User talk:Workman

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[edit] References

Hi. Quick question, and you must be the guy to ask: Is there anyway to make WP-style references work? I'd love to cite the materials I write from, particularly as I'm transferring them from WP, but can't seem to make the APA-style WP citations work. Any suggestions? Thanks. Freechild

First of all, thank you for your contributions to the Omaha Wiki. Categorization is very important to finding content and you've done some nice work in categorizing existing content, added new categories, and editing existing articles. In response to your question, we have not yet created the Wikipedia citation templates and have not yet added extensions to the Mediawiki base software for creating citations and references. However, this is something I had been planning to do and I can look into adding this capability later this week. Can you verify that you are talking about being able to import Wikipedia text that has citations and references in the text and you would like this to create the same format of references here. Is this correct? I read through Wikipedia's Citing Sources article and I think you are talking about the Harvard referencing systems for inline citations since I believe this is the system that matches the APA style. Can you verify this?
Also, if you plan to use content from Wikipedia, you should review Help:Use_content_from_Wikipedia in the Omaha Wiki. You seem to be familiar with Wikipedia and essentially all you have to do is add {{wikipedia|article_name}} to the end of the article to comply with the attribution terms of the GFDL license. Examples of articles in the Omaha Wiki that have done this include Union Pacific, Malcolm X, and ConAgra Foods. Let me know if you have questions by either adding more posts to this page or by e-mailing me at workman@creighton.edu Workman 21:53, 23 September 2007 (CDT)
Thanks for replying. I am talking about APA-style citations, namely because Wikipedia's authentic style is annoying to me. I have written the majority of Omaha-related articles on WP, and I understand the process of inserting them here. When I write new articles, does it matter if I post them here or there first? I've never thought whether that was apropos before... Okay. See you around. Freechild 12:02, 24 September 2007 (CDT)
I created a Citation Project page to move discussion of the citation issue from my user page to a community forum. I see that you have project experience on Wikipedia -- any ideas you have about organizing this project and/or importing the necessary templates would be appreciated. I've put the Citation Project on my watch list so I'll be notified of changes there. I plan to add the Cite extension to the Omaha Wiki by the end of this week and that may address some of the technical issues related to using citations from Wikipedia. It is still necessary to copy any Wikipedia templates to the Omaha Wiki if they are part of the article you are using. If you need me to make any system administration changes such as additional extensions or parser hooks, let me know.
Regarding whether you should start new articles in Wikipedia or the Omaha Wiki, the sequence does not matter legally although administrators and other users at Wikipedia might look less favorably on content attributed to the Omaha Wiki than vice versa. The GFDL license requires attribution if you use content that comes from other GFDL sites and this can be satisfied by adding {{wikipedia|article_name}} to articles in the Omaha Wiki that use Wikipedia content and by adding {{Omaha Wiki|article_name}} to articles in Wikipedia if they use content from the Omaha Wiki. If you are the author of a new article or are the sole contributor to an existing article in either wiki, I am pretty sure you can legally add the content to both wikis without using the aforementioned template statements. This is because you are the copyright holder of the content at that point and have the right to license it to as many places as you want without having to use the GFDL license to justify borrowing from one wiki to go to the other. Hope this helps.

[edit] WP dump

Thanks for asking me about the WP dump. I've worked on other wikis where they dumped from WP, and frankly I don't like it. One of the things I've been thinking about as I've begun adapting the material I've developed on WP for the OW is about the localness of the information. On WP I'm writing for a different audience than I am on the OW - and the writing should reflect that. So I'm parsing the phrase "Omaha, Nebraska" into Omaha, and trying to rewrite more locally. The other thing going one article at a time allows me to do is clean them on my own time, i.e. Culture. I'm afraid that a wholesale dump will actually diminish the usefulness of the OW, as it will only be a photocopy of WP and not particularly useful - either in naming conventions, or content.

Regarding naming conventions, thanks for that reminder about "Omaha city parks", etc. My edits here will be Omaha-centric, and particularly North Omaha-centric, and I need to be reminded that places like Fremont exist. Although I love 'em, they're not really on my radar from this distance.

Finally, congrats on the size of the OW - I had no idea. Now if we can just make the content substantive enough to blow the other cities outta the water, then... well, then I should get to work. Thanks again for asking. Freechild 10:39, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Downtown Omaha

I think you should rethink the status of Downtown Omaha. The place is far more ubiquitous than the org. Perhaps the org's article could be renamed Downtown Omaha (organization). I would like to move the article I wrote on WP here, but I'm hesitant now. Let me know what you think. Article Freechild 13:04, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

I moved the article for the non-profit org to Downtown Omaha, Inc.. I generally want to follow WP's naming conventions and keep legal terms like Inc., LLP, Co. out of the names of organizations. However, for disambig purposes, it makes sense to include it and this also seems to be consistent with Wikipedia's naming conventions for companies. You can now write over the redirect at Downtown Omaha with the wp version you wrote. Also verify all of the links to the Downtown Omaha page should be to that page and not the non-profit group.Workman 13:44, 26 September 2007 (CDT)
Thanks for the clarification. Freechild 23:07, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Fixes

Thanks for the clarifying question. I created Category:Nonprofits in North Omaha to replace Category:North Omaha organizations, the the latter can be deleted. As for admin status, that's just fine - I'd like to help out however possible, and with the time I'll pour into this Admin status will make everyone's lives easier. Freechild 23:07, 26 September 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Bots

Meh. I fumbled around with bots when I first got on WP, did not enjoy the tediousness of the coding, and ran away. Hope you're having fun with that! Freechild 07:41, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

Got it to work! There was a bug in the code and the author pointed me to an updated version. Check out Omaha Wiki:Category Index - everything should now be organized as sub-categories. You can start at Category:Top level if you want to get the idea of how you can quickly navigate categories now.
I still have some tweaks to do but want your reaction to categories with geographic qualifiers like 'Omaha', 'North Omaha', 'Bellevue', 'Gretna', etc. Since there are roughly 600-800 existing categories on the Category Index page and there are at least 10-15 potential geographic qualifiers, I propose we NOT add any Category names with location qualifiers to the category index page. The purpose of the Category Index is to help people find content and find a place to categorize articles but not to list every possible category name. We can still use them, but they should be categorized under one of the general category names shown on the Category Index page. You agree? Workman 07:51, 4 October 2007 (CDT)
I agree. As long as the "meta-categories are present on the page, that's all that matters. I might consider adding some kind of geographic breakdown, as that's how a lot of people think about the city: South, North, Downtown, Midtown, West, Northwest, Southwest. But the problem there is arbitrary perspectives, as opposed to objective designations. Folks in Florence can be sensitive to being called "North Omahans", as there is a particular stigma attached to the title. So maybe I take that idea back. It just seems like something like that might be useful. Freechild 08:13, 4 October 2007 (CDT)
Do you know of the non-profit group Omaha by Design? It started as an initiative of the Omaha Community Foundation and they've done some work on specifying boundaries for neighborhoods. These might be of use if you want to define boundaries across parts of the city. However, I have concerns with some of their labels like "North Papio Hills" and "South Papio Hills" for portions of West Omaha. I live in the Millard area and I think people living here would be OK with that label but I've rarely heard the North/South Papio Hills terms. There is also the Neighborhood Center for Greater Omaha at UNO, that might have done some work in this area. FYI, today's headline story in the OWH is related to North Omaha - thought you might be interested. Workman 08:53, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Template

Check this out. Template:Contact Freechild 10:59, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

Great job! I made a few changes (added City, Fax) and used it on Nebraska Crossing Factory Stores and made sure Madonna School still worked. One problem I'm having is if we later add any fields to the template (e.g., "Type of organization"), then all of the templates using it will have {{{type of organization}}} showing up on the page. In Wikipedia it looks like they use #if statements to prevent existing articles from having problems when new fields are added to the template. I tried an experiment based on wp:Template:Infobox Automobile, and it blanked out empty fields, but also blanked out those with valid content. No more time to mess with it now ... --Workman 12:52, 4 October 2007 (CDT)
Good. Maybe we could just put "Type" as the top field and sort it out later. Freechild 12:56, 4 October 2007 (CDT)
Saw you made a change to the template, but now all articles using it have problems with the new field (e.g., Madonna School). The general problem is if you have a template that is used by hundreds or thousands of pages, you don't want to then manually have to go through all of them and add a blank 'type=' statement or have to fill in the type to prevent {{{type}}} from showing up. You want them to leave it blank if there is no 'type=' statement on the page. I think that is why something like #if is needed, but I'm not sure. --Workman 13:15, 4 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Category clarification

What's the difference between Category:Omaha and Category:Top level? Should the two be differentiated for that which is Omaha-specific versus that which is general? Freechild 17:19, 8 October 2007 (CDT)

I created the Top Level category to have a place to put the 21 categories that are shown in the light blue box at the top of the Omaha Wiki:Category Index. The 4 columns (General Info, Things to Do, Formal Organizations, Religious & civic organizations) can apply to geographic region in the Omaha Metro area (e.g., the entire region, Omaha, Bellevue, Council Bluffs, etc.). In contrast the Omaha Category would be used for organizing types of content about Omaha. I added a one line category description to the Omaha category to help explain what it is for. Hope this helps. --Workman 19:33, 8 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Reviews

This is risky - but well-worth it - territory. This adds another layer of interactivity and vibrancy to the entire website. Good call! Adam 18:38, 16 October 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Template:infobox congregation

Please feel free to delete it. The church one is better. ⇔ ChristTrekker 10:14, 31 December 2007 (CST)

Thanks for your quick feedback. --Workman 10:16, 31 December 2007 (CST)

[edit] list of infobox types

This is the "canonical list" of infoboxes for the wiki. Feel free to edit in-place.

[edit] meta-infoboxes

Juan's Yard & Landscape Maintenance using template:Infobox Test looked pretty good, so I switched template:Infobox School to the new sub-templates too. You can see the results at Russell Middle School. Most of the formatting has been stripped out and placed in MediaWiki:Common.css. Currently the only difference is the background color, which depends on a single class name at the beginning of the template. Putting all the style there allows us to easily make all the infoboxes as identical or customized as we want. ⇔ ChristTrekker 13:30, 28 January 2008 (CST)

I saw you had been putting some of the formatting info in MediaWiki:Common.css and I think that generally makes sense to ensure an consistent look and feel across a lot of different types of infoboxes. It looks like the color background like lavender and orange is in MediaWiki:Common.css settings for the infobox and not a parameter that could be set in each Infobox. Is it possible to either set up color in each Infofox (vs. commons.css) and/or pass this as a parameter to the various templates (e.g., header, location, contact). If we end up with two or three dozen different infoboxes (but hopefully not the thousands that Wikipedia has!), would you want each of them having a color statement in MediaWiki:Common.css? --Workman 13:57, 28 January 2008 (CST)
That (inflation of the CSS) is a good point. The upside of CSS is the expressive power, how it is able to match multiple elements to apply a style. One line saying ".infobox th" and all the headers in the template are orange, green, outlined, whatever. You can make it a parameter (thus easy to change on an individual basis) but then you're back to having a "style=foo" attached to every single element in the template that needs styling. Instead of CSS inflation, you get template inflation. The template inflation has to be there to make custom styling possible, whether you give the parameter or not. You don't have to add anything to the CSS; you can use the defaults. (Which reminds me, I need to add a default infobox color.) ⇔ ChristTrekker 14:24, 28 January 2008 (CST)

[edit] OW logo

Can you tell me what font/size/color is used in the logo? I'll recreate it with a bit small O and a transparent background as we discussed. ⇔ ChristTrekker 08:33, 13 February 2008 (CST)

Sorry for the delay - I had done it on an old laptop and just got Adobe Photoshop Elements installed on my new laptop yesterday afternoon. The words Omaha Wiki and Encyclopedia are all in Arial, Faux Bold, 60 point, with Red color of #F03030. While you are at it, can you a logo with "Strategy" (in place of Encyclopedia) and e-mail it to me to use on the Strategy wiki? Let me know if you have any questions. --Workman 11:22, 13 February 2008 (CST)
Hmm, I don't have a faux/demi bold weight, so it doesn't look quite the same. Our editors must be quite a bit different, because to get the text to look about the same I only need to use 20 pt size. ⇔ ChristTrekker 12:58, 19 February 2008 (CST)

[edit] soliciting your feedback

Community area discussion. ⇔ ChristTrekker 10:43, 21 February 2008 (CST)


[edit] Flickr

Does the flickr photo function, <flickr>number|m|thumb|caption</flickr>, not enabled on the omaha wiki? --Blazingbat 10:59, 29 February 2008 (CST)

I just installed the extension and also changed the help page on Flickr to have the info on how to use it.--Workman 12:41, 29 February 2008 (CST)

[edit] Largest City Wikis page

Hello! I hope you're the right person to ask about this. I saw the request on Omaha Wiki:Largest City Wikis for other city wikis with more than 500 articles, so I added the Randomness Guide to London to the talk page - but I note that it's not been included on the February stats update, whereas it should have come in somewhere around number 15. Is this an oversight, or is there some problem with our stats? Thanks! Kake 11:25, 1 March 2008 (CST)

Yes, I'm the person that handles the monthly updates. I'd been busy and forgot you had put a comment about the site on the talk page for the Top 25 listing a few weeks ago and forgot to incorporate it. You're on the list now. I'll update the Wikipedia article in a few minutes. --Workman 12:33, 1 March 2008 (CST)
Fantastic - thank you! --Kake 20:05, 1 March 2008 (CST)
Hello; another small problem, I'm afraid. You have RGL down as having 5 users editing last month but in fact there were 25. --Kake 19:45, 1 May 2008 (CDT)
The monthly columns are for articles, images, and users added and for total edits during the month. By my records, you had 96 total people who had done on an edit on RGL as of March 31 and 101 as of April 30th and thus 5 users added in April. I changed the introductory text above the column heading to clarify it is users added during the month. --Workman 21:51, 1 May 2008 (CDT)
Ah, I see - thanks! Yes, it was confusing before; I thought it was users _active_ that month. -Kake 07:10, 2 May 2008 (CDT)

[edit] Bekins/Thornton Moving and Storage Inc.

While cleaning up Category:Businesses I discovered that I am unable to access this page, possibly due to the slash in the name. I've never seen that matter to a MediaWiki wiki before, but YNK... ⇔ ChristTrekker 10:50, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

It's a known issue I've referred to Adam - any names with slashes produce errors. I think it's a problem with the .htaccess file - do you know Apache? --Workman 11:18, 18 April 2008 (CDT)
Can't claim to be an expert, but I know enough to set it up and figure out the issues I've had to. ⇔ ChristTrekker 11:28, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

[edit] Checking in

Hey John, how is it going? I wanted to let you know that I've started WikiProject Omaha to strengthen the city's presence on WP. It seems that despite the # of articles and the breadth of what we've created, few editors know what, where or why Omaha matters. So now any user on WP can add their name to list of editors, add userbox to their profile pages, get a clear picture of work to be done and work they want to see done on a to-do list, find some useful resources and more. There is also a list of all Omaha-related categories that puts the scope of the WikiProject in context. Oh, and I linked to the OmahaWiki there, too. I think this can really build some synchronicity between WP and the OW, especially by giving us a clear pic of whose active on WP. The project needs to be "populated" by a lot of editors to prove its salience and develop power; if you know of other folks who would want to add their name to the list let them know. Let me know your thoughts in general. Take care. Adam 13:44, 4 May 2008 (CDT)

Hi John - happy fall. I noticed that Omaha has slipped in the overall city wiki rankings, so I'm doing some work to catch up. Its a little sloppy, so I hope you'll forgive that, but I've got at least 300 more articles to move from WP to here. Wish me luck. Freechild 04:13, 3 October 2008 (CDT)
Thanks for all of your hard work. User:ChristTrekker and I have been talking about how to make this import of articles from Wikipedia easier and within the next month or two hope to have a better process where you can simply provide a list of articles you want. For now, I created an article at Omaha Wiki:Microsoft Word Wikipedia Cleanup Macro that provides a macro for Microsoft Word that may be of some help to you if you have access to Word. The page also has a step by step process that I use when bringing in Wikipedia articles. You are welcome to edit the steps in the process and/or move them to a separate article, since the conceptual process for doing this clean-up should probably be separated from the Word macro that is simply one tool for helping with that. Outta time for now. --Workman 08:19, 3 October 2008 (CDT)
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