Talk:Main Page/Archive2

Are Images borked?

Is it just me, or did all the user uploaded images disappear? As seen in my article, Chained Sword (3.5e Equipment), the main picture is gone, and I made a second picture which the thumbnail does not show up on the page.The Dire Reverend 07:40, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

They failed to get transferred over. Re-upload yours if you have the permission to use the file. --Havvy 08:00, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Is there no way the images can be transferred like the articles were? Losing them would be a significant handicap here, transferring them manually will be quite some work, I expect. Daranios 18:28, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

They can be. The problem is (from what I've heard) that most of the images are not properly cited, and we wish to avoid legal issues. --Havvy 19:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

If I find legitimately cited images, should I port them over? Or just go on a spree and mark all the pictures with proper citations with some note? I could run around and do that, you know. - Aelaris 05:34, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

By all means, go ahead. --06:27, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Did I get it right?

I woke up today with the intention of finishing up some of my creature sheets, but ended up making some Artifacts instead. I've never made Artifacts before, so I want to see if I overdid it. Could someone take a look at it and tell me how I did. This isn't the only one I made today but it was the first. It is also my favorite one out of the ones I made. It's my first Artifact ever so go easy on me >.< Here is the link:

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/User:FiddleSticks96/FS96_Sandbox:Items

Sorry for the long link but I don't know how to hyper-link stuff. I'm allowed to post a link to my sandbox here right? FiddleSticks96 02:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There are some ways to improve the formatting that can be remedied by making a table, but that's not really an issue. As far as its power is concerned, I would be inclined to say that it may even be a bit weak for a major, one-of-a-kind artifact (it's probably more acceptable if it's of the minor variety). In any case, I should post a full response on that page, not here. In line with actually answering the query on how to make a Wiki link, you use brackets to make them. So your same page would appear like so: Voila! (with whatever text you desire replacing "Voila". But as I said before, if you wish to discuss the balance of the artifact further it would probably be best to do so on the talk page for the article itself. - TG Cid 04:12, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit to "Chat" Section

Since I cannot edit the front page, could an admin add IRC://irc.mibbit.net/dnd somewhere to the section so that users who don't want to use Mibbit and know how IRC works can figure out where to go without getting on Mibbit? And yes, it seems odd for me to say this...but I'm looking for less join/parts and increased user satisfaction. --Havvy 18:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean with that last line, but meh. Edit made. - Tarkisflux 18:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Good vs Evil

I'm DMing a campaign right now and my players are making preparations to reforge an ancient blade called "Demonbreaker" in order to stand a chance against Nightshade, a powerful demoness, and her host of demons and save the peninsula from a literal hell on earth. Classic and unoriginal, I know, but the battle of Good vs Evil is just too epic to pass up. I am currently making exact statistics for Demonbreaker and Nightshade. The Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss has been a most useful book in this regard. While I was making stats I began to wonder...we have the Fiendish Codes I and II respectively and together they cover all things demonic, but why is there not a corresponding book for heavenly machinations? Maybe something like "Brilliant Divine: Hosts of the Heavens" or something like that? Hasn't anyone attempted to make such a book as of yet? Sure sure, the PCs are usually the good guys and won't pass up a chance to fight back against the forces of the Abyss and the Nine Hells...but...sometimes...the players are outright evil. Such players WORK with demons and devils and are more suited to messing with Heaven rather than Hell. You get me? FiddleSticks96 18:00, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

People here are working on all sorts of sourcebook projects. Actually they are kind of unsatisfied with the Fiendish Codices and other similar works in 3.5, so a while ago (before the codices, actually) two people on a message board I visit made the Tome of Fiends, whereas people here are working on Liber Demonica. Now, you'll aptly note those are more for demons and devils...

There has certainly been interest in creating equivalent works for the upper planes, both from the people on the first link and the people from the second. It hasn't been done though, for a number of reasons I won't get into here. If you're interested in seeing what's done so far, the reasons mentioned, or want to pitch in and help make something with the rest of us for the upper planes, I recommend you visit us in our real-time chat: click the link on the sidebar under "Community" titled "IRC Chat", or just click here. Surgo 19:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Just chiming in (as one of the contributors to Liber Demonica) that Cid and I would LIKE to cover angels and their friends at some point in the future. However, how FAR in the future is questionable at present. - MisterSinister 23:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There's a community project on the subject matter at hand over at the Giant in the Playground forums. Beyond its existence, I know nothing about it with regard to completeness, balance, et cetera, but it does seem to have garnered a fair amount of attention. -- Jota 06:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Cool, thanks for the quick responses guys. I was certain I wasn't the only one thinking about something like this. I would like to help; unfortunately, my expertise is more AD&D than anything else. To top that off, if left to my own devices, I tend to get carried away when making high HD creatures, like angels and demons, as I have a much higher standard for what is considered power than most everyone else. As an aside, I have never gotten over the fact that they went as far as to make NPC sheets, very weak if you ask me, for the GODS. Even a lesser deity should be WAY stronger than that, but I digress. I will be watching both the Tome of Fiends and the Liber Demonica with great interest. By the way, the puns made in the Tome of Fiends were quite amusing. Always nice to see that not everyone's humor is dry and boring. FiddleSticks96 17:42, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry too much about high power, seriously. We'd be happy to see any of your creations and maybe work them into a new book! Surgo 18:13, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

That's good to hear. As far as I can tell, my friends and I play at the Wizard Tier level. Don't play in one of our campaigns if you can't take the heat. FiddleSticks96 20:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Link to Wikia

Wikia does link here, but not on the main page: The main page does link to a forum page from where they link here. In my opinion, the link to Wikia is still useful, because those images that we still want to transfer are there (and someone might want to check on stuff there). That's why I personally would prefer to keep the link. Daranios 18:49, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikia doesn't want links to spin-offs on the main page, which is why it was changed. -- Jota 21:00, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Reading the Preloads

I attempted to add the "Classes" portion of my sandbox today. When I went in to put up my Vampire Hunter class, I dutifully went to the preloads page as per the rules. This is were everything began to fall apart. I copy and pasted the preload and erased the appropriate lines. That was about as far as I was able to get. In terms of imagination, I am an A+ student, but I only got a C in Visual Basic, and I tried really hard to earn that C.

I tried to make heads or tails of the preload but it is extremely difficult to read. The Vampire Hunter class I am making is a Prestige class. It was so much easier to start building it in MS Word. Is there some kind of tutorial for using the preloads, because, in all honesty, I had no idea what I was doing. FiddleSticks96 20:01, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Most of the preloads work the same way. Find the "<- Stuff goes here, and often there are instructions here as well ->" and replace that with the relevant bits of text, brackets and all. The brackets are just there to make it stand out. You can also remove sections entirely if you need or want to. But if you just replace that stuff / follow those directions you should be basically set, as the rest of the stuff there is formatting instructions.

You might see some "<!---"s floating around. Those are comment brackets, and are used to hide things on a page rather than indicate a place where you need to do some replacing. They should probably be ignored unless the section is inapplicable and you're deleting the whole thing. - Tarkisflux 21:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Feedback

I have just added 2 more major artifacts to my items section of my sandbox. The Fang of Nosaia and The Mail of Invincibility. Someone looked over my first one, The Trumpet of Crackling Glory. Their feedback was most insightful and helped me work the kinks out of it. I request that someone tell me what they think about the two artifacts I have added so I can get the kinks out of them as well. Here is the link:

User:FiddleSticks96/FS96 Sandbox:Items

Thank you so much for your feedback. FiddleSticks96 16:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Usually the best way to get feedback quickly is to use our website's chat, which almost always has people in it talking. To do so, just click on the "IRC Chat" link on the sidebar under the "Community" header. Surgo 16:50, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

You already know about the chat of course, but I want anyone who reads this to know about getting the best feedback. Surgo 17:02, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't thought of that. FiddleSticks96 17:07, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

This probably isn't the best place to announce new things that you'd like feedback on actually, as this page is used more as a discussion of the main page itself and other larger wiki issues. Aside from asking in chat or waiting for users to find it in the Special:RecentChanges, you could also add the {{Help Wanted}} template to your sandbox, which will make the page show up in a special list for articles specifically requesting feedback. Hope that's a helpful option for you :-) - Tarkisflux 17:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I am still new to this site and don't know where to find everything. FiddleSticks96 17:41, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Task?

What does this mean, in layman's terms? "Migrate the 4e section away from DPL querries, and update the semantic properties of the 4e templates and preloads." -- Techpriest88 15:19, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

The programming language this Wiki uses is being updated/modernized, and one of the results is making 4e articles less ugly-looking. There's a lot of carry-over from the older sites that these were transferred from, including a lot of categories and properties that are meant to assist in Wiki navigation but don't work here because we are using the different language (there may be another more technical reason, but I don't know it). At least, I'm pretty sure that's the gist of it. - TG Cid 15:47, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

More or less Cid. The old stuff is still supported, we're just trying to move to a setup that does everything we cared about with the old stuff did as well as allow us to make better nav tables and do on-the-fly custom searches. So in layman's terms it means replace one set of code with another that lets us do more. - Tarkisflux 21:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Mibbet's FUBAR

As I'm sure most of us already know, Mibbet is totally borked at the moment. I for one cannot even get a chat screen when I log in. If this is a persistent problem for others, I'm wondering if we have an alternative until Havvy and his people get whatever ailment it is currently suffering settled. - TG Cid 19:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I actually have no real power to stop what is happening, and axod has very little. We aren't exactly sure what it going on. If irc.mibbit.net fails for you, try the following:

• Log in through Mibbit. I'm not quite sure why, but the attacker usually cannot block www.Mibbit.com -> irc.Mibbit.net connections.
• Use one of the following:
  • irc.uk.mibbit.net
  • irc.nj.us.mibbit.net
  • irc.ca.us.mibbit.net

--Havvy 00:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Wait wait wait... the ATTACKER? You mean this isn't Mibbit being down but someone trying to DoS us? Wow, I wonder who got butthurt, or if it's related to the spamwave we got. Oh well, egos on the internet and all. Still I'm curious now, tell me more. -- Eiji-kun 02:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

No, it's an attacker on Mibbit's side, not DnD-Wiki's. --Havvy 02:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Ooooo. Ok, still butthurt, but an unrelated butthurt. Hopefully Mibbit kicks them to the curb soon. -- Eiji-kun 02:25, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

What happened?

Was I the only one who wasn't able to access this site for a week? If not, than what happened? Was the site down for maintenance? FiddleSticks96 20:06, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

It was down for everyone this weekend due to issues on the hosting side. - Tarkisflux 20:13, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Spambots

I have a solution to the spambots, which is a type of captcha, but not so much of a pain in the ass that you can't read the text. From my understanding, it has worked for http://nethackwiki.com. They use a specific captcha that they coded specifically for their wiki (I'm sure if I ask nicely I can get a copy). It will ask you a question related to nethack which should be common knowledge (from some from of questions database). For example: "What symbol represents a floating eye in NetHack?".

If I can get a copy of their captcha, we can recode it with some very simple D&D related questions (maybe randomized multiple choice?). ie:

• Which of the following is a 3.5e rogue class feature: a) sneak attack, b) rage, c) spellcasting, d) power points
• Which of the following is a 3.5e monk class feature: a) evasion, b) flurry of blows, c) turning into a colossal++ wyvern via the metamorphisis power, d) all of the above

The second one is a joke, btw.

Sure, it discriminates a bit against people that have little to no D&D experience. On the other hand, we can provide a link that tells them to just make an account if they don't want to answer the captcha questions.

Thoughts? --Aarnott 15:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

That would be good (the spambots seem to be adapting again after all). No idea on what the questions would be. -- Eiji-kun 16:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

It's supported by the confirmedit extension that we currently have installed doc here. If we get a list of questions together I'll code it and pass it along to Surgo for implementation. - Tarkisflux 16:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Some questions for you folks:

• What dice type is used for attack rolls in DnD? a) d20 b) d6 c) d8 d) d12
• Which of these classes is not in the SRD? a) monk b) rogue c) truenamer d) fighter
• What is the lowest level a player character can be in DnD? a) 4 b) 1 c) 0 d) 9000
• A "fighter" is an example of what? a) a race b) a class c) a feat d) a weapon
• Which of these skills is not in the SRD? a) Use Magic Device b) Spot c) Iaijutsu Focus d) Bluff
• What does BAB stand for? a) Base Attack Bonus b) Base Angel Beat c) Blue Animal Bed d) Bonus Argument Belief
• What tabletop RPG system does this wiki cater for? a) GURPS b) DnD c) FATAL d) Shadowrun

Figured I'd help out. - MisterSinister 21:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I just looked at the questy captcha implementation again, and it's not multiple choice. So if we really wanted multiple choice, and I don't think it's a good idea actually, we'd have to find an extension that did that. These questions could be reformulated to include the options though, like "Which of the following classes is not in the SRD: Fighter, Monk, Warmage, or Ranger?", and then the answer would need to be typed in (and would probably be case sensitive). - Tarkisflux 22:06, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit - We could go with a different extension entirely actually. The Asirra Extension is an implementation of an MS anti-spam measure where you have to select all of the cat or dog pictures from a set containing both cat and dog pictures. I don't know if this would be more or less annoying than typing the answer to a question, but it sounds less vulnerable to brute force or manually generated list attacks against a limited question set. - Tarkisflux 22:10, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty certain any type of captcha would be sufficient. I just suggested that one because it is convenient for an actual person (unlike a lot of image-text captchas out there, which are annoying). I'm pretty sure (just seeing spam on other wikis I watch) that there is a bot that spiders the internet for mediawiki sites and tries to spam sites that have unprotected IP edits and user creation.

Also, multiple choice can work if we want to make the answer to the captcha "a", "b", "c", "d", or "e". Further, we could rearrange the multiple choice answers and still use questy captcha. Whatever is easiest for implementation but also isn't (much of) a pain for real people. --Aarnott 22:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit - what I mean by that can be explained using this questy captcha code:

$wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => 'What dice type is used for attack rolls in DnD? a) d20 b) d6 c) d8 d) d12', 'answer' => 'a' );
$wgCaptchaQuestions[] = array( 'question' => 'What dice type is used for attack rolls in DnD? a) d6 b) d20 c) d8 d) d12', 'answer' => 'b' );

So we can do multiple choice. But really the cat/dog thing is probably easier to implement (just an extension) and just as easy for actual users to use. --Aarnott 22:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I could have sworn I posted on this. Anyway, as I was saying I'm down with the cat/dog images, or whatever image sets we do. Not that it effects me nor that I would fall for it, but I have to consider what if some particularly unusual person didn't put in "dog" when they see a dog and they put in "german shepard" which may be technically correct but not what we were looking for. Or they see the color pink and they put in "salmon".

Course, no system would be perfect and thats a small issue IMO, but I figure I'd bring it up anyway. -- Eiji-kun 23:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Dropped of the face of the planet for a bit (I blame combinatorics :P). I've tested out the cat/dog Asirra extension and it is perfect. The only thing I found a bit annoying was that you have to look at 12 photos. Luckily we can just change that value using $wgAsirraCellsPerRow to something more manageable like 6 photos. That would be enough that it wouldn't be super annoying, but it also would be pretty certain to stop the spamming. --Aarnott 13:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll ask Surgo to install the Asirra extension then.

In other news, I spent some time tracing the ips associated with the spam yesterday, and they're all run through the same hosting service. I'm looking into a way to just block that host, which would also pretty much kill our spammer issue. - Tarkisflux 16:31, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Tarkisflux, F*CK YEAH!

Coming again, to stop the mother f*cking spambots,

Tarkisflux, F*CK YEAH!

CAPTCHA is the only way yeah,

Spambot host your game is through cause now you have to answer too,

Tarkisflux, F*CK YEAH!

So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,

Tarkisflux, F*CK YEAH!

What you going to do when we posts now,

it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

F*CK YEAH!

Eiji-kun, F*CK YEAH!

Surgo, F*CK YEAH!

Ganteka, F*CK YEAH!

Leziad, F*CK YEAH!

Aarnott, F*CK , YEAH!

Wildmage, F*CK YEAH!

Ghostwheel, F*CK YEAH!

Genowheel, F*CK YEAH!

F*CK YEAH!

Dracomortis, F*CK YEAH!

The Badger, F*CK YEAH!

Warrior4, F*CK YEAH!

Daranios, F*CK YEAH!

Sinister, F*CK YEAH!

Karuma, F*CK YEAH!

Parakee, F*CK YEAH!

TG Cid, F*CK YEAH!

Reverend, F*CK YEAH!

Spaz Chaos (F*ck ye... F*ck yeah?)

Dukelzan, F*CK YEAH!

YX33, F*CK YEAH!

Aelaris, F*CK YEAH!

TK-Squared, F*CK YEAH!

Foxwarrior, F*CK YEAH!

Haavy, F*CK YEAH!

Karrius, F*CK YEAH!

Magnamune, F*CK YEAH!

Paleomancer, F*CK YEAH!

Tarkisflux (Tarkisflux)

(f*ck yeah, f*ck yeah)

Spanambula

Rith!

(Ends with an epic guitar riff)

(If you could tell, I'm really happy to hear that Tarkis.  :D) -- Eiji-kun 17:53, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

→Reverted indentation to one colon

Yay song! Glad I could brighten your day Eiji. Surgo has been asked to install the extension, and it should be up shortly-ish. I have no idea if or when the host blocking will come online, as there doesn't seem to be an easy way to block them short of doing rather wide ip range blocks... which is less than ideal. - Tarkisflux 18:49, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

New capcha is up, but Aarnott was wrong in that we can't turn down the number of pics required for authorization (the setting referenced only changes their layout). So we're stuck with the somewhat annoying 12 photos. Talking it over with Surgo still, but we might look into an alternative. Until then, I guess we'll see what happens with spam. Sorry in advance to any user affected by the change who has not confirmed their email :-/. - Tarkisflux 21:35, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

It looks like I was also wrong that it would fix the problem. Which really surprises me. It must be a pretty sophisticated bot. I'm going to do some research to see what else can be done. --Aarnott 15:13, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Surgo reverted the capcha to the simple capcha. He felt that the assira one was overly obnoxious since we couldn't reduce the number of visible pictures. While we had it running though we had 0 instances of spam (for the whole 2 days). Since most of these bots are from the same host and they are starting to re-use ips, I've been doing range blocks (using the CIDR notation for the block assigned to the host, thanks ARIN!) and perma-bans. I thought it was working up until this morning :-/ - Tarkisflux 15:20, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Nevermind on the not working, it probably is (if slowly). The two recent spammer ips were only given 2 week blocks by Gan originally. They, and all other ips on their subnets, are now perma-blocked. Hopefully they'll run out of unblocked ranges sooner rather than later. - Tarkisflux 15:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

What will happen if someone uses a proxy?--Parakee^Talk 17:45, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

We have special server magic that causes computers attempting to access us through proxies to melt down. Also, the proxy would be blocked when it showed up. My guess is that the ips currently being blocked are proxies actually. It's stupid whack-a-mole right now, but since they're mostly all coming from the same hosting company I'm hopeful they'll run out of blocks. - Tarkisflux 17:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to make it auto-target the captcha box when editing so that people don't need to click on it when editing and can just enter the number, etc? --Ghostwheel 22:53, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE - Surgo has turned the Assira (kittenAuth) back on, since Simple has been broked. It should trigger only for new pages, url adds, and account registration for non-confirmed users only. You should be able to do regular page edits without it, even if your account is not confirmed. Hopefully it's not too annoying for anyone and spam accounts drop substantially. Report any problems on my talk please. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 23:36, 14 May 2012 (UTC)