Talk: Community Portal

Uses of the "Portal"

As this "Community Portal" is a link in the sidebar (or similar place in various skins) we should make good use of it.

Uses of Community Portals vary across MediaWiki; but all of them that I've noticed give viewers some idea of where in the wiki they can go for specific activities or information (enlarging on the Main Page in some respects). Here's the one I wrote, in case it's any use as half a guide: http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal

Robin Patterson 05:51, 6 Jul 2005 (UTC)

Admin rights

Please let me know if you'd like admin rights. I'd be happy to share the rights and responsibility with the contributing folks here who have some wiki experience. --CocoaZen 03:12, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I've managed quite happily on lotr: and genealogy: without. But in case anyone's keen we may as well set up a Requests for adminship page and an Administrators page. Done in a flash, of course. Robin Patterson 03:47, 23 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Aerik's wiki idea: "Kids Eat Free"

(The following has just been copied from Wikia Central, with one link created; Aerik's six-item list is nicely placed on the Parenting wiki but hardly anything else is on that wiki; we can make ours more geographical and less child-oriented, maybe. - Robin Patterson 23:23, 4 Nov 2005 (UTC))

How about a community to discuss and share resources for family activities? What I'm thinking of is an a very large version of a list I have, "Kids Eat Free" - the original idea was what restaurants have free or discounted meals for children, but I'd expand it further to any family friendly discounts and free resources. More examples include: free admission to the San Francisco zoo on the first Wednesday of the month, Discount movies on Tuesdays at a local moviehouse, etc. Obviously there is a geographical component to this, but sometimes not. I think that's okay too. Any ideas? My very short list had input from a dozen parents I know locally, so I think it could be a great thing. --Aerik 04:31, 19 Mar 2005 (EST)

Hmm - no feedback pro or con so far - I'm not sure if that's good or bad! I feel good about the idea, and will probably email some parents to get a feel for how well it'd be accepted. The only thing I'm really wrestling with is organization. Clearly, the main organization will have be geographic, but how so? One page per city? One page per entry (say, a specific restaurant or chain of restaurants) with categorization by type and location? Maybe that's the best. I'd love to hear from others. Thanks. --User:Aerik 00:21, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)

Could this be part of the parenting: wiki? Angela 01:24, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

Sure! This could easily fall into "Travel cities/Locals info"... I've still gotta get some kind of plan for how to organize it (any ideas? Maybe I should check out other wikis with geography dependant content) and off we go... cool, thanks.--Aerik 02:14, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

This is great idea!!! As parent of 4 boys, we always looked for "affordable" idea for kids, and we seemed to be expert on that. For example, we now can get a nice hotel with complimentary breakfast for only $33, and I would have no problem to share how to get it. I know how to visit over 200 US museums free for the family ...etc. I think the best way to organize the information is thru Questions and Answer sections... At any given time, there will be a list of questions, and people know the good answer to post. Sometimes, the great deal has time limit, so timing is also critical...

World has a placeholder link for traveling with children. No content yet. I think this is one area where we might need to do cross-linking. The Parenting Wikia would be good for general activities, but Cities could have info about community run programs, World could have good sight-seeing for kids, etc. There will be "grey" areas, suggestions as they come up will be welcome. --CocoaZen 18:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Many city names are used in more than one place (examples: London, Frankfort, Elizabethtown). When we add a city (or town) that shares its name, how should we distinguish it? Especially, if the town we are adding is not the most famous with that name? Is it first come, first serve? Should the smaller or less well known location be more specific? Should the main page for that city name be a disambiguation page? Do we want to suggest a prefix standard? For instance LondonONT for London Ontario. I'd like to add a small town, Hamilton, NY, and there are larger, better known Hamiltons. So, suggestions? comments? --CocoaZen 14:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

At the rate we are adding cities, "first come first served" may be OK for quite a while! We already have a smallish place that's prempted a better-known name, I think. But a fairly small place that's known or suspected to be not unique should probably follow the Wikipedia naming style (with one spinoff advantage being that related material copied from WP will not need links edited), and if that means adding a state and/or a county name the people contributing could use shortcut redirects to minimise the work of typing links. So yours could be officially named Hamilton, NY but you could have a redirect such as hny. Robin Patterson 22:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Sub-Pages

Another piece of naming conventios is how we indicate the sub-pages for a city. We've been using a colon (:), like Metropolis:Neighborhoods, but I've been told that the colon is used more for namespace designation. The World Wikia uses a slash for sub-pages, for instance Metropolis/Neighborhoods. It seems to me that we should start using the slash format. We're still small enough that retrofitting the old stuff by moving it shouldn't be too painful. Do you agree? --CocoaZen 18:56, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I see some advantages but I don't agree (yet, if ever). They have different properties, with the colon style having distinct advantages for editors and aesthetics. Please see the paragraph at Cities_Wiki:Community_Portal#Subpages and the separate page Cities Wiki:Subsidiary pages (and maybe continue discussion on its talk page). (You really do like capital letters!!) --Robin Patterson 03:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month

Hi, this wikia is the new collaboration of the month but we need the text written for the front page. You can write one at Wikia:Collaboration of the month/Cities/Blurb using Wikia:Collaboration of the month/Shopping/Blurb as a model. Don't forget to include specific goals for the collaboration. Thanks! - sannse (talk) 07:01, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I gave it a shot. If anyone wants to take a stab at it and change the wording, or the goals, I certainly won't mind. I'm assuming CocoaZen is the admin/coordinator here, so that's what I put. - Nhprman 21:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I am an admin here. So are you now. I was not the founder of this Wikia, but helped it out, just as you are doing now. Thanks for taking a shot at this. I'll look to see if there's anything I can think of to change/add, but I'm sure you did a good job. --CocoaZen 22:59, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I made it too long. Will try to fix that now by referring to content here rather than spelling it out there. (For example: Cities Wiki:About.) --CocoaZen 23:20, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Current events

Currently the current events page seems to have nothing on it except for news about this Wikia. There is a news section on the main page, surely it would be better to delete that link and just keep news to the main page, and put an archive link on the main page for out of date news. Lcarsdata (Talk) 10:26, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Barely 33% correct, my friend, if one counts the number of main headings: only one of the three is about this wiki. But I agree that there's nothing very "current". There is a link from that page to "Past current events" (archived material); you could repeat that link on the main page, maybe - or have I misunderstood your reference to the main page? Robin Patterson 01:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Coordination with other place-related Wikia

There's been an on-going conversation about the relationship between this Wikia, Travel, Local, and Tourism. See Wikia:Forum:Discussion on working together. How do you, the contributors to the Cities Wikia, feel about merging into a new World Wikia? --CocoaZen 23:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I vote to keep this site right here. I think the World Wikia is very attractive, but focused on travel, as would be expected, since it appears to be the successor to the Travel Wikia. However, the Cities wiki appears to be more "locals"-centered and about folks telling others about their towns, which is good and serves a purpose, too. A town's History page may or may not be very interesting to those on the travel wikia if it's moved, nor would a People, Schools or Downtown page. I guess THIS is the Wikia where people go after they've been impressed by visiting a city or town and want to consider living there. It's also a place for locals to show their pride and sense of community. A tourist site, though, is a place I will go to find out how many restaurants and bars there are in a city, and where I can crash at night. That's important too, but WILDLY different in emphasis.

So my suggestion would be to KEEP this wikia, allow the World wikia to become a travel-focused site, changing the mission of THIS wikia to (basically) "Are you proud of your community? Tell us about it, and share what makes it unique," which would focus less on where to eat and sleep, but about a city's culture and people, and perhaps have a forum for people to brag a little about their city's accomplishments.

One thing I do hope the World Wikia isn't is another one of those "Let's throw up a broadly defined wiki and let people fight over what it's going to have for a mission and edit-war over content" things. That's extremely annoying and a huge waste of resources - and frankly, is a mockery of the wiki concept. It doesn't look that way now, because some care has been taken, but I would urge caution there, and here. - Nhprman 06:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

First-class response, Stephen! My only point of divergence from what you said would be that we need very little changing of this wiki's mission, which already (in current and past statements) embodies much of what you and I value. Maybe we should have another go at revising the introduction to the main page, with help from project:About and the original opening sentence "serves as a place for people to share information about improving their communities" and the Original Description? I know CocoaZen instigated the "broadening" of the mission; but it has recently started looking like a change, which risks losing some of the value. Robin Patterson 01:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I have a fondness for Cities, and it has the longest history, but right now, Local is also serving as a place that a person is sharing information about improving his community. For some reason, Cities didn't seem appropriate? And Travel (being copied to World now) covers many of the same type of things we do about cities. (Although I think at this time Cities has more original content.) There's an on-going cross-wikia conversation. Please contribute your opinions at Wikia:Discussion_on_working_together. I really feel that we are creating redundancy and overlap to a degree that hurts each of these Wikia. However, I'm willing to go with a consensus decision -- either way. Please speak up so your voices can be heard. --CocoaZen 17:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the comment about redundancy. I think it's a problem in the Wiki approval process. As soon as one Wikia is started, another is approved with overlapping content, and then another, then another, each competing for the same territory but with slightly different missions, or poorly defined ones (or ones that change often.) I would caution against a long, protacted discussion/debate over finding "consensus" on that other page, at least how the word is often (improperly) defined. Wikians/Wikipedians seem to think "consensus" means "debate until everyone is happy" but this is an impossible standard.

It's too bad the long discussions didn't happen BEFORE the competing Wikia were created. I do have to say I think discussions elsewhere about HOW to move Wikia content is wildly premature.

As for me, I'll work on my city information wherever it lands. I've seen people on Wikipedia waste a lot of time on process arguments, so I won't be part of any lengthy discussions over the process, preferring instead to wait on the sidelines and perhaps actually create and edit articles. - Nhprman 05:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

4 efforts are too many

We have wikia on Cities, Local, Tourism and Travel (now World), as well as individual city wikia like vancouver, boston, and san francisco
I agree that travel and cities are different, but often related. My question is whether it should 2 (travel and cities) or the current 60 if you count all the individual city wikia...
Gil

I guess in my little perfect world, all 60 city-related wikia would be merged into the Cities Wikia (as some already have been) and then there would be a Travel wikia for travel-related material. However, the other way will work fine, too. I just hope the transition from 60 to two Wikias can be a relatively easy one and no one fights the change tooth and nail. That would be a bad outcome. - Nhprman 04:39, 10 August 2006 (UTC)