User talk:Bob the Hamster/archive
This page is for archived conversations from User talk:Bob the Hamster
Grady: Hey Bob, i thought this would be an inappropriate question to ask on the HOWTO & FAQ so i decided to ask it here, can i please have some help on how to use MediaWiki or whatever it is on my website, if you don't mind? Thanks :)
Bob: Sure! I reccomend installing it on a Linux box. Trying to do it on a Windows box is possible, but a huge pain.
- Download the latest Mediawiki 1.4.x from http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
- Follow the instructions at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Installation
- If you have problems, mail me, or ask questions here, but I will answer your questions (if I can) by editing and improving http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Installation
Grady: Okay, Hmm.. the reccomended ram is a bit high, i only have 128 MB, and alot of that is used by Windows XP :P Oh well i'll give it a shot anyway, dosen't hurt to try, thing is i have to find a decent server that gives free MySQL and PHP and whatever the hell else it needs :P
Mike: http://swifthost.net - Best. Hosts. Evar.
Bob: Spam filtering still works just fine in Mediawiki 1.5 ... I just forgot that logged-in users are allowed to say "viagra" without getting filtered.
Mike: Surely there's a way to get an IP address attached to a username. But, I looked, and couldn't find anything. Or, is that just a 'Bureaucrat' feature?
Bob: I would have to check the server logs to get that spammer's IP. Bereaucrat just means you can grant Sysop to other users.
James Paige Hey! I really object to the editorial slant of this article! And I especially don't like that bit about encouraging people to bug me about finishing wandering hamster. I have a big enough backlog of e-mail already!
Bob the Hamster Oh, what? Were you just sitting there hitting "reload" on the recent changes page, or what? I thought you were busy!?
James Paige Oh, much better. Now you make me sound both lazy and crass. Seriously, buying me books is not a good way to get me to work on WH. it is a good way to get me to spend hours and hours of my free time reading books, and specificly not working on Wandering Hamster. And it is my lunch break right now. I am aloud to spend my lunch break obsessively reloading and web page I please, aren't I?
The Geek: I could be really cheeky here and say "what lunch break, oh you mean the one that +never ends?", but I won't :)
Bob the Hamster The Geek, when you posted that, it was blocked by the spam filter because James hates you because you were not logged in, and this page contains the word "viagra". (unfortunately, the spam filter currently uses the full-text of the page, not just the changed parts)
Mike C. You know you have problems when you have fake arguments with yourself in public places...
James Paige I am perfectly sane. Bob is the one with problems.
The Geek: There, I am a user now. I didn't realize you didn't need to give an +e-mail address. Thanks for restoring the post. And I agree with Mike :)
Bob the Hamster Actually, the above post was blocked too, because I had not yet added you to the not evil list. Now you can post without fear of accadentalluy triggering the filter. I really need to fix the filter so it only filters changes. Any page where someone has ever spoken a blocked word like the v-word is practically locked down. :(
The Geek: Hey, it works most of the time! And thanks again for restoring the post.
Contents
Wiki issue[edit]
FyreWulff Can you fix the Mediawiki namespace so that we can actually make use of the Special:Wantedpages ?
Bob the Hamster: I'm not sure what I need to do to fix it, but I can certainly try.... I guess I just need to create all those missing pages...?
Slanderous lies![edit]
Nintendork: Hey, in your user page, it says "I take care of this wiki for my good friend James Paige, who is too busy sculpting naked women to spend any time maintaining his own silly wiki," but I thought James was dead! Are you saying my thought that he was dead for over six years was all a lie?
Bob the Hamster: He died six years ago, but has spent the last 5 years as a zombie. (Handy cooking tip: Strawberry rice-krispy & marshmallow squares make an excellent murder-free brain substitute)
Mike C. Hmm, strawberry, eh? I was trying to use peanut butter in my own necromancy project... thanks for the tip!
OHRRPGCE Gamelist[edit]
The Geek: Totally off-topic here, but how did you do the multiple-page bit of the OHRRPGCE gamelist? Did you use a database for it and then call for entries x to x or what?
Inferior Minion: It looks like that's exactly what he did. The gamelist page is set to display 8 games and it uses the offset passed through the URL to determine where to start.
Bob the Hamster: My gamelist is written in php, but that particular bit of work is done in my SQL SELECT statement, using a LIMIT clause.
$query=sprintf('select * from linklist order by %s %s limit %s,%s',$sort,$sortdir,$offset,$limit);
I have imported the gamelist source code to subversion under https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/source/web/ohrrpgce-static/
bobs![edit]
did you get shooted!? [User:James Paige|James Paige]]: Bob is still in the hospital. He is recovering well from his gunshot wound, but he is still in a coma. He has not spoken, nor given any indication of waking up since the "incident". When somebody has figured out who did it I will take the RPG file on a laptop to him and play it in his hospital room, in the hopes that it will wake him up.
bugs[edit]
--Dorumagesu 16:29, 27 November 2007 (PST) Bob, I lost my bug partially, just I lose sound effects.
--Dorumagesu 17:28, 12 December 2007 (PST) Bob, I can't seem to access bat when the page exists.
Uh bob?[edit]
--Dorumagesu 17:41, 19 December 2007 (PST) I thought main page was read only. I could edit it...
--Dorumagesu 13:56, 20 December 2007 (PST) The change came up..... don't worry, I erased all the changes I made. That is sooooo weird....
--Dorumagesu 13:02, 26 December 2007 (PST) New topic Bob. Why was the wiki down for the last three days? I couldn't update anything!
--Dorumagesu 10:19, 31 December 2007 (PST) Uh bob, I can't look at the info boxes on game pages. Why?
Castle Paradox[edit]
--Dorumagesu 08:07, 22 December 2007 (PST) Do you know any reason why Castle Paradox is unavailable? I tried it on 2 computers but it still doesn't work for 2 days.
--The Mad Cacti 18:12, 22 December 2007 (PST) CP worked for me yesterday, and it works right now too. But it's no use asking James about it, he doesn't run it, User:Inferior Minion does. See Why does Castle Paradox's server go down so often?
Calehay[edit]
--Dorumagesu 18:54, 1 January 2008 (PST) Bob, an annoying person called Calehay is accusing me and being sarcastic about my game, when I am sure it is very nice and it has no mistakes, but bugs in it! He says they aren't bugs! Please help me!
Bob the Hamster: Help you with what? If you and Calehay have an disagreement about something, that is between you and him. It isn't my place to resolve this sort of dispute. I would suggest talking it over with him via e-mail or forums or IRC. The wiki isn't really a chat board.
--TwinHamster 16:04, 4 January 2008 (PST) It might be best for you two to carry on whatever dispute you're having through Castle Paradox's private messaging system, so that it's none of this wiki's business. It might also be a good idea to take advantage of Castle Paradox's journal system and talk about your game there so that you won't have to add fifty updates to your game's wiki page every day; instead, you could post your daily edits on said journal and then update your game's wiki page after big updates are made. By doing so, you can single-handedly reduce the clutter of the recent changes page, allowing the rest of us wiki-editing folk (Well, me at the least) to easily spot the other changes that have been made. Thank you.
Questions[edit]
--Dorumagesu 15:22, 4 January 2008 (PST) Bob, who exactlly is allowed to edit on locked pages?
--Dorumagesu 15:07, 6 January 2008 (PST) Bob, is superwalrusland a page that is related to OHRRPGCE's wiki?
--Bob the Hamster 15:19, 6 January 2008 (PST) superwalrusland is run by Surlaw, who is a user of the OHR. He is the editor of the HamsterSpeak online magazine. So superwalrusland is related to the wiki in that they both cover related topics, but I am not an admin of his site, nor is he an admin on this site.
Wiki[edit]
Bob, I highly reccomend you to change the comment format from (user-comment) to (comment-user). I think the criticism of the wiki has a bit to do with this. Dorumagesu 01:57, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Which criticism? I didn't read any. Anyway, I do like the (user-comment) format because it looks a little more like a forum thread-- but I have no strong objection to wikipedia standard (comment-user-date) format. Bob the Hamster 03:22, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Oh, some of my classmates say that this wiki is a failure because of the format. Dorumagesu 14:15, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
In an opinion totally unrelated to Dorumagesu's classmates, I think there could be some improvements to the wiki: noticably, it's terribly hard to find anything on the FAQ page. A separate short list of FAQs seems impossible though - which questions should go on it? Or perhaps we should remove some questions and put them somewhere else? (Especially questions about nonexistent bugs, vague questions)
Something that really worries me is that when people add questions to the FAQ, and we answer them and alphabetize them or rename them, they have no hope of finding the answer without using Recent Changes, which I imagine non-proficient wiki users won't. Maybe we could have a Recent Questions page which is similiar to the old Helpme board format, where people can add questions sequentially to the top and always be able to find the response? We could then copy (possibly a subset of) the questions to the FAQ. Personally, I think that all the questions on the FAQ that only 1 person will ever ask really are detrimental. It's pretty weird to go from a Helpme board where people respond when you answer their question to a wiki, where only about 1 or 2 people in several years have ever responded looking for clarification.
Finally, I don't entirely like the main page because on other wikis, the main page welcomes guests and makes for an excellent starting point for finding things; here, it's redundant to the navigation bar. The Mad Cacti 01:53, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
S'orlok Reaves: I vote for a "most recent questions" script, which holds a link to "All Questions (Alphabetical)" for the rest.
Bob the Hamster: I agree that the F.A.Q. is a mess. OLDFAQ is a place to move obsolete stuff, I just haven't been vigilant with it. I like to imagine that people use the "search" feature to find things, but I have no idea if that is actually true.
The Mad Cacti 11:30, 5 March 2009 (UTC): I'm most concerned with the wiki being a bad place to ask a question. If I were a new user, I simply would not post my question on the FAQ. I'd try IRC but might not be bothered to register at a forum. There's no room to add details in a page name. I think we really need a proper replacement for the old Helpme board. I think the most important lacking criteria for a place to ask questions are:
- The most recent question appears at the top of the page so that someone will see and answer it, and preferably you can see whether/when it was answered
- There's somewhere to type out details about your question/problem
I have 3 suggestions: on this wiki, point to existing forums, or a new forum.
- In the short term and probably long term too: I suggest we tell people to register at SS or CP and ask their question there INSTEAD of touching the FAQ, and only to try the FAQ if they have some general question and don't particularly care about being answered.
- Is it possible to do any sort of scripting on mediawiki? I'm imagining something like a form that asks for a page title and question content, creates the new page (possibly in a namespace) with relevant categories/header/footer, and adds a link to it to the top of a new Questions page, and maybe (alphabetically) to the RAQ list. OK, such a form would be saving on quite a small amount of work, but it would be friendlier to a wiki newbie than having to set up page links. We'd stop worrying about misspellings on the Questions page, malformed, duplicate, non-alphabetical or FAQ-littering questions.
- On the other hand, how are you meant to see replies? The most natural place to place replies would be on the question page. Maybe a form/script to show the answer titles on the Questions index page. A script to add something to the user's talk page when their question is replied to would be awesome
- A new forum similar to the old Helpme. But creating a new forum doesn't seem likely to attract enough attention: it didn't work toooo well last time it was tried. I kinda forgot to ever check it.
Bob the Hamster: I do like the idea of a question-asking form. Maybe we can use something like this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms (I don't know whether that is the best extension for the job, I just did a quick search to see if any such extension already existed)
Actually, I also like the idea of just telling people to ask on CastleParadox or SlimeSalad, and then to get into the habit of answering questions on those forums with links to new wiki pages.
The Mad Cacti: That is interesting. I'm inclined to go play around with it now in a testing wiki.
Dark Sentiel:Hi! Bob, what you did with Skeppio and Rathmara when returned from Jormungand's Belly? Do you helping James to develop "Wandering Hamster"? Do you develop own games with OHRRPGCE? Sorry for stupid questions. I am know English not good. Thanks
The Mad Cacti: Hey James, are Recent changes only kept for 14 days? That's really really annoying! I sometimes miss changes that I want to have a look at some other time.
Bob the Hamster: Oh! Funky! I wonder when that started happening? Mediawiki was configured to hide old edits older than 7 days regardless of what settings you chose at the top of Special:RecentChanges. I found the configuration option and instructed it to rebuild the recent-changes list. You can now go back 8 weeks.
The Mad Cacti: Thanks. But what's the point of an arbitrary cutoff anyway?
Bob the Hamster: I dunno. Might be a performance thing? I was rather surprised that the default value for the cutoff was only a week. That might be motivated by the high-traffic needs of wikipedia.
The Mad Cacti 08:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC): Hey James, I thought we were going to put each step triggers on each NPC type? I can hardly think of any cases where a per-map each NPC step trigger is what you actually want.
Bob the Hamster: oops! Hey, you are right. That is how it should be done. If I make it on a whole-map basis, then the script would always have to have "switch" statement on "get NPC ID", and that would be silly. Guess I have to bite the bullet and fix up the N format.
Bob the Hamster: For anybody wondering about my recently flurry of ip blockings, the spammers aren't spamming any worse than usual, I was just getting sick and tired of having my mailbox crammed with all those notifications from our spam filter that it had successfully blocked spam. Blocking the worst offenders makes my mailbox quieter, and removes the temptation to disable the notifications, which I need to spot the occasional false-positive from a new user who isn't on the Not Evil list yet.
Question[edit]
sorry i dont know much about hwow to use wiki i know about wikia tho but, Bob how would i make a minigame like pacman or space invaders in my game? --Jesse9705 23:06, 1 November 2010 (PDT) - jacunn
It would be better to ask on one of the Forums than to ask here. I do have a sample script you can use for Space Invaders. Start a thread on one of the forums, and we can discuss it more there --Bob the Hamster 08:15, 2 November 2010 (PDT)
Thanks![edit]
Thanks for letting me post links. It was a hassle to minimize the size of the Hamster Whisper App. I hope it works for all Mac Users, planning to plotscript in the Mac. As far as I know, once the .hs file is saved, it is easily uploadable, but opening it on the App, seems difficult. The .hs doc can be opened in Textedit, and scroll down to find the plotscripts. Forgive me for the late and long reply. Thanks again! --Caseylocke j (talk) 05:44, 28 November 2012 (PST)
