User talk:Optimist/Archive2

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This is an archive page for discussion posts.

Please do not edit this page. To communicate with me (Optimist), please go here.

Contents 1 Thank you so much! 2 Spam 3 Seance: 4 Illuminati 5 Current Events 6 Marking Outstanding Articles 7 community portal link 8 server uptime 9 no match interface 10 Browsing 11 Improving tinWiki 12 Hello There! :) 13 Help! Illumanati Page 14 Could you Delete this Page? 15 Please help 16 Question about dates 17 MediaWiki Ad 18 CAPTCHA 19 Outstanding tinWiki articles 20 Jeff Rense 21 tinWiki colors. 22 Your tin logo 23 skin settings 24 more skin settings 25 Leo Lyon Zagami 26 article format question

Thank you so much!

Thanks for deleting all of that spam that spammer left on my talk page. I hope you are not still getting the error when you block a spammer. I talked it over with some of the mods and we think it may be a browser issue, and if not maybe something relating to the software. In any case, thanks again for your help and your diligence. It is very much appreciated. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 14:59, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

No problem. Deleting the spam was easy -- blocking the ip's took a short while, but I was mostly thinking of other things once I got the hand movements sort of automated...

Anyway, I thought I did post that message in the forum but then I didn't find it there. I do still get forwarded to that erroneous URL, always have, by the way, when I have blocked spammers. Like I wrote in the message (after all, then), the URL begins like this: http://tinwiki.orghttp//tinwiki.org.... (and some more stuff). That is the problem, of course. If it's something that just happens with me, then of course it's very strange.

The browser I normally use is Firefox, but I also have other ones, for example Internet Explorer and Opera, and so will try using them next time and see if anything's different. Optimist 15:21, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

Right. Of course when I said, thanks for deleting the spam, I meant the blocking the spammers ip. My brain is not working on full capacity right now. As for your problem when blocking, I am quite surprised to see it. I usually get a page not displayed message after I block, but I have not been paying attention to the urlk.In any case, the offenders are being blocked, so maybe it's not a great problem in the eyes of the Overlord. :-) William One Sac | tinWiki Master 15:29, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

I guess the only thing the page would say is something like, "User blocked." It's really not an important issue, I totally agree. :-) Optimist 17:10, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

Spam

I edit (and administer) this wikia:

http://pagan.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.

I never have trouble with automated spam there. I am not certain how wikia keeps it out, but people who do not register are obligated to type in code words to list external links. Could this wiki use that technology?

--Mig-17 17:25, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

I am looking into the CAPTCHA feature that Optimist made me aware of several months ago. What you suggest would likely be an improvement, although as of right now tinWiki does not require an email account. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 17:44, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

Mig-17, as you may know, Wikia wikis use the same software as tinWiki does, namely the one made for Wikipedia, what is called MediaWiki. However, there are different versions of this software (naturally) and so I wonder if that in itself has to do with whether there is that "Are you human?" typing-in-letters test or not. tinWiki's version is stated here.

William One Sac, I don't believe there needs to be any requirement of the contributors giving their e-mail address. In Wikipedia, at least, it's simply to type in correctly the 'jumbled' letters from the graphic, and then one can save one's page edit (if the page edit contains no external links, the test is skipped). Optimist 21:17, 3 October 2007 (CDT)

I found this page about combating spam, right now. The information there seems very interesting. Optimist 00:27, 5 October 2007 (CDT)

Seance:

The source was identified, so why did you delete? If you objected, simply keep the top of the article and then provide the link....

Also, when dealing withn occult lore, one must not "paraphrase" or rewrite. It voids the ceremony. --Mig-17 18:24, 20 October 2007 (CDT)

Did y

I have restored the page for now. This should be talked about on the articles discussion page.William One Sac | tinWiki Master 19:23, 20 October 2007 (CDT)

Since this is mentioned in my personal discussion, I want to just state for the record that it wasn't I who deleted the page in question. Optimist 08:32, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

Please see the Séance talk page.

Sorry, Optimist, for my mistake. Note also that curious woman has started to follow me around on various wikis to "hassle" me. Rather weird. --Mig-17 18:10, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

Mig-17, It's alright, I just wanted it "in the records" that I personally was not involved, so that's why I commented. I am sorry about the problems with the hassler, and hope that calms down. Anyway, I have written a comment in the Seance article discussion. Optimist 21:45, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

Illuminati

Is there a quick way to revert an article. Spam destroyed the Illuminati page.

--Mig-17 17:51, 22 October 2007 (CDT)

A quick way to revert to an earlier version is to view the version by clicking on it (in the article's version history -- reached through the tabs found on top of all pages) and then click edit and then simply saving that previous version.

There is also an automatic rollback feature available for those whose user account has what is called sysop status, and to use that one must view the contributions list of the last user to edit the page in question, and then click where it says "rollback" next to any of the edits for the page in question, and all the user's edits on that page will be reverted. (The automatic method can only roll back the edits by a single user. If more than one users have made edits that need to be reverted, then the reverting has to be done with the manual method, that is, the method I described first in this reply.) Optimist 23:35, 29 October 2007 (CDT)

Current Events

I just wanted to tell you I think you have done a wonderful job on the current events page. Really top notch. Everything is nicely laid out, and is very pleasing to the eye. Excellent!!William One Sac | tinWiki Master 19:59, 2 November 2007 (CDT)

Thank you, William One Sac, I was very happy to see that you like it. :-) Optimist 18:29, 3 November 2007 (CDT)

Marking Outstanding Articles

I think it is an excellent idea to mark outstanding articles. So I think we should go ahead and do it. I also think it is a good idea to create a page for the nominations. I do not mind if you would like to pick articles as well though. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 13:06, 18 November 2007 (CST)

 :-) Great. Perhaps my experiment banner/template can be used until further, and maybe my suggested title for the nominations page can also be created (it can always be moved later if necessary).

About my facts knowledge, I frankly don't have much, so that's mostly why I didn't suggest myself as a member of the deciding commitee, or such. I'd be happy if I could just suggest/nominate pages, and if you and possibly others could look at pages like every other month or something to see if they look like some of tinWiki's best. Maybe it could even be a good idea to try and recruit one or two people to assist with evaluating the nominated pages? Just a thought. Anyway, I will create my suggested nominations page, hope it's alright. Optimist 14:11, 18 November 2007 (CST)

community portal link

That is really brilliant that you figured out how to change the redirect Optimist. I had just about given up on that. So great job, you really deserve congratulations on figuring that out. As for how you did it, it may take me some time to see just how it works, because I am a bit confused right now to say the least. Anyhow, good job! :-) William One Sac | tinWiki Master 21:45, 18 November 2007 (CST)

 :-) William One Sac, thank you.

About the whole thing about the interface messages, I expect I will be looking a bit more into that later, and so will hopefully also manage to explain a bit more concisely what I did. What it seems is the sidebar links are actually set using a kind of double redirect, or something like that. Anyway, thanks again. :-) Optimist 04:16, 19 November 2007 (CST)

server uptime

I am not certain why the site is down for you sometimes. It is always up and running for me. Oh yeah, I dont know how your ip got blocked, but perhaps you can try to unblock it in the special pages link. I believe there is an option to unblock an ip there. Let me know if you have anymore problems. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 22:08, 19 November 2007 (CST)

Thank you. It seems the problem is over now, today I get in again. :-) I imagine it wasn't the wiki software which blocked me, but that it was some kind of automatic software on the server computer, or something, to protect against what I believe is called 'denial of service' attacks, not that I know at all what I'm talking about. At first I could still go to ATS (yesterday), but then it seemed I was blocked from that also (but could still get both sites if I went through the proxy service I mentioned). Anyway, it seems I can get in again today. Which was great to see.

It's interesting that I have these periods now and then when it seems tinWiki.org is 'unreachable' (or what the terms is?) and you don't, I wonder what the reason is and if other people have the problem or if it's something to do with my Internet connection. Anyway, I am thinking of reducing the frequency down from every ten seconds to every sixty seconds, and then try again with the FREEping (got the capitalization wrong yesterday :-) software and see if that is a low enough frequency to not be blocked. Thanks, again, for the reply. Optimist 05:21, 20 November 2007 (CST)

no match interface

Hi Optimist, I saw the change you made on the article not found page. I think it is an excellent idea. We cannot have too many links when it comes to helping people who are new to tinWiki. Kudos to you for figuring this stuff out, I admit I am playing catchup on this and other matters to see what you are doing. Wonderful job! William One Sac | tinWiki Master 21:47, 20 November 2007 (CST)

 :-) Thank you, William One Sac. I am glad you think this is an improvement.

That "Special:Allmessages" page is where I found the place to change the settings for this. Seems that Special:Allmessages page is an important overview concerning such settings (that's also where I found how to somehow change the sidebar links when I changed the target for the Community portal link). Thanks again. It feels great to be able to contribute here. Optimist 06:43, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Browsing

Hi Optimist, I have read the entry you made on my talk page about some of the articles which are truly not encyclopedic. I think that in these cases we should try our best to try and rewrite these pages to better conform with our goals. I would not like to think that people would not want to contribute here, because they are worried we will just remove their page from the site. Your thoughts about moving some of the articles to a blog webpage are excellent. However, the blogs space at ATS are off-line at the moment, and I do think that if we remove any articles which can not or should not be edited, they should remain on the ATS servers. Perhaps we can make a page of articles which are candidates for either improvement or removal? I like your idea of refining the site, and I think it is a good time to make these improvements. I agree that the site is ready for this. I do think that part of the problem is that not enough people edit the tinWiki. The reason for this I feel is that there are not enough complete articles. Also, we need to find a way to get the word out to people that the site is here and is theirs for the taking. Springer has mentioned to me several times that I should start articles in the Board Business section on ATS, but I am unsure of what I should say. (I mean articles promoting tinWiki).

If you have any ideas of what I might say, please give me some ideas. I am in this for the long haul, so even if we do not see a great spike in participation in the short run does not mean we need to give up. I have noticed something else which bothers me a bit. I notice that many members of ATS will work hard on articles for a short time and make 10 decent articles. They will then ask to be given editor status, which I am usually happy to do for such excellent participation. Then they will disappear, or just post once in a very long time. I am unsure about what to do about this, other than that I am going to be very wary about handing out the titles in the future.

I would like you to expand on your idea of moving articles off of the site, as this is what concerns me the greatest. The blogs should be back up and running soon (according to the blog czar) so perhaps we can start a blog on ATS, I can give you the password to the account and we can discuss and move any articles which may not be suitable for editing. Please let me know your thoughts. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 17:33, 22 November 2007 (CST)

Improving tinWiki

Hello Optimist, I have been giving alot of thought to the suggestions you have made, and I must say I agree with much of what you have to say. I am giving thought to creating a page that we can refine that states tinWiki's mission in a clear and consise fashion. I was thinking also, perhaps we could create a new, short "blurb" for the Main page, and then have the idea fully expanded upon on this new page. I think that stating something along the lines that tinWiki is a collaborative encyclopedia whose focus lies along alternative - conspiratorial topics, for the main page, and then perhaps going alot further on a new page, explaining things like the need to remain neutral etc... Perhaps we can name this page tinWiki: Mission or something like that? Or maybe more simply: TinWiki's Mission. But before I go any further, I would like to know if we are on the same page with this (pun not intended!) Do you have any suggestions for what we could name the page? I think the naming of the page will be just as important as the contents, because people need to see it and automatically say to themselves "Oh, this is important!" William One Sac | tinWiki Master 18:03, 25 November 2007 (CST)

Hello There! :)

Hi Optimist, I just wanted to let you know that I am catching up with some of the ideas and suggestions you have made. My online time was extremely limited over the last couple of weeks, thus I have been missing in action for the most part. However, I can now focus more attention to tinWiki. I really appreciate the way you have been keeping up with everything here. So let me know if you need or want anything. I am going to review the suggestions you have made over the next couple of days and we can discuss them further. I want to let you know that I asked SkepticOverlord to implement the CAPCHA changes you provided a link for, and he did try a few times to make the changes. I will have to ask him to look into doing it again, as I am sure it has just slipped his mind. Also, I like the way the Main Page revamp is coming along. It would be nice to use the image of the week idea you came up with. I would just like to make that table smaller or something. I have to look at it when I get a chance. But I really think you are getting close to something we can change the Main Page to.

Also, I really don't know too much about copyright laws and such, but I think (if I catch your drift correctly) that we can rectify the problem by removing the copyright from the Main Page? If so, I think we should just go ahead and do it. After all, this is ATS's garden, but we are the gardeners. :-)

William One Sac | tinWiki Master 10:07, 18 December 2007 (CST)

Help! Illumanati Page

I tried to fix the Illuminati page after a spammer hit it, but I cannot restore the formatting. Can you help?--Mig-17 18:14, 3 January 2008 (CST) [This post has been moved here to my discussion from my user page.]

Mig-17, I have now restored the page to the version that came just before the spam edit. Optimist 21:03, 3 January 2008 (CST)

Thanks for fixed the Illuminati.

Also, thanks for telling me how to edit spam more easily. I was cutting the stuff out the hard way! --Mig-17 23:21, 4 January 2008 (CST)

Could you Delete this Page?

http://tinwiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Poweredby

Should this page not be deleted? It seems to be for spam only. --Mig-17 15:24, 13 January 2008 (CST)

Please help

http://tinwiki.org/wiki/El_Chupacabra

I know you told me how to fix this,but I still keep getting vandalism on the page. Could you fix it?

--Mig-17 18:05, 17 January 2008 (CST)

Question about dates

Hi Optimist, I was wondering if I could ask you about something I have noticed. On the main page, the date does not refresh itself until I manually do it myself. Although once in a while the date does change, but for the most part I have to click edit, then check the minor edit box, then click save to get the date to update. However I have noticed on some of the pages you have created, like the current events page, the date seems to update automatically. Do you have any ideas as to why this is? Sorry if I am not being clear enough. Thank you in advance. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 22:05, 19 January 2008 (CST)

MediaWiki Ad

Thats a great idea Optimist. Hopefully someone will step forward to help us out.

William One Sac | tinWiki Master 20:23, 6 February 2008 (CST)

CAPTCHA

Hi Optimist. I just wanted to let you know that I let SkepticOverlord know about the information you supplied about tinwiki needing to be upgraded to a newer version before captcha will work. I haven't heard back from him yet, which probably means he hasn't had a chance to look into it. I will follow up with him though to just make sure he doesn't forget. Thank you for looking into that information, hopefully we can get CAPTHCA successfully depoyed here to cut down on the spam. William One Sac | tinWiki Master 19:28, 11 March 2008 (CDT)

Outstanding tinWiki articles

Hello Optimist. I think your idea for nominating tinWiki articles that are outstanding is a great one. However, you do not need me to rate an article as outstanding (although I am happy to do so). I have made you co-administrator of this website. You are very deserving of the title and I am only too happy to give you the recognition you deserve. So feel free to nominate any articles you feel are deserving of outstanding. Let me know if you want any additional titles associated with your account (bot, Bureaucrat). I will start putting articles that I like on the nominations page, and I think you should as well. Also, I am going to give you some points for your account on Above Top Secret. This is so if you want to upload an image to ATS's servers, you can buy the space you need in the ATS store. The reason I am thinking this is so that images will not run out of bandwidth if they are hosted elsewhere, like image shack for example. When we first started the tinWiki 2 years ago, some of the image shack images would run out of bandwidth, and it would ruin how certain pages looked. So that is just something to keep in mind, as we have unlimited bandwidth with ATS's servers. Although I do not believe you can upload a png file to there. William One Sac 15:08, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

Jeff Rense

JEff rense offers low quality conspiracy theories, he does little research into facts. His website has about 25% truth to the information there.
The above was posted on 20:38, 28 March 2008 by an anonymous user at IP address 69.231.92.10.

69.231.92.10, Thanks for the feedback. I have written a longer reply in your user page's discussion here. --Optimist 17:43, 28 March 2008 (CDT)

tinWiki colors.

Hi Optimist, I have been spending some time wandering around the internet looking at other wikis to see if anything would jump out at me as an idea to improve our website. I found this site here wikiHealth. I like the subtle color scheme very much. I think it makes the site much more attractive. Not necessarily the way they have the front page formatted, but just the background colors and the green and tan colors. I think a similar scheme here would go a long way to making the tinWiki more appealing to more members. They also gave me some ideas about announcing the newest pages on the front page, which I think would compliment your idea for an image of the week nicely.

As far as those last two things go, I think we just need to find a pleasing way to place them on the main page. Now that I am heading off topic, I think it would be good if we could add those two tables, the image of the week and the newest pages table, and we get rid of the "What is tinWiki" or whatever it is called. We could just link to that page from the mainpage, by creating a much more condensed version on the main page, which is something that I think you may have brought up in the past. I think that if we add some subtle color changes to the site, revamp the front page, including the main page template, that we might attract more people to the site to start leaving more changes rather than just links to viagra sites. :P

I would really love to implement these changes, but I think that as far as the color changes go we would need Skeptic Overlord to invest some time. I think I am right that we cannot make changes to the site like I am thinking? If we could, it would really open up a whole new world for us to play with improving the site. As it stands right now, I find the white and gray colors a little stark, and less friendly. Although the format has worked sucessfully for sites like wikipedia, I think it is perhaps holding us back.

As for the site I noted above, like I said I do not necessarily want a carbon copy of what they have done there. I do not like that they are forcing the screen width to 800 pixels for examples. So if you know, I would like to know if you think we can create a color scheme that is more pleasing, or do we need to get the skeptic overlord to do the actual coding for that... Let me know what you think. Keeping in mind that we would probably need to redo the logo for tinWiki, for which I have no photo shop kung fu. :)

William One Sac 21:04, 8 April 2008 (CDT)

Hi Optimist, thank you for finding those links and researching this. I also don't know php, but as you said maybe with some of the examples we can find something nice. I have been thinking about our logo, and I find it is very ingenious. (The wiki ball with the tinfoil around the top) Actually we had the real wikimedia ball when we first started out, but someone complained to us about copy-write infringement, so we changed it to the smooth ball. I have to say that glancing over the pages you linked to I am finding the whole matter a bit confusing. I guess it is just a matter of getting both feet wet (as they say) and just getting in and starting it. Have you had any luck with changing any of this?

As for the front page design, I really like what you have done and feel we are close to being able to implement the changes on the page. You did a great job with everything. I like the tables you made for the new pages and the popular pages. I think we just need to work on the layout for now. Anyhow, I think we are moving in the right direction here. :) William One Sac 14:49, 11 April 2008 (CDT)

Your tin logo

I love the tin logo you made for your user page.

Very creative! I think I will try sprucing up my own talk page as I see how nicely yours has come out.

William One Sac 01:17, 24 April 2008 (CDT)

skin settings

Hi Optimist,

I did try a couple of things on the pages you found. However nothing seemed to work, although it is my intention to try and see if I can work anything out. If it turns out we cannot change the skin ourselves, I will need to ask SkepticOverlord to do it. However I will need to be very specific to tell him what we would like to do. Perhaps he can change a permission that would allow you and I to change it ourselves. I will look into it some more and see what is what. Also, feel free to play with those pages anyway you see fit. If you are successful and do make a change, I think it is very easy to revert the changes. At least I think it should be. Thank you for finding those pages.

William One Sac 22:33, 1 May 2008 (CDT)

more skin settings

Hello Optimist,

I was just looking at the main page revamp page. WOW! Your knowledge of wiki code is very impressive. The page really does go far in how I envision the site to look when we gain control over the skin. I must say I agree with you that this is very exciting. I am going to email SkepticOverlord and let him know what you and I are thinking. Because I was wondering, and hoping, that there is some setting he can easily change that will allow us to work directly on the skins with that link that you found. That would really be the best way. Thank you for all of your hard work. :-) I will, of course, keep you updated on any news that I hear.

William One Sac 14:38, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Leo Lyon Zagami

Hey Optimist, I just wanted to comment on the article you wrote about Leo Lyon Zagami. I had not heard of him before, and I must say it is a very interesting piece you created. I have only recently become aware of Project Camelot, but I must say I really don't know much about it. Anyhow, I just wanted to acknowledge you and what you have done. Thumbs up! William One Sac 19:10, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

article format question

Hello Optimist!

I have been thinking something over, and I was wondering what your thoughts on the matter might be. When we make a standard article, to format it properly means we must include a "relevant discussion threads" section. Do you think that we should start naming this "Related discussion threads on AboveTopSecret.com?" I realize this would be quite a daunting task to go back and rename all of the articles now, but perhaps we can do it this way from this point forward? Or maybe you have a different idea that would more accurately reflect what the section means? Or perhaps I am just over thinking this and it should stay the way it is now. Anyhow, please let me know what you think. You can let me know on this page here, as I have temporarily closed my discussion page due to the amount of spam it has started getting recently. William One Sac 15:42, 13 May 2008 (CDT)

William One Sac,

Yes, I do agree with changing the discussion threads header as you describe. I have actually been thinking of it myself, a while back. The reason I think it makes a lot of sense to be more specific in that header, is that visitors may come to an article page through a search engine, directly. Such visitors won't necessarily know that tinWiki is affiliated with ATS (I myself am an example of that...) So, yes, I think it's a very good practice that you are describing. The threads aren't simply discussion threads, but are specifically ATS threads -- indeed, no other threads are allowed to be in that section. I agree 100% percent. I will be using the new header name you suggest, in new articles I create, and I will change articles I edit so that the discussion threads header is updated to the new version. This will improve tinWiki in a significant way, I definitely agree. Optimist 16:29, 13 May 2008 (CDT)