Wiki trolls throw mud: Page name prefix debate

You may know there is a contingent making an LSL section on the SL wiki.
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Portal

The has been a debate raging for a could weeks as to what to name the pages. It would be great to have the community at larges input on this as after all the wiki is here to serve the community.

Why the debate?
There is an issue with MediaWiki (the wiki engine we are using) that requires an articles first letter to be capitalized (the MediaWiki folks consider it a feature and refuse to fix it; there is no hope of it getting fixed). Of course this flies in the face of every LSL function, event and type name. The only keywords not effected are the constants. If we do not use a prefix the most useful page's names will be cased wrong. LSL is case sensitive. Unfortunately there is no middle ground.

Examples:
No prefixing: 'LlFrand'.
'LSL ' prefix: 'LSL llFrand'
'LSL:' prefix: 'LSL:llFrand'

Currently the 'LSL ' prefix has been used while the debate rages. There are contingents that want the 'LSL:' prefix and others that don't want any prefix at all.

So do you want pages prefixed or do you want them mis-cased?

So what are the reasons?

Prefixing Pros:

1. Pages are named properly.
   
2. No ambiguities with pages outside of LSL.
   
3. Fences off the LSL part of the wiki allowing it to focus on LSL.
   
4. LSL specific pages are easily recognizable in wiki search.
   
5. If the 'LSL:' prefix is chosen all existing pages will need to be renamed.
   

Prefixing Cons:

1. Complicates page links
   
2. Separates the LSL part of the wiki from the rest of the wiki.
   

Without Prefix Pros:

1. Simple page linking
   
2. Incorporates seamlessly with the rest of the wiki.
   
3. The page can be tagged as being misnamed with {{lowercase}} (the javascript doesn't work, see llEmail).
   

Without Prefix Cons:

1. The page names are misspelled
   
2. Page name conflicts will occur introducing the need from Ambiguity pages making browsing LSL content more difficult (resulting in postfixes)
   
3. Pages are harder to identify in the wiki search engine (because they lack a prefix).
   
4. Requires renaming all existing pages.
   
5. Can cause confusions since LSL is case sensitive.
   

There are currently about 400 LSL specific pages already on the wiki.

So what do you think? Please post your opinions.

Well early on Rob Linden posted on Jira that there should not be a prefix. This was in response to a request to modify MediaWiki to make a specialized namespace for LSL.

Since the Lindens have contributed and creating pages in the 'LSL ' prefix it would be safe to assume they have accepted the 'LSL ' prefix.

We've already started to move pages out of the LSL_ pseudonamespace. I didn't know there was still any debate, I thought Rob's comments settled it. He clearly said he wants the pages named without a prefix. See his talk page for the most recent discussion on it.

I planned to start renaming function pages probably tomorrow. I figure I can knock out at least 100 an hour. The other related pages are already named in a flat way, it's only the functions that are left.

BTW- Biased poll results by calling the normal naming convention "misspelling" is kinda low.

is there a special reason they are using the mediawiki
couldnt they find one that allows pages without prefix
or are they comvinced this is the bestest and greatest wiki engine made?

It doesn't matter at this point, they've modified mediawiki to use the SL authentication system. It's not going to change at this late stage.

Besides, for all its flaws, mediawiki is the one wiki software likely to still be around and maintained in 10 years. That's a good enough reason alone to use it.

Haven't looked there in the last couple days. Will take a look. Though the community at large should be consulted.

Biased? Only a little, I did provide examples in the poll choices so it's not like I'm obscuring the issue. How would you describe it concisely. Anyway, such confusion in programing languages cause syntax errors and code to work in strange ways it is best to be avoided (adds that to the cons list). LSL is case sensitive so it is an important issue.

EDIT:
Ok looked at the page and it wasn't anything new, Rob's talking about ambiguities that have arisen already. I still don't see where he says: "Don't use a pseudo-namespace and move all pages out of the 'LSL ' pseudo namespace." Something definitive like that I would have noticed.

Rob created the page:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_llGetUnixTime/test
If he didn't want pages in the 'LSL_' namespace he wouldn't have created one.

I submit that there is something terribly and fundamentally wrong with software that enforces the capitalization to such a degree that it cannot be customized, or at least not customized easily and painlessly.

Having said that, however, I really cannot stand the other wiki (I cannot recall the name of it now) that causes every double-click on a word to go to the "You can't edit this page, dumbass" page. I frequently will double-click a word as a shortcut to selecting it for a copy-paste, and would rather have a local wiki mirror where I have control over that behavior than ever visit such a site more than once.

The same double-click/select/copy/paste makes the capitalization problem of MediaWiki more pronounced for me, since LSL is case-sensitive, but fortunately there is almost always a correctly cased keyword nearby on the same page.

Yeah the double click thing is annoying. When the wiki was still live if you logged in you could turn that off.

I agree, it's only a little, but still.



Heh, come on, you can't read much into that.

<llrobla> my preference was not to have the LSL prefix. However, it's a preference, not an edict.
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If enough people want them to stay this way then I won't waste my time taking off the prefix. I am willing to go through the hassle of renaming everything though.

Strife, you seem to still be missing the fact that the display names can be fixed by {{lowercase}} and some clever javascript. The internal names will still be "Ll__" but that doesn't matter as much as the display. Links like [[llrand]] would work anyway.

On another topic, I'd say calling the without-the-pseudo-namespace option "misnaming" and declaring us "trolls" is not a good-faith gesture. Also, I'm pretty sure the use of {{lowercase}} is preferred by all of us over just leaving things as "Llrand"; although perhaps unintended, you ended up setting up a strawman attack. Please don't misrepresent things.



I hope you'll be able to work around this for most browsers soon (see Wikipedia's eBay article to see the {{lowercase}} template in action), but yes, it's not quite painless.

Well then I'll add those to the Pros side. Not my intention hide anything. I want people to decide on the facts. Again sorry about the bit in the poll, I'll fix the post (can't fix the poll option though sorry) didn't see the potential issue.

As to the title of the thread, it was to get peoples attention, who would be interested in a topic about page names otherwise? It's a rather esoteric topic. But a topic about mud throwing puts a new spin on things. Yes it was a little low to assert that there has been mud throwing (I haven't seen any mud throwing on the wiki, and the debates have been very civilized).

I tried {{lowercase}} on LlEmail and all I saw was the message, doesn't look like LL has the javascript setup to do the replacement.

/me breaks out the geek-fu

Custom namespaces are proposed and the response is "No". JIRA issue WEB-22





In a request to have the MediaWiki upgraded to 1.9, Strife sneaks in a request to have StringFunctions to be installed, ignoring JIRA issue WEB-15: JIRA issue WEB-23

Now onto the Wiki Saga.

Strife acting before thinking or without giving fair notice of his intentions:




Objections to Strife's methodology begin



Strife contradicts himself




Despite being told two days earlier "no";

Basically, Strife keeps on being told "no", and ignores this.

Strife's methodology makes it difficult for newcomers to MediaWiki syntax to figure out what the hell is going on under the hood.

As demonstrated by the poll options for which he has been criticized, Strife's attitude towards potential users of the SL Wiki has been elitist, and until 08:49, 14 February 2007 (PST), Strife appeared to be fully prepared to exclude the needs of every single non-technically minded Resident from making sense of the information contained in LSL-related articles.

Despite Strife's methodology being under dispute, he's been continuing to create articles using the "LSL_" prefixing method. By his own admission, this requires a bunch of complicated template code in order to get the pages sorted correctly.

Since being told that prefixing things or using custom namespaces won't happen, Strife has made close to 700 edits on the SL Wiki, with only a teeny-tiny minority actually including edit summaries. Not only is he showing a blatant disregard for the authority of Linden Lab, ignoring the protests of his peers, Strife also seems to be content to stick his head in the sand and ignore the huge amount of work that will befall the rest of us to fix the mess he is making.

If you're going to be an ass... attribute things to the right person. "I" was the one who asked for the LSL: Namespace on JIRA, not Strife.

d'oh >_<

In my defense;

1. Strife appeared to be the only one advocating it.
   
2. Strife's name appears right above yours in the list and I'm still not used to the JIRA interface (hence my delayed reaction to some of the bugs I filed)
   
3. Strife's comments and attitude towards the situation is incredibly infuriating, thus leading to errors. I mean seriously, look at the name of the thread.
   

I apologise for my error, and the thread has been editing accordingly.

more from the wiki:

I'm not going to make a big fuss about it, but I'd prefer if, per the Editing Guidelines, that the page just be called "LLRand"

Rob, the main reason we didn't do that is because Linden Lab already had a lot of the LSL function names taken with their own pages on the subject, with internal development notes on the functions rather than scripting documentation. Gigs Taggart 20:10, 11 February 2007 (PST)

That makes it even worse. Does it make sense to a newcomer that the difference between LLRand and LSL LLRand is that the first is development notes, and the second is a reference? Let's figure out a better way of disambiguating than that. I would rather that we figure out how to refactor the two pages to merge the appropriate information, and then break out other information into separate articles. -- Rob Linden 21:57, 11 February 2007 (PST)

I only know of one conflict and that is with llEmail. Since the discussion over the namespaces issue is still pretty much unresolved, I was going to burn that bridge when I was content with the state of the content (3 -> 6 months). Because of how the pages and templates are written, moving the content only involves the extra work of changing 3 very small templates (assuming people used the templates). The namespace debate doesn't keep me awake at night. Strife Onizuka 22:21, 11 February 2007 (PST)

yeah really, we could do without the attempted character assassinations here.

Look, I don't really care what the pages are called personally. I like the "LSL llSleep" model simply because it's up at the top of the page.. and when I'm tping code in the game window, and glance over.. it's a bit of a speedbump to see it cased incorrectly.

Is it a deal breaker? no.. not really.. I couldn't much care less.

But the useage of the commands is llSleep. and having it displayed AS llSleep in the wiki is important to noobs. I find some noob wanting to make a script show some floating text..., and I hand them the wiki page for llSetText because I want them to figure it out themselves.. and they're going to come back 20 minutes later with "I tried and I tried and it still gives me an error"

Now is the case likely to be the error? probably not. But I've seen people scripting with capslock on.. "because it's easier"

LSL is hard enough to learn, without having to learn to translate the wiki into usable code.

That said.. the idea of slipping some javascript powered css into the title display seems like a neat idea.. as long as the people generating new pages aren't inconvenienced greatly by having to "insert first L here" then "type name of command here, minus first l"

I think you overlooked on the left side of JIRA issue WEB-22 that shows the reporter as Thraxis Epsilon.

If I had seen JIRA issue WEB-15 when i posted JIRA issue WEB-23 I wouldn't have posted the request for string functions, it was an after thought. I would have posted it in the title if It were anything but an after thought. Feature suggestions at that time were not permitted on JIRA, why should I expect to find any others. I apologized for posting a feature suggestion.

----------------

To the thread in general:

What has been really bothering me is this:
Look at the guidelines. Does it say anywhere "LSL pages are not to be prefixed with 'LSL' and all existing pages in the namespace (exlcuding these... *insert list*) are to be moved."
If you want to end a debate you need to end the debate. If you want people to follow you have to tell them. Once you post something like that, then you can go forward, you have declared intent. If there the debate flares up then go into full dispute resolution mode. But if they don't; well full speed ahead. Course you need to give them a little time to comment.

We had this problem on the LSLWiki. Everyone did what they pleased without consideration. Ended up writing rules against making major changes without first putting it in the Guidelines/StyleGuide.

We need to write some guidelines for the wiki. Every wiki has them. You can't say what is the right and wrong until you write the rules that distinguishes the difference. It makes dispute resolution impossible. First we need to write some dispute resolution guidelines (or borrow them from somewhere). Something reasonable. They need to be customized for our wiki; this isn't the old LSLWiki nor is it Wikipedia.

My thoughts:
The website as defined in the CS is PG. So we need to watch our language.
Talk pages are for gear grinding but decisions should be posted in the open.
Unless it can be reasonably verified to be false it shouldn't be removed if it does not disrupt the article.
Talk is cheep, if you want something in the guidelines put it in the guidelines and wait for the fallout.
If you want to play games you have to define the rules.

I would like to move the LSL function and event pages (if that where things end up). I'm thinking of rewrite the templates and its' as good a time as any. This will fix those annoying template errors you see at the top of 100 pages as well.

Everything will look the same on the outside but the inside will be overhauled. The goal is to cleans the templates of their language specific content and make it easier to add new custom modifies. A key advantage of this will be that it decentralizes the strings allowing for individual templates to be added and changed without causing all the pages to be re-rendered (this is a big problem with the current templates).

The new templates will have a duel interface: Old style parameters and #var's.
Templates like LSL Function will convert it's parameters into #vars
Inbetween the two template calls and above LSL Function the user can include Additional templates that modify current #vars
Then a call to a template LSL Generic will handle the rendering itself. Will probably be faster then the current templates

If this debate can wait a few days I'll have a prototype whipped up.

Question: Whats the plan with Categories and templates? Should they also have 'LSL' stripped? I don't think there are any collisions with Categories currently not so sure about templates. I'm inclined not to move the templates.

That quote was already corrected at the time of posting Strife.

You also seem to be forgetting one key fact.

You're creating all this fuss as a workaround for a bug in the MediaWiki platform, for which there already exists a suitable workaround.

You're also ignoring any potential future features of MediaWiki that allow article case handling to be processed on a per-article basis, rather than a per-wiki basis.

To be blunt, you're being incredibly short sighted.

Strife: I don't understand what templates have to do with the page names. If there is some template magic you can do that will rename all the pages, by all means say so before I manually rename the 300 remaining pages.

Signpost: Come off it, you are the only one getting worked up here.

I do need to chill

It's a problem I've always had; when I'm repeatedly presented with a situation that makes no logical sense to me, I start running around like a headless chicken till the logic smacks me upside the head.

This happened before with the UUID privacy issue, which w-hat are actually linking to

Either Strife or someone else does have some Perl/Python-fu up his sleeve that can do this.

If it's going to be a manual job, I think the best way to approach it would be to divide up the pages between all interested parties rather than putting it all one the shoulders of one person.

if you want to be logical....

form should follow function.


okay, im a clueless newbie who wants to look up something in scripting. i type in the search box "llOwnerSay". does the article "LlOwnerSay" come up? then i found what im looking for. does an article titled "LSL: llOwnerSay"or its variants) come up? or do i have to go through an extra step of peering through all the pages that have llOwnerSay in them, first?


still a clueless newbie i search for "ownersay." do i read the article titled "LlOwnerSay" and use that to type in the wrongly capitalized function in my code? as for me, personally, i wouldn't. first, i can see right off that all the ll functions are ll and not Ll or LL. second, i usually dont bother reading the article titles, i read the actual article, and i expect a highlighted or bolded or otherwise notable example of the actual code that i will use as a template (or copy and paste :X ) there.
but might there be some confusion that could be mitigated with using "LSL: llOwnerSay"? yes.


lastly, things like "LlOwnerSay" and then the ol 'this article's name is wrong because media wiki forces us to capitalize first letters and it really shouldnt be' are REALLY ugly. (and is the capitalization gripe really necessary on all the pages? ugh.)
for this reason, i would opt for using a prefix. however, i don't know if that will break or hinder the search function. or your linking functions, or whatever black box tinkering goes on behind the screens.
however, if you decide prefixes cause too much usage trouble, i would vote for using "LLOwnerSay" and double-capitalizing the first letters. just because it is more aesthetically pleasing.


hopefully, that was helpful, because i can't give an informed opinion. if not, just ignore me.