wiki updates
hey guys, if you don't mind i'm going to take this time to provide some WikiUpdates™ since Stuff has been Happening.
- you may have noticed that the spam is back. don't worry, it should be gone soon, but there are some bugs in the spam protection that need to be worked out (nothing too major). if you'd like, when you see a spam page, you can add the spam template to it (by typing {{spam}} anywhere), which will put the page in a category so that it can be deleted by a bot.
- i altered both the album and song "infoboxes" (examples here and here), including the addition of an optional catalog number field in the album template. i'm not actually sure how much of joco's stuff is cataloged (i don't own any of his things physically except the artificial heart lp), so if anyone can fill in the rest of that data then please come forward! additionally, if there are other information fields that ought to be included in those/other infoboxes, then that should also be discussed.
- on a related note, is an image actually necessary for every song? it doesn't seem exactly necessary to me, except on pages with their own specific illustrations/etc.
- does anyone have any suggestions for the appearance of the wiki? the CSS is still open for changes! also, i think some pages (like lyrics pages or song pages) can be assigned specific templates to maintain a consistent and distinct style for each type of page. just a thought.
- if anyone is interested, i've been considering the user group rights (viewable here) on the wiki, and i think there should be some changes. for one thing, i think all emailconfirmed users should be able to patrol edits, and that moderators shouldn't have edits autopatrolled (no offense to the moderators, it's just that patrolling is one of my favourite wiki features and i think it should be practiced widely). if anyone else has suggestions/etc. then they should feel free to mention those as well.
- just for the public benefit: i made a bot which can do simple search-and-replace-type jobs and other simple tasks (like deleting every page in a category or on a txt list, for instance). if anyone has suggestions for tasks (lately i've just been adding categories to pages and deleting spam), then that should also be voiced.
i might be forgetting some things. if so i will post them here as i remember... 
Comments
@mtgordon yeah i think it makes sense to have those, but aside from those and a few others (like the portal thingy on "still alive"), or single covers if mr. coulton ever releases any singles (or has he already? i'm so bad at this), i think it gets a bit excessive.
Bumpety-bump.
I didn't want to disrupt cruise planning too much, and I know I risk coming across as a bit of a buzzkill, but I really want to figure out some way to organize cruise-specific stuff that goes on the wiki without crowding out the actual JoCo content of JoCopedia.
As you've probably noticed, I'm a little obsessive about maintaining proper organization in the forums, which carries over for the wiki, except with the wiki I'm much less likely to know how to do things.
My proposal is to create a new MediaWiki namespace within the wiki. If you didn't just click that link, here's what Wikipedia says about it:
So I'd like to recommend creating a namespace for cruise-specific topics. This would basically be a sandbox for people who are going / have gone on the cruise so you can organize/promote/inform/plan as you see fit, without affecting usability for people who are actually using JoCopedia to learn more about JoCo music etc. For instance, the page "JoCo Cruise Crazy" would continue to give a basic summary of the cruises, then cross-link to, say, "Cruise:JoCo Cruise Crazy 3", for information about unofficial events, fan meetups, games, tech, etc.
What do you all think? I welcome any objections, corrections, improvements, or suggestions. Again, my goal here is not to prevent you crazy people from posting all the crazy things you did/want to do to a collaborative space -- the way I see it, you guys should keep doing exactly what you're doing, just stick a prefix (e.g. "Cruise:") in front of everything.
I am also not a unilateral committee. Nothing is set in stone; you could consider this a request for comments, as it were.
I'd particularly like to invite @Apollo, resident wikisheriff, to comment, in hopes that she sees this mention (and that at-sign mentions actually work, which they don't always).
(I do want to say that the next step for creating a namespace, if we decide we want one, would be to ask @Scarface or someone to go touch the MediaWiki configuration; until the namespace is actually created, there's no point moving pages there, or so I'm given to understand.)
Is such a thing even possible!
Thanks for the replies, much appreciated
I'm assuming the lack of responses means that most of you don't have strong feelings either way; if anyone isn't comfortable with this or has an alternate wiki organizational scheme to put forward, please let me know by, say, Saturday, Feb 23. If I don't hear otherwise, I'll be e-mailing @Scarface then to petition for this new namespace.
sorry I haven't been paying any attention to the forum here! I was quite disheartened when my initial attempts at curbing spam worked for a few days...then stopped working at all. So I sort of stopped paying much attention to JoCo and y'all. Anyway I think Scarface and I have FINALLY enacted some measures that will stop the spam altogether, but right now editing/deleting/etc. are disabled while he works out some PHP bugs (a big shoutout to Scarface for taking the time to do that!). Hopefully in the next few days the wiki will be editable and fairly spam-free!
@Bry (is that how I do that?*) as far as the cruise namespace goes, I am strongly in favour of that idea! I agree that Cruise stuff greatly clogs up the main namespace and isn't really relevant enough to be there; however the information should definitely be documented and kept in records. Plus, it would probably make a good buffer zone: cruise-related content that may or may not warrant a main article can be posted there and worked into a proper article (or not) and then be moved into the main namespace. Have you emailed Scarface about it?
*apparently not
I should probably tell you what the changes we made are! So on that note:
There you go!
OKAY, everything is now up and running! You can all edit, etc.
mizzie: feel free to go ahead and create that show page now!