Editing User talk:Loci

I've been seeing your edits on the recent changes page for a while now.  Good job. :-) [[User:Emufarmers|Emufarmers]] 08:22, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the information regarding creating new pages.  I have removed my question from [[Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Centralized Discussion#Content|where I posted it]] and will add a Wiki Editing section to the [[Frequently Asked Questions|FAQ]]. [[User:13thEssence|13thEssence]] 00:30, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

==Creature Type Pages==
Are those supposed to be stub articles, or did you mean to create them as categories? --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 22:28, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

:Mainly I created them as stub articles so I would have somewhere to link the "interesting" attributes in the creature info box. That way the info box can just say "No Stun" with a link to more information if the user desires, but without cluttering up the info box with excessive common knowledge. While I also considered adding these tags as categories to the proper creature pages, I haven't put in the time to make that all work yet. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 22:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

::Eh, I tried to set up categories for the various "interesting" attributes, but the creature pages would display the categories without actually being assigned to the categories. Presumably it was a problem with transclusion depth, or formatting, or something. Someone more familiar with the system could probably get it to work, but I didn't feel like spending any more time on the problem so I removed the categories. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 12:39, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
:::That's because you were just inserting '''page links''' - if you wanted to put them in categories, you should've used <nowiki>[[Category:DF2012:whatever]]</nowiki> rather than just <nowiki>[[whatever]]</nowiki>. --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 13:52, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

::::Not quite. I actually had added the categories using the <nowiki>{{Category|foo}}</nowiki> template, but removed them because they didn't work. Your links aren't working for me, either. When I click on [[:Category:DF2012:Flying]], for instance, I get ''"This category currently contains no pages or media."'' If, however, I add the category template <nowiki>{{Category|Flying}}</nowiki> to a creature page directly, the creature shows up on the category page. However, I certainly don't want to modify each and every creature page individually, so any workable solution has to be based on a template transcluding data from the creature /raws. If the creature pages won't register in the categories, I'd rather have the links to the "stub articles" than links to non-functional categories. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 14:24, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
:::::Using {{tl|Category|foo}} will include it in the category and {{tl|Catlink|foo}} will make an actual link appear on the page - if you want both to happen, then you need to use both of those (see {{tl|attrib proc}} which I just recently modified). --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] 14:50, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

::::::If you click on [[:Category:DF2012:Flying]], you will find that the majority of creatures with flying are *not* currently included. This is exactly the same problem I ran into with my revision [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Template:Attrib_proc&oldid=179580 179580], which looks remarkably similar to your revsion [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Template:Attrib_proc&oldid=179609 179609]. In short, the creature pages show the category links, but aren't actually added to the category until the creature page is edited directly (the three flying creatures currently listed in the category have all been edited since your change). That means the categories won't be complete until *every* creature page with an ability has been edited (or the category lists are administratively regenerated), which is why I chose to revert the categories and just link to an ability page. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 23:15, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

:::::::Well, it was empty... then when I edited [[Giant bat]] it was added to the category page (even though I didn't edit the creatureinfo box). I only added a sentence about how much [[fun]] giant bats are to see what would happen. Strange that just editing a page would add it to a category... --[[User:Lethosor|Lethosor]] ([[User_talk:Lethosor|talk]]) 02:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

::::::::Yep; that's exactly the problem I ran into. For a technical explanation: whenever a template is edited, the wiki software queues up jobs to automatically "regenerate" all the pages that include that template. As those jobs are processed, the pages should pick up new categories from the template. Unfortunately, the wiki software is not handling this specific case correctly--it appears that the raws are not being transcluded correctly during the regeneration, leading the conditional logic to conclude that no creature has the [FLIER] tag. When users edit the creature pages, though, the categories ''are'' regenerated correctly because the raws ''are'' transcluded correctly. I'm still looking for a solution to resolve the automatic regeneration problem, but since it only happens in the server's back-end processing it's hard to pin down. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 08:47, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

::::::::: Wow, I just noticed you said pretty much exactly what I said in the post before. Anyway, I noticed [[Template:Creaturelookup/0]] is using "/raw" as the path to raws. Maybe the wiki software isn't resolving this path correctly (which could be hard to track down, since we use an uncommon namespace scheme). --[[User:Lethosor|Lethosor]] ([[User_talk:Lethosor|talk]]) 21:04, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

== Regenerating cached categories ==

I will reset the caches this weekend. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 09:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

:Thanks! --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 16:02, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

:It appears that the pages still aren't being categorized--the jobs are likely stuck in the [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Job_queue Job Queue] (currently [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=statistics 730 jobs]  waiting). [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:RunJobs.php Manually running the queue] will hopefully put everything in the proper categories. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 21:35, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
::I simply forgot to clear the appropriate caches.  The full job queue is run on a scripting server every 30 seconds, that estimate is always wrong. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 21:19, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
::For context, a single page rebuild creates about 100 jobs in the queue, so the expected number of jobs for this reset should be in the 10k-100k range. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 21:20, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

:::Alright; sorry for the confusion. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 21:43, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
::::No worries.  The refresh cycle is running now and will take between 6-10 hours to complete. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 21:45, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Just an update - clearing the cache failed because of some silly issues with the way mediawiki creates jobs.  We will need to null edit every page in order to get things working properly again.  I will probably set up a bot to do this for us. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 05:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

:That, sadly, does not sound like a very workable solution. When I changed the formatting in one of the templates, all the categories were emptied again. So all the creature pages would probably have to be null-edited again after every change to any template on the creature pages. Unless the bot can be fully automated, the categories are practically guaranteed to be incomplete. In light of these problems it would perhaps be best to scrap the categories entirely. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 19:03, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
:: Let's not do that yet.  I'm planning on upgrading mediawiki again shortly, and I believe there are fixes to this issue in newer versions of the software. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 01:26, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I did some experimentation on this problem; the automatic regeneration ''is'' running, but it appears that the creature raws are not being transcluded correctly during the regeneration, which prevents detection of the necessary tags. I believe the #df_raw function is not correctly returning the raws when executed from the context of the job queue process--is that something you could take a look at? Alternately, is this code available somewhere I could take a look at it? Unfortunately, since this is probably DFwiki-specific code, I doubt a Mediawiki update will fix it. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 09:12, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
:[https://github.com/quietust/DFRawFunctions] is the repo. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 06:34, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

::Thank you. While I don't see any significant problems in the code, I do see several paths that could lead #df_raw to return without the raws. You suggested above that the job queue is running on a separate server. Are the two config variables $wgDFRawEnableDisk and $wgDFRawPath setup correctly on this server? You might also try setting the correct values in DFRawFunctions.php directly, in case the global config values aren't being applied when the job queue is run. Whichever user is running to process the job queue needs to have read permissions to the raws directory and all files and subdirectories inside. That user may also need directory-list/execute permissions on those directories as well. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 17:11, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

== Variations ==

Thanks for fixing up the issues with namespaces and large/gigantic variations (although I must admit, "Tis" is pretty interesting). I tried adding spaces to [[:Template:Creature/basename]], but I'm unsure if #mreplace is aware of spaces. It looks like the variations don't show up on [[DF2012:Giant mantis]] (although I neglected to see if they did before, but they probably didn't, since Giant mantis man and Giant giant mantis don't exist). The link is still incorrect on [[:Template:Creature/variation links]], however. Also, I created [[:Template:Creature/exists]] as a potential replacement for #ifexists (which is "expensive" - the examples at [[:Template:Creature/variation links]] list an expensive function count of 68/100). A DFRaw function should do the trick, but I have yet to find a working solution. The problem I ran into previously was how the raws of base creatures contain no references to variations. I suppose, as a workaround, we could have a script build a cache-type template (probably run outside of the wiki and generating template code), but it would likely break easily with updates and take up a lot of space for a template. --{{User:Lethosor/sig}} 22:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
:Note: [[DF2012:Giant tortoise man]] does display variation links, but none to itself. --{{User:Lethosor/sig}} 22:56, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

::I wouldn't worry about the expensive function count--each invocation only uses 4, but the 17 examples on the template page are the reason why that particular page is so high. In normal use, each creature page should only need 4 (actually 6 since creature/variation uses 2 as well). I have an idea to override the variations output which should make it possible to "special case" around the bugs. Really, "Large" and "Gigantic" could be handled as special cases too, since there are only a few of them. I'll see if I can get that working here shortly. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 23:19, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

== Double Redirects ==

I'll take a look and see what broke there.  It used to work properly but something got finagled at some point. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 18:24, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

== Image Issues ==

Fixed sliver barb on the [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/File:Textile-industry-flowchart.PNG textile flowchart]. thanks for pointing that out --[[User:Agm|Agm]] ([[User talk:Agm|talk]]) 00:21, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Should be fixed now.  Thanks for the heads up. --[[User:Briess|Briess]] 20:40, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:Wow; that was fast! Thank you for your dedication to the Dwarf Fortress Wiki. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] 20:47, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

== Creature categories ==

In case you haven't noticed, the recent upgrade seems to have fixed the issue with the categories ([[:Category:DF2012:Exotic pet]] lists 273 creatures). --{{User:Lethosor/sig}} 12:58, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

:They worked briefly, but sadly they're now broken again in a new way: [[:Category:DF2012:Exotic pet]] currently includes [[Cat]], [[Dog]], [[Dwarf]], and all other creatures that use the attribute template. So we traded empty categories for incorrectly-filled categories, resulting in equally worthless information. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 20:39, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
::Just a sec, I've started the repair process there -- for future reference, when this happens, just do a null edit of [[Template:Creaturelookup/0]] (that is, an edit that doesn't change anything), and the wiki software will automatically fix this, though it might take a little while (incidentally, it wasn't the update that fixed it, it was me, using this trick) --[[User:Zzedar|Zzedar]] ([[User talk:Zzedar|talk]]) 20:55, 13 April 2013 (UTC)
:::I also started rerunning all the category regeneration, so it should be super fixed. :) --[[User:Briess|Briess]] ([[User talk:Briess|talk]]) 21:00, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

:Excellent! That appears to have fixed it. I don't know why my change to [[Template:Attrib proc]] wouldn't cause the same regeneration, but I'm just glad to finally have useful categories. Now we finally have a list of all the critters with [[:Category:DF2012:Shell|shells]] and [[:Category:DF2012:Syndrome|syndromes]]. --[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 21:17, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

== [[DF:Next]] ==

I have no idea why I created that. I might have thought it would be useful in a template, but right now it's only used on [[Special:WhatLinksHere/Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki:Next|2 content pages]]. The only reason I can think of is that it could help detect things that need updating once the next version is actually released, but that can probably be accomplished with a search. Personally, I agree that "the next version" is clearer than "DF2013". --[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 21:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

== Recent changes to the exploratory mining page ==

<sub>(Recent changes page lurker)</sub> Why did you remove the reference to the "Pinwheel Shafts" from that page? Seemed quite appropriate and non-harmful. Also, if you could link any research you point out in the text (mainly about FPS death, which I believe should go to a new, separate section but within the same topic), that would be great.--[[User:Doktoro Reichard|Doktoro Reichard]] ([[User talk:Doktoro Reichard|talk]]) 22:39, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

:Eh, that design was significantly similar to the mineshaft design, yet less efficient and did not provide 100% visibility. The only "claim to fame" listed was protecting against dwarves falling down stairways, an event so rare in this version that I've never even seen it happen. I didn't feel that the design was particularly clever, so I removed it from the page. If you are fond of it, feel free to put it back.

:[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104643 This forum thread] was the source of my comment on FPS death. Specifically, [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104643.msg3096896#msg3096896 blue sam3 notes that open space causes lag], and later on [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=104643.msg3403998#msg3403998 ghostwoods compares linear space to square space].--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 20:13, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

:: No, I'm not particularly fond of that design (I'm more of an organic development kind of fellow), but I do like to know why things that might have been good yesterday are deleted today, without any apparent reason (even in the changelog).
:: Also, I did read that post fully (it's even in my userpage due to the relevance). I would have to argue that just opening space by mining costs FPS. What does cost is, as I think you mentioned, the increased pathing calculations that results from the open space. That research also came a bit before the current DF2012 according to the [[Release information]] page. This being said, my main concern about that part is that FPS death is a diagonal subject to Exploratory mining and would deserve a section of its own, if enough relevant information is present in the page.--[[User:Doktoro Reichard|Doktoro Reichard]] ([[User talk:Doktoro Reichard|talk]]) 22:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

== &lt;gallery> ==

The reason [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=DF2012:Forgotten_beast&diff=197254&oldid=197231 this] didn't work is because parser tags (like &lt;gallery> and &lt;pre>) don't treat their content as wiki markup. The easiest way around this is to use <nowiki>{{#tag:}}</nowiki>, which passes its (parsed) arguments to a tag:
<pre>{{#tag:gallery| {{/gallery}} }}</pre>
Also, nice work with the random images and galleries – using pipes is a lot cleaner than using Regexfunctions (which I apparently hit the limit on when redoing the old gallery). &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 16:52, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

:Ah, that makes sense. I think I'll leave the forgotten beast page the way it is though--it's already quite long, and the gallery works well enough as a linked subpage. My goal was to add random images to the forgotten beast page, but when I researched the Sg template I discovered it was only a single-purpose design. Rather than copy it and create another single-purpose template, I decided to generalize it. Luckily the syntax for images and galleries is interchangeable, so I was able to simplify the code and take the images directly from galleries. The random images don't seem to rotate very often (probably the result of server caching), but other than that they seem to work. Hopefully I can find more great artwork on the forums to spruce up the wiki. On the topic of images, I think the main page gallery could stand to be cleaned up a bit; one long string of text does not translate well to a thumbnail. Some could be cropped to a more compelling image (like the "attend party" one has been); others may require reformating or replacement.--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 19:53, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

::Purging should usually update the image - I use [[User:Lethosor/purge_link.js|this script]] to add a menu option that does this to the navigation bar (under the move/watch menu). I agree that some of the captions need to be shortened - I like the fact that they're more visible than before, but some of them end up being too long when displayed (particularly for narrow images, like [[:File:Cacamefight.gif]]). &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 20:08, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

== Plant raw pages ==

Not sure if you noticed, but QuietBot already created DF2014 plant raw pages (at least trees, possibly more) - see [[DF2014:Orange tree/raw]], for example. &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 01:26, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

:Wish I had caught that before I created all those duplicates. We seem to have a naming issue (which is carried over from the raws): [[DF2014:Alder/raw]] vs [[DF2014:Abaca tree/raw]], [[DF2014:pineapple/raw]] vs [[DF2014:Watermelon vine/raw]] vs. [[DF2014:Raspberry bush/raw]] vs. [[DF2014:Tomato plant/raw]], etc. Sorry for the mess; feel free to remove the unnecessary pages and clean it up however you prefer.--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 02:00, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

::FWIW, I prefer the shorter names. You can inline-wikilink [[cherry]] in a number of different ways ([[cherry]] wood, [[cherry]] fruit, [[cherry]] wine, etc.), however [[cherry tree]] is significantly less accommodating ([[cherry tree]] wood, [[cherry tree]] wine? [[cherry tree|cherry wine]]?). Adding the extra descriptors doesn't really gain us anything unless we want a separate page for cherries-as-a-fruit.--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 02:21, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
:::For all of the plant raw pages, I used the plant's [NAME:foo] (or [ALL_NAMES:bar]) token; thus, the inconsistency comes from Toady himself. --[[User:Quietust|Quietust]] ([[User talk:Quietust|talk]]) 13:15, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

:I went ahead and finished creating the stub pages for the new trees.--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 16:22, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

== #param ==

I'm curious about your [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Template:Plantlookup&diff=next&oldid=215972 series of edits] to [[Template:Plantlookup]] - is there a problem with {{<nowiki/>#param}}? &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 21:26, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

:I was trying to get <nowiki>{{#ifeq:{{{wiki|no}}}|no|_A_|_B_}}</nowiki> to work [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Template:Crop/DF2014&curid=34609&diff=215974&oldid=215969 here]. I would expect that if the wiki parameter is not defined then this would return _A_; instead it returns _B_. I was modifying the #param call to check if it was returning a defined value given undefined inputs. (My results are inconclusive since I later realized someone had added a [http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=Template:Plantlookup/DF2014&diff=prev&oldid=215976 redundant layer of #param processing].)--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 21:44, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

::Oh, right. The {{{arg|default}}} syntax only returns "default" if arg isn't passed at all - if it's passed to the template with an empty value, that will expand to an empty string instead (I think #param behaves the same way). Making the "wiki" parameter default to "no" in [[Template:Plantlookup/DF2014]] should work. &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 02:58, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

== New creatures ==

Are you adding/updating these creature pages with a script/bot/whatever or manually? I'm asking because the [[Graphic_set#Creatures|graphic set]], [[Tileset#Creatures|tileset]], and [[Creature]] pages still need to be updated with the new creatures as well.
Is there an easy way to pull these from the raws automatically? [[User:CLA|CLA]] ([[User talk:CLA|talk]]) 20:55, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

:I wrote a perl script to do the grunt work. I'll see about updating those pages as well...--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 21:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

::If you'd like to make a bot account, I can give it the bot flag so it doesn't clutter up recent changes (as long as you pass ``bot=true`` when editing pages, that is). &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 22:42, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

:::Thanks for the offer, but [[User:Lightfoot|Lightfoot]] already made all the new pages. I'm just crunching the raws to plug into pages which have long lists of creatures.--[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 23:27, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
::''Much'' appreciated. Thank you, Loci.[[User:CLA|CLA]] ([[User talk:CLA|talk]]) 10:19, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

== v0.43.05 raws ==

0.43.05 raws should be up now. (It's been a while since you mentioned this and since you've been active, so I thought I'd reply here too.) &mdash;[[User:Lethosor|<span style="color:#074">Lethosor</span>]] ([[User talk:Lethosor|<span style="color:#092">talk</span>]]) 01:44, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

:Thanks! --[[User:Loci|Loci]] ([[User talk:Loci|talk]]) 14:54, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

== Multiple redirects leads to incorrect namespace ==

Discussion here: [[Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki_talk:Centralized_Discussion#Solution_for_this]] [[User:Brightgalrs|Brightgalrs]] ([[User talk:Brightgalrs|talk]]) 10:49, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

== Discussion in, supposedly, proper context... ==

...because context does matter.

With all my attempts to correct the following:

"Murky pools won't be shown on the [[embark|embark screen]], but they are '''a ubiquitous feature'''"

 ...for some sort of highly, blatantly obvious spelling/grammar mistake, that honestly needed (or so I thought) no edit summary to not be correct and stay correct, but for your semi-irrelevant vomiting about "an usage" I wouldn't find myself in the bind I now do. (Yes, its a mistake to me, hence the corrections in the first place) The question now becomes: How to proceed ''other than leaving it alone'' (as you seem to have insinuated with your "an usage" interjection on my talk page, unfortunately)?  I mean, yeah, SPAG, corrected thus:   "Murky pools won't be shown on the [[embark|embark screen]], but they are '''an ubiquitous feature'''" sets off my personal annoyances (Aspergers, frankly) a good deal less, but.. 

...*shrug* What say you? [[User:Silverwing235|Silverwing235]] ([[User talk:Silverwing235|talk]]) 18:50, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

== Appreciation ==
I've recently had an unfortunate reason to look at your contribs, and I think it's too bad for the wiki's sake that you're not still an active editor. '''—'''[[User:Sriefmadsakzro|'''οɼѕаk''']] 23:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)