Suggestion

This is a page soley for making suggestions to The Aquarium Wiki. Please type your suggestions below and sign using four tildes ( ~ ).

Wikiproject

Perhaps we could organize articles on specific subjects.

Jourdy288 22:22, 31 January 2008 (CST)

which articles? most articles are organised on specific subjects. --Cat 05:33, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Right, I mean articles that, oh, wait a minute, sorry.Jourdy288 18:01, 11 February 2008 (CST)

OK, new one. How about article creation for different species, i.e. AquariumWikiproject Catfish, Project Tetras, etc.

Don't forget to sign :)

It would be possible for something along these lines, but such specific information requires multiple dedicated and knowledgeable editors, something we do not have at the moment. As far as I know most people who edit this site regularly are general fish keepers, they don't really specialize in any one species or genus.

Something that may fit the bill until we have more regular editors is a Portal system, please see wikipedia's portal information. Its essentially what your looking for.

Personally I would rather see more detailed and complete animal profiles, and more of a Salt water section. However its an open encyclopedia so please add anything you feel would be useful to the community. The rest of us will come by and check it to insure it meets general standards.

--Brian 00:16, 12 February 2008 (CST)

i'm still a little confused over what you want differently than what is already on the site Jourdy. there are already articles on catfish/tetras etc, how much more detail do you want that wouldn't mean copying sites such as fishbase, or species specific sites such as planet catfish or all the african cichlid websites? i agree with Brian that we should concentrate on completing what we have, then think about expanding information further. i've been trying on the saltwater section but i've never ACTUALLY kept saltwater so it's all just going by research that i read elsewhere on the web or in PFK. there are hundreds of stubbed pages with little or no information, lets get these filled up! the more information that is here the more likely we'll get more traffic and more species-experienced people visiting and contributing. --Cat 06:17, 12 February 2008 (CST)

Cat, those are just my thoughts. THe thing is we need to work on what we have, but you are right. We do need more people. Perhaps, though, we could have Projects the way Wikipedia has them, just as soon as we have more members.

Sorry, forgot to sign. Jourdy288 15:07, 12 February 2008 (CST)

Do we have Barnstars? Jourdy288 18:44, 16 February 2008 (CST)

Barnstars? Not heard of that. Care to explain?

--Quatermass 14:03, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Right here w:Wikipedia:Barnstar

Jourdy288|12:21, 18 February 2008 (CST)

YouTube
I've been active on YouTube lately. I hope to expand a YouTube Aquarium Wiki Encyclopaedia Channel which educates and hopefully leads people back to the site.

I started creating a channel under my own username, then realised I needed a dedicated channel.

If any of you have video editing experience then feel free to let me know.

I've also been busy updating my other sites which have become a bit neglected lately. :-)

--Quatermass 14:03, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Stubs
I have created Cichlid Stub; we should make more, i.e. tetra, betta, etc. Jourdy288 17:31, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

Sounds fine. We have quite a few misc. stubs that could be better categorized, overall they do not help the site's for visitors but could help new editors. I'm not sure if you do, but make sure you keep an eye on the Recent Changes page to see the edits everyone else is doing, specifically the edits people make to your pages or things you have worked on. One of the best ways to improve, such as I added to your cichlid stub category, the Stubs category. Making it a sub category. --Brian 19:59, 17 March 2008 (CDT)

indeed, i'm crap with wiki template codes, it would be a good idea to do others. also, while we're on the subject of these little headers, the "need image" one, can that be rewritten so it's less page-invasive? i don't like using it because it's so huge! --Cat 04:45, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

I've shrunk the Need Images template for ya. --Brian 14:52, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

Forum
I've been looking into phpBB and the possibility of having a forum on our site. This would ideally be an extra tab next to the article, discussion, edit, etc. in which people can click to go to a forum on that article. I know I find keeping track of even the basic discussion difficult as editors post replied to each other on different pages! Makes sense to have it lumped together. Comments?

phpBB does have an extension that allows phpBB V2 members and mediawiki members to share the same login details. May be we could try it out?

--Quatermass 06:21, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

i'm all for there being a forum! i would bring a more community aspect to the site for the technophobe who's only used to message boards and not this discussion element of wiki sites. --Cat 06:33, 18 March 2008 (CDT)

When we started the site I wanted to avoid a forum so we could more freely advertise on other community forums (so they wouldn't really see us as competition). Since however we have become a more formitable site. The biggest problem with forums, is they require a bit more moderation. Not a huge problem because we already have three fairly dedicated editors and a few on the up and up. The other issue is we need to keep the forum active, people will not post if they do not see recent posts. To discuss it, I'm going to throw the Simple Machines Forum out there as my preference. If you look at the MediaWiki Extension Matrix, there is a bit more support for SMF then phpBB. Sadly I've never used SMF in production, but I have heard good things. --Brian 15:01, 18 March 2008 (C DT)

I am for a forum too, just wondering, though, advertising? Do we have aquabanners? Anyhow, I do have forum experience (not as a mod or anything) but yes I could help on the forum. It could also be used more in article creation. Someone asks a question, it gets answered, the answer could be added to an article.

Jourdy288 20:07, 19 March 2008 (CDT)

I've taken a look at SMF and it looks very neat. The MediaWiki/SMG integration however seems to be designed for SMF users to link into a Wiki, rather than having a Wiki which links into a forum! (It seems that login is handed by SMF rather than the Wiki for example.) Plenty of wiki admins crying out for such an integration. But they're all unfinished despite being a few years old. --Quatermass 05:47, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

Quatermass, I agree that the Integration sucks overall, we can give it a try. If you want to install it go ahead, otherwise I'll do it when I can (two tests in electronics and em fields next week :. Worst case scenario if the integration sucks I will work on a module for it myself.

Jourdy288, I have signed up for various things before such as aquabanner, and aquarank, etc. but overall I don't really have faith in them. To much member fraud etc. All things considered, I think we would be better off using paid advertising if we wanted to go that route. This site generates in excess of 50k page views a month. If we put ads up ourselves we could make the money necessary for a private server, and/or advertising. However so far we have chosen not to add banners to the website.--Brian 23:24, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

Ok, the basic SMF forum is up and running. I've not yet added any MediaWiki/SMF integration so if you want to browser or login you'll have to manually login. See forum

Once you're in I'll make you all administrators. --Quatermass 06:10, 21 March 2008 (CDT)

you spelt encyclopedia wrong! --Cat 11:49, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

You need a better dictionary Catxx ;-)

See Encyclopaedia

or

Both spellings 'encyclopedia' and 'encyclopaedia' are current.

Though 'encyclopaedia' is often considered the formal way when discussing scientific work.

--Quatermass 12:06, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

but "paedia" reminds me of "paedophile"...--Cat 12:39, 22 March 2008 (CDT)

I can't being to wonder why. It's pronounced the same.

--Quatermass 08:10, 23 March 2008 (CDT)

well i'm posting on it! with jourdy occasionally, c'mon guys, get plugging and posting! --Cat 09:23, 26 March 2008 (CDT)