Re: [piecepack] Re: Help requested with Piecepack Wiki cleanup effort

[Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

Hi all,

By experimenting, I've figured out how to fix many broken links at
once with a single procedure, and improve the quality of the wiki in
other ways as well. Let me explain, using Mark Biggar's page as an
example.

It's possible to create linkable page names on the wiki using "camel
case", LikeThis. In fact, I'm old-fashioned by wiki standards, so
that's how I prefer to make links. It's also possible to create more
complicated page names on the wiki, for example by enclosing them in
brackets and quotation marks ["like this"]. That's the way Mark
created his home page. He did it so he could create his middle initial
and spaces in his name, like this:

["Mark A. Biggar"]

That's how his name occurs almost everywhere on the wiki, and on the
old wiki, it pointed to a page with this name:

Mark_20A_2e_20Biggar

Notice how messy and unreadable this is. The old wiki encoded space
characters as "_20" and periods or dots as "_2e". The equivalent page
on the new wiki has this name:

Mark_A._Biggar

Much preferable, I hope you agree.

The broken links were occurring because on the old wiki, ["Mark A.
Biggar"] pointed to Mark_20A_2e_20Biggar, but on the new wiki, it
pointed to Mark_A._Biggar, which showed up as a red question mark
after Mark's name, indicating the new page had not been created yet.

What I did was click on the red question mark to create and edit the
new page (Mark_A._Biggar), cut the content from Mark's old page
(Mark_20A_2e_20Biggar), paste it into his new page, and add the
following text to the top of his old page, which was now empty:

#REDIRECT [[Mark_A._Biggar]]

(Note that I used [[Mark_A._Biggar]] here, not ["Mark A. Biggar"].)

Now the old page still exists at the old URL, so anyone who links to
the old page can still find it. (Yes, URLs are backwards-compatible
with the old wiki.) However, when the old page opens, it will send the
reader immediately to the new page, with a short note at the top, so
they can read the content and update their bookmarks (or not, because
the old link still works).

Please, go ye and do likewise. I will be.

Ron

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 2:08 PM, Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...> wrote:
> Thanks, Mark. I'll read and digest this later. I guess I can go back
> and reread your scripts too.
>
> Your page is here, I think:
>
> http://ludism.org/ppwiki/Mark_20A_2e_20Biggar
>
> What content is missing?
>
> You can see a complete listing of wiki pages here:
>
> http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki?action=index
>
> The way page names were translated from MoinMoin to OddMuse is not
> always obvious.
>
> Ron
>
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:12 PM,  <mark.a.biggar@...> wrote:
>> Almost all of the special listing page scripts just used the MoinMoin global page search function with a specially designed RegEx.  That search function automatically generated a WikiLink list for the matching pages.  In particular the Taxonomy page heavily depends on this.
>>
>> Other things that need a replacement method (I've briefly glanced at the formatting pages on the new wiki and didn't see any obvious replacements.)
>>
>> 1. the automatic formatting of definitions in the Glossaries
>>
>> 2. the Anchor based intra-page links on pages like the Glossary also don't work anymore.  I.e., the alphabetic section links and the top-of-page links.
>>
>> BTW, the contents of my designers page has disappeared along with the linked in images.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> --
>> Mark Biggar%0D%0Amark%40biggar.org%0D%0Amark.a.biggar%40comcast.net%0D%0Ambiggar%40paypal.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Ron Hale-Evans
>> To: piecepack@yahoogroups.com
>> Sent: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 16:12:51 +0000 (UTC)
>> Subject: Re: [piecepack] Re: Help requested with Piecepack Wiki cleanup effort
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  I didn't really study the scripts on the old wiki very thoroughly,
>>
>> other than to rule out obvious exploits (not that Mark would do such a
>>
>> thing, but as an admin, you have to be paranoid). However, I love
>>
>> regular expressions and use them regularly (ar ar), and after sleeping
>>
>> on it, it seems to me that it might be possible to take a vanilla
>>
>> OddMuse script and add one or two regular expressions that would
>>
>> transform the special codes Mark installed into pretty HTML for the
>>
>> browser.
>>
>>
>> If that's the case, then it's mostly a simple matter of slapping
>>
>> together the right regular expressions. On the other hand, some of the
>>
>> scripts scanned the whole wiki looking for special tags that showed
>>
>> what kind of kind of game something was, so we'd have to figure out
>>
>> how to do that in OddMuse too. But I think those two things are most
>>
>> of the work, and once we figure out how to do each of them, we can
>>
>> reuse the solutions.
>>
>>
>> It would be nice if we had some feedback from Mark Biggar, who
>>
>> masterminded the original scripts. Mark, are you out there?
>>
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> p.s. Jorge, you are among the most stalwart stalwarts of the piecepack
>>
>> right now. :)
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:19 AM, Jorge Arroyo <trozo@...> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not sure I recommended it, but I recall commenting that I was glad after
>>
>>> the switch because I really like the OddMuse system. It's true, both my own
>>
>>> site and a couple I maintain run under OddMuse and I've done a few simple
>>
>>> scripts for them...
>>
>>>
>>
>>> I think it would be great if we could find a way to restore the automatic
>>
>>> listing as it was a great way to list games of a particular type like all
>>
>>> solo games, or games from one designer. I can look into it a bit but I don't
>>
>>> have much free time right now...
>>
>>>
>>
>>> btw, "piecepack stalwart"? :D That was funny (although I admit I had to go
>>
>>> look that word up...hehe)
>>
>>>
>>
>>> -Jorge
>>
>>>
>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>
>>>> >>> As you may know, Ludism.org, the server for the Piecepack Wiki,
>>
>>>> >>> suffered a hardware failure in May 2009, and it took a few weeks to
>>
>>>> >>> restore the Piecepack Wiki and various other services. All of the
>>
>>>> >>> information from the wiki was preserved, but it's now running on
>>
>>>> >>> different wiki software called OddMuse (the old software was
>>
>>>> >>> MoinMoin).
>>
>>>> >>
>>
>>>> >> Congratulations on this achievement, and thanks to all involved in the
>>
>>>> >> hard slog recovering from the immediate disaster.
>>
>>>> >
>>
>>>> > On behalf of myself, I thank you. :) I also thank you on behalf of my
>>
>>>> > piecepacking wife Marty, who patiently listened to me complain about
>>
>>>> > the whole thing and drove me to Fry's to look for a new PC. :)
>>
>>>>
>>
>>>> In case it's not clear, I'm kidding on the square. It may have been
>>
>>>> piecepack stalwart Jorge Arroyo who recommended OddMuse in the first
>>
>>>> place; he runs some OddMuse wikis himself. The author of OddMuse was
>>
>>>> also extremely helpful with technical support. And so on.
>>
>>>>
>>
>>>> Ron

--
Ron Hale-Evans ... rwhe@... ... http://ron.ludism.org/ ... (206) 201-1768
    Mind Performance Hacks book: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101534/
 The proteiform graph itself is a polyhedron of scripture. (Finnegans
Wake 107:08)