Sweet Aunt Jemima

[Huss]

Ok, I think I have the skins workign. Can you test around and report if it looks and acts like bigsoccer

thanks

[Huss]

please note the changes to the navigation menu up top when you are in the wiki

[Huss]

Anyone play with it yet? Think we can release the houdns?

[Chicago1871]

Ugh. I checked the Fire one out...for about five seconds.

[XYZ]

I can't get the BigSoccerWiki skins to work when I'm logged in. I can only see them if I log out.

[XYZ]

Oh, OK. I reset my preferences and I can now see the BigSoccerWiki skins without logging out. I like the skins--in concept, at least.

[Huss]

you hsouldn't see any skins in the wiki except for bigsoccer. in fact, it should just default to bsi. it doesn't?

on another note...are you and knave keen to take on proselytizing this thing? we want it to have an irreverant tone - it doesn't have to be serious like wiki.com....

[XYZ]

it should just default to bsi. it doesn't?It does. The skin in the wiki defaults to whatever BigSoccer skin is set. The ultimate default if you don't set anything seems to be BigSoccer X.

Also, the log-in from the wiki seems to be working fine now (at one time, it wasn't working).

on another note...An irreverant, less serious tone sounds great to me. I'll think about ways to encourage that. Wikipedia has too many style and content police. I guess it works for an encyclopedia but maybe not so well for a disorientation guide.

[XYZ]

I've been experimenting with the skins--mostly just the BigSoccer skins (gold, white and gray)--for a few days. I really like that it looks like BigSoccer and not like Wikipedia.

Not to nitpick (and ignoring some minor quirks), below are a couple of things I think are important:

The search function is missing. This is the function for searching the wiki, not the function for searching the forums (which is there). The wiki search function has two options, "Go" and "Search".
The "Go" function searches only for an exact article title match and, if it finds one, goes directly to the article.
The "Search" function does a text search. I'm pretty sure the search is limited to articles in the main namespace.

The "discussion" tab doesn't work. As it is now, it attempts to link to a thread on BigSoccer. However, as I said, it doesn't work. In most cases, it links to a page that says either "Invalid Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator." or "you do not have permission to access this page" (or something like that). In the case of the Chicago Fire (http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Chicago_Fire) article, it links to a thread (in 'Politics and Current Events') about a recent fire in Chicago (not even the famous fire in Chicago).

While I don't doubt you could make the "discussion" tab link to a thread on BigSoccer, I doubt that it's worth the trouble. The wiki software provides a talk page function with some nice features. I don't know how you program the link for that "discussion" tab but I can tell you what the link would be in wikitext.

The wikitext link for a talk page is:

[[{{NAMESPACE}} talk:{{PAGENAME}}]]

where {{NAMESPACE}} and {{PAGENAME}} are predefined variables that are part of the wiki software.

I think it makes sense to use the wiki talk page function. If someone does create a discussion on BigSoccer, they can always put a link in the wiki, either on a talk page or in the article itself. I doubt there will be many talk pages anyway so I can't imagine it being a problem.

------
The My Tools dropdown menu is unnecessary since everthing on it is on the Wiki tools menu.

[XYZ]

Good googily moogily! The skins I've tested work fine except for the problems desribed in the preceeding post (the lack of a "Go"/"Search" function and the malfunctioning of the "discussion" tab).

[Huss]

Great -working on those two.

[Huss]

there is a search link on the HP
http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Search

yes, needs to be more prominant

[XYZ]

Now we're getting somewhere. The skins look fantastic. With a few tweaks BigSoccer Wiki could be made easier to use than Wikipedia itself. The remaining problems are the ones described above.

Regarding the missing search function:

It existed on BigSoccer Wiki before you created the skins.

Yea, there's a "search" link on the main page (and some other pages, too). It's part of a template I made as a work-around. It's better than nothing but just barely. Actually, all that link does is do a search without any search parameters. The page that's generated is a "search results" page but, of course, there are no results because there was no search string. It's true--you can do a search from the 'search results' page but 1.) there are search options that aren't available, 2.) it's a little backward that the only way to do a search is by starting with a failed search and 3.) the option to select a namespace is unnecessary for most searches.

I've done a lot of experimenting and I've discovered the components of a url that does a proper search. Results of the experiments are summarized below. I hope it helps.

As I said, there are two main options: "Go" and "Search". If there can be only one, the "Go" option is the more useful.

Example 1- search for "chicago fire" using the 'Go' option.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Search?search=chicago+fire&go=Go

The above url takes you directly to an article titled "Chicago Fire" even though 'fire' is not capitalized and article titles are case sensitive. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

----------------
OK, let's search for an article that doesn't exist.
Example 2 - search for "tripping, shin-kicking and so on" using the 'Go' option.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Search?search=tripping,+shin-kicking+and+so+on&go=Go

The article title search fails but the software automatically does a text search and returns one match.

And the search result page also says: There is no page titled ":tripping, shin-kicking and so on". You can create this page. where "create this page" is a link.

Again, pretty cool.

----------------

But what about the "Search" option?
The "Search" option will do a full text search even though an exact article title match exists.

Example 3- search for "Roberto Baggio" using the 'Search' option.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Search?search=Roberto+Baggio&fulltext=Search

The search returns one article title match and several text matches.

Example 4- search for "shin-kicking" using the 'Search' option.

http://www.bigsoccer.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Search?search=shin-kicking&fulltext=Search

That returns one result but a major downside of the "Search" option is that we aren't given an option to create an article if one doesn't exist.

--------

On another topic---

Jumbo Whales, the guy who started Wikipedia, was on Charlie Rose a week or so ago. He talked about how it took quite a while for Wikipedia to get its first 100 articles (it has a few more than that now :D) and also about how others are now taking the software and utilizing it in various ways. It was pretty interesting (well, it was to me). The wiki concept is proven. The software has some very nice features.

Things may be slow on BigSoccer Wiki for a while but all it takes is for a few people to get interested in it and it will take off. There are a lot of possibilities.