Talk:Migration

Feel free to bring up any ideas for how to best migrate stuff from the old wiki here.

Who's doing what

I'm going through the targeting method pages and subpages right now. I'm still on the simple targeters right now. Some of those pages are really messy. =) --Voidious 23:06, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm playing around with the main page. I'm hoping to make it look better than the old wiki's by incorporating some of the more advanced wiki code available in MediaWiki. (Translation: I'm playing with code from Wikipedia's homepage in the Sandbox.) -- AaronR 23:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I really like the version you have going on in the Sandbox! --Voidious 00:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Any ideas for what the "... Whatever ..." section could be? What about the categories at the top? -- AaronR 00:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I just want to point out how useful the special pages are. For the fastest migration, everyone should start patrolling Orphaned pages, Uncategorized pages, Wanted categories, and particularly Wanted pages. --AaronR 05:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I can start working on these, should be able to get a page or two done :P --Baal 04:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I plan to work on radar page and perhaps put a little work into robocode mathematics. --Chase-san 06:23, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm doing Melee and then Movement-related stuff. (Btw, there are 3740 pages on the wiki, removing 'potential empty pages' it can be rounded down to 3,700 pages. And we only have 77 articles :) -- Starrynte 06:11, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Right now I'm working on a client-side wiki-bot written in Java that can do things like remove double redirects, etc. I'm using the Java Wiki Bot Framework to interact with the wiki. Since it's my first attempt at a bot, you may see a lot of changes to the Sandbox in the near future. =) --AaronR 06:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Judging from the recent changes log, I got my bot working correctly. =) At present all it does is remove double redirects, but it has a nice pluggable interface and is fully expandable. I'm not using the Java Wiki Bot Framework anymore - it's a server-side framework, and I'm hoping to have the bot run as a client, a bit like the RoboRumble clients. --AaronR 07:34, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Cool! Let me know if there's anything I can do to assist you, as it seems like a very useful tool to have around. --Voidious 00:53, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. As soon as you can get the file uploads working, I'll post a JAR of it with source. Because of the long weekend, I should have plenty of time for Robocode over the next several days. --AaronR 01:26, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization of page titles when linking

Ok, I've got a style question. If I'm linking to the Bearing Offset page, should I capitalize it? Should it be like, "A Bearing Offset gives you a blah blah", or "A bearing offset gives you a blah blah".. ? They each have their merits, in my mind, but I kind of lean towards the latter for anything that isn't obviously a proper name that we basically made up (like "GuessFactor" or "WaveSurfing"). Thoughts? --Voidious 06:04, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki will automatically ignore the capitalization of the first letter of a pagelink. I say we use lowercase for everything except the "made-up words", and create redirects from lowercase to uppercase for any 2+ word page titles. ("Bearing offset" should redirect to "Bearing Offset", but "bearing Offset" is automatically redirected to "Bearing Offset" by the wiki software.) This is pretty much what they do at Wikipedia. I also think WaveSurfing should be Wave Surfing. --AaronR 06:19, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Cool, sounds like a plan. I'm all for following what Wikipedia does. And I'm fine with "Wave Surfing", but I suspect we'll forever see it in both forms, anyway... --Voidious 06:21, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Robots

If at all possible use the new robot infobox template when shifting over robots. They look nifty after all, and thus we can change the layout without having to go through and update every single page... --Chase-san 14:40, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the infobox looks really sleak, but I wonder what it leaves to actually fill out the rest of the page. I guess if all the fields are optional, authors can decide which go in the box and which make up the main page content? --Voidious 16:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I removed the "White Whales", "Inspired By", and "Inspired" options from the infobox. Those three items seem to me to work better as page content. --AaronR 18:31, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

They didn't have to use those fields ya know. :P --Chase-san 18:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The infobox seems quite nice, it is clear but complete and easy to comprehend. If there is something noteworthy about a bot (and usually there is ;-) ), it can be added below it (I think, I am not familiar (yet) with this kind of wiki) --GrubbmGait 23:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I added this discussion to the current events listing - maybe we'll get some more opinions. --AaronR 18:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Will uploading be allowed, if not I should remove the image part of the Template, as it can only use images thata re stored on the wiki. --Chase-san 19:33, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Logo

http://chase.tfsnewworld.com/images/RoboWiki2.png

I got bored and Photoshopped up a newer version of the logo, I doupt people will agree to change it though, but it was fun to make. I obviously used the original as a basis. --Chase-san 21:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Pages that are discussions

Ok, I've reached a page that I'm unsure how to migrate. For ABCs Linked List Challenge, I went and gave it its own page and put it under Category:Discussions, which seemed like a reasonable setup. For FuzzyLogicTargeting, it doesn't make as much sense to me. One option is to make a Fuzzy Logic Targeting page, make it a stub, and add the page content's to the talk page, but that doesn't quite seem right - there is no such thing as Fuzzy Logic Targeting, so how could it ever get fleshed out? I could just transfer the whole contents and put it under Discussions like with ABCs Linked List Challenge; I guess this option works, but it still just feels a little off. Anybody got any suggestions? --Voidious 16:19, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

It was inevitable that there would be articles that just aren't worth moving. I realize by doing so we lose a little information from the old wiki, but in this case I just don't think it really should be moved. Unless the conversation had something influentual in it, I think it should be left alone aswell. --Chase-san 16:22, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Articles needing revision

Should we make a category for these, pages that we're just mostly copy and pasted from the old wiki, would obviously need revision to shake loose coversation and make them more informative, perferrably by someone knowledgable in the subject. Generally, I think each page should be written in a "for dummies" methodoligy where possible (things such as neural targeting will almost never be able to be put into a "for dummies" contex). In such as guessfactor targeting it is written out in such a way that someone realatively new to java programming can pick up, ergo generally lacking in technical jargan(unless referenced to the jargans meaning) and in plain english.

People such as I need things put in the simplist way to understand, as I am learning disabled so understanding psudoism's isn't exactly easy. (Just ask Voidious, who I worked with considerabily in an attempt to get my very first traditional gf gun working. Some things I just litterally needed spelled out.

Chase-san 16:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am trying to revise pages as I move them over, but if you move something and just don't know how to revise it, I think this is a fine solution. I think just marking it a "stub" or putting a note on the Talk page are other good options (either instead of or in addition to a "needs revision" list). --Voidious 16:41, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Template:Stub should used for articles that are too short. I believe Wikipedia has a generic "cleanup" template also. --AaronR 17:11, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

File and image uploads

Will these be enabled in the future? I can see some definite utility in allowing uploads: the challenge reference bots, the screenshots for The2000Club and The2100Club, illustrations for the tutorials... --AaronR 17:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I will enable uploads today or tomorrow. Yesterday, I looked into how to do it, checked out what kind of anti-abuse measures MediaWiki has in place, and talked to David to make sure he's cool with it. It should be no problem. --Voidious 18:13, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Will we be able to upload our robots to the wiki? --KID 00:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, David is working on a replacement bot repository, you'll be able to upload your bots there. If you need to upload your bot somewhere before then, feel free to e-mail me your bot (my handle at gmail) and I'll host it for you. --Voidious 00:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you still on vacation, Voidious? "I will enable uploads today or tomorrow" doesn't seem to have happened... --AaronR 00:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

No, sorry for the wait - image uploads are enabled now. None of the cool stuff like auto-thumbnailing is setup at the moment, but maybe we can set that up down the road. --Voidious 01:56, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --AaronR 02:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

When to move to RoboWiki.net

At what point in this migration should we move this wiki to RoboWiki.net (and the old one to a subdomain, perhaps)? Obviously the migration is going to take a long time before it's "finished". The RoboRumble participants pages work fine in the new wiki format. Any other major issues to resolve before we can "move"? --Voidious 15:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I still think we have a few too many redlinks for this to be considered "acceptable" as the new wiki. Just look at the Main Page, half of the links are missing (including RoboRumble!). Furthermore, the site is even less inviting to newcomers than before, since almost any link followed will dead-end them rather quickly. My opinion is that a lot more of the site needs to be finished before we can move over to the new wiki. Of course, at the rate everyone is contributing, that should only take about a few days. =) --AaronR 15:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion the completely new contents should go directly to this new wiki instead of creating new content in the old wiki. This can slow down the process. May be it could be interesting to put a note in the link of the old wiki. --jab 07:09, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

It's kind of a tough grey area... I think whichever site is actually at robowiki.net is where most people will go, just out of habit, so it's tough to just add new content elsewhere if you expect everyone to see it. Anyway, what I think really needs to happen is to get enough of the content moved over that it makes sense to put this at robowiki.net, then we can continue migrating from the old wiki after that. I personally have been pretty neglectful of the migration of late, but I am planning to get back to work migrating content soon. --Voidious 15:19, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Signature

Right, I almost forgot in MediaWiki you sign with four tildes :) But then, how do you edit your signature? I didn't see it anyware in "my preferences" Starrynte 20:02, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering that too. At Wikipedia, everyone has flashy multi-colored signatures ... except for me. --AaronR 07:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Aha! You have to use the "Nickname" field with the "Raw signatures" box checked. See, look at my signature now. I had to do a bit of searching through Wikipedia's help pages to figure that out. --AaronR 08:09, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Progress

Woohoo! Largely thanks to Fnl's recent updates for the Robocode pages, we are now up over 100 articles on the new wiki. I have been making good progress on the Targeting pages, too. There are nearly 4,000 pages on the old wiki, but I'd guess a ratio of 2:1 on the old wiki vs new wiki, because the new wiki doesn't count user pages or talk pages in that "article count", plus we are condensing some things over here. Keep up the good work, dudes! =) --Voidious 19:50, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd call it more like a 3:1 ratio. Actually, according to the Statistics page, it's a 340:113 ratio. Thanks to user pages, talk pages, redirects, and categories, a huge percentage of the old wiki's "articles" don't actually count as articles under the new system - which is a good thing, because that means we're close to 1/10th of the way done! And remember, we don't have to move everything. --AaronR 21:33, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Last time I looked at the main page it didn't look nearly as good as it does now. I didn't realize that, I thought it was ... ok. But now it's really sharp! --Simonton 03:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Bots using <this concept>

A lot of pages on the old wiki include a section of "bots using <this concept>". Most of them are painfully out of date, so I'm not sure they're of much use. Should we come up with some standard way of doing this? For instance, we could have a (potentially VERY long) section at the end of the topic page, or a subpage like "Topic/Bots Using". Or maybe it's not worth doing this at all because it will never be kept up to date - using a "What links here" or an advanced search might always be a better idea, anyway. --Voidious 20:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

As you say, these sections are always out of date. I would just use "What links here". Maybe, for some of the really broad strategies (Wave Surfing, Random Movement, GuessFactor Targeting, Pattern Matching, and Dynamic Clustering are the only ones I can think of), we could have subcategories of Category:Bots. --AaronR 20:48, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer usage of Categories rather than "What links here" -- KetsuNfwu 06:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

This type of wiki indeed has more powerfull (and automatically up-to-date) features for this. Rambots is the only category I can think of that is not hopelessly out of date, so I think it is not necessary. --GrubbmGait 23:22, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

ASHighlight

Can we add the ASHighlight extension to this wiki? It would be really nice to be able to use the <source lang="java5"> tag like you can on Wikipedia. You can see an example of this here - it's the same source code I used in my wiki-bot I wrote a while ago. --AaronR 23:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I very much second this notion Baal 05:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea --jab 07:09, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Thirded (fourth'd?) -- Synapse 06:02, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

ASHighlight? I think wikipedia use GeSHI. Anyway, I fifth. » Nat | Talk » 12:44, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

InfoBoxes

How about infoboxes for movement and targeting pages or something listing relative difficulty and codesize Baal 05:06, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Now at RoboWiki.net

Whoop! At last we moved! First post on the new URL :-) The sad thing is that old robowiki is unaccessible for now :-( » Nat | Talk » 06:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yep, PEZ got the domain pointing at the new server (much thanks, PEZ!), but he ran into some trouble trying to get the subdomain to point at the old one. I'll be working with him to get a copy of the old wiki and put it up on the new server asap. My main concern is the RoboRumble participants list -- there may be some bot adding/removing mayhem when clients can't get at it, but I think I heard Darkcanuck mention some protections against that. Yay! =) --Voidious 13:28, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Uh, the protection is that only my client does removals until I work up something better... And it looks like it tried to clear the rumble of all participants! A little more warning next time? I didn't anticipate this. ;) Does anyone have an up-to-date participants list file that I can use to put things back to normal? --Darkcanuck 14:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Doh. =( I'm working on getting the participants list off the old server ASAP, but I can't say for sure when it will be. (I do expect it to be today, at least.) Maybe someone could find it in their browser cache sooner than that? --Voidious 15:03, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I grabbed Google's cached version from 14Apr2009 and put it here: http://darkcanuck.net/rumble/particip1v1.txt ; my latest melee version (which hadn't updated yet) is here: http://darkcanuck.net/rumble/participmelee.txt . I've also updated this wiki with the same contents. I don't think we're missing too much, zyx.Gauss for sure, maybe a newer version of Wintermute -- anything else? I caught the problem after about half the rumble had been removed, so it may take some time to rebuild. For now all clients have the remove function disabled, including mine. I should probably file this as a roborumble bug too... --Darkcanuck 15:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to a quick consult from PEZ, I was able to snag the participants list off the old wiki and post it here. Is it the same as the old rumble, in that the battles are not lost, but each bot needs one battle to reappear in the listings? --Voidious 15:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's just the high number of add/removes really hammers the database and things start to time out. The version you posted looks perfect, so at least melee and 1v1 are up to date here (teams?). My client is now pointing at the new wiki's home, will take another look at this tonight. --Darkcanuck 15:31, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Just read that PEZ is in trouble.. (for pointing the domain) I believed that this occurs because he can't make two domains point at the same folder? » Nat | Talk » 16:15, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't really like this, without any notification. I'm editing one of old wiki page, then BOOM! All my content gone :-( But nothing important, just for fun. You still don't answer me Voidious, does the new server have mod_rewrite? » Nat | Talk » 13:43, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the new server has mod_rewrite, but I will look into it. I agree that the Wikipedia style URLs are nicer than the ones we have at present... --Voidious 15:05, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It's David's? We should emailed him to enabled mod_rewrite if he didn't already. Just uncomment the LoadModule (or he need to re-compile? I don't know he use the one from his distro or he compile his own)

It's David's, but I do have root access for that kind of stuff... --Voidious 15:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Some comment on this wiki, is it really that hard to install ParserFunction? I can get it running in a minute. I think we should copied over monobooks.css over from Wikipedia. I use that style on my Thai RoboWiki now, it really nice and neat (well, it's Wikipedia's).

More suggestion, it would be nice if we can upgrade this wiki to latest 1.14 so we can make a use of all Commons file. » Nat | Talk » 15:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll check into both of these. Definitely want to keep the MediaWiki software up to date. I don't know about the ParserFunction / monobooks stuff, but if it's easy and useful, of course we can see about setting it up. --Voidious 15:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The monobook.css one is brilliant css I have ever seen :-) I can do this for you if you just give approved me on this page ;) For Parser Function, I just asked because the current Category:Wikipedia Templates say. » Nat | Talk » 16:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Hey all, hope the thing arrange before I woke up tomorrow :-) At least please finish this weeks. If you want any help, I'm at your service. » Nat | Talk » 15:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Until we get the subdomain / archived copy of the old wiki setup, you can access the old wiki by updating your hosts file to point "robowiki.net" to the old IP, 174.132.4.195. This is C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on my WinXP machine, and /etc/hosts on Unix/Linux. (You may need to restart your browser, too.) And you can still access this wiki at testwiki.roborumble.org, so you can migrate stuff pretty easily while you have that setup. --Voidious 15:53, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! But it still read/write-able. And for Windows Vista, don't forget to run notepad as administrator! » Nat | Talk » 16:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Just found out that at last old robowiki getting read-only just by time I'm going to change the main page once more. Hope the subdomain up soon. » Nat | Talk » 12:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Voidious, I'd want to know. Is this all start a month ago by the time that I first post on Robo_Home/Discussion page? This is getting over fast than I expected. Or just coincidence? » Nat | Talk » 12:50, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

A little of both, I suppose. =) The migration has been in the works for a long time, of course. But your post and the high level of activity on the wiki lately got me really motivated to just get the migration moving along again. I feel bad that it has dragged on for so long. Sorry guys! --Voidious 14:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding first person references

Due to the nature of the wiki when we write an article we may be tempted to write something like "I suggest" or "my robot X".. however as we no longer sign our names in the main articles (as it looks silly msot likely), should we try to avoid this manner of writing and instead atleast opt for 3rd person references "It is suggested"/"Some suggest"/"NAMEHERE suggests" or "the robot X"/"NAMEHERE's robot X" isntead to just avoid confusion? I only bring this up because I saw it on a page I edited recently. While I think its fine you talk in first person on your user pages, it should probably stay out of the actual articles. --Chase 23:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you but only for topic pages. When you post in your user page, your robot page, or a signed talk, I think using of first person reference is fine. » Nat | Talk » 01:40, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Wiki Bot?

Hey, anyone have skill at writing wiki robot? I know that someone suggest not using a bot, but some work is really boring and screw up Recent Changes page very much. If we have a bot doing that, it will be much easier, and can hide from Recent Changes as well. What do you think? » Nat | Talk » 01:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Old Wiki Talk

Should we copy over the old wiki discussion direct to the discussion page? Why not we leave the discussion page blanks for new discussion and create new archive page for the old wiki talk? » Nat | Talk » 16:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

This is something I have wondered about, too. What I've been doing so far is: if there is a lot of discussion, I will create an archived talk page (how we did on the old wiki, too, and probably will here). If it's just a few comments, I just put it on the talk page. It does seem appropriate to put it on the talk page, doesn't it? It is discussion about that page from the old wiki, just formatted differently on the old wiki. But I don't know, what does everyone else think? --Voidious 17:00, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I'm completely off here, but, but to me it seems that it might be appropriate to make a a dedicated wiki namespace for "Archived Talk". I've think I've seen some archived talk get put in the main namespace like Migration/Archived Talk 20090424 and that doesn't seem right to me. Something like Talk:Migration/Archived Talk 20090424 doesn't seem right either because Migration/Archived Talk 20090424 would be linked to by the tabs but wouldn't be an actual page. I propose we use something like Archived Talk:Migration/20090424 instead. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces for technical details. Just a thought anyway. --Rednaxela 22:07, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that seems like a fine idea. I wonder if most wikis just delete stuff from their Talk pages? That wouldn't surprise me, as their primary purpose is just to refine the articles, but here, that archived discussion is full of good info that I'd rather not delete. Or maybe I'm just kind of a data-pack rat. Gonna read up on namespaces a bit before doing anything -- thanks for the link. --Voidious 22:54, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think most wiki do delete their talk. On the Wikipedia, all talk is archived to Talk:Migration/Archive_N. Namespace is good ideas. I don't think we should leave the 'Archived' namespace blank. We can just redirect to main talk page for archive discussion, or for some page that should be fully rewrite, we can take old wiki page to 'Archived' namespace. For a note: the '_talk' must be in lower case, or it won't work. » Nat | Talk » 08:58, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Archive talk page naming

Hey, should we make a rule for archived discussion page name? I know most people use 'Archived talk YYYYMMDD' for the page name, but I saw some page with just 'Old discussion'. » Nat | Talk » 09:02, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

How to migrating content w/ external links?

Voidious, I'm very curious, how can you migrate content with external links? Since reCAPTCHA is now point at robowiki.net so the CAPTCHA image won't load. Or SysOp has skipCaptcha right? Now when I copy content over, I need to edit my host file twice in order to access the new wiki through robowiki.net. If SysOp has skipCaptcha right, so please RoboWiki:Requests for adminship ;) » Nat | Talk » 02:46, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Ok, accounts more than a couple days old should skip the CAPTCHA now. Could you let me know if you still hit it? We definitely don't want to make migrating content from the old wiki so difficult. =) I'm still working on getting the archived subdomain setup. --Voidious 04:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)