Oolite Bulletins

Hm, I for one couldn`t do a lot with the description "eye candy" (could be ships, planets, some objects like the Tionisla Graveyard, station exteriors etc. etc.), whereas categories like "Ships", "Stations" or, indeed, "Solar Systems", tell me what exactly does get the candy. Know what I mean?

I will happily live everafter with whatever categories are decided for in the end, but do find my suggestion more orientation-friendly inside the oxp-jungle.

Just my 0.2 Cr.

Thargoid wrote:

Sounds like a plan. One question though, is there a unified list of Categories anywhere (here or on the Wiki) so we know what to put the OXPs into? Just to save multiple lists springing up...?

Not really. Subcategories are listed in their parent categories, which should ideally be enough.

I see the ones linking off your Oolite_expansion_packs above, but there seems to be some surprising (or perhaps not so) inconsistency between the sub-category namings, especially Equipment? That one also doesn't seem to be a sub-category of the main one?

Also can I request the addition of Weapon_OXPs as a sub-category, as I presume that's beyond normal user control? (not that I know how the category set-up works behind the scenes).

There’s very little on a MediaWiki that isn’t under normal user control. (I’m a normal user.) Categories basically come into existence when you use them. The downside to this is that they get a little ad hoc, which is why Oolite Equipment isn’t Equipment OXPs.

Ahruman wrote:

Not really. Subcategories are listed in their parent categories, which should ideally be enough.

It is enough. It was more to make sure I hadn't missed something, as a few categories seemed to be missing. For example weapon OXPs, which I needed for a couple of my OXPs. So I put it into them, and now I see that has been rolled in as a sub-category of the overall list. Clever this wiki stuff, init?

Ahruman wrote:

There’s very little on a MediaWiki that isn’t under normal user control. (I’m a normal user.) Categories basically come into existence when you use them. The downside to this is that they get a little ad hoc, which is why Oolite Equipment isn’t Equipment OXPs.

So I now see (they weren't when I first created them, I guess the software needs a little while to get its brain round it, either that or there was a cache hiding things).

Would I be right in thinking if I (or someone else) went through the OXPs currently listed under the category "Oolite Equipment" and changed the entries to "Equipment OXPs" then the latter would appear and the former be removed, or would we end up with an empty category called "Oolite Equipment"? I'm happy to go and do it if it unifies things, especially as half the entries in it are mine

But anyway, all 7 (!) of my currently published OXPs are now wiki-paged, and my user linking page and their entries in the main listing updated to include references to those.

Thargoid wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

There’s very little on a MediaWiki that isn’t under normal user control. (I’m a normal user.) Categories basically come into existence when you use them. The downside to this is that they get a little ad hoc, which is why Oolite Equipment isn’t Equipment OXPs.

So I now see (they weren't when I first created them, I guess the software needs a little while to get its brain round it, either that or there was a cache hiding things).

Categories show up in red until you (or, in this case, I) put something into the description of the category page itself (which I’ve now done). Even a category which shows up as red does keep a list of its contents, though.

Would I be right in thinking if I (or someone else) went through the OXPs currently listed under the category "Oolite Equipment" and changed the entries to "Equipment OXPs" then the latter would appear and the former be removed, or would we end up with an empty category called "Oolite Equipment"?

The empty category would still be there, but if you emptied its description page – in particular, the [[Category:Oolite expansion packs]] bit – it would no longer be listed anywhere so you wouldn’t notice.

I’ve added an {{OXP-stub}} template. You can see it in use here and here, and a list of stubs made with the template here. The latter page also lists convenience aliases for the template, like {{ship-OXP-stub}} (which automatically lists the page on Ship OXPs instead of Oolite expansion packs).

A general note: I named those pages “<OXP name> OXP” rather than just “<OXP name>”. It is, after all, EliteWiki, not OoliteWiki, so using names that at least vaguely indicate Ooliteness is polite. :-)

Thargoid wrote:

I'd presumed that Oolite expansion packs was going to be the overall list of everything, like the big list I originally mentioned in reference to breaking it into a few smaller chunks.

That’d probably be a good idea, along with a separate list of unclassified ones. This is easy to change for pages using the stub template, but requires work for all the full OXP articles.

Done (see: Category:Unclassified OXPs). I also added a “category” parameter to Template:Infobox OXP (defaulting to Unclassified OXPs), but as it turns out that’s only used by one OXP page, so that wasn’t actually very helpful. :-)

In an(other) attack of OCD, I’ve done the equipment category rename and added a bunch of new templates:

• {{demo-OXP}}
• {{equipment-OXP}}
• {{mission-OXP}}
• {{ship-OXP}}
• {{station-OXP}}
• {{weapon-OXP}}
• {{unclassified-OXP}}

Each of these puts the page into the appropriate category and the Oolite expansion pack category. The advantage of using templates is that it would be easy to move the master list into a separate category, like “All OXPs”. It’s also OK to use multiple templates: {{mission-OXP}} {{ship-OXP}}

I’ve also started going through all the OXP pages and applying these templates. In the process, I’ve weeded out a number of pages which are about individual ships within an OXP, rather than the OXP as a whole.

Ahruman wrote:

I’ve also started going through all the OXP pages and applying these templates. In the process, I’ve weeded out a number of pages which are about individual ships within an OXP, rather than the OXP as a whole.

Why not have both? The OXP one can reference the ship ones (such as how my Aquatics one does, or perhaps did)?

I believe every OXP page on the wiki (including ones previously not in any OXP category) is now listed at Category:Oolite expansion packs and at least one subcategory.

Thargoid wrote:

Ahruman wrote:

I’ve also started going through all the OXP pages and applying these templates. In the process, I’ve weeded out a number of pages which are about individual ships within an OXP, rather than the OXP as a whole.

Why not have both? The OXP one can reference the ship ones (such as how my Aquatics one does, or perhaps did)?

I have no problem with the per-ship pages existing, or being listed on Category:Oolite ships; I just object to them also being listed individually in Category:Ship OXPs.

Thargoid wrote:

OK, that's clear. I slightly misunderstood what you said before (and would agree about ship pages appearing in ship OXP list, although single-ship OXPs may be an exception of course).

I put a helpful, if terse, when-to-use guide on the ship-OXP template page, and indeed the other OXP category templates which are listed here.

For more categorizing fun, I’ve added two templates for OXPConfig-compatibility: {{OXPConfig}} and {{OXPConfig-small}}. These add an OXPConfig icon and a category. The non-small version is a fairly large banner in Wikipedia article message box style.

When I attempt to obtain some OXP's, from EliteWiki or from BerliOS, I am redirected to BOX.NET where files are often not downloadable.

Although I am sometimes able to get the "shared file" at box.net, most of the time I cant. It just produces a (virtually) blank page.

It doesn't matter whether I use Safari or InternetExplorer - although all the OXP's I've downloaded from box.net have been done in Safari - or how often I clean-up-browser, some OXP's will never upload to me.

The OXP's I would like are the Pallas/Merlin/etc. ships of Benulobiweed Shipyards fame, whose brochures & history I have read, some of whose ships I already have (Kestrel/Falcon), but for some reason their complete model range is unavailable!

Would it be possible to put these ships on EliteWiki with the others?

Or alternatively, If a ship (or other OXP) is on the Wiki page, then could it actually be made available, rather than a redirect to somewhere else?

The same thing happens at berliOS - some downloads are fine, but some merely redirect to another location.

Sometimes the Box.net site DOES work; it is only SOME OXP files which won't upload.

Perhaps somebody who has the Pallas (or even better the whole Benulobiweed model range) ship OXP could post it somewhere that it could be obtained by other users?