Users/JabberWokky

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This profile exists for wikis that I am assisting with. If I am active in a Wiki Spot wiki, I tend to create a profile there. The most extensive profile is currently available by davisclicking here. Also see [WWW]my user info.

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Howdy. I'm Evan "JabberWokky" Edwards (even my wife calls me JabberWokky, but you can feel free to call me "Hey you", or "guy with a beard"). I'm a gnome here on wiki spot, working to help communities. It is also what I do for a living; I write wiki software (no, not sycamoreSycamore) and help small towns publish (you know, on dead trees) newspapers. I've been doing it since 1998 (or 1997 if you count when I started a side business, but 1998 I quit my day job). I currently reside in State College, Pennsylvania, where the lovely and talented Sarah (the aforementioned wife) is doing naughty things to proteins at a quantum level to earn her doctorate. We used to live in northern California, and before that I was in Florida and North Carolina.

I maintain a very complete personal entry at davisthe Davis Wiki, which is where you might want to leave a message if it relates to the Davis Wiki. If it is about Wiki Spot or wikis in general, go ahead and leave a note here.

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2007-11-19 23:00:03   Psst. CCCC project? It's funny, the kinds of responses the HH is getting. —KarlMogel

2007-12-03 21:17:27   Thanks for the tip on the "seed". I tried it on the Philomath Wiki and it said I needed to upload an image and I don't know how? Yikes! —RichLindvall

2007-12-03 22:07:41   Wow! That was quick! Thanks! You're great! Must be snowing there in PA today! —RichLindvall

2007-12-07 03:37:41   Oh yeah, no problem. Actually, I criticized the blog they're basing their wiki on in a humor post, and I believe that's how they probably found out about Wiki Spot - maybe by looking through my own posts related to the wikis. I'm helping them figure out how the wiki works, it's kind of fun. —KarlMogel

2007-12-07 05:00:34   Thanks, tell Sarah that it's great to hear, even years later! I'm working on getting my radio started up on a new digital channel at a local radio station - the closest thing to KDVS that Madison has to offer. Even though I've been blogging, which is usually characterized by short posts of a paragraph or two, I can't shed my itch to tell stories about topics in-depth. I'll have to write a book. I've said too much, way too soon. (A few years too soon.) Gotta get back to stats homework...

I didn't know about the Universe of Discourse, I'll take a look, thanks. —KarlMogel

2007-12-12 21:38:13   Thanks, JW, for your help on the Philomath Wiki! As always, you're great! —RichLindvall

2007-12-16 05:25:49   Those tiny logos are great! I really like your description of the different aspects of what they represent! Pretty awesome! The wiki really does represent an amazing sense of sacrifice as well as friendship/fellowship. Where else do you find people from such diverse backgrounds and beliefs working together? —RichLindvall

2008-01-23 15:19:16   Wokky,

Hi, I am brand new to wiki's. I was testing some things out- hope I didn't mess anything up. I am a bus driver and union organizer in chicago. I have been collecting stories and photographs with my coworkers over the past few years. Transit workers have crazy schedules, so I thought a wiki would be a good way to work together. You sound knowledgable about this. I have a few questions: can space be reserved within a wiki for content that may only be changed by the person who originally wrote it (like a personal story by a train motorman or bus driver or passenger, etc.) or by a moderator, etc. Also, do you know of any wiki-enthusiasts in Chicago that could help us- it would be good to meet and talk with people who know what they are doing? Is this the right community/portal (wiki-spot) for us or is this for something else?

Thanks!

-erek slater
erekslater@sbcglobal.net —Erek

2008-01-26 18:27:53   Evan,

I have not successfully loaded new style sheets into my Indian Hill Road wiki. I initially loaded in the Wikimedia style sheets which created a scrambled front page. I've been tryin to load in a better set of style sheets — any tips?

Thanks,
Jack —IndianHillRoad

2008-02-14 19:24:16   Added a simple spam trap (similar to the one we have for comments) to the edit area — let's see if it helps.

My theory is that some of these bots, once they view the page once, "remember" the state of the forms and then continue to fill them out that way. In that case we may have to juggle things around a bit to screw with their memories (but it seems the comments one has been working).

Just putting off the captcha as long as possible :) —PhilipNeustrom

2008-02-26 16:22:36   I like gnomes... ;-) Very retro —ksullivan

2008-02-26 16:39:43   I guess I'll ask here too— Hi, my hometown of Milpitas has a wiki, but it has said that it is under construction with no signs of any progress at all, for a while. Some friends and I would like to start making it into a real page, and we were wondering how to best start on this. Any help you could give would be much appreciated, thanks. —EliYani

2008-03-10 21:50:06   Well that ISP just emailed me and said he holds the copyright on that graphic and wanted it removed, I never deletd it, I tried to restore it when I thought he was sabotaging the wiki....here's the email he or she sent me: I own the copyright to the rollergirl graphic that you have been posting. I have not given permission to anyone to use, post or
distribute this graphic. The owner of the Santa Cruz Rollergirls,
Robin Hoff has been notified and is fully aware that use of the
graphic below is a copyright violation.

By posting, distributing, using or copying the graphic below you are
in violation of copyright law, a federal offense; Library of
Congress, United States Copyright Office registration number
VA0001624379
their email adress: hr@artaryink.com —AlexDarocy

2008-03-10 22:33:52   Sure, feel free to handle this....I dont have a strong opinion one way or another about the use of logos, but the individual keeps removing our photorequest now..... —AlexDarocy

2008-03-11 02:58:39   Thanks for dealing with that, Evan. I'm not actually an administrator at the Santa Cruz Wiki, so I dont think I can delete those permanently myself... —AlexDarocy

2008-03-11 05:31:46   I believe that Ben Chaney is the admin.... —AlexDarocy

2008-03-26 00:43:45   Thanks for the edit, but I was just trying to explain why I wanted to figure out how to use linebreaks. —tobyk

2008-04-02 16:38:50   Thanks for looking after sacwiki. —CharlesMcLaughlin

2008-04-05 22:16:14   re: Featured Page. Sweet, thanks. Any revisions to offer to the text? —JoRo

2008-05-09 02:35:07   Re: the rollergirls thing, thanks for helping out. Also, thanks for being generally helpful in the SC wiki, it's very much appreciated! —BenChaney

2008-06-09 22:41:54   The FAQ page said that you had a "bash" script to create a backup for wiki pages. Could you pass me the script and info on how to run the script? You can contact me at bevan@40belowfilms.com.

Thanks,
Bevan. —bklassen

2008-06-10 17:38:06   Whoops I left a comment but I don't think you got it, we lost power a sec. Very hot here in RI. I understand how to revert, but what I am not clear on is exactly how it affects everything else. I mean, it took me a while to find the page barbaro303 had posted before a certain student got happy, but does it affect the page globally, or only that user? Sorry to be such a dufus! I appreciate your help so much! the kids are really making this project their own, which is pretty darn good for a bunch of 11 year olds! —Smarten me up! —LCCasey

2008-07-01 21:10:43   Thanks for the location on your "seed" icon and permission to use it. I can see it but I don't know how to make it appear on the "file to upload" line on the Christian Music Central "seed" upload image screen. :-( —RichLindvall

2008-07-01 21:21:21   Thanks so much, JW! Yes, I made the quick edit! You're greeeaaaat! (Like Tony the Tiger says about sugar frosted flakes) —RichLindvall

eye_of_jabberwokky.jpg

2008-08-11 20:07:56   Thanks for that spelling help, Jabber :) —Dredovian

2008-08-12 00:17:08   you should really try it, if you're into RPing it is a neat web browser game to do, as you can have noticed :) if oyu end up in Avalon tell me! i'll help you as much as possible, and if you don't end in avalon i'll try to find you some help too :) —Dredovian

2008-08-14 22:04:39   (Durn it - templates are not included, but rather hard coded.).

Can you explain what you meant? We had a more efficent way to implement Templates? —Dredovian

2008-08-15 16:28:30   very interesting, i'm eager to know how it works :) —Dredovian

2008-08-15 21:12:59   Jabberwokky thanks for the help on OPAC. I have a listserv. I haven't announced the new wiki on the listserv yet, but it was nice to get a sense of how it feels to have the wiki change from other peoples contributions. we had a very non-interactive website in the past that no one visisted or used, quite understandably, so I hope this wiki combined with a facebook group will work better. thanks. —spencerkingman

2008-08-29 15:06:21   When will the results of the pirate treasure honeypot photo experiment be published? —TheAmazingLarry

2008-08-30 13:04:02   Hey, you said I overwrote an entry on the Wiki Spot hub wiki. I am totally new to this, as you can see. I wanted to create a page for students and staff at my high school to further discuss (and integrate technology) what I taught in class. I created one called GHS-History. Now, I guess, what do I do from there? —GHS-History

2008-08-31 08:24:16   Ok, so I think I have made my page. What I want to do is have the title and introduction stuff as is, then each week/month add a new topic for my students to discuss. First, how do I do that? Second, how do my students do that? Thanks so much for the help! Total newbie! :) —GHS-History

2008-09-03 18:24:34   Ah, I'm all about the whatnotting on Chico Wiki. Thanks for catching that whole template thing for us. I just got online and saw the reverting and was grateful that someone caught it quickly since that could have led to some interesting confusion. Thanks for all your gnoming help. Cheers! —StaceyEllis

2008-09-04 04:42:05   I'm pretty sure it's that searching doesn't work while we're processing a batch job of index writes in syc_search_server.py —PhilipNeustrom

2008-09-06 02:23:23   I'm not so sure your number of watched wikis isn't doing bad things. While it might seem snappy to you, it's possible it's causing some slowdown. I have no idea, of course, as I haven't profiled this in a long time (and never with that many wikis). Either way, it should be made faster or limited in some way.

The way it works right now is it iterates through the list of watched wikis and requests the recent changes blob for each, then combines them and sorts them properly. My concern wouldn't be that the combination / whatnot would be slow, but that the constant re-generation of RC blobs for wikis that really ought not to be generated. The cache we use (memcached) is an LRU, so obviously populating it with actually non-important data over and over might be problematic. Anyway!

Also, if we wanted we could produce a "firehouse" "all wikis" recent changes page. It would be possible to make that query run a factor of n faster. —PhilipNeustrom

2008-09-06 16:53:26   Hey JabberWokky - I was wondering if you knew anything about the Stockton, CA wiki, [stocktonwiki]stocktonwiki, I grew up there, and wanted to contribute, but I've never seen anything like this... I've been spoiled by the Davis wiki, and wikipedia. I'm not sure how to make it more like Davis wiki. It seems to be more of a listing of stuff for sale. Also if you do a google search for the stockton wiki, it pulls up some weird links to an ebay search looking for the stockton wiki. I'm confused and overwhelmed. If there is anything you can do, or if not, let me know. Thanks - Aaron —Aaron.Curtin

2008-09-06 16:58:12   Ignore the ebay listing thing... I think it has to do with my computer. But their wiki is still weird. —Aaron.Curtin

2008-09-09 18:41:40   I think you may have just pressed one of the buttons on the IWRC page, no? —PhilipNeustrom

2008-09-26 19:19:15   Banned his/her IP. We should probably, at some point, have a global Wiki Spot ban / management interface. Interestingly, it looks like that person formatted their edit to exact Wiki Spot page formatting. It doesn't look automated, which is kinda silly! —PhilipNeustrom

2008-10-16 21:38:41   It was a bug I fixed, so no need. —PhilipNeustrom

2008-11-20 23:11:10   Aha. Thanks for the heads up. Guess I don't have to be nice to him :-) Thanks for gnoming on Chico Wiki! It's REALLY appreciated. —RyanMikulovsky

2008-12-08 16:46:54   Hi JabberWokky, Is there a way to protect comments? One of my students is worried about his comments being changed. I know that the essence of a wiki is creative collaboration and change, but should one be allowed to change another's comments? I think not. Can you tell me how I can protect the comments? Thanks, LCCasey —LCCasey

2008-12-09 19:55:18   I saw something you wrote about getting Wiki Visit Counts via http://trackingdomain.com/webbug.png, but I fear that how one would go about this is completely unclear to me. Could you, very kindly, elaborate? Thanks much. —Mwanner

2008-12-11 01:41:19   Can admins get at their user's email addresses? —Mwanner

2008-12-11 13:07:37   Another question I think I already know the answer to— can one, by any chance, change the Wikipedia logo? We will be using a lot of links to Wikipedia, and the logo is mighty noticeable. See hslAdirondack Cottage Sanitarium, for example. But I fear the answer is that it's a global setting? BTW, looks like I should maybe be asking this stuff at the wikispotFAQ? I that basically the central HowDoIDoIt page? TIA —Mwanner

2008-12-12 12:03:38   I guess that seems like a lot of rules for a little wiki? I'm coming at it from Wikipedia, where the rules would choke a horse. And after your comment, one more rule was added. Of course, rules don't matter much if they're not violated, which is what I would hope will be the case. Thanks for the pointer to the Copyright page. Cheers! —72.228.82.154

2008-12-20 06:42:11   Yeah, I'd also like someone to do logos for me. I only have limited artistic talent — I can see things in my head, but can never get them on paper or monitor like I want to see them. Can you make some Ventura Wiki logos for me? —BrentLaabs

2008-12-22 04:01:53   Yeah, I had a similar idea. Here's a 2-minute mockup of an old idea I had. Can't be done with a real photo, but could be done patching photos together (two trees and eastern hills photographed from Oxnard, combined with a beach photo. Good work, but yeah, not ready for prime time yet. venturawiki-logodraft1.png —BrentLaabs

2009-01-16 02:59:17   Hiya - I like your (B) icon for BerkeleyWiki. How would we install that? (referring to your comment at the bottom of this page: [WWW]http://wikispot.org/Users/AbhiYerra ) —Graham.Freeman

2009-03-18 17:57:17   Evan, Thanks for the visit and the nice feedback. It's good to know that there's help out there. So far, so good. I've got our site somewhat seeded. We'll see what happens. —BobSteffes

2009-03-19 01:17:12   yeah you are right. I thought i wanted to upload it to wiki settings/images, but it wouldn't allow me. Bizarre because i was told a few weeks ago that i was given admin privileges, but my user settings page looks no different than the one i had on Davis wiki, and i certainly was not an admin on Davis wiki. Perhaps the original admin just forgot to give me admin rights. —MattHh

2009-04-19 19:54:33   Thanks for the corrections on my wiki. I can now copy and paste your formatting to make new sections, which makes things pretty easy. Couple of questions. First, I am setting this up as a way to organize information relating to the restoration of my car. Is there anybody else out there doing the same that I should look at? The search did not turn up much, but I think there is more out there than I am finding. Also, you put the logo from my website in the title bar of my wiki, which is great. However, the background of the logo is asphalt, whereas the background of the wiki title is black. Any way to change the background of the wiki title? —Wilsont

2009-04-26 18:25:35   Somehow, I figured one more person also trying to explain the same concept as everyone else wouldn't work. The best bet to break through is to show informal sympathy, most importantly on the same level he was presenting and is more likely to be receptive to. —EdWins

2009-04-28 18:23:23   step by step. Going to wait another two or three days, then make another comment. He's still a bit peeved off. I mentioned [WWW]this indirectly a while ago to JA regarding the real-name talks, but it applies in this situation here too: "IMO, people have entrenched. I think often regular editors quickly form up in a "us vs them" nature that is off putting to newbies." I can't really blame him, I often think certain people are too quick to jump in with reverts and cramming "this is how the wiki is" down newbies throats, though it is frustrating for those people who try to help guide gently. —EdWins

2009-05-08 23:28:29   I was just about to leave you a comment. I'm distracting from the talk pages for a reason, I don't think he's ready for it. I think he needs to be able to shielded for a few days, browse around, and get out of that protective victim cocoon. He needs to understand a bit more about the "how" of the wiki, and certainly the "why", or he's going to get lynched by a mob when he tries to use the talk pages. And fair or not, there certainly is a mob waiting. He'll have to be 120% better to have a chance. I want him to understand the talk page, understand "why" someone would say that and it not be a personal attack, and then for him to tackle it. Of course, our philosophies may differ. I'm not entirely sure why I took an interest in him. On one hand, he's trying, and on the other hand he freaks out and throws a tantrum. —EdWins

2009-05-08 23:30:59   Anyway, I'm done for now, which was why I was about to leave you a comment. This was what I was going to say to you a few minutes ago: I was "softening him up." I figured for some reason he'd read my comments without feeling like I was going to attack him, because I think I was one of the few who didn't (but also stayed away from his edits so that he didn't feel threatened). And now, with some basic knowledge of the wiki to think on, you could do the followup on specifics. I wanted to lay a primer, if you will. Carry on, good sir. I think eventually he'll be fine on the wiki, if he can control his temper and people don't bait him too much. —EdWins

2009-06-12 05:52:11   Hi Jabberwokky,

Yes, I am quite familiar with the address macro (I have over 7,000 contributions in various wikis - mostly RocWiki.org). The page I changed already had the full address, so I preserved the original authors content and made it a single line with the address macro added. It would be nice if WikiSpot had the extended address macro that we have on RocWiki that allows the second argument as the display name. I have found that geo-coding of addresses sometimes needs the zip code. One personal peeve I have about some tabled info is that the extra spacing between lines makes for a less compact display, as in the previous version of the page, where the editor put the street and city on separate table rows (:>}

As a active gnome, perhaps you can tell me if there is a provision for inter-wiki INCLUDES. I could swear I saw it in some documentation somewhere. There is some useful common info for Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.

Thanks

Brad —BradMandell

2009-07-25 16:44:30   Hey you. Thanks for the comments on the PawtucketRI wiki. I'm brand new to wikispot, but I kind of know how to plagiarize. Any suggestions, please let me know. —DabucketJohn

2009-07-30 17:15:23   I think I have to give up on RealC. I've tried a few times, he won't even let you and JA near him (figuratively) for perceived past slights. It just annoys me, because I really thought and still think he COULD learn and become a better user. I don't feel he's doing his thing out of bad intentions like SO did, I think it's just ignorance and a refusal to try to understand. Blah. —EdWins

2009-08-06 22:49:31   Hah, yeah, when I saw the comment he had posted, I was like, "Wait, did I miss something here?" —JoePomidor

2009-08-31 00:38:41   Howdy JabberW = you mentioned admins could define tables in the CSS as a way to get around text formatting limitations - but nowhere do I find any instructions on how to do this! Please cold you advise... an eg. read y to tweek would be great! —NormanNitram

2009-09-03 00:49:09   Hello, I have a question about the random restaurant picker on the Ithaca Wiki restaurant page. Ive taken kept tract of the statistics and it disproportionately chooses pizza places by a lot. I wonder if this has anything to do with how the way the list is done, it never seems to pick Asian places and I have a feeling It has something to do with the Asian places being in sublists. Is there anyway to fix this. —MattHh

2009-09-03 23:40:49   Dijon is double listed in the upscale section, which is not a double header section. I don't think I have ever got one from the double headers. —MattHh

2009-09-06 21:10:15   Hi JW, I'm contacting you regarding the bug "Using the include macro causes footnotes so far to be dumped on page" ([WWW]bug 36). The include macro appeared as an ideal solution for our design/content management ideas, i.e. creating text boxes, with nice table layouts, by macro-including a page with the table (and text) in it. Example: the table is [WWW]here, and it is macro-included [WWW]there. (In this example, the bug doesn't appear simply because the include macro appears before the first footnote).

The result is rather interesting. If it's not too much work to ask you or another generous colleague of yours, could you check and see whether this bug is a nasty one, or if there's a chance it can be fixed on the medium-short term? Otherwise, we'd have to find some trick, like screen captures of text boxes + use the image macro instead... (?).

Thanks, and congrats for this great wiki. —PerigGouanvic

2009-09-13 00:47:58   Re: Multiple Columns in Footnotes: > Hi, JabberWokky. I researched and then played around with the CSS, but was not able to figure out how to get multiple columns. My footnote text is already pretty small, so I wouldn't like to go any smaller. I have 70 footnotes in the article I'm working on right now, so I really could use 2 or 3 columns. Thanks in advance. :) —Alderman

Hi again. I'm guessing you're swamped with real-life work - which I can fully understand. I'm still interested, just so you know. Thanks. :) —Alderman

2009-10-08 15:59:21   Heya JabberWokky! What is the consensus for including a proper citation for creative commons content copied from another wiki? Say I wanted to use large parts of Davis Wiki's Ethics page for the Pgh Wiki, is citing the source in the comment field of the original copy & paste edit be sufficient?

How about if I wanted to pull some creative commons photos from Flickr, is the best way to cite the images a link to the flickr page in the caption?

Thanks! —pittsburghDanWillenbring

2009-10-26 20:10:40   What kind of "stuff" does he keep trying to add that you keep vanishing off? Links to his crappy site, personal attacks, or ..? I'm mighty curious to see one before you delete it :P —EdWins

2009-10-30 17:49:58   [WWW]here. —EdWins

2009-10-31 13:24:23   Is doing a find and replace across a list of pages something you could do? We have a phrase we would like to change in 700+ pages. —Mwanner

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