WikiWOOD talk:WikiCommunity Woodturning

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Image:100px-People icon.jpg This article is part of the Wiki Community "Woodturning", a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving WikiWOOD's coverage of Woodturning.
You do not have to be a community member to edit this article, but you are encouraged to join if this topic interests you.

This page is for discussions about the woodturning content of this wiki. Questions about the content of the wiki as a whole, or subject areas that don't yet have a community to look after them, should be posted to WikiWOOD talk:Community Portal. Questions about using the wiki software should be posted to the Help Desk


Contents

Links that should be here.

Hi Derek, You have a lot of really good information on your user page. What do you think about putting some of those here? We should setup a section of templates like you have in your manual of style.

Thoughts? Zunigene

I moved some, feel free to add anything you think will be useful. Toolrest 15:59, 17 January 2009 (CST)
It should also be noted that this page is a subset of WikiWOOD:Community Portal so much of what is on that page applies here too.

OK! I got here. It will be interesting to see how this process works. stnick


Categories

One thing to that is useful is to make sure that the category tag is put on the articles. That way the Wiki will organize it for browsing. for example if you put this tag at the bottom of your article: category:woodturningCategory:Woodturning tools

Is there a list of tags or can we make them up, or add to the list. category:woodturning Category:Woodturning tools category:cutting tools Category:Bowl Gouge
In most cases category:woodturning Category:Woodturning tools is an overcategorization since Category:Woodturning tools is a category within category:woodturning. I think I had this on one of my original pages and need to remove it. I have learnt better since then.
You can make up your own categories. However, some thought needs to be given to choosing a name since it is harder to change a category name than an article name. The main problem is conflicts with other areas of the wiki, so in many cases we must add 'woodturning' to many of our category names, such as 'woodturning cutting tools'.
Category:Bowl Gouge is possibly something to consider creating at a later date if we find we have several articles that will fit into such a category. There is nothing worse than having to drill down through several layers of categories when there is very little in each one.
When you create a new category, you must add it to a higher category, otherwise it will become an orphan.
Check wikipedia [1] for more advice.Toolrest 16:26, 17 January 2009 (CST)

All 'content' categories are subsets of Category:Contents. This in turn is within Category:Top level which contains categories for all the 'backroom' pages such as this one, templates, images etc. It is semi-hidden so as not to confuse the casual visitor. Easiest way I find to find it is to use the Categories link in the sidebar navigation box, then use the Top Level link at the bottom of the page.Toolrest 16:52, 17 January 2009 (CST)

There are 7 Categories in Contents: Carpentry Manufacturers of tools, machines and supplies Safety Wood Wood Joinery Woodturning Woodworking tools
There is one article in the category Contents. Woodworking
Does this make sense? Everything in Woodturning is an article. Is that a good setup? Is it OK for now, and change later?--stnick 15:05, 18 January 2009 (CST)
The Contents category is really just a broad overview of the whole wiki. I don't think there should be many articles there ultimately, but Woodworking seems to fit there. Probably most of the topics listed in Woodworking will ultimately be major categories. Category woodturning already has two sub categories within it (plus one for images), more can be added as required. There are two articles that could go into Spindle Turning, and two for Bowl Turning (or should it be Faceplate Turning?) if you want. Like most things in a wiki it is all very fluid, and can be done now or later. Generally I think it is a good idea to only create a category when there is at least two articles to fit in it, or if you can be very certain that more will follow shortly. Toolrest 16:38, 18 January 2009 (CST)

The side bar has a Categories Link. It takes one to a page covering all of woodworking. To get to Woodturning, you have to take another link. Since we are concentrating on Woodturning at this time, should we have a link in the sidebar that takes us there? So Categories becomes Categories Woodworking; add Categories Woodturning; at some point we could add Categories Flat Work etc. Does this make sense? --stnick 18:42, 19 January 2009 (CST)

Editor roles

In that vein, do we all want to identify an area we feel comfortable writing about? After the writer has made a first pass, perhaps an email to this group for review would be a good idea.

I wasn't thinking that each of use would be writing primarily, or knowledgeble in a specific broad area. The area each Senior Editor is covering, is more supervisory. Put those pages on your watch list. If they need a wikify tag, get it placed there. If you can wikify them, do so. Add to them or re-organize them to fit the templates - when Joel or Derek tells us where those are.
Probably best if we all just keep an eye on Special:Newpages and Special:Recentchanges - available directly or indirectly in the sidebar. Narrowing things down to specific people slows down the cross-fertilization of new ideas. Toolrest 16:38, 17 January 2009 (CST)
Which templates are you referring too? We have theseCategory:TemplatesToolrest 16:44, 17 January 2009 (CST)

Things that need attention

I know there are lots of things we need to do to get this in better shape. Please add anything you think needs attention to this section.Zunigene

  • Images need to be fixed
  • Joel, what do you think of installing the category tree extension: [2]? It would be useful in portal type pages ie Main Page, woodturning as on [3]. Toolrest 04:16, 18 January 2009 (CST)


I like the idea! It might help address my issues above. --stnick 15:07, 18 January 2009 (CST)

    • Looking at it now. I'll report back shortly. Zunigene 13:23, 19 January 2009 (CST)
  • how are you making out with the changes needed for the file names etc? Toolrest 17:33, 17 January 2009 (CST)
Getting there. It looks like the problem is affecting all the .png images. I am working on seeing if uploading them as .jpg helps. If you look at the .png MIME type it says text/plain as opposed to image/png.

Zunigene 18:20, 17 January 2009 (CST)

Yep that was it. After changing the image from png to jpg, it works just fine. There is something messed up in the configuration here. I am going to try to get to the bottom of it so we don't have to change all the templates. But if we need to do something quick we can just change png's to jpg's.

Zunigene 19:37, 17 January 2009 (CST)

Where do you find the jpg's to exchange with the png's? I could spend some time changing them out. --stnick 23:48, 25 January 2009 (CST)
Image:40px-Broom icon.png It seems to be as simple as saving the file to my computer and uploading it again over the top of the old file. It is still a png and seems to be fine. Although it wouldn't take too long, I'm hesitant to do this unless Joel is confident there will be no further problems. They are in Category:WikiWOOD Images. --Toolrest 05:21, 26 January 2009 (CST)
Well done, and thanks. I was actually thinking of the bit in the url: index.php5?title= Toolrest 03:43, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Gotcha. I will make that a priority. We may need to upgrade the software. we are about 3 revisions back right now. Am investigating short url's now. Zunigene 09:42, 18 January 2009 (CST)

  • Review new format of Main Page. It can be expanded as new areas of interest develop. I looked at the coding for the pretty boxes wikipedia use on their Portal pages. It involves a lot of deeply nested templates and functions that we don't have. It would take a long time to implement and I think that at this stage time can be better spent on other things.
WOW! That looks GREAT! WELL DONE! Zunigene 11:36, 18 January 2009 (CST)
  • Delete 'Forum' link in Help menu in sidebar. Toolrest 12:14, 18 January 2009 (CST)
    • Done Zunigene 16:57, 18 January 2009 (CST)
  • Delete the 4 top pages in the Long Pages List of Special Pages. They are all in excess of 150K, all marked for deletion and all look like a mistranslated GIF image (random letters). Is this something I can do? --stnick 22:36, 19 January 2009 (CST)
  • Delete other stuff at woodbase.org. In an email with Jason, Derek wrote "We would only be interested in woodbase.org and would want to convert it to a wiki only, so if we took it over would you be happy for the rest of that site to be scrapped? Jason replied: YES, I WOULD BE FINE WITH THAT. WE CAN SCRAP IT ALL AND START FRESH. So woodbase.org would be the main page of the wiki.Toolrest 12:14, 18 January 2009 (CST)
    • I would not delete just yet. I am trying to get the archive and restore functioning properly Zunigene 16:57, 18 January 2009 (CST)

A bottoms up approach to articles

Being faced with an empty article such as bowl turning is a pretty daunting task. Whole books have been written on the subject, so where does one begin? One solution is to concentrate on just one small part of the subject, create a page about it, and write that. This is what I did with my early articles such as Cutting logs for bowl turning and Anchor, bevel, cut. These are topics that one can easily get ones head around without getting bogged down in trying to organise a huge array of thoughts. They are quite simple to write. They can be linked to from higher level articles.

If you need ideas for what to write about, look back at some of the questions asked in online forums and mailing lists. Toolrest 09:10, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Take care with copyright of course. It is fine to use your own contributions to a forum, but not those of others. I just added Preventing spiral waves in woodturning which is something I wrote a while back, all I had to do was slightly broaden the context. Toolrest 09:35, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Signing posts

All, to keep attribution clear, please sign your edits by putting 4 tildes at the end of your post. This will add your name and timestamp. Zunigene 09:44, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Do you mean just on this page, or on edits elsewhere? --stnick 21:59, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Just on Talk pages. Toolrest 05:24, 19 January 2009 (CST)

Wiki Tags for Pages

OK! I found the expand tag that includes the invitation to contribute to a page. I added that to the History Page I am working on.

I have been looking for a tag to include the contents box at the top. I haven't found the source yet. I assume it does something with the headline types. Or is there more too it. --stnick 15:42, 18 January 2009 (CST)

That gets added automatically when there are more than 3 or 4 (I don't remember) headings on the page. -- Toolrest 16:40, 18 January 2009 (CST)

Thanks Derek! That makes sense. Are there any other wiki type tags that we should be aware of. --stnick 16:51, 18 January 2009 (CST)

The TOC is something that registered users can turn on of of in their preferences under Misc: "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)" Toolrest 04:48, 27 January 2009 (CST)
The correct terminology for these is templates. Anything you come across inside two curly brackets is a template. They live in the Template: namespace, so if you need to see how they are made, or look at the documentation you can find them at, for example Template:expand. Anyone can make a template, pretty much like any other page, except the documentation is in a sub-directory of the template page. Often templates use other templates; this maintains consistency of appearance. Most of our templates should be listed at Category:Templates, or displayed in WikiWOOD:Banner templates, WikiWOOD:Maintenance templates but I think an audit of that is overdue.--Toolrest 17:33, 18 January 2009 (CST)
I have sorted out the maintenance templates. They are all now the same width so they look a bit tidier when several appear on one page. They are all displayed at WikiWOOD:Maintenance templates and they are all in category:Maintenance templates with the exception of req-photo which has a bug that I cannot find. Toolrest 13:23, 19 January 2009 (CST)

UPDATE

Just so everyone knows what is going on. Our current MediaWiki installation is 1.11 the latest is 1.13.8 . I have installed another instance on one of my domains and am working on porting everything so we can update. One problem with the current installation is that I am having some problems getting the mod_rewrite functions working properly which is stalling the short url. Also, some of the extensions that look nice (like Category:Tree) are written for the latest version so I want to test them on a test instance. Zunigene 18:47, 19 January 2009 (CST)

Thanks for your help on these Items. Sounds good for me. --stnick 19:38, 19 January 2009 (CST)
Thank for the work you are doing on this. In case you haven't found them already, help is available here [4] and here [5].
No worries all, we're all in this together. Thanks for the help links. I'm doing more with url rewriting than I thought possible :) Zunigene 17:51, 20 January 2009 (CST)


New sections

When you start a new topic of discussion, please do so in a new section by hitting the + tab at the top. This keeps things short and to the point, and makes the page easier to follow. When a talk page gets very long, the oldest sections are usually archived in a subpage. Thanks. Toolrest 05:34, 21 January 2009 (CST)

Tidy up

In the interest of keeping things tidy, and setting a good example for when more editors come on board, I have posted a note at the top of this page as to its scope. It should really only be used for discussions about content within the woodturning section. There are more appropriate places for questions relevant to content of other sections of the wiki, and for technical help. To get the ball rolling at the help desk, I have cut and pasted three sections from here to there. Thanks. Toolrest 07:46, 21 January 2009 (CST)

I have added a note to WikiWOOD talk:Community Portal about copyright which needs attention. Toolrest 10:54, 21 January 2009 (CST)
Derek, I think what you have there is good. Where would a history page, taking an image from the National Archives, list a picture of WWII. It is my understanding that all of those are in the public domain? Public really doesn't fit in any of the choices. --stnick 22:00, 22 January 2009 (CST)
Any thing in the public domain is 'free', so you would add parameters:
{{Copyright-status|self=no|free=yes|fair=no|originator=National archives |originator_link= http://www.archives.gov/faqs/ |user_page= |original_license= public domain |rationale= }}


This file originates from National archives [6] where it is licensed as public domain which is compatible with the Creative Commons license Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported


Note that I link to the faq page that describes their copyright.
Ok! I need to keep looking at the links and not jumping to conclusions. <GRIN> --stnick 07:42, 23 January 2009 (CST)
Should we then move the pieces of content to appropriate pages, perhaps with a note (temporary perhaps) about the move? --stnick 19:47, 21 January 2009 (CST)
Sure. I wanted to see what sort of response I got before tearing this page apart altogether. I also got sidetracked on other issues. It is sometimes a problem with wikis when there is so much to do:) Toolrest 09:31, 22 January 2009 (CST)
Yep! Always too much to do. What Can I do to help with this load? --stnick 21:03, 22 January 2009 (CST)
Thanks for the offer John. It is really just a case of me finding little problems or having ideas for improvement every time I open a page. I hope to get back to writing content today. I see you plan to add more images, so please add the template Template:Copyright-status to the description, and fill in the appropriate parameters. This should be done retrospectively on your previous uploads. I see from your User Page that you are still finding your way around the site and the editor. Did you come across WikiWOOD:Guide for newcomers which describes all the menus. Do you think a similar page about the editor functions would be useful to newcomers? Your feedback on these issues would be a great help so that we can be ready when more contributors come on board. Toolrest 05:32, 23 January 2009 (CST)
I will check this out later. I'm headed out for the day job. Thanks --stnick 07:42, 23 January 2009 (CST)

Detail Gouge

I wonder if there is sufficient difference between a detail gouge and a spindle gouge to justify a separate article? The construction and use is so similar, though I say that without ever having seen or used one, that I think there will be a lot of repetition. Toolrest 07:19, 23 January 2009 (CST)

Ok, this raises a question: new turners might not know the difference between a spindle gouge and a detail gouge. If we don't provide an article about the detail gouge, how would they know to look under "spindle gouge" to see the info about it? I think, at the least, the detail gouge deserves a short article that describes it and points back to the article about the spindle gouge. I am willing to put that together (in fact, I thought I had already), but now that Derek indicated is dis-interest in a separate article for it, I'm not sure if I should or not. --Tom 13:58, 10 February 2009 (CST)
Go for it then. Given what I have said about glossaries etc, then yes Detail Gouge should have a page, though I would have just put a redirect there to Spindle Gouge and removed the circular backlink from Spindle Gouge. I have never seen one, or used one, but if you think there is sufficient difference, then lets have it. --Derek 14:50, 10 February 2009 (CST)
Ok, I kinda like the way you suggest; Detail Gouge can point to Spindle Gouge. I re-read the Spindle Gouge article, and agree that it covers Detail Gouges sufficiently already. So, how do we do the redirects? Want to set it up for this one, and we can go to school on it for any other articles like that? --Tom 16:13, 10 February 2009 (CST)
See Help:Redirects and give it a try. Let me know if you need help, but I doubt it. If you want to see what a redirect page looks like go to Roughing gouge and then click the link that says (Redirected from Roughing gouge). That will force it to display the redirect page.--Derek 18:01, 10 February 2009 (CST)
Done. Check out Detail gouge. --Tom 09:57, 11 February 2009 (CST)
'Fraid not! Check out the red link Detail gouge. You created Detail Gouge. which has a capital G and a period at the end! Try moving it to Detail gouge, and flagging the original with {{delete}}. The redirect works just fine though:) --Derek 14:57, 11 February 2009 (CST)
Fixed. --Tom 17:17, 11 February 2009 (CST)

Glossary

I notice that John has started a Glossary which makes me raise two issues.

First was whether a wiki needs a glossary in the first place? Why not just put the material into an appropriate article? It will be easy enough to find with a search.

Second is copyright. This looks awfully similar to Steve Russel's glossary. Where he got it I do not know, but we have to be very careful about how we use material from elsewhere. --Toolrest 05:47, 26 January 2009 (CST)

I started jotting a few entries down a couple of weeks ago when I first set up my account and looked around. I have a very distinct memory of a request for a Glossary Page. After setting the page up, and trying to make the link, I was unable to find that request. Since I didn't find the request, I would have to join your question about 'does a wiki need a glossary?'.
I have read Steve's material over the past two years, since subscribing to his newsletter, thus I am not surprised at some similarity. I will compare tonight after work. --stnick 07:16, 26 January 2009 (CST)
I just came across a red link to a Wiki Community dedicated to a glossary at WikiWOOD:Community Portal. Maybe that was what you saw? Toolrest 08:58, 27 January 2009 (CST)

Hmmm. I really like the idea of a glossary. People know they can go there for definitions. The keywords can be links to articles that provide more detail about that topic. It's clean and effective, and can even serve as a sorta index with definitions. --Tom 13:52, 10 February 2009 (CST)

I think they should also kno, or quickly figure out, that is what the Search box is for. See also my comment to John about 'terminology': User_talk:John#Terminology. Another problem I see with a Glossary is that is potentially a very big page, or it has to be broken down into A-Z. --Toolrest 14:42, 10 February 2009 (CST)

Multiple copies of Roughing Gouge

There are 2 copies of the Roughing Gouge article. One is called Roughing gouge, the other is called Roughing Gouge. Then, there's a 3rd one called "Spindle Roughing gouge" that is a redirect to Roughing gouge.

How do we clean this up?

Ultimately, I think we should establish standards in our naming. My preference would be the first letter of each word should always be capitalized; ie., the correct form should be Roughing Gouge, Spindle Roughing Gouge, not Roughing gouge or Spindle Roughing gouge. --Tom 16:35, 10 February 2009 (CST)

Sorry, I don't know why I created two 'spindle gouge' redirects. The main article is Spindle roughing gouge which you created. We should only need one redirect for 'roughing gouge' and I will take care of deleting one of them as soon as I can.
Derek, are you going to fix this? I still don't know how to remove articles that aren't needed.--Tom 09:59, 11 February 2009 (CST)
Yep. I have flagged Roughing Gouge for deletion. I can't delete it until I get permissions from Joel.--Derek 14:45, 11 February 2009 (CST)
There are some naming conventions on wikipedia [7]
Technically we need to use lower case for all words except the first, and excepting proper names. Otherwise we have trouble with wiki links. Compare Preparing Green Wood, Preparing green wood, preparing Green Wood, preparing green wood. You can see how this may look odd if we have to write something like: We must take care when Preparing Green Wood or it may crack. This would of course be fine if it were a proper name in the link, like The American Association of Woodturners.
Stylistically, there seems to be no concensus over capitalization of headlines. British, Canadian and Australian news websites that I looked at use caps only on the first word and proper names. US sites use caps on most words in the headlines. Either way, I think the linking situation over rules any style preferences. --Derek 17:55, 10 February 2009 (CST)
so using Wikipedia as an example, it seems they don't capitalize the names of articles, unless they refer to a proper name. I guess I can deal with that. However, they don't do as you say; (ie., capitalizing the first word), and using your example, capitalizing the first word looks just as weird as capitalizing the first letter of each word(ie., "We must take care when Preparing Green Wood or it may crack." vs "We must take care when Preparing green wood or it may crack." So I guess we probably should write the way we would if writing a school term paper, and ignore the fact that the words are links that will become titles of an article. Seems simple enough. --Tom 09:48, 11 February 2009 (CST)
The capitalization of the first word is taken care of automatically, so it doesn't matter what we do with it. If you try to create the page "any name", it will force the page name to be "Any name". If you then link to "any name" it will automatically go to "Any name". With regard to my example above, I choose a badly capitalized page on purpose to be able to show why it doesn't work, but I should have explained further: You may have missed that the page is titled Preparing Green Wood. So, preparing Green Wood gets by, because the first letter is automatically capitalised. However, Preparing green wood and preparing green wood fail because 'green wood' in not capitalised in the links. Clearer? --Derek 14:37, 11 February 2009 (CST)
yes. Thanks. --Tom 17:17, 11 February 2009 (CST)
I updated Help:Starting a new page to include some guidance on page naming.--Derek 11:08, 12 February 2009 (CST)
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