MediaWiki:Sitenotice:
2025-12-29: I have restored the wiki to a backup from the end of November. Starting in September 2025, accesses went form the 800MB-1.2GB range per month to 26GB in September, 42GB in October, and 70GB in November with most accesses originating from China. As soon as I realized what was causing all the access problems in November, I shut it down (it had reached 36GB by then) behind a password/login screen. The database had gotten corrupted, and I tried a restore from just before the spike in access but that didn't work. Thus, end of November. I still have the other daily backups so if there were any important additions in December, let me know and maybe they can be recovered. - Allen H.
User talk:Polluks
Sub-categories
I see you made a category of "Software" under "Game", creating a subcategory. I did not know this was possible until today, and see you already knew this. Is there a way to have duplicate sub-categories? Like, can we have "Software:Joystick" to be a cat/subcat indicating Software that require Joysticks, but have "Hardware:Joystick" be a cat/subcat indicating a hardware device that IS a joystick? --OS-9 Al (talk)
- Unlikely, the name must differ. -- Polluks (talk) 17:11, 3 September 2016 (CDT)
- Well, I noticed the "Software" and "Game" templates are not really compatible, so I was thinking to revert my change -- Polluks (talk) 14:37, 31 August 2016 (CDT)
- All new InfoBox templates and a new tag/category system are being worked on at this moment. Check out InfoBox_Templates for the all-new (work-in-progress) templates, and List of Tags for the category suggestions. The tag page is where I'd love your help figuring out how to link the categories ("tags"). I also installed the Category Tree browser, so it will help us visualize what works together. --OS-9 Al (talk)
- I see. Please avoid tagging Publications if you already taged its sub-category Books. -- Polluks (talk) 15:19, 31 August 2016 (CDT)
- I won't touch sub-categories until we have that Tags page complete and can figure it all out. Drop me an e-mail, if you can help discuss this. OS-9 Al (talk) 15:27, 31 August 2016 (CDT)
- Check out this: Special:CategoryTree -- enter "Hardware" and display it, or "Software".
- I see. Please avoid tagging Publications if you already taged its sub-category Books. -- Polluks (talk) 15:19, 31 August 2016 (CDT)
- All new InfoBox templates and a new tag/category system are being worked on at this moment. Check out InfoBox_Templates for the all-new (work-in-progress) templates, and List of Tags for the category suggestions. The tag page is where I'd love your help figuring out how to link the categories ("tags"). I also installed the Category Tree browser, so it will help us visualize what works together. --OS-9 Al (talk)
- Well, I noticed the "Software" and "Game" templates are not really compatible, so I was thinking to revert my change -- Polluks (talk) 14:37, 31 August 2016 (CDT)
New InfoBox Templates and Categories
I am making one master InfoBox template which will use extensive conditionals (if/switch) to generate all the variations. This way, everything will look consistent and there is only one box to maintain.
InfoBox has a new parameter, boxtype, and then accepts all the parameters for any box it can generate.
PublicationInfoBox will be a template that just calls InfoBox with "boxtype = Publication". The top level Category (Publications) is set inside the NavPublications template, since ALL Publication pages should use that. BUT, not all Publication pages will use an InfoBox (indexes, for example). I'd think if I click on "Publications" I should see ALL pages that deal with them, even index pages.
We will then be able to make "BookInfoBox" which is just like "PublicationInfoBox" (using boxtype = Publication) but it can add "Category: Books" just to save the user having to do that one extra step (and we might decide we want it to be "Book" versus "Books".
Likewise, I have "SoftwareInfoBox" (main category of Software comes from NavSoftware), and I will create things like GameInfoBox (which adds "Category: Games").
There will be some redundancy (Nav adds Software, Games is a sub-category of Software) but the end result should be a much cleaner site with Categories being used consistently. --OS-9 Al (talk) 15:38, 31 August 2016 (CDT)