Talk:User page

re: userpage vs username page

Mainly, it's because I cut my teeth on MediaWiki/Wikipedia, where userpages are strictly separated from "articles". But I also think it makes sense

And, you may have noticed, but you get a screaming orange bar when someone leaves you a message at [[user_talk:LyingBrian]]. Not so much for LyingBrian. I like your italic hack for this, but ideally I'd like to see people move their userpages to the user namespace. I don't expect this to happen anytime before JEEP implements a unified login, though... :/ -- Mr. Flay 10:05, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

huh?

Mainly, it's because I cut my teeth on MediaWiki/Wikipedia, where userpages are strictly separated from "articles". But I also think it makes sense

And, you may have noticed, but you get a screaming orange bar when someone leaves you a message at user_talk:LyingBrian. Not so much for LyingBrian. I like your italic hack for this, but ideally I'd like to see people move their userpages to the user namespace. I don't expect this to happen anytime before JEEP implements a unified login, though... :/ -- Mr. Flay 10:05, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

i'm confused... the word "userpages" seems to have two different meanings in the 1st & 2nd paragraphs... in the first paragraph you use the word "userpages", which i interpreted for me would be User:LyingBrian, which makes sense in context, but in the second paragraph you said "I'd like to see people move their userpages to the user namespace.", in context, i would read that as moving LyingBrian to User:LyingBrian, but based on the usage of the word in the 1st paragraph it reads as User:LyingBrian to LyingBrian, so i'm not sure which you meant... i'm really not trying to be picky, but i can't figure out which you meant, and my reply will change based on what you meant, so... lol, i'm sorry i can be so technical sometimes, i hope i'm not frustrating you...
LyingBrian 12:58, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

Heh, no problem. Yeah, what I mean is that userpages should ideally be at User:Whatever, with a redirect/link from Whatever. For the old wiki, there were no namespaces to worry about, so everybody got into the habit of making their page at their name, and that's how they got moved over. The terminology I'm using is far from precise, it's not your fault. (I'm trying to use "userpage" for User:Whatever and "username page" for Whatever). -- Mr. Flay 15:22, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

So, what you're saying is that UserPages should actually be in the User namespace, rather than in the Main namespace where the majority of them are? This is going to take a while to fix! Somestrangeflea 15:45, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

It's okay, once you're logged in it's fairly straightforward with the Move command, and even the page history gets saved, and the old name (somestrangeflea in your case) becomes an automatic redirect. It's not as bad as it sounds... Mr. Flay 16:11, 14 August 2007 (MDT)

Oh I know, I meant it'll be hard on the large scale. (ie. everyone on MS to move!)Somestrangeflea 17:24, 14 August 2007 (MDT)

They don't really have to do it themselves. Any account with Move privs could do it in a matter of hours, and then JEEP just has to add "User:" to the tag in profiles/signatures... -- Mr. Flay 17:26, 14 August 2007 (MDT)

LB's Thoughts

Heh, no problem. Yeah, what I mean is that userpages should ideally be at User:Whatever, with a redirect/link from Whatever. For the old wiki, there were no namespaces to worry about, so everybody got into the habit of making their page at their name, and that's how they got moved over. The terminology I'm using is far from precise, it's not your fault. (I'm trying to use "userpage" for User:Whatever and "username page" for Whatever). -- Mr. Flay 15:22, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

p.s. i tried to use the title player to refer to a username on the MafiaScum forums, and user to refer to somebody contributing to MafiaWiki...

i believe i agree in concept, but disagree in content... for example on Wikipedia, Mr Frosty is a user on Wikipedia who has a 'userpage' located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mr_Frosty which is separated from the 'articles' on Wikipedia by the "User:" namespace...

however, on MafiaWiki, i think it is totally appropriate to have 'articles' that talk about each player... not every player will be a user (and least until JEEP implements the unified login) and will have a 'userpage', but every player 'automatically' has a 'username page' which is 'created' when they sign up (yes, i know it's not technically created until somebody puts text in the page, but a link for it still exists in their forum profile)...

IMO, the 'userpage' should be used if a user wants to give personal information about themselves such as Mr Frosty did on Wikipedia... included on that page could be a list of articles that user has contributed to, etc... the 'username page' should be used to give information about a player, such as where their username/custom title comes from, their playing and/or modding record(s), win/loss ratio, etc...

in a perfect world we would have a template for these pages (such as we should have for the games) in order to create a unified look, but the 'userpage' could be totally customized by each user... what are your thoughts on this?..

SSF's Thoughts

I think that a Scummer's personal page/s should be in the User: Namespace. If Scummers' pages and actual "encyclopedia" pages are kept in separate namespaces, it helps to keep the Wiki tidier as a whole. For now, the majority of pages in the User namespace are just redirects to the respective page in the main namespace, which is kind of a waste. Somestrangeflea 16:32, 13 August 2007 (MDT)

i'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing w/ me... i think personal information about a Scummer that is not related to the game should be kept in their User: Namespace, as well... i also think information about a Scummer such as games played/modded, win/loss ration, etc. should be in an 'encyclopedia' page... think of it as an extension of the player's profile on the forum (i think this is why it's linked in the forum profile)... for example, mith is a page that talks about the player, while User:WikiSysop would be a page that talks about him as a person...LyingBrian 23:22, 14 August 2007 (MDT)

I agree with ssf (assuming "personal page" means user name as opposed to game page or concept), but I'm not going to be a dictator about it if other people disagree. MediaWiki is even flexible enough to add a namespace for Games, if we want to keep that separate from theory and roles and the like. Perhaps we should marshall our arguments pro/con each side, and when JEEP does unified login, we can present a poll in the forums and see what people want to go with. -- Mr. Flay 06:37, 15 August 2007 (MDT)

ok, i see what your saying now, i think... basically Scummers should have their own namespace... yeah, i can roll w/ that, but i think the namespace should be something different than "User:"... to further expound, when i see the word "User:" i think of a user of the wiki, and i don't connect it w/ the player on the forums... maybe if we created a namespace such as "Scummer:" or "Player:", that would make more sense to me than "User:"... again, i think the "User:" namespace should be saved for personal information, and the "Player:" (i slightly favor "Player:" over "Scummer:", but just slightly) namespace could be used for personal game history, etc... we could also rename the "User:" namespace to "Player:" (or something else), and that would make more sense to me, and cut down on the redirects... i think having a namespace such as "Games:" is a good idea, also... LyingBrian 18:22, 15 August 2007 (MDT)

Distad is an example of what i think should be on the "User" pages, i.e. this page should be named User:Distad, since it does not contain any information relevant or pertaining to MafiaScum (again, sort of like an extended profile)

LyingBrian 09:52, 16 August 2007 (MDT)

Yeah, custom namespaces are nearly-trivial in MediaWiki. I kinda like the Scummer: one... but I'm not sure I agree with you about the separation of user-info and player-info. Thinking on it still... -- Mr. Flay 12:30, 16 August 2007 (MDT)

I would think that a Scummer: namespace would work quite well. It seems more "Official" than simply having a Scummer category on the main namespace, and it would remove quite a few of the pages from the main namespace, making it much easier to search for game or player-related articles specifically. Somestrangeflea 14:14, 16 August 2007 (MDT)

I dunno... If I understand you correctly, would that mean splitting records and personal information into two seperate pages? Would that just make things messy? Also, what happens when authors give their comments about games in their records? Would that count as personal information or just records? But perhaps I'm just being pedantic Shanba

I think, if I'm understanding correctly, SSF is advocating changing the [[User:]] namespace into Scummer:. LB seems to lean toward two different pages... -- Mr. Flay 20:00, 16 August 2007 (MDT)

meh, i'm not so much set on having two different pages, as i am renaming the [[User:]] namespace to Scummer:... the only reason i was suggesting two different pages is b/c i thought we were talking about standardizing the User Pages... if we want to have a standard for those players who don't want to edit their own, that's sounds like a good idea, but it would also allow those players that do want to edit their own to be able to do so...LyingBrian 00:58, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Cool, sounds like we're all close to the same page, maybe we can draft something up and post it in the Forums... -- Mr. Flay 07:05, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

So, what about redirects? If we move personal pages onto the Scummer: namespace, we'll end up with masses of redirect pages on the main: namespace (Main → Scummer:), and double-redirects on the User: namespace (User: → Main → Scummer). What will be the policy regarding those? Somestrangeflea 08:41, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

If I'm reading the discussion correctly, the proposal is to rename the User namespace to Scummer. That sort of rename would be done server-side, and wouldn't result in any redirects. Redirects from main to scummer are harmless, IMO. --YYCguy 08:52, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Eh. I'm against having two seperate pages on the grounds it would be messy, but I don't see any harm in moving everything over from one page to another and renaming that page. I can't really see the point, but I'm not opposed to it. Shanba

(to YYCGuy) Yeah, it'd be a namespace change for User:, and then fixing all the redirects in mainspace (unlike Wikipedia, we don't care about cross-namespace redirect). Special:Doubleredirects will help with fixing those... -- Mr. Flay 09:08, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Oh! The idea is to rename the namespace. I thought the idea was to create a whole new namespace and move all the pages there! Anything else? Somestrangeflea 09:24, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Current Proposition

From what I can see, the current proposition stands at:

• Renaming the User: namespace into a Scummer: namespace.
• Moving userpages to the Scummer: namespace, with a redirect on the Main namespace.
• Userpages use the Scummer: namespace as the standard location.
• recode the links in the Forum Profiles to link to the Scummer: namespace (this will probably have to be done by JEEP or mith, but just listing it here) - LB

Feel free to edit the above after further discussion. This section is just to summarise everthing once discussion has reached a conclusion. Somestrangeflea 09:24, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Looks like what I see above, and I agree with it. -- Mr. Flay 12:19, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

cool, so what's the next step? LyingBrian 12:28, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

We can put it to discussion/poll in the forums now, or wait for JEEP to finish tying the two logins together first. -- Mr. Flay 12:37, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

i don't think it would hurt to discuss/vote on it while we're waiting on JEEP to unify the logins... just out of curiousity, do you know where he's at w/ this?.. LyingBrian 12:44, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Not 100% sure, because it'll depend on whether or not we switch to phpBB3.0, probably... I'd say it's a month or two out, at best (unified login, not the new forum code). -- Mr. Flay 13:40, 17 August 2007 (MDT)

Update: Jeep said he may try to integrate the forum login with the wiki this weekend, as he thinks he has all the bugs worked out. -- Mr. Flay 06:22, 21 August 2007 (MDT)

discussion?

basically serving as a bump, but did we want to start another thread about wiki-related stuff, or [tic]do you think it will overwhelm the masses thinking about something outside of the forum?..[/tic] i would like to generate more interest in the wiki, but i don't know HOW...-- LyingBrian 02:12, 21 August 2007 (MDT)