Trains:Station announcements

Userboxes

A few templates for userboxes have been started. Please see the individual template pages for specific details about each one.

Extra facilities

To make life easier we are still adding to the "standard wiki". There seems to be no such thing as a standard installation of Wikimedia, though.

Categories

I wish there were a way of enforcing a hierarchy of categories, but can't find one so far. But we have installed Special:CategoryTree which shows the current status. It's better than nothing, but if you know an extension that will "enforce" a category structure, we're up for it. This also adds little plus signs for subcategories in a category.

[Update 12:50, 5 July 2007 (UTC)] A hierarchy of categories is gradually developing. The list of categories at the top of the Main Page is the set of 'Main Categories', and all others should be sub-categories of one or more of these. The Main Categories belong to Category:Categories, which is the top-most category in the tree. By entering this in the editbox on the CategoryTree page, the entire category tree may be browsed. (Click here to try.)

Many of the initial pages at TSW were captured from Wikipedia. This process catches pages, images and templates, but does NOT catch categories. Hence you may see an ex-Wikipedia page with redlinked categories. If possible, please update these pages: non-railway-related categories should be removed (probably – if in doubt, leave them), and railway-related categories should be created. The best way to do this is to find the matching category at Wikipedia, and copy it (again, removing any non-railway content). WP has a well-established set of categories, and it makes sense to copy the basic structure here. Re-using the WP category names also ensures that the maximum number of redlinks are resolved at each stage.

New Users

It took us a while to find out where it was hidden, but now, in Special:Log the drop down list included new users. We've added MediaWiki:NewUserWelcomeTalkPageContent for any user to put in a new user's talk page.

Google Maps

When you edit a page you will see a new litle link under the row of control buttons. It says "make a map". This links to Google Maps. We think that this may be absolutely excellent for, among other things, a spotting report.

<googlemap lat="51.41591" lon="-0.748959" zoom="16"> 51.415562, -0.749109, Bracknell. HQ of Spotting World. Example of use for a spotting report </googlemap>

I've not played with it much, but I have pinpointed the town in the UK where our HQ is, just to show you what can be done.

Event countdown timer

For full details see the mediawiki page, which explains it perfectly

Railfan conventions

We're making sure that railfan conventions can be advertised here. {{railfan convention}} is ready for action.

Youtube Video

For full details see the mediawiki page, which explains it perfectly.

As an example: <youtube>qXBwTBlpo1U</youtube>

produces

Note that, when Youtube is off the air for maintenance that white space is shown instead of the video

Flickr images

For full details see the mediawiki page, which explains it perfectly

As an example: <flickr limit=6>Steamtrain</flickr>

produces

<flickr limit=6>Steamtrain</flickr>

A Blog for every user

On every new user page there is the chance to create a blog. This is at blogs.spottingworld.com. One blog per user, to be used for lawful purposes only.

Events calendar

A new citizen in the left hand margin is the "Coming Events Calendar". Put simply, every new event should be on its own page, and the relevant category tags put in the page. Follow the "Calendar Help" link for full instructions and details of the extension

Google video

For full details see the mediawiki page, which explains it perfectly.

As an example: <googlevideo>-3448603109648968432</googlevideo>

produces

<googlevideo>-3448603109648968432</googlevideo>

News archive

Our News archive will grow. We do need an editor or two to choose news from around the world and to create it, linked from the main page.

Spam prevention

Nothing annoys more than spam. We take the following steps:

• All links have a "nofollow" attribute. This means that it's pretty pointless adding spam links to us. For real links the content is the key, and our search engine rankings are simply not passed on the the recipient site
• We've install a CAPTCHA system to defeat the simple bots that fill our pages (or did) with spammy links. If you are a registered user you'll not see it, if you're an IP user then every external link addition attempt needs you to be able to do maths. A small user inconvenience, but the removal of a huge admin headache.
• we ban the IP address of spambots for ever.

Vandal Prevention

We have come under vandal attack. We will be deploying a bot in due course. Until then we have protected the site against IP only editors.

Fan Fiction

We're enjoying loads of Thomas the Tank Engine fans here at present. We're making space available for them for Fan Fiction, and have created a new main category for Fan Fiction. There is only one "ground rule" and that is to ensure Fan Fiction is kept separate from the factual pages (including all the 'Thomas' pages) -- so please do not link to any Fan Fiction content from the factual pages.

Bugs and problems page

Trains:Bugs and problems has been created where you can list any software or coding related problems encountered using TSW for community discussion.