the logs. It may have been removed from the archive, or it may be that the search function just can't find it. - Tarkisflux 19:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

It was likely deleted while we operated over at wikia, in which case, deleted articles were not imported over with the move. --Ganteka Future 19:14, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the original was restored, then sandboxed, without the talk page. But I found the original talk page and just copied that over. It's just a restore move delete mess. - Tarkisflux 19:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Feat Types

How can I get the Skandar and Uongo-mijusi feat types on the glossary page? --Franken Kesey 20:05, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

You would need to make those pages and put them in the appropriate categories. It would probably be better to not make those though, and just change the type to Racial and keep the race as a prereq, as that's more standard in other work (including all of the WotC supplements). I've made the suggested change to Cold Retardant Fur (3.5e Feat) so you have an example. - Tarkisflux 21:53, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Spam Outbreak

While we can easily ban these damned spambots and delete their spam, wouldn't adding capcha or something similar to unregistered member editing and account creation greatly decrease spam or even eliminate entirely? Just an idea, I am assuming we have a reason for not doing it in the first place. --Leziad 05:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, we could add capchas to all unregistered contributions and pretty much kill it, but that is very likely to annoy and possibly drive off casual editors. I'm not actually convinced this is a bad thing on the homebrew side of things, but it's more problematic on the canon side and something we need to consider lots before doing. Other things we have in place that aren't working like they should are a module installed that will block pages containing specified urls. I've been updating the list with spam bits (though I'm not as consistent as I could be) which should block the pages from being created by anyone, registered or no, but the spam pages we're getting each use different urls so it's not doing all that much. We already have a math solving thingy for new account creation that functions sorta like capcha, but it's probably fairly easy to automate around. This is actually why you see the spam pages being added, then an account created, and then an image uploaded - because you need an account to upload an image. Stricter capchas on account creation are probably a good idea, but they won't stop the links in the first place :-/.

That's a summary of where we're at, and what some of the options I think we have are. I know Surgo's working on some stuff for this, and he's more up on the various extensions we could employ to reduce it than I am. I'll bug him about stronger account capchas for accoutn creation tomorrow, and see how he feels about capchas for unregistered contributions in general. I don't actually have server access to update this sort of thing, so it's all gotta go through him. - Tarkisflux 06:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I see, so we need to try these options before considering capcha. It all make sense, in the mean whole I guess admins just need to be vigilant. Now stronger capcha for account creation would be very useful indeed, too bad I can't really help with the technical stuff. Anyway thanks for answering my question. --Leziad 06:41, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Btw, since it unnerves me so, whats the chance of us being able to auto-delete accounts which have never posted and have not done so in 3 months? I always imagine one day their vast bulk will awaken and mass spam. It's enough to give a plushie 'pam flashbacks an- *twitches and stops, looking behind the Recent Changes button. He swears he saw something.*

....I'm watching 'em. -- Eiji-kun 20:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't have the ability to delete accounts at all, so I have no idea what the chances of automating that are. I'll talk to Surgo about it though. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:09, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Citation again

Hello there! Now that I had scanned through DnDWiki's publications I felt ready to go into adapting canon articles again, but I am having new problems with the Template:Cite Pub, e. g. at Canon:Aerdy. The citation does not seem to work with a number of publication articles like Publication:Greyhawk Player's Guide, but am really slow on the uptake and cannot figure out where the problem lies. Could you please help me out? Thanks! Daranios 18:54, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Oddly, the issue was with the Publication Infobox template. It wasn't setting the title property on pages that lacked urls. Should be working now. - Tarkisflux 19:36, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Great! Thanks a lot. Daranios 07:25, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

test

Email Confirmation Issues

If you're having issues getting your email confirmed, drop me a line below.

Before you do that though, please do the following:

• Enter an email address in the email field of the User Profile tab under "My Preferences", and click save. This will send you a confirmation email with a link to click.
• If you already have an email saved in your preferences, you can get a new confirmation email at Special:ConfirmEmail. If that page doesn't work, you can delete you saved email address, save the page, re-enter your email address, and then save again.
• Make sure to check your spam bin so you don't miss the email.
• Log out, and then log back into your account.

If you've done all that and you're still getting the capcha let me know. - Tarkisflux 21:01, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

[Edit] - There's an error in the capcha setup, and more users are probably getting it than not. Some email confirmed users who have done everything right are seeing it currently. We expect it to be resolved within 72 hours. Until then, I'm sorry for the arithmetic reviews :-( - Tarkisflux 02:43, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Math is hard and you are torturing us! Armond 23:48, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I only do it because your tears make me stronger :-D

I'm actually waiting on Surgo to double check a couple of things in the setup I don't have access to. Until then there's not a lot I can do :-( - Tarkisflux 17:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Yay learning! You know, I seem to get bothered more from the site notice than the captcha. Is that weird?The Dire Reverend 09:00, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You know you can dismiss the site notice right? I eventually did, otherwise it'll stay up there like forever... -- Eiji-kun 09:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Term under DoSomethingAboutMe

I chatted to Havvy about what should be done about these, and he was unsure. He claimed that they were there as Category:Term was becoming too cumbersome, so I proposed a recategorisation into something more specific. He agreed, but said I should speak to you first. So... yeah. - MisterSinister 23:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't remember right now. If I haven't gotten back to you in a few days, kick me (metaphorically please). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 07:54, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that category needs to be removed. It has things like Blinded (a condition), Aid Another (an action), Force Effect (a descriptor), and so on. It's too broad a concept and we're not using it for anything. I'd go through the pages there, and any page that is something else should have that category on it instead of Term, and if there's anything left over afterwards we'll go from there. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah...with subschools in there, I've been removing the term category from those. --Havvy 02:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

The problem with Term is that everything is a term somewhere. There are more specific categories that better fit every page in there that I title skimmed. Pages should probably not self-reference though, and it might make sense to keep it as a sort of meta-category for overview pages. So pages for "action", "subschool", "condition", and what not are all members of the Term category (unless something else makes more sense). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:11, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather call those concepts or rules rather than terms. --Havvy 15:39, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Random Button

MisterSinister wants a link to Special:Random on the front page. I'm thinking if we have such a link, it would be best placed on the navigation sidebar. Do you (or any other user of this wiki) have any opinions on this matter? --Havvy 02:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Not sure how I feel about it honestly. Do you know off hand if it pulls random pages from non-main namespaces? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:00, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

redirect

Oh hey sorry for adding that redirect page (CODD) I should have checked in policies about adding them. Liosrakia 04:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

No worries. We don't really do redirects for homebrew articles, there's not a compelling reason to chew up empty pages for them. Most of the redirects we do have are for SRD or Canon terms that point at the pages in the appropriate namespace (or are leftovers from pagemoves that we didn't get around to removing for some reason). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:20, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

IRC

Can we meet up on IRC some time? --Havvy 01:00, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Should be able to join you in a couple hours, give or take. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 01:56, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I might be gone in a few hours. But if I'm there, I'm there. --Havvy 01:57, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

More domains or whatever they're called

Log:

<elliottcable> CorporateGW › I’m the owner of http://dndwiki.*/

<elliottcable> CorporateGW › wanted to know if y’all would like to use ’em

<%CorporateGW> elliottcable: I think we would be happy to--would you mind leaving a message on TarkisFlux's talk page?

<elliottcable> I’m obviously doing nothing with them (http://dndwiki.com/), so I thought I might do a good deed and give you guys whatever DNS entries you want.

<%CorporateGW> We'd love that :-)

<elliottcable> CorporateGW › just ask him for IPs for A records or whatever CNAMEs he’d like added; you can reach me on Twitter (@elliottcable) or Freenode (#elliottcable) when you’ve got ’em. (=

<elliottcable> CorporateGW › fly safe!

Knowledge is power, guard it well. --Ghostwheel 23:36, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Stewardship

Can you look after my stuff? I neither have time or energy for the vigil that I possessed before. I would also appreciated if you could exhume and revive Frankensteins creations - the face was ugly, yet the mind and heart still may be of use. --Franken Kesey 01:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

ArrayMap News!

• Dungeons_and_Dragons_Wiki:Programming_Templates#ArrayMap

Read it. Behold powers we have had for a long time without knowing. Also, if you can get Semantic MediaWiki updated to the latest version, the Type namespace will vanish, cleaning up the wiki a little bit. --Havvy 02:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Huzzah! Now if I could just remember what I was fighting with the commas over...

I looked at SMW 1.6 already, and couldn't come up with a compelling reason to ask Surgo to upgrade to it. I think I'm going to hold off on asking for a bit still, hope they get around to fixing my NOT operator bug when presented with many valued properties. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:38, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot Editing

Can one bot edit a link? (Not the subtype.) I would like to rename two pages, and both have alot of links (27 total). --Franken Kesey 18:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

It's limited to admins. Leave me the current text and the replacement text and I'll get that swapped out for you. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 20:14, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Star Ship, Battle Ship (3.5e Monster) into Abathor (3.5e Monster), and Star Ship, Destroyer (3.5e Monster) into DeCimae (3.5e Monster). Also can you replace the names within the article (battle ship into abathor, and destroyer into DeCimae)? Thank you --Franken Kesey 20:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

All links should be migrated now, or will be shortly. Anything left is something that got missed by the various search strings I ran and should be updated manually. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:24, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Can you also transfer Zeigeist (3.5e Race) into Zeitgeist (3.5e Race). --Franken Kesey 22:07, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, though only 2 pages even link to the old page anymore and that's the sort of thing that's much easier to do manually. You can check what pages link to a given page by navigating to the page in question and clicking on the "What links here" link in the nav bar on the left. Then you can just fix those links and any other text references on the page with a word processing find / replace function. The replacetext tool is case sensitive, so I have to run 3+ search strings to see what even needs to be replaced, and each takes a few minutes to run. It's really intended for larger scale updates than this. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Anna Has Posted

As have I. Thought you'd like to know. - MisterSinister 09:17, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Down Every Night

Oi, every night the wiki has been dropping. Are you doing something? -- Eiji-kun 07:43, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Nope (well, I did push though a minor Author template change a bit ago, but it would just slow things a bit, maybe, not kill it). I haven't even been here that last couple of nights. Surgo shouldn't be poking around either, since he's waiting for a DNS issue to be resolved before finalizing the updates.

What time has it been dropping? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 07:56, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

This last one was, roughly estimating, 30-45 minutes of downtime ending at when I made this post (2am something for me and apparently "07:43" on the wiki clock). Did it last time too, and I think a time before that. I can't say if it was the same time, but I'll be paying attention for the next two days. The error is a 500 Internal Server Error. -- Eiji-kun 08:07, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Approximately 1:50 am to 2:30 am this time. -- Eiji-kun 07:36, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

From 4:55 am-5:05 am today, also down for significent time the day before, something like 6-8pm. -- Eiji-kun 10:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Today from 0043 am-0236 am. -- Eiji-kun 07:38, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Today, 0148am-0254am. -- Eiji-kun 07:55, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

This time, 1120 pm-1133 pm. Also witnessed by Spanambula and LD this time, and accompanied by serious lag issues before and after. Le sigh. -- Eiji-kun 04:36, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

0205 am - 0315 am. Double whammy tonight. And still lagged to hell. Help us Tarkis B. Kenarkis, you're our only hope! -- Eiji-kun 08:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Third time's a harm. 0453 am - 0530 am. Ouch. -- Eiji-kun 10:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Its been so long, spotty, and slow, I'm just gonna say 6am to whenever, cause it's still going on. -- Eiji-kun 14:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Noted. Was out of town for a few days, back now and will redouble my efforts to get this fixed (which mostly involve keeping Surgo focused on it). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 01:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

Zaldor1976 06:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC) Mon Jan 2, '12 1:22am I'd like to thank you for the push, "shove" in the right direction with the formatting of the Improved Flight feat. While I'm not new to the game itself, I am new to the use of this awesome site and its extremely awesome tools. I have been playing since AD&D 2nd edition off and on, unfortunately I live in the bible belt so it makes it hard to find enough players on a consistent basis, but I have just recently found this sight and have been using it as quick reference to topics of questions on the fly. I thought i had found this feat once before in one of the many books out there. I had at any rate used it in a game of my own a few years ago. I was disappointed to not find it anywhere. That's When I decided to make an account and write it myself. As i mentioned before I am new here and I'm not at all familiar with the formatting. So I not only thank you for the help, but also for showing me how much I need to learn in order to evolve as a DM.

Help for upload

Hello there! Recently I am having trouble uploading images from Wikipedia, e. g. RaryTraitorCover.jpg directly from the source. Could you please tell me, if you happen to have any idea if there is anything wrong, or if you are having the same problems? Thanks a lot! Daranios 20:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

It works again now. As far as I know, I did not do anything different. I wonder what was the matter inbetween... Daranios 19:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Subtypes

Can we host either the Living Construct or Dreamborn subtypes? The latter is from Hyperconciousness I believe. I've made monsters with said subtype and I struggle with having it be a red link, yet neither is probably OGL, is it? Wat do? -- Eiji-kun 07:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Hyperconciousness is OGL IIRC, Living Construct is not. --Havvy

Oh good. Now, I've never made a subtype page which wasn't my creation. Do I just copy the text but leave off an author box? Do I reference it that it comes from Hyperconciousness? Does it get the "SRD" tag in front? -- Eiji-kun 00:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Pages that are direct transcriptions of OGL material from outside of the SRD belong in the Publication namespace, as a subpage of the publication itself. The subpage would then generally follow the standard chapter / article format we have everywhere else, and be linked from a ToC on the main publication page. Oh yeah, and no author box. It's just a naked article (see Dread Codex for an example). - Tarkisflux ^Talk 01:32, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Help Please!!!

Need some help... can you link me a few templates to my user page? the Class Creation template, the Race Creation template, and Campaign Creation templates please. I'd get them myself, but only way i can think of doing that is creating a new article, then copying it onto my page. Thnx!

Firestorms0 05:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I could, but there's a really easy way to make a sandbox out of any preload you want and you should probably use it instead. When you're at the "New Whatever" page and you're typing in the name, use "User:Firestorms0/<-sandbox name->" in the box. That will dump the preload in the sandbox you've named, and you'll be set from there. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I also redid the links you were using. I think the problem was that you weren't using the normal format for subpage links. You want to do something like [[User:Firestorms0/<-sandbox name->]] or just [[/<-sandbox name->]] on your user page to link properly. Note that the second link style here will only work for subpages of the page that you're currently on, while the first link style will point at the subpage from anywhere. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:48, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

K, thanks. Having another problem tho. In my Ranger sandbox, i'm having trouble getting the links in the statistics blocks (Sneak Attack, Trapfinding, Animal Companion, etc...) to link to the explanations farther below... little explanacion por favor? Firestorms0 16:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure. There's two parts you need to that. The first part is that you need to set up an "anchor" in the page so that you can do a link to that section. You automatically get an anchor with any of the headers (things like ===Stuff===), but those aren't a good fit with class abilities. You can also manually add an anchor with the anchor template, {{anchor|<-Class Ability Name->}}. So you will need to enclose Sneak Attack, Trapfinding, and all the rest of the class abilities in that template wrapper in order to link directly to that section of the page.

Once you've got those down, you can do the direct links. Just like the "/" symbol is used to specify a subpage, the "#" symbol is used to specify a section in a page. You can do a full link to it from off page like [[User:Firestorms0/CLASSIFIED INFORMATION#Sneak Attack|Sneak Attack]] or you can do an in-page link to the section like [[#Sneak Attack|Sneak Attack]]. You don't technically have to use the "|<-Stuff> at the end of the link, but without it the link looks ugly. I've gone ahead and done sneak attack in the page for you so you have an example to copy. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Important addendum - use the shorter in-page version wherever you can, so always for times when you're just linking to a different part of the same page. When the page gets moved, the links still work. If you use the longer version, you have to change all of the links on a page move, and it's just extra work for no benefit. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:37, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried to dump a preload into my homebrew campaigns sandbox, did wat u said. Went to make a new campaign setting page, put in "User:Firestorms0/HomeBrew Campaigns (3.5e Campaign Setting)" and i just created a new page... Help? Firestorms0 20:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

It's probably because the navigation tag, ie the "(3.5e Campaign Setting)" is still in there. So even though it is a subpage of your user page, it is also reading as a new wiki page. I would get rid of that tag until you're ready to post it for real, and do the same for any further pages that you make in a sandbox. - TG Cid 17:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's what happens when you try to dump the preload into a sandbox page, you get a copy of the preload in the new sandbox page. The sandbox part is just that the page is a subpage of your user page, instead of being in the main namespace. I went ahead and put a link to the new page on your user page though, and blocked out the categories on the new page just in case. So nothing went wrong there, and you don't need to worry about tweaking anything. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:02, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

So i just leave off the paranthesied stuff and it'll make the page in my sandbox? kewl. TY! Firestorms0 20:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

You can leave the parentheses on even if you want. The important part is that the page title starts with "User:Firestorms0/", as that's the part that specifies the new page as a subpage of your user page, i.e. a sandbox. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 20:57, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Canon queries

Sorry to bother, but I noticed that the query-driven pages Canon:Deities and Canon:Creatures do not show all canon articles from the respective category by far. (I did not check the other such pages.) Do you have any idea what might be going wrong there? Thanks a lot! Daranios 20:49, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Not off hand. Do you have a specific page that isn't showing that I can take a look at? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, found one. Ok, what you need to do is this: after you move a page into the canon namespace, edit the page and save it without making any changes. That will cause the proper tables to update and the page will show up in the lists normally afterwards; a move by itself does not trigger the updates for some reason. I'll try to do some of those for you if I get some time later. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Deities are all done, including some cleanup. It's probably best to just go through the categories for the others and tweak as appropriate. And if you want to avoid this in the future, it would be better to move first and edit/clean up second, since then it would be saved in the new namespace and update background things appropriately. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 07:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Done Category:Term. Daranios 19:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Should be done with all now. Daranios 19:53, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Now there seems to be a new problem with the canon queries, unfortunately. Could you have a look at any of them, e. g. Canon:Deities? Thanks! Daranios 15:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The ask query needed updating following our wiki upgrades yesterday. I fixed it already and it should propagate through the other pages shortly. Let me know if anything else pops up or stays broke. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 16:26, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Interwikis

After introducing the interwiki links (yeah!), it would be great if you could automatically change: "[[w:c:forgottenrealms:" to "[[forgottenrealms:" (including in the "DnDWiki"-namespace). And "the Great Library of Greyhawk" to "the Great Library of Greyhawk". Of everything else, I think I can either take care of, or, in the case of Greyhawk articles, it is just to much bother to introduce the interwiki link instead of the hyperlink everywhere with regard to the gain (which is basically getting rid of the symbol with the arrow after each hyperlink). Thanks a lot! Daranios 20:27, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure. Jobs queued. Let me know if there's anything else. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:51, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Idea for a new bot

I created a page: User:Aarnott/Lego Bin 14 that is able to list all of the articles that have not been updated for 7 days that have an incomplete or winter cleaning template. Here's what I think would be worth doing:

• The bot has a list of Incomplete pages that have not been edited for exactly 4 days and have one of those templates. It will add a note to the user talk page of the author of those pages notifying them that their page will be deleted in 3 days unless they take action to fix the problems.
• When the 7 day mark rolls around, the bot will delete those pages and leave a note on the user talk page that the page has been deleted and if the user wants it restored, they need to message an administrator.

This would work similarly for Winter Cleaning, however it would be extended to 2 weeks for deletion.

What are your thoughts? --Aarnott 18:43, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Such a bot would be lovely, but I am incapable of creating it. I'd also want to confirm with Surgo that it didn't add too much to the site processing/ram overhead, since I don't want to slow anything down. Otherwise, I'm all for it and would separate out the incomplete projects to better accommodate it. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:27, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I can make it and it would run on one of my servers, not on our wiki. It would act like a regular wiki-user (I've written web bots as a hobby for years now). So the overhead would be about the same as a regular user. --Aarnott 22:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

That's awesome then. After thinking about it some more though, let's just do this for incomplete stuff. Winter cleaning is way more fuzzy, as it gets applied for formatting (something I don't necessarily want to delete over) and weird balance things (that I would delete over). Also, I'd even consider changing the policy incompletes to better reflect what the bot would do. So instead of deleting 7 days after the template is posted, the template basically serves as note for the bot to start watching. Since any edits would reset the counter basically, warning after a day of no changes and deleting after 3 might work better. That requires a policy change though, and discussion and all that sort of stuff, but I think it's worth it for automation. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:31, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

The bot is almost done. It runs using a python script, which I can supply the source for privately. It can't handle pages that don't have the Author template, so it instead messages a list of users (right now just me) to ask them to handle warning the user about the incomplete article. If I get enough time, I might be able to limit the number of unknown user cases more by parsing the page history. Then only IP users would require special consideration. But for now, no author box means manual labor. --Aarnott 19:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Cite Pub template

Hello, it's me again. Something seems to be amiss with Template:Cite_Pub recently. See e.g. Canon:Special Materials - it unneccesarily shows "Publication:Name" in the beginning, but does not show the ISBN. Do you have any idea why? Thanks for looking! Daranios 13:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

SMW update broke it. Easy to fix though :-) - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Good to hear. Thanks! Daranios 14:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for moving my sourcebook

Exactly what the title says. Thanks for moving my Libris Vampiricus sourcebook to the right page, I hadn't even asked for that yet. I've been working on getting it organized but I'm still learning proper wiki format (I only just recently got tables figured out). Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for that.

Chocobos

All the rest of the chocobo things are copies of SRD classes with the find-replace feature used prodigiously. Wanna take em out too? --Ghostwheel 04:21, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

The ones left don't appear to blatantly reuse all of the mechanics and actually add stuff to the classes, so I'll leave them. I'll probably move them all into the sourcebook as subpages though, since they're so restricted and don't fit the standard "can be used elsewhere" metric for classes. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:38, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Deleting namespaces

It is finally done, all D&D Wiki material has been adapted. The DnDWiki and DnDWiki talk are now empty except some (hopefully) unused templates. Do you happen to know how to delete the now superfluous namespaces? Should I manually delete the left templates first? Thanks again for your help. Daranios 19:41, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

There's no easy way to delete a namespace. Last I looked, it required a dirty sql hack to achieve. I'll check into it with Aarnott and Surgo though. But we should finish up removing the templates first, so that they don't get lost afterwards. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 19:49, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Spam

Do you know where all this spam is coming from? --Franken Kesey 21:07, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

No, but I have a plan on reducing them. Just need to connect with Aarnott for a bit. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:00, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a bored spammer is buckling down. Using a lot of proxies... Brazilian and Russian from the ones I've checked. While I'll keep hitting them down and reverting, know any way to put a stop to him? -- Eiji-kun 03:57, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Proxies? Not without doing things that Surgo has previously indicated a dislike for (namely disabling ip bypass of the capcha in several namespaces, since the capcha is intentionally annoying). I'll bug people. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:05, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Danke. I'll keep holding the fort then, I've got all night. IMO, I'm all good with disallowing random IP edits myself, but thats just me.

By the way, do you think this is a person or a bot doing this? I always assume bot, but they've not be coming all THAT rapidly, so it could just be some random wanker on the other end. Just curious. -- Eiji-kun 04:09, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Then carry on Spammerbane. I have a feeling the answer will be "not going to temporarily adjust capcha policies tonight, we'll wait and see if it stays a problem first". - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:21, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Special case

Hello! And one more special question: Do you happen to know, if/how a category can be moved? Thanks! Daranios 18:33, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what you're referring to here. Can I get an example / more details? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 20:30, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

We have had discussed about using Category:Books solely for in-game books. However, categories like that have otherwise been named in singular so I would like to move it to Category:Book. Oops, I am just noticing that that category already exists. So I will just change the appropriate article links and delete the category then. Daranios 12:56, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

The really easy way would be to run a replace text for it, but that's down right now. So you can do it manually if you like, or blow it off for a couple of weeks and I'll take care of the changes when it's working again. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Done for this case, it was not much work as the category existed anyway. Daranios 18:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Flux Templating Example

Just to show the preliminary designs (we haven't touched links or tables yet at all!), I converted Template:Author over to Flux on the Flux wiki. What do you think so far? --Havvy 04:50, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it's much easier to code table templates with that, since you don't have {{!!}} workaround templates floating around. I'd seriously consider swapping just for that. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:00, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's one of the major boons right now to anybody using tables heavily. One of those things that becomes easy when you use commas to delinate arguments instead of pipe keys everywhere. --Havvy 13:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

WIki Help

to the Admins and Gods of the dnd wiki

i am the creator of the d6holocron.com which does include a wiki as well. i have been having a lot of issues with bots on my site which has been overloading the servers completely. i am really hoping i can get a little help. pretty much in the area of how this site stays clear of most of the bots and keeps the captcha running. i really do need this help and would greatly appreciate any assistance that can be provided. if you are not the one to ask please forward this on so that my request can be addressed. i would have emailed but i did not see an address for the admin anyplace on the site. and yes this is embarrassing to sound like im begging this much, but the devil drives.

please contact me at [email protected] to set up any communication for this. as well as any ideas of sharing community population sharing. upfront i would defiantly offer add space on my pages for the dnd wiki.

thank you very much for listening BSDOblivion

p.s. i too am one of the people who abandoned ship from the wikia sites to create my own sites

I have a soft spot for new wikis and d6 Star Wars, so here's what I gots. We keep our traffic pretty spam free with this media wiki extension, the Asirra plugin detailed on that page (though any of them aside from SimpleCapcha should work), and some custom ConfirmEdit capcha trigger settings. It's all handled server side though, which is mostly out of my hands. This setup should be really straightforward though, and if your first solution doesn't work you can just try a different capcha plugin. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Did this guy ever get his problem solved? Surgo 03:37, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

He didn't follow up here and I didn't contact him via the listed email, so I'm not sure. If you'd like to take over direct communications, feel free. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:48, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

ToP Skills template?

Figured I could ask - is there something out there to add nicely-formatted ToP skills to your classes out there? I wanna do that for the shadow magister, but I dunno what to do there. Also, ratings are welcome. :p - MisterSinister 21:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Because I'm insane and it's still your fault

I'm thinking about a ToP compliant Truenamer at the moment, and I wanted to discuss its main casting mechanic with you. I've been meaning to catch you on IRC a few times, but you're not on when I'm on, and I figured having this here for reference would be useful.

Basically, the flavour text for my fix is as follows:

• The First Ones created the multiverse using certain words (think of them as the programming language of reality).
• After they created things, they became defined by certain rules (think of them as the source code of reality).
• Truenamers are like low-level programmers for this source code, and can basically write their own modules for it to make reality perform something it normally shouldn't, or fail to perform something that it should.
• However, reality is defensively-programmed, which means there's only so much change it can tolerate. Additionally, some thing are limited in the source code, so certain changes are just not allowed full stop.
• All of this should feature speaking, singing, etc as a key part of it all.

Some things I wanted to avoid specifically:

• Vancian casting in any form (including spell/power points). It has issues which we need hardly discuss, and doesn't fit very well.
• Everything-at-will power scheduling. It's lazy, boring and requires a very narrow option list to be viable (as well as just plain not fitting the flavour text in any way).
• Anything that resembles the shadow magister - simply because I don't wanna reuse it for such a different class.

My basic question is - what can I do? One consideration I had was Mana-Based Spellcasting, but I recall that you had some reservations about it on the Den (and Frank tore it a new asshole), and since Surgo never responded to them, I'm unsure if these are significant limitations, or something that can be overcome, and if the latter, how? - MisterSinister 02:20, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Static spellcasting (by Tarkis) is probably strictly better balanced than my own Mana-Based Spellcasting. I am partial to my own though, just because I like having it scale with your ability score. Surgo 19:45, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Ignoring all of the other baggage that got written into that recently, I would argue that it is better at modeling the vancian progression than other point based systems. Whether that's a good thing or not is probably a matter of preference. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:57, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

I got CommFaved! What now?

See subject line. I'm sure we know what I refer to. - MisterSinister 23:21, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

See Project:Rating Articles#Community Favorites for more information. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 23:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

And written. In my unique style. - MisterSinister 23:40, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Ranger Tome of Prowess Compliance

MisterSinister suggested putting in sections to make this class ToP-integrated, and I think that would be a cool thing to do. But I don't know the first thing about how to go about this aside from the obvious bit about having Survival. Help on that front would be appreciated with regards to what skills it should have any how any class features should be altered to accommodate. - TG Cid 14:04, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I dropped the default Ranger skill selection on the page for you. I'd start by reading through them, seeing if there's any you really don't think fit, and working to adjust overlapping class features from there. I should be in chat later this afternoon if you want to talk specifics. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 14:57, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

CommFav for Races of War

We need to add RoW to the CommFav rotation. Of course, we need someone to write the blurb and such because the authors are not around to do so. - TG Cid 00:38, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I volunteer. I think I can do the abrasive insightfulness of the Tomes well enough. - MisterSinister 00:42, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

And done. - MisterSinister 00:57, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Added with minor changes, because abrasive insightful doesn't have to also be edition war starting or overly graphic. And I don't particularly think those things appropriate for the Main Page.- Tarkisflux ^Talk 01:34, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, not here anyway. I appreciated them though, for whatever that's worth :-p - Tarkisflux ^Talk 01:36, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

While you're at it, could I bother you to add a blurb to mana-based spellcasting? Also maybe it needs an image for the front page...I have no idea what to do for that though. Surgo 03:36, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

I can add it to my list if you want, but I don't actually have a like in on that one. There's a link to a CommFave preload on the Rating Articles page if you want to beat me to it. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 03:53, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

How Much of my Todo is left?

Take a look at User:Surgo/Todo. How much of that still needs to be done? Not that anyone cares about 4e (lol) and the long horizon projects are basically pointless. Surgo 19:44, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Responded on page. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 20:00, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Replace-text request

Hey Tarkis,

For the purposes of my extension, is it possible to change all instances of == Rating == to == Ratings ==? That would help a lot. Surgo 17:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Should be easy enough. Did you want all of the ==Rating== and ==Ratings== turned to == Ratings == as well? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:28, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Because MediaWiki backend is terrible, I rely on a text match to find the section. Surgo 18:11, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Jobs queued. I'll look for some unchanged Favor entries as well. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 18:12, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Weird shit with ratings

Some pages (for example, this one) seem to have a whole bunch of ratings on them from no-one, which don't show up on the page, but somehow contribute their scores to all categories of rating! What's goin' on? - MisterSinister 11:01, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Bad function / magic word interactions. Resolved now. Thanks for pointing it out. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:07, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Another bug: Chocobos. Should list five hate ratings (and be community opposed!), but only seems to show 3. Surgo 15:09, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

It's an SMW cache issue. Forcing the wiki to refresh the page clears it up (and already has, in this case). Can you look into changing the way SMW stores page results in the cache so that it updates more frequently? - Tarkisflux ^Talk 15:34, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Pyrotechnic

I've been watching the pyrotechnic for awhile hoping it would get edited and made playable, but seeing as the person that adopted it didn't do anything and it was deleted I was wondering if you could restore it and let me adopt it as it is a class and archetype i'd like to make playable. FiRaven 05:25, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Pyrotechnic (3.5e Class) and associated talk pages have been restored. Happy cleaning :-) - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:42, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you I have a lot of work to do. FiRaven 06:46, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Lemme know if you need any technical help with it. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 06:47, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

ReplaceText Issue

If you try using the ReplaceText capabilities on too many pages at once (say every page with Category:3.5e), then ReplaceText will error out with "You must select at least one namespace." Do you have any other ideas for how to make this edit? --Havvy bot 07:26, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

You could do smaller categories if you wanted, like class and feat and whatever, but that would take a while. Example:

• Search

}}
[[Category:

• Replace

}}
{{Navboxes}}
[[Category:

• In category

Feat

And then change the category limiter to something else and repeat until satisfied. You could also just run a perl (or whatever) text replace bot against the category. Surgo had one from before replace text was installed that he might be able to give you the code for. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Alright...I don't know Perl, and don't care to learn it, so I tried playing with the MW API in JS. There's a maximum limit of 500 pages on the wiki though. It's possible to get past it, but that might be what is breaking ReplaceText, if ReplaceText uses the API. --Havvy 06:39, 16 September 2012 (UTC)