Wiki Gnome Headquarters - Gnoming wikispot one page at a time

wiki-gnome n. from the French "gnome":
A dedicated creature that takes care of the little things on a wiki.

Welcome to the Wiki Gnome Headquarters, a central place for wiki gnomes from all over the net. Wiki Gnomes are users who focus on taking care of wikis by handling the little things, making sure that entries are technically correct, and helping out new and confused users as best they can. See Wiki Gnome on Ward's Wiki.

You too can be a wiki gnome!

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Resources for Gnomes

This wiki is a headquarters for wiki gnomes and interwiki gnomes. It is intended to be a central resource for gnome resources for all wikis and gnomes who wish to help with wiki communities in need all over the net. To get started, you might want to read the Introduction to Gnoming.

Community

Discussions create discussions in this namespace as ["Discussions/topic"]
Dealing with Abuse repository for solutions to abusive behavior and launch point for gnome repair
Gnomish Irregulars — Need something? Ask here. You might even get a need filled if you don't ask.

Resources

Templates use naming format that will read correctly when it follows "create as"
Includes create includes as ["Includes/tag"]
Graphics includes graphics and Gimp or Photoshop templates for creating more graphics.
Greasemonkey Scripts each script gets its own page ["Greasemonkey Scripts/Name"]
Recent Wikis perhaps one of these needs help, you may also wish to keep track of Wiki Directory.
Scripts are little programs that run on your local computer and manipulate markup or wikispot wikis.
Spelling
Further Reading
Presentations
see also CityWiki for generic local/city wiki templates and discussion

Assisting Users

Welcoming new users
Conflict — Keeping your head as a gnome when everyone else is losing theirs

Pleas for Assistance

2008-02-22 20:13:51 Greetings Wiki Gnomes. After much time of inactivity, I have decided to finally publicize the Madison Wiki, but before I do, I would like to work out the color scheme. I'm not very good at picking colors, and there have been some comments abotu contrasting colors on the Madison Wiki - the blues and greens I picked out to match city logo colors doesn't seem to match the red, white, and gold colors I picked out for the special tables (Wiki_Style/Special_Tables) for university-related stuff. Does anyone want to help me work out the colors in the CSS?
A unique layout would also be neat, but isn't necessary.
Basically, I would like to get the wiki into a presentable look before I send out the press release in just over a week. —KarlMogel

2008-03-14 00:13:50 How do you become an administrator? Also, on wikispaces you can revert to a former version. I suppose you cannot do that to a page? —Librarian

I replied to you on your user entry. —jw

2008-04-29 21:44:17 how change the color of the words in the wiki —camiloMelo

You can't really. You can change the color of text in a table and give a table custom styles — see Help with Tables

2008-07-07 16:38:53 How do you make text big? I tried <big></big> but that doesnt work as it normally does. —RadcomAdmin

HTML tags aren't allowed, so <big> doesn't do anything here. The primary way to make something big is to use a header, == blah == is the largest without an underline. As an administrator you could probably do some magic by defining a table class in the CSS too, since classes are allowed in the wiki markup. —BrentLaabs

2008-11-12 03:57:21 VictorRamayrat needs friendly and industrious gnomes for fresno.wikispot.org. —VictorRamayrat

2009-01-21 18:02:18 Hello, I just added a picture to the "Adobe Apartments" page of the greenbelt bike path... but its HUGE!! Can you help me reformat it?? Thank you!!

AdobeManagement —AdobeManagement

They mean Davis Wiki... on it... —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards

2009-02-16 21:22:23 is there any possibility that not logged in users can add events on the events board? —nicolasm

2009-03-03 03:12:42 HELP! I set up my site, aisavesenergy.wikispot.org, using the registered name david-stookey. Realizing that best practices say it should be DavidStookey, I changed it, deleting the first one in the process. Now I can't administer the site; I can't even Edit pages because of my security settings. How do I get administrative control at DavidStookey? Thanks for your help. —DavidAdmin

Log back in as david-stookey and go to the security area and add DavidStookey. Then log out and log back in as DavidStookey.

Thanks SO much for getting back to me. I guess I didn't explain things well. I believe that admin privileges are attached to david-stookey, the name I used to open the wiki. When I changed my name to DavidStookey - thinking somehow the privileges would transfer - I was asked to "disable" the david-stookey account which I did. I can't log in as david-stookey. Nor can I create david-stookey because I'm told "User name already exists." And when I log in as DavidStookey I have no privileges. Can you transfer admin privileges to DavidStookey or enable david-stookey again if that name has the privileges? Thanks.

I re-enabled the david-stookey account. Log in as that, add DavidStookey as an admin, log in as DavidStookey, remove david-stookey as an admin and you're good to go.

You're beautiful!

2009-04-04 23:11:44 Make me a wiki! —75.45.100.58

Shazam! You are now a wiki! —JasonAller

2009-05-07 01:22:27 Hi! I would like to have just a single tab on my wiki for feedback from other people interested in my project how can i do this? —optimumshrimp

You first need to create a page for feedback. Name it Feedback or something. Put the comment macro ( [[comments]] ) on that page. Go Wiki Settings/General on your wiki and add "Feedback" to "Tabs, not logged in" and "Tabs, logged in". If you want people to be able to comment without creating accounts, go to Feedback, click on edit, and click on the security button. Check the boxes so everyone can read and edit. Leave me a comment if you need any more help. —Users/WilliamLewis

2009-07-01 23:37:09 Dredovian from Imperium Nova Wiki here, i would like to know how should i modify the CSS settings, or whatever, to let the Include macro use a ==Header== instead of a =Header= . Basically, The Include pagename uses the wrong header too for our taste, since we usually do:

=section=
[[include(page link, "subsection")]]

and it ends up with Subsections having the same header as Sections. —Dredovian

2009-07-02 03:31:55 Got an example you can link to? I'm not sure exactly what the specific issue is, but the ones I think you might be talking about can all be fixed pretty easily. —JabberWokky

2009-07-02 15:00:59 Here's the Page —Dredovian

2009-07-02 15:48:17 At first blush, something like the following is what you probably want:

.includedPage h2 {
  text-decoration: none;
  font-size: 1.8em;
}

That kicks the size down a notch and removes the underline. You can tweak it however you'd like. It's untested, so if it doesn't work, just let me know and I'll look at it a bit more in depth. —JabberWokky

2009-07-02 22:34:01 added at the bottom of the Style.css - doesn't work —Dredovian

2009-07-18 05:32:33 Just started a wiki for Modesto, California. Could use help! —jefffy

2009-08-18 19:17:48 I have a grey box around my wiki! The whole thing (but not the bottom) of the page. Bit of amystery after many experiments with the CSS..

Any help appreciated...

http://philosophical-investigations.wikispot.org/ —NormanNitram

2009-08-18 22:20:24 Victory:

This line does it:

body{

margin: 0px;

padding: 0px;

}

cunning, eh?! —NormanNitram

2009-08-20 14:50:58 It looks like the gnomes are all living underground... —NormanNitram

A user's warning to others about sleeping Gnomes

I like the idea of Wikignomes very much - but hey, in two months, the requests have remained the same and my own queries have to been answered below either? If the Wikignomes are 'dormant' - this should be noted here (and elsewhere) so that users who are (at the moment) being encouraged to request assistance are not disappointed when that never comes. - Norman Nitram (philosophical-investigations, and potential assistant gnome)

But read below... if you don't read your answers, it doesn't help much.

What questions do you have that are unanswered? Looking below it looks like everything's set? —PhilipNeustrom

In fact, there's even a very technical answer and a question to help guide future answers on your user account at your wiki. It popped up 15 hours, roughly half a day, after you asked me (if you want faster responses, you might try asking the general group here rather than one person on their editor entry). Perhaps you missed the message? We can't help you if you don't read your answers. ;) —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards

2009-09-04 23:22:55 Oops! Feeel free to take my 'plaint off...

Re. the 'query', though, I've adapted the existing style and layout css codes already, so we now have the basic design ready on the PI site and we have been implementing pages with it. It is a bit different from the WIkidot - for example there are no 'drop down' menus, but in a way it is more 'fun' so I am basically happy to stick with the system.

But what is a bit annoying is the inability to use font colours and sizes as we want - and I was taken by the wiki gnome advice to get around this wiki-specific restriction by ADDING to the style.css code a couple of our own 'tables'.

So, in other words, I would like to know how, in the exisitg style.css file, one might introduce a new table, for example, called 'wikiquotes', which would have its own set attrbutes, eg, be centred, be in a smaller font size, and have a white background.

The other useful one would be a table which would use the same colour as the page, but add colour to a larger font, and so serve as a way around the restricitions on colour for headings.

If you could offer me actual egs I 'think' I'm CSS competent enough to just take it from there. Thanks! —NormanNitram

If you want to work from example, the front page of Wiki Spot itself is an example. —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards

2009-09-05 09:05:34 Obviously I looked at that, but if you defined the table in the CSs, I can't find where (and hence how) it was done. If you want to help users, and this idea was floated generally as such, then please put the steps down absolutely clearly, and why not take my query as the excuse to 'get around to it'. The tip is obviously important for designing wikis, most users are not at all clear about how to do it, and YOU can help by joining the dots for us.

I would like to know what code went in the ? style.css ? for say, this wiki page, and which bit 'calls it up'. It would be great if you can provide teh two elements in a from I can 'try it out' at Philosophical Investigations'.

We would apprecaite any feedback too on our CSS changes and style ideas there too. NN —NormanNitram

See, that's kind of the problem. At the point you're defining custom classes, it's really completely up to you. You invent the name and toss the css anywhere into the style.css (or even the layout.css) that you want. It's standard css, but creating standard css is pretty complicated (for those who haven't done it). So, for instance, you can invent a class called "sillyTitleOverlap", add a table:

||<tableclass="sillyTitleOverlap">Hi, Mom!||

and then add the css to stick it over the title (in a typical layout):

.sillyTitleOverlap {
  background-color: yellow;
  border: 2px solid red;
  font-size: 200%;
  position: absolute;
  top: 4px;
  left: 10px;
}

It's a silly use, but you can do pretty much anything with CSS in terms of applying radically different styles to the individual cells or contents of a table. That's kind of where the problem is — you have to know css to know what you can do, and at that point, it's dirt simple. —

Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards

2009-09-05 23:24:05 Thanks Jabberwocky, that's just what was needed. Making slow progress! —NormanNitram

2009-09-14 15:13:27 want to set up a shared workspace for non-profit group (senior staff from a variety of health care for the homeless organizations). Work on shared documents, meeting, conference planning, work, documents, etc. Open and visible only to invited users who would have to register (unique email). editable with tracing (not anonymous). no ads. free. I was thinking of using Wiki such as WkiSpot, TikiWiki, Netcipia, MyFreeWiki? Any suggstions. thanks in advance —158.72.12.73

Here's how such a system would work on Wiki Spot: Help for Wiki Administrators has information on how to set up user groups and security settings per page and across the whole site. You'd probably set up a group for most of your users to be a part of, and manually add them to that group. That group has read/write access to most pages, but you turn off such access for all other users on the Wiki Settings/Security page. As far as adding users: Wiki Spot has a global userspace — a user account in one wiki will work for them all, and you register on the main wiki spot site. Instead of sending out emails to invite users, they can create their own accounts, and you can add them in the Security page. I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, but it's what we provide here. (And no advertising; all IP addresses are automatically logged.) —BrentLaabs

2009-10-11 11:26:49 I'm from Egypt and trying to launch a new wiki for my city and wanted to use Arabic in creating this wiki - it's our language in here :) I'm facing some editing problems that I didn't face in wikipedia.org
mainly with the direction of the lines. Arabic is right-to-left language but when I write any special character or latin character in the sentence everything goes to complete mess and the sentence is not not moving in the right direction any more.

an example:
حدائق الأهرام ويكي هو جزء من مشروع Wiki Spot ، الذي يوفر التجمع والترابط لجميع أنواع مشاريع ويكي. اقرأ April 2007 Wiki Update لمزيد من المعلومات.

This sentence should be read from right to left. The original thing should look like that:
1- حدائق الأهرام ويكي هو جزء من مشروع
2- Wiki Spot
3- الذي يوفر التجمع والترابط لجميع أنواع مشاريع ويكي.
4- اقرأ
5- April 2007 Wiki Update
6- لمزيد من المعلومات

what's displayed here it totally different, it looks like that
1- لمزيد من المعلومات
2- April 2007 Wiki Update
3- الذي يوفر التجمع والترابط لجميع أنواع مشاريع ويكي
4- اقرأ
5- Wiki Spot
6- حدائق الأهرام ويكي هو جزء من مشروع

so it can't be ready normally at all! —Tamer.Darweesh

2009-10-11 08:47:32 Tamer, have you modified the css file to set the language direction? —JasonAller

Tamer, specifically, you need to set the css "direction" of the content to rtl. It's a case of hinting what the default is versus what is embedded rather than the other way around. Since there is ltr text surrounding the content (in the headers, footers, etc), the content inherits that direction, and you need to simply tell the browser (via css) that the content is, by default, right to left. Now, I say "simply", but I have not done it myself, so I'm not absolutely sure about the details. A rather technical description (from the committee that defines how the web works) is here. —Evan 'JabberWokky' Edwards

2009-10-12 08:34:48 Yes great thanks Evan and Jason. My page now is rtl and working fine (Y) http://hadayek-elahram.wikispot.org/

—Tamer.Darweesh

2009-10-13 18:23:24 Hi, I'm trying to run JabberWokky's backup script but without results. It keeps telling me "urlencode: command not found" Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! —karlbourassa

2009-10-13 18:55:01 Hi, I'm trying to run JabberWokky's backup script but without results. It keeps telling me "urlencode: command not found" Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! —karlbourassa

2009-10-13 18:55:44 Hi, I'm trying to run JabberWokky's backup script but without results. It keeps telling me "urlencode: command not found" Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! —karlbourassa

2009-10-22 19:19:18 Any options for an admin to modify CSS or get help from WikiSpot robots.txt fole for Search Engine Optimization. Some submissions want you to create a sitemap or add stuff to the site to improve crawler access. Anyone have any experience with this?? —BradMandell

2009-11-12 18:33:18 Would like to know how to "memory hole" unwanted and/or old changes as an admin on a wiki. —Reivas

Revert the changes as normal, and then look below the field where it asks you for a comment about the revert. If you are an admin, you have a checkbox to permanently remove the changes back to that version. -jw

2009-11-18 03:01:20 I noticed that articles don't automatically have a Talk page created and that there is no Template for a Talk page on my site, DavisWiki, WikiSpot or here on Gnome. Is there a reason why there isn't a Talk template to facilitate a little structure when people want to Talk about an article? For example, I thought about just having some boilerplate instructions and the Comment() macro. Would that be a bad idea? Thanks. —csroberson

Historically, most of the wikis haven't been really into the 'talk' page idea. There was a ton of debate about having them on the Davis Wiki. In particular, most local material is best debated and discussed on the page itself, or on some linked sub-page. Lots of meta discussion tends not to happen. Anyway, there's no editable talk page template, but that's because nobody's gotten around to adding that functionality — it's a good idea.

BTW, some background here on talk pages in the davis wiki. We were/are very concerned about people getting confused about where to put page comments. We really didn't want them on separate talk pages when they were relevant to the page.

2009-11-21 01:40:42 I have two pages should be basically identical, as I was in the process of moving it from one wiki (Sonoma) to another (SonomaValley) but they are not: the picture and the text don't line up on SonomaValley the way they did on Sonoma: http://www.sonomawiki.org/Rebecca_Bailey http://www.sonomavalleywiki.org/Rebecca_Bailey What happened? I'm going to change Sonoma to a #redirect but I wanted to show this to you first. —csroberson

I'm guessing it's a difference in the CSS? Did you alter the CSS files at all?

Nope. All I did was include the same CSS file from WikiSpot for both. I did accidentally load the file into the wrong place but I thought I corrected that. I'll try updating the CSS on both wikis again. —csroberson

I just rechecked at it appears I failed to upload the new version of common.css to one of the wikis. I uploaded the new version and all is good! Thanks! —csroberson

2009-11-21 16:53:57 Is it possible to pass a parameter to a file that I include, e.g. a string of characters to be used as part of a pathname? I'd like to have a page, like Seed, that allows me to say "Your are viewing PageName. You may also want to see OtherWiki/PageName." Thanks. —csroberson

2009-11-25 21:22:55 منير —41.218.21.207

2009-12-13 20:10:41 Is it possible to create a redirect that includes an anchor on another page? For example, I have the "Springs Redevelopment Area" which is governed by the "Redevelopment Advisory Committee". If someone links to the RAC, I'd like for it to go the section on that committed on the SRA page: http://www.sonomavalleywiki.org/Springs_Redevelopment_Area. Thanks! —csroberson

2010-01-09 03:23:25 How to debug the Events_Board? I had a wikian post this plea to me and I'm a little stumped:

Yesterday, I added several events, Hit the Road Jack and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, but I can’t seem to access a calendar and when I try to access events, I only see the HTRJ event, Fran had the same experience, and ideas?

When I go to the Events_Board, I only see Hit the Road Jack. How can I dig a little deeper? Thanks! —csroberson

As a follow-on, I had another person post an event "The Sonoma Valley Cheese Conference" at 12:12 AM on Saturday, Jan 9th. I can still see the edit in the Interwiki Change Log but the event is no longer displaying on the Events Board (though I did see it on Saturday).

Do we have a bug in the Events system or am I missing something? If it's a bug, is this right place to report it? Thanks —csroberson

Not a bug. Events that happen are removed after the day passes.

The events that have disappeared were scheduled for dates pretty far in the future (Feb and later), unless the users made a mistake. For example, the cheese conference was posted on "Jan 9th" but the event was scheduled for Feb 20-23, 2010. Is there anyway I can look in the logs to view these records to see if it was user error as I'm having local organizations showing signs of not trusting the events board as they think it loses the data they are entering. —csroberson

The events board code hasn't changed in ages. I'm betting they were entered as 2009 on accident — e.g. the year field was 2009 (entered in 2009- say in late december). Is this a possibility, or were they entered in the new year?

2010-03-05 22:37:17 Over at Friends of West Pond there's been some trouble getting a birdwatching checklist in a printable format on the wiki. As I recall, .doc files don't do too well as attachments, but formatting it for printing as a sub-page seems challenging. Any tips? —TomGarberson

2010-03-26 19:34:40 I'm in the category of new and confused users. This message just appeared in the Wiki I am editing: "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that you're currently editing the hub wiki for the whole Wiki Spot project. It looks like you're going to develop a lot of information on this topic, so head over to Create a wiki to get your own wiki. If you have any questions, let me know. —BrentLaabs" I thought I had created a new Wiki, called "MA Affordable Housing," and was only editing this Wiki. I have no idea what to do next - and I have no idea who will see this note and how I will know if someone responds. hjoseph@gis.net —hjoseph

2010-03-26 20:23:05 I'm in the category of new and confused users. This message just appeared in the Wiki I am editing: "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that you're currently editing the hub wiki for the whole Wiki Spot project. It looks like you're going to develop a lot of information on this topic, so head over to Create a wiki to get your own wiki. If you have any questions, let me know. —BrentLaabs" I thought I had created a new Wiki, called "MA Affordable Housing," and was only editing this Wiki. I have no idea what to do next - and I have no idea who will see this note and how I will know if someone responds. hjoseph@gis.net —hjoseph

Hey, just go on over to the page Create a wiki and fill out the form on the page & read the instructions! Best, —PhilipNeustrom

2011-04-28 18:35:13 I wish to expand beyond local wiki being a place for college students to look for entertainment, food, etc, which is what the UCD students started with when they set up Davis wiki. I wish to set up templates for creating an information base about how the local economy actually works, by sector. I have been working on this for several years, and the Davis wiki says it is not relevant to Davis (?), so they won't let me post anywhere in Davis wiki. My real idea is that we build a grassroots global information system, starting with community wikis. Anatomically, the fig fruit is inside, if you turn around it becomes a strawberry: we need an economy where we can see everything that matters. The 20th century economy doesn't work for anybody; my idea is that we create an economy where the information is easy to figure out. I have been emailing Philip Neustrom (local wiki project) so this should not be a surprise, but I would like this to be a growing project: we can build on Wikipedia to evolve an economy we all can use. If this interests you, please email me at jli@cal.net. Jon Li. —JonLi

2011-04-28 19:00:11 So, I just read http://wikispot.org/Community_Guidelines/Talk, and I think what I want is inside your guidelines. My Wiki Economy matrix is person-neighborhood-village (1000)-community (10,000), district, region. The place I want to set up a community wiki is Cairo. Their entire economy is in shambles, and it is making everybody distrust the military that is trying to hold it together. I think a Cairo Community Wiki can help them find resources to meet their immediate and future needs. I am designing a home page for Cairo Sustainability. Where is the best place to use this idea? —JonLi

2011-05-31 22:40:09 I'm interested in building out the Seattle Wiki but I have limited admin rights. The original creator hasn't touched the wiki in almost 3 years and the site design has some bugs I'd like to fix (specifically the search box that floats on top of the main content). Anyhow, any ideas? —todd.d.robbins

2011-07-13 17:33:28 Hello! We are the Willows Apartments Management, and we have tried logging in using our username: willows password: 1959 and we can not find the edit button anywhere. We would like to update the page with our new availability (We no longer have any 1 bedrooms left), any specials, rent changes, ect. that would benefit the Davis wiki users when researching for apartments. Is there a way we can work with you to make this happen? If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at willows@tandemproperties.com or give us a call at our office: 530-757-2118. Thank you so much! —76.114.18.109

Your account was disabled because of its name. Please read the message here: http://daviswiki.org/Users/willows you should create a new account using your real, non-business name. Best, PhilipNeustrom

2011-08-12 14:01:01 I'm looking for a way to create spoiler boxes or text that can be open or hidden without creating separate pages for each text box. —RachelLeake

Not sure if there's a better way to do it, but you can do a black background for a table cell with black text like so: ||<#000000>Try this||. If you select the text it becomes visible. I'm not aware of a way to do a toggled hide/reveal spoiler box.

Try this

—TomGarberson

2011-09-27 06:53:54 Can you help with a apparently changed password. A user named "docent" cannot log in - invalid password. But I do not remember the email address associated with that user, so I cannot get a link to reset the password. What can I do? —Pbarnett —Pbarnett

2012-11-03 03:25:46 I created a page and I can't seem to find it on wiki. I am not sure how to make my page more accessible. I work for a crisi hotline and I would like people in the area to be able to see our resource and be aware of volunteer opportunities. Thank you so much for your help! —KiraSchetter

2013-05-15 16:19:35 Hey, How do I create "invite only" wiki?
thx! —PopkaTut

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