Discussion: Maintenance Mode

<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

(Redirected from DMM)

1 Maintenance Mode (reposted from Bufo's Discussion page)
2 Needs Analysis
3 Good Start
4 Pictures and Such
5 Latest from Candy
6 Requests made
7 Editing Tool Bar is definitely gone.
- 7.1 Response
8 Success!
9 No Table of Contents
10 Suppressing the Table of Contents
11 Replacement for Formatting Toolbar
12 Impact of MM
13 about getting volunteers
- 13.1 Response
14 New Stats Posted
15 UK

Maintenance Mode (reposted from Bufo's Discussion page)

I'm sure there's more to it than Candy is actually allowed to say at this point. At the very least, Sciffy has decided that it's not willing to invest the level of resources in our project that it has in the past.

But, in many ways, that's beside the point. What's really important now is how we choose to respond to it. We could whine about the change or we can continue trying to make the best resource that we can. A few of us, like you and Larry, seem to be determined to take the latter course, and not only is the commendable, I think it's ultimately the right choice. No amount of whining or complaining or feeling sorry for ourselves will ever change the destiny of SCIFIPEDIA, but continuing to do our best to make this the finest resource available may, in fact, do so.

Make no mistake, though, our challenges are daunting. Like any other open source project, we have a bit of a catch 22 to start out: we need street cred. to attract additional volunteers, but you don't get street cred. without an impressive product, but you need a lot of man hours to create an impressive product. So, we must crawl for a very, very long time before we walk. But, from there perhaps, learning to truly fly can be managed much easier than those first couple of steps. Since we're still very much laboring on with the same tiny core group of regulars, I suspect we still have some distance to crawl before we take those first baby steps.

So, the big question is, what is it going to take us to move to that next level?

(I suppose I could ramble on about what my own ideas are, but I'd rather see us come together as a community to answer such questions. So... thoughts?)

--stilltim 15:52, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes, I now can add pictures to the gallery. Are you suggesting that I need to do this for more than my own articles? I would be willing to find pictures for other articles, since I am now practiced at this. My summer is coming up, and I am willing to do this then, and also keep adding comic book articles, with occasional detours when my interests take me there.

Its hard to know what else we need to do to "make it to the next level". I have a friend who considers himself a science fiction buff, who once hinted he might like to add to the site when I showed him what I was up to.

So...keep adding new articles, recruit others to help, administrative duties..what else is there?

Someone needs to write the editorial stuff on the front page - shout outs and such. Perhaps we need to transcend the Sci Fi channel? Though we already cover much that is outside the network, the Editor's Journal rarely did. I assume Candy is leaving that part behind...so who will continue it?

Larry7639 20:53, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

Needs Analysis

Thanks to stilltim for prompting this discussion!

I think there have been great things done here, and I'd like to see the site continue to grow and to serve as a vaulable resource.

One thing that seems to be clear about maintenance mode is that Candy will have less involvement.

Setting aside her irreplaceable cultural contributions, what administrative and operational tasks has she been doing that we have been unable to do? Identifying these areas, we can find out if it is possible if we can take them over, or if it is something that may have to become dormant, eliminated, or far less frequent. Some of them seem to be:

Adding pictures. I saw that she has instructed Larry in that one
Deleting articles
Updating the Front Page
Locking and unlocking Creator articles
Checking technical issues, such as account creation difficulties and vanishing buttons

What else is there?

--bufocalvin 14:25, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

Good Start

Wow. These are some pretty amazing responses. I hadn't expected such great feedback so soon. I was mostly myself thinking along the same lines as Larry articulated, particularly in the area of recruiting. We really need to attract more folks. But, the lack of Candy's contributions is going to be a big issue too.

We also may need to find ways to promote the site even beyond our immediate circles of acquaintance. The loss of that scifi.com front page link is going to cost us a lot of hits. Hmmm... marketing on zero budget...

--stilltim

Pictures and Such

Larry, I don't think you =need= to do pictures, but if you want to do them, great! :) You can find articles here: Articles without Pictures category. I put articles in there as I run across them, mostly during this conversion to Sentence case project. I'll copy Candy's instructions to you into the :Category:Tips|Tips category, then other people can do it as well.

Stilltim, I'm not sure that the issue of more people has changed. It would be great to have more regular contibutors, and I think that has always been the case. If we can come up with ways to attract more participants, that's a really big plus, no question.

As to the Front Page, I've been changing the This Day and Hot Topics. I haven't been doing it as nicely as Candy was: I just haven't had time to summarize, as opposed to just pasting. I literally randomize the three Hot Topics, and the Featured Article, although I keep going on that one until I get a substantial enough piece to be a featured article. The main problem I have there is that it appears that the syntax for the Featued Article link isn't right, so it doesn't show unless you click on it. Hopefully, either Candy can fix that or give us editing permission so I can fix it.

I'm not quite sure what to do about th Editor's Journal. This is the first day we haven't had something there. We could write it ourselves, but I'm not sure the Sci Fi Channel would approve of that. I think it's important to try to respect their corporate identity. My instinct right now is to run a "classic" Editor's Journal, just pick one from the past and rerun it.

Oh, has the formatting bar disappeared for everybody else? It's been missing for me for a few days.

I track the front page hits, by the way...I was reporting some stats to Candy. We'll see what the impact is for May.

--bufocalvin 09:10, 16 May 2008 (EDT)

Latest from Candy

(copied from Bufo's Discussion page)

Requests made

Hi, Bufo!

I've requested that the main page be opened to contributors so all of you can work on the featured articles and other main-page entries. I also noted the lost editing tool bar!

Cheers,
Candy scifiadmin1 13:33, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

--bufocalvin 15:11, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Editing Tool Bar is definitely gone.

Luckily, I remember some of the codes, like for italics and bold, so it hasn't stopped me from continuing my articles. I have noticed (for the first time ever) that the five new articles under "Newest Editions" are all mine. Is this because Candy isn't contributing any more?

Larry7639 15:51, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Response

Candy said she would ask about the toolbar.

Here are some of the common codes:

''word'' = italics
'''word''' = bold (used for referencing the article title also)
[[word]] =internal link
[word]=external link
<no wiki>word</nowiki>=keeps it from converting these marks...that way, you can do instructions for people on how to use the grammar
# with a space after it is automatic numbering
#redirect [[newpage]] = creates a redirect
----- = a line (it might not require that many, but it works)
--~~~~ = signature, date and time

Feel free to add more.

As to the contributions, I think the biggest change has been MarshAngel not contributing as much. That could just be transitory...I hope we see MA back again. Candy didn't contribute a whole lot of articles, actually, although she was certainly a factor. I've been working on the conversion project a lot, and doing some front page maintenance. I think it's kind of a fluke that you had five straight...

--bufocalvin 17:37, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Yeah. Here's hoping that MarshAngel will resurface soon. She was very encouraging to me at the outset of this strange hobby.

I started my war on "category:articles without pictures" today. I got pictures for everything from A-B except for "An Evening with Batman and Robin" which I can't seem to find one for. My guess its a bit obscure. Anyway, on to C.

Larry7639 16:58, 18 May 2008 (EDT)

.....

That's great, Larry! The pictures really enhance the articles. :)

--bufocalvin 00:14, 19 May 2008 (EDT)

You're doing some great stuff! I like the idea of using quotes for the main page journal entries. I think that works very well. And yay for images from Larry!

My request for help with our wandering tool bar has been noted, although I don't have a time frame yet.

Just wanted to say hi!

—Candy
scifiadmin1 19:34, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Success!

Thanks to Candy, we have the Front Page pretty much up and running again! We have the Featured Article showing with a picture! It's not up to what Candy had been doing, but I think it works. :)

By the way, Larry has added hundreds of pictures...way to go!

--bufocalvin 22:21, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

No Table of Contents

Anybody know the code off-hand for suppressing the Table of Contents? I know NOTOC is part of it. I could use it on the Featured Article.

Thanks!

--bufocalvin 09:37, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Suppressing the Table of Contents

__NOTOC__ on a line by itself suppresses the table of contents. What I did was replace all coded sub-heads with simple boldface, because the headlines automatically generate the table of contents.

Another step in the process is to remove the info box (created by MarshAngel's beautiful template) and keep only the image, sized at 220–230px.

—Candy scifiadmin1 13:43, 26 May 2008 (EDT)

Replacement for Formatting Toolbar

I should have done this earlier, but I've created some Word code you can use when the Formatting bar disappears. They are designed to work similarly to the buttons: highlight the text, run the code. You could put whatever you want into the quotations. I've actually built a toolbar with these two so far. :)

Sub SFPInternalLink()
Dim ZZWord As String
ZZWord = Selection
ZZWord = "[[" & ZZWord & "]]"
Selection.Text = ZZWord
End Sub

Sub SFPExternalLink()
Dim ZZWord As String
ZZWord = Selection
ZZWord = "[" & ZZWord & "]"
Selection.Text = ZZWord
End Sub

I know that not having the toolbar has slowed me down a bit, so I hope this helps you. :)

--bufocalvin 00:54, 31 May 2008 (EDT)

Impact of MM

I have been doing stats for Candy every month. We actually weren't hurt as much as I thought we might have been. You can see them here.

--bufocalvin 14:53, 1 June 2008 (EDT)

about getting volunteers

i would suggest making treads in various sci-fi forums, but that probaly would be considered spaming. i did post in a few places calling for volunteers when i first started here, but i don't know if any answered the call. other than that, i have nothing else to suggest. sorry.

--archersangel 18:25, 3 June 2008 (EDT)

Response

I think you're right, that a general request might seem off-topic. However, if you notice that somebody wrote something particularly good on a subject, that person might appreciate getting a little recognition and an invitation, if you can contact the author separately.

--bufocalvin 23:27, 6 June 2008 (EDT)