FAQ

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

#0 How do I use this FAQ ?

• This FAQ is a list of questions people have asked at one point or another. If you are looking for information you didn't find anywhere else, you can read the FAQ to see if someone else has asked for it. If you have not found your answer by the time you get to the end of the FAQ, click 'edit', and add your question at the end of the FAQ. You'll be surprised at how quickly someone will answer it.

#1 I am trying to help edit RocWiki.com, and I can't seem to stay logged in!

• This problem should be fixed, thanks to PhilipNeustrom.

#2 I want to add 'info' to my edits so people can see why I edited a page?

• When you edit the page, under the edit window there is a box labelled "Please comment about this change." That's where you put this info. Hope this helps.

#3 How do I attach images to a page?

• When you go into the Edit tab for a page, click the "Images" button. This will give you some instructions on uploading an image and putting it inside of the page (under "How do I do this?"). Just remember to add the [[Image(filename)]] line to the page's text where you wish for the image to appear, where filename includes the extension of the file. This means if I upload mypicture.jpg I would put the line [[Image(mypicture.jpg)]] where I wanted that picture, or if it was mybirthday.gif it would be [[Image(mybirthday.gif.)]].

#4 How do I see which pictures are on a page?

• By going into "Images" in the Edit tab you may see the pictures attached to the page already and choose to view them and manage them ("del", if you have the privileges, deletes the picture).

#5 What are the conventions for linking and naming

• Check out Help On Linking.

#6 Is there a way to see a list of all the pages in the wiki?

• Check out Title Index.

#7 Can I see which pages link to a particular page?

• Yes. Just go to the page and click on the page's title. Displayed will then be all the pages that link to that page. This does a search for the page title, so this is an easy way to see where you need to turn normal text into a link to the page — e.g. turning Mishka's into Mishka's. Link everything!

#8 Where can I find out geeky things about this site?

• System Info

#9 My image looks horrible with a border, is there a way to remove it?

• In the event your image looks bad with a border, you can use the markup [[Image(myimage.png, noborder)]] in place of [[Image(myimage.png)]] and that will remove the default border. In most every case an image looks good with a border (especially in the case of photographs), so keep this in mind.

#10 How do I force a one-lined return?

• [[BR]] will force a single-return. Normally, just put two returns between blocks of text. It's more readable that way. Sometimes you need to use [[BR]] for pretty looking layout, such as in a table (which don't yet support returns properly). Most of the time, when people write things like:

  something
  

  another thing
  

  another thing

they are really making a list of items. In these cases you should make a list. See Help on lists.

#11 How do I rename a page?

• Go into Edit and click "Rename".

#12 Is there a way to insert a link into a footnote? It may just be external links, but I haven't tried internal links.

• No, not as far as anyone I know has figured out. It's on the 'ToDo' list, below a LOT of nifty stuff...

#13 What wiki software does RocWiki use?

• RocWiki uses the Project Sycamore wiki engine although some internal development is done as well. You can help!

#14 What group of people, or person, 'owns' the lease to the RocWiki organization and domain names?

• The domain name registration is held by Robert Polyn. The site infrastructure is managed by a loose knit group of volunteers. No formal organization or group sets policy or oversees day-to-day operation of the site.
  

• Some of the folks regularly posting to the mailing list have access to things like the Google Analytics reports, low level database access. Feel free to join the mailing list if you're interested.

#15 Is my IP address visible?

• Anyone can see the IP addresses of contributors on the Recent Changes page, as long as your browser displays the "title" tag of a HTML link. Float your mouse pointer over the contributor's name to see it.

#16 Why do Talk pages appear in the orphan list even though each main page has a Talk icon at the top?

• It's an issue with the software used to run the wiki. It only looks at the editable content of the page. Search engines like Google (and even the wiki's built-in search engine) can detect the Talk pages and the software is a little rickety at times, so users/ryantucker, who is chiefly in charge of our server, usually prefers to leave well enough alone. (And I can't blame him)

#17 Do rocwiki pages need to be Rochester related or can they contain other content not related in any way to Rochester?

• Pages should be at least tangentially related to Rochester. And it is preferred that pages be of general interest, so as stated on our etiquette page, a page devoted to your pet probably doesn't belong, although it's not the end of the world if you do create such a page. Curiously, this thought process implies that while a page devoted to your dog or cat might be considered odd, a page devoted to everybody's dogs or cats is generally considered acceptable.

#18 Is there a moderator that prevents people from excessively advertising their business on multiple pages?

• Yes, it does: Everybody. RocWiki does not - nor does it intend to - have a designated body of moderators. The general consensus is that we are more capable of maintaining the wiki through cohesive social pressure than through any central authority. You will find, however, that some people are more active about making reviews and removing shilling, trolling and spamming. Others spend their days fixing formatting inconsistencies and protecting people from spam. The most active reviewers of edits (which is as much as we can call them at this time) can usually be found on our Google group. The precise composition of the pool of editors tends to evolve over time as people come and go.

#19 Is there a way to make bookmarks that notify you (via e-mail) when your bookmarked (or 'watched' or whatever) page has been changed and/or commented-on?

#20 Why does clicking the Banned Group page say "You are not allowed to view this page." ?

• The technical answer is easy: the permissions are set so that only members of the AdminGroup may view or edit the page. The reason it's set that way, however, I can't answer, because I don't know. It was implemented by one of the founders of the wiki, AdamDewitz, back at revision 2 and I think we've all been operating on the assumption that there was a very good reason for doing so. I will cheerfully tell you that almost the entirety of the list consists of pseudonyms used by trolls. At the time of writing, there is one (likely) real name and that person was banned for comment deletion.

#21 Doesn't it make more sense to list comments with the most recent of comments being displayed at the top of the comment list, beneath the page info? Could this point be up for consideration and implemented at some point?

• Absolutely! Unfortunately, the software used to run RocWiki at the present time does not support that behavior and it is fiendishly difficult to add any other desirable behaviors. However, our illustrious Tech Team is hard at work developing a replacement engine that will do this and a whole lot more.

  Speaking of which, anyone with experience programming in Python is cordially invited to join the RocWiki Tech Team to accelerate the project so that we can all enjoy a brighter tomorrow in a lot fewer todays... or something like that.

#22 since it isn't possible yet to show the most recent comments first would it be possible to remove some old ones that are no longer accurate like "the store is closed"?

#23 How do I make an italicized timestamp automatically appear when I add comments to a page?

• You use the comments line on the page before the comments.

#24 Every time I visit this site it won't accept my password. I click on the link to reset it. I click on the link in the email, and enter my password and re-enter it. Then I can contribute to the site. But as soon as I log out, it loses its mind, and I can no longer use my password, and have to reset it again. Maybe it doesn't like that I am re-using the old password. Do I have to set a new password? I would rather not.