User talk:WikiAdministrator/Archives

Week of July 5

Hi Will, Thanks for the changes. I totally forgot about the colon on the documentation namespace. The reason why the DPL wasn't working on the Wimba Voice Tools one is because I haven't made the sub-pages yet. Creating the parent page just helps me organize my thoughts.

- Zack (riacale)

Week of July 20

Hi Will,

We need to change the "p" on the Wordpress Documentation to a capital "P". WordPress has a function that automatically capitalizes the letter with any mention of wordpress and when we embed anything on blog it pulls from the wrong wiki page.

Let me know if anything is unclear or you need more info. You can call me too at 2-4623.

- Zack (riacale)

Hi Zack, I've responded on your user page. -Will - WikiAdministrator 21:56, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! You rock! Also just one minor detail but http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:Wordpress_Basics this needs to be changed too.

- Z

I missed that one. Got it now. -Will WikiAdministrator 22:10, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Week of July 26

Will, I am link to two pages for an article, and I doubt I have the URL's right. If you care to change the URL structure for them, could you please do so quickly so I can provide correct links to the publication?

One: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Elearning:Wikipedia_As_Platform - This one will be edited to be less of a presentation and more of a standalone case study.

Two: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Resource_Management_Framework

Oh yes, is editing of the Elearning space presently restricted? I was hoping to invite a UBC prof to edit the Wikipedia piece above.

Feel free to email or call my mobile if you wish. Thanks! BrianLamb 16:00, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

--

Hi Brian, I sent you a response via email. Will - WikiAdministrator 16:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

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Hey Will: you have been doing some great work here with the support pages and wayfinding!

I've recently made a few quick screencasts (experimenting with Screenr) to explain namespace, dpl and subpages in the context of the learning commons project. Thought you might want to have a look? Learning_Commons:Namespace_Orientation

All for now! Cindyunderhill --Cindyunderhill 18:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Cindy - thanks! and thanks also for calling my attention to your 'casts. I've added a couple additional comments on your user talk page.

-Will - WikiAdministrator 21:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Week of August 3

Hey Will, Yeah it was great meeting up today! We'll have to talk some more about how to put everything together, but we'll do great together! I know it ^^ Cynthia (UBC LSIT) 16:57, 5 August 2010 (UTC) P.S. I've added a Template:Update and Category:Wiki Maintenance Templates and Category:Wiki Formatting Templates

Cool! Those are great. WikiAdministrator 22:27, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Week of August 9

Hey Will, I was looking at some of the Help section stuff and I was thinking that things like Math Formulas, Creating Maps, and pubmed citations doesn't really go in "Formatting". Math Formulas we can maybe leave there, Creating Maps maybe in media? would that fit? No idea where pudmed citations should go though... let me know what you think -Cynthia (UBC LSIT) 22:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi Cynthia - are you talking about the Help:Formatting page? It looks like it has a small section on TeX markup (Math) but I don't see anything on maps or pubmed citations in current or recent versions. The page at Help:Adding Media does cover both maps and pubmed. At some point, I would like to expand those topics into their own help pages (although be warned that there is some talk of changing the map extension as it has some conflicts with the wiki embed plugin) such as I did with Help:Footnotes and References. Anyway, does that make sense? Will - WikiAdministrator 23:03, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Hey Will, I hadn't added it, I was just wondering where they should go but clearly they already reside somewhere. I just added more to the math section and reorganized the Formatting section a little bit. I hope the way it's organized now makes a little more sense, and I added the bit on signatures. I'll take a look at the rest tomorrow. We should meet again maybe sometime this week or early next week? I need to chat with you about a couple of things. Shoot me an e-mail or leave me a msg ^^ -Cynthia (UBC LSIT) 23:39, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Just FYI, I think I'm done moving anything else relevant from the help page I created. I did just some minor editing to some of the pages and added some other (usually mediawiki or wikipedia) help pages at the bottom of some of them. Cynthia (UBC LSIT) 20:09, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Week of August 17

Hi Will, Thanks so much for the suggestion to move the Elearning/Toolkit/SECTIONS page to the Elearning namespace - I actually thought it was there already. Those pesky colon's posing as forward slashes! Nice catch! --CatherinePaul 21:28, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Week of September 7

Hi Will,

I'm getting this error today while I was trying to upload a PDF file:

Internal error Could not rename file "/tmp/phpxjlMDu" to "public/1/15/Teaching-portfolio-prep-guide.pdf".

I've seen this error before and we just solved it by trying to upload different versions of the file over and over again. Is there a fix for this?

--ZackLee

Hi Zack - I responded on your talk page - W WikiAdministrator 19:55, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hi: I think the list of wiki pages is being truncated on the DOCUMENTATION page....see my image below. I cannot seem to see WordPress Basics I. The list stops at the letter "U". --EmilyRenoe
  

  HELP! the list is being truncated

Hi Emily, I responded on your user page. Thanks for letting me know about this issue.

Will - WikiAdministrator 22:42, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hey Will thanks for the answer. I think this needs a solution asap. Because looking at the list its hard to navigate...I look at the END of the list and think well, "THATS IT THE END OF THE LIST"...but clearly its not the end of the list...so CONFUSING to say the least. THANKS a bunch...pls advise asap. EmilyRenoe

• Hey Will: thanks so much for looking into this - I appreciate it! EmilyRenoe

Hey Emily, no worries - I really appreciate you calling my attention to this problem. I agree with you that this is something that needs to be rectified as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no simple technical solution and building out a proper index will take a few days (mainly because I'm back in classes and my time is a bit more limited). Anyway, I'll have something up next week. Thanks again - Will WikiAdministrator 23:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC) [cross posted at your user page]

Week Sep 13

• Hey Will: Hope you are well! I seem to be unable to edit my wiki page all of a sudden. I logged in but see no EDIT button at the top of the page. Under DOCUMENTATION though , I have a few wikis and DO see the edit bouton. thx EmilyRenoe

Hi Emily, the eLearning space is a reserved namespace, which requires users to have access rights in order to be able to edit articles. I've set your account so you edit that space. Please let me know if that works or if there is anything else I can do. Will - WikiAdministrator 21:01, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hey Will: thanks for this! EmilyRenoe

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• Hey Will: Is there any way we can have the CWL login lasts a bit longer, I'm on and off the wiki throughout the day and having to log in there ever 5/10 minutes is getting on my nerves... anything that could be done besides a big sip of comforting herbal tea? DavidKohler

Hi David, I responded on your talk page. Best - Will WikiAdministrator 20:24, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Week of Sept 30

Hi Will, I'm totally mesmerized, I'm adding a link for a wiki page that exists, but it won't get recognized... fiddled with it a few times, just won't do it. You can check it out here the link is in red, but the page exists. Any ideas?

--DavidKohler 07:34, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi David, this is a bit of an odd one. It looks like you had written the following syntax for the link: [[Course:MATH110/003/Homework | homework]]. For some reason, in the link, it looks like the wiki software was reading the space after the word "Homework" and before vertical slash mark as an extra character. This character didn't exist in the name of the page, so it thought the link was to a different page. I deleted the space and the link appears to be working. Normally, the wiki software ignores spaces at the ends of links, so I'm not entirely sure what is causing this behaviour. Thanks for bringing this to my attention - I will spend some time trying to replicate the problem to see what is causing it. In the meantime, please let me know if that solves the problem for now, or if I was addressing the wrong link.

Best,

Will - WikiAdministrator 14:54, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Week of October 18

Hi Will, I have two questions.

• First, my students are starting to create pages on their own inside the realm of my course page, some started to create pages they might not want to keep using, is there a way to delete them? Is there a possibility I could do that myself by getting some administrative power within my course pages maybe?
• Secondly, is there a way to have the dynamic page listing only list the proper subpages and not all the subpages of subpages (in other words, just read the next level in the tree). I've tried to look that one up on the DPL project page but didn't find much myself.

Many thanks, DavidKohler 07:25, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi David, thanks for your questions. I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that I am out of the office but that I'll respond in-depth to your questions in the next couple of days. The quick answer to the first question is that there is no easy way to provide rights for you to delete pages. Page deletions is something that the MediaWiki platform makes into a bit of a difficult task and only users with a super admin rights (which extend across all of the UBC Wiki) can actually delete anything. You can add the script {{delete}} to a page and, as long as no one contests the deletion, the page will be deleted in about a month. If you need pages to be deleted quicker than that, you can let me know or you can send an email to wikisupport@exchange.ubc.ca and we can take care of it for you.

As far as the DPL question, it seems like it should be possible but I'll have to take a closer look to see how to do it. I'll follow up with you in a day or two.

Best,

Will - WikiAdministrator 22:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Will, thanks for your answers and for deleting these few pages. I've spent some time explaining the wiki policies to my students, hopefully they will make better choices from now on when it comes to create pages around here. Let me know if you get a solution for the DPL question.

Cheers,

-- DavidKohler 17:29, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi David - no problem - I've responded to the DPL question on your user talk page. No worries on misplaced student pages, we happy to move things around.

Best,

Will - WikiAdministrator 20:18, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Will,

The DPL on this page is not working at the moment: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Documentation:Respondus_Quiz.

Thanks!

- Zack

(Since I'm learning about DPL code, I had a quick look. Your bug happens because there's a typo in your code, respondus takes an o :) -- DavidKohler

Thanks for that quick response David. Cheers - Will WikiAdministrator 20:24, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

- Ah! Wonderful! Thanks to the both of you for your sharp eyes!

- Zack

November 16th

Hi Will,

I'm working on a project creating wiki based resources as an orientation to teaching online:. We started this project a few years ago - before we had the current framework for the wiki. So, we have moved (and are working with) the Documentation space for this content but we have some orphaned pages that we now want to delete. Can you do this for us? Here is the list of pages:

• Creating_the_Online_Learning_Environment
• Cultural_Issues_in_Teaching_Online
• Introduction_to_Online_Teaching
• Supporting_Critical_Thinking_Online
• Teaching_Challenges:_Online

Let me know if you have any questions! Thanks Will. --Cindyunderhill 17:59, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Cindy,

I've deleted the above pages. Just an fyi - for deletion requests you can also add a delete template to the page you want deleted by writing {{delete}} anywhere on that page. I usually review and delete all of the pages with this template once a month (if it's not obvious that it's your article that you're requesting to be deleted, you should leave a comment on the article's talk page). Of course, sending me a message directly also works, especially if you would like something deleted quickly.

Best,

Will - WikiAdministrator 19:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Will,

FNHL_Introduction_to_Social_Web_Tools is just a short session that I'm doing with the First Nations House of Learning. It's not really a part of a course, more of a one-off type presentation. I'm okay with moving it but not sure it is appropriate to do so. I'll leave that judgement with you.

Cheers!

- Zack

Hi Zack,

Sorry for my slow reply. For presentations, there are a couple of different strategies that seem to work well. If it is just something you are doing for a limited audience, you can move them as a subpage of your username (ex - User:WikiAdministrator/Open_Access_Talk) or you can move it to the sandbox (which can be thought of as a personal workspace and where anything goes). If the presentation is something that you think would be beneficial to the broader UBC community, it should be in the mainspace of the wiki with a sentence or two introduction to give that page some context (i.e. something like "the following presentation on Social Media tools was presented to the First Nations House of Learning on x date by x person.").

Please let me know if that makes sense or if I can provide further info.

Best,

Will - WikiAdministrator 19:20, 23 November 2010 (UTC) (ps - I cross posted this on your user talk page).

November 22nd

Hi Will,

No worries! I actually like the Subpage under my username strategy. I'll do that then. Also as food for thought, the criteria of a page being "beneficial to the broader UBC community" is very vague that anything could be considered. It defeats the purpose of having a criteria or description on what suppose to go in the mainspace.

Thanks!

- Zack, 12:09, 23 November 2010 (PST)

Hi Zack

Great - I'm glad that works. Sorry about the vagueness in the mainspace comment - I was just writing in shorthand, although I agree that we need to better describe the criteria for that space. The more official description is "The main space, or root, of this wiki is reserved for articles relating to UBC. It is primarily a community area for knowledge sharing about all aspects of the University. Mainspace pages should include introductions to provide context about how the topic of the article relates to UBC." I've been trying to push the idea that this is primarily a community space where no one "owns" any article and everyone is encouraged to edit every page. If you have any thoughts on how to tighten this up, I'd love to hear it.

Cheers - Will, WikiAdministrator 21:15, 23 November 2010 (UTC) (cross posted, etc)

Hi Will,

I actually like how you put: "no one "owns" any article and everyone is encouraged to edit every page". In my view, it provides a much clearer picture than the official description unless the root is very specific to only UBC Community-related content (i.e. location info, places to eat, etc.)

Cheers - Zack

November 26th

Hi Will,

I stumbled across this page on the UBC Wiki: Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology and we need to fix it. Centre needs to be spelled “re”, so it should be Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology. If you could make that change, to the wiki name and url, that would be great. You'll also need to adjust the top part of the Tech Express page too.

Thanks, -Michael

Hi Michael - thanks for catching those. I've changed all Centre/Center spelling mistakes across the wiki.

Best, Will - WikiAdministrator (ps. Please don't hesitate to correct any random mistakes you stumble into across the wiki - a self correcting community is one of the features of the wiki).

Thanks Will. I wasn't sure if we should delete Center_for... and replace it with a new wiki page Centre_for... or redirect it (which you did). Thanks for the help.

Michael

Nov. 29

Hi Will,

I've run into a potential issue with the presentations as a subpage of User pages. The default search doesn't include User pages and one of the participants from my workshop couldn't find it. I know there could also be a concern with User Pages getting changed and what not. I don't know what a balanced solution would look like but I just wanted to let you know about it.

Thanks!

- Zack Monday, Nov. 29, 2010 9:36AM (PST)

Starting a test thread