Bye-bye Oooops!

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Edited: 1256932052|%e %b %Y by: leiger
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Tags: hotlinked-heaven

Bye-bye Oooops!
From the desk of pieterh
Via the yes-we-has-anglish department, on 1256932007|%e %B %Y, %H:%M

Wikidot.com originated in the lovely Polish city of Torun, which is famous for its stunning brick architectures, and lively nightlife. Today, of course, Wikidot.com is a global community, with most members coming from English speaking countries, especially America. So the original quaint language and spelling has started to look unprofessional.

We've just finished one round of improvements to several hundred components, cleaning up error messages, prompts, labels and other texts. We'll do more of this later until Wikidot.com speaks perfect English. Mainly the site manager still has the old texts. Tell me if you like the changes - they are all through the application.

Comments: 29

Ed Johnson 1256936539|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

And of course the first one I tried hasn't been changed yet! :)

Permission Error

Oooops!

Sorry, you can not edit this page. Only members of this site, site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to.

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Free Wikidot Applications · Your Shared Photo Gallery · Your Personal Blog

leiger 1256952488|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

To be honest, I like the "Oooops!" messages ;-)

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— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40

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pieterh 1256968266|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, I see it too. I suspect the cache needs to be flushed.

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Ashe 1256936611|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I take it the capitalization of button text is part of this? I personally liked the lowercase buttons. I do suggest that two-word button captions, like 'Site tools', 'Page source', 'Edit meta' be made uniform — i.e. every word should be capitalized. As I recall that's the usual convention (unless the word is three letters or less).

leiger 1256952561|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Agreed, I liked it when it was lowercase much better — but I think it's just a matter of getting used to it being different. It's not only lowercase that was changed. Instead of 'view source' it now says 'page source', for example.

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— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40

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pieterh 1256968527|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, buttons should take header capitalization. It'll take another pass or two to get this all clean.

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cold_blood3d 1256939315|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

capitalization can always be changed with CSS :)

Re: Capitalisation via CSS

James Kanjo 1256955466|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, Matt is correct. You can change the capitalisation via CSS:

#page-options-bottom {text-transform:lowercase}

It is better to have the first character capitalised in the html, because you can't do this in CSS.

@ Pieter, the "discuss(x)" button has the first letter uncapitalised.

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λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact

Re: Capitalisation via CSS

pieterh 1256968641|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

the "discuss(x)" button has the first letter uncapitalised.

Thanks. Also reply | options in threads.

This was a really large set of changes, and we wanted to publish the first round even when it was not all complete.

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Re: Capitalisation via CSS

James Kanjo 1256969178|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Also, "save & continue" on normal pages needs to have the first letter capitalised :)

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λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact

Re: Capitalisation via CSS

pieterh 1256970294|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Ack.

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Oooops!

rhombus p 1257474588|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

i personally liked the Oooops! messages than the "Don't panic" ones…

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Re: Oooops!

Wayne Eddy 1257475324|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I think an even better solution (for the this page already exists error) would be not to have an error message at all.

I'd replace the "New Page" button with a "Find/Create Page" button and then just go to the page if it already exists.

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Wayne Eddy
Bundaberg, Australia

Re: Oooops!

pieterh 1257513909|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I think an even better solution (for the this page already exists error) would be not to have an error message at all.

Indeed. Anything we can do to streamline the user interface is good. You're referring to the button for the NewPage module, right?

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Re: Oooops!

Wayne Eddy 1257538082|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, that's right. The button for the NewPage module. I use it all the time to find pages, and it would be fantastic if it skipped to existing pages without the error message.

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Wayne Eddy
Bundaberg, Australia

Re: Oooops!

leiger 1257548421|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I'd disagree. I use this error as part of my compatibility website: http://cyclods.ject.pro

If you enter a Game ID that is already being used, the message appears to tell you that the game has already been added — which is exactly the behaviour I want! :)

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— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40

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Re: Oooops!

Wayne Eddy 1257549229|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

If that's the case, I guess it would be nice if it was a configurable option for the "NewPage" module, or if there was a separate "find/create" module that could be used in its place.

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Wayne Eddy
Bundaberg, Australia

Re: Oooops!

pieterh 1257597928|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Wayne, feel free to discuss / edit here: http://blog.wikidot.com/design:8

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Brunhilda 1257540588|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I'd replace the "New Page" button with a "Find/Create Page" button and then just go to the page if it already exists.

This is Wikipedia system. If the page you are searching does not exist, then a possibility to create one with that name is offered, together with the other pages where this word (or words) appear…

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell

Wayne Eddy 1257549461|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Yes, that's true.

It is one of the few things I still like better about MediaWiki. (The other thing I can think of, off the top of my head is the automatic "noredirect/true" link back to a redirect page that MediaWiki inserts at the top of a page that has been redirected to.)

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Wayne Eddy
Bundaberg, Australia

Brunhilda 1257583186|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Hm, this was a big bugger for me, but I found a solution. Each redirect I l

[[module CountPages category="*" tags="преусмерење"]]
Историјска библиотека има %%count%% преусмерења
[[/module]]
[[module ListPages order="titleAsc" tag="преусмерење" separate="false" perPage="10000" category="*"]]
%%linked_title%% (*%%link%%/noredirect/true)
[[/module]]

Therefore I have the list of them, and I am able to edit them if needed… (The tag преусмерење is added because I make redirects within the same category as other pages (art, art2, video, slika), and I don't want them to appear when listing pages in that category…)

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell

last edited on 1257583259|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by Brunhilda + show more

I don't like the new message at all...

Brunhilda 1257771835|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I preferred the Ooops message. This one with Don't panic is (sorry for my frankness, but i have to say) sounds very stupid.

Why would anyone PANIC if cannot edit some page? I think that the best thing would be not to put anything. Just a plain mesage:

Sorry, you cannot edit this page because you don`t have editing privileges at this site.

Simple and clear and above all, neutral.

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell

Re: I don't like the new message at all...

pieterh 1257781039|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I agree the "Don't Panic" title does not work in all cases. I do not like software saying "oops" or "sorry" to me as a user, that feels silly. It's not a person, it's a machine.

The slight difficulty is that the error messages need a title. We do not, internally, have different types of error (warning, panic, information), which is a problem but not something fixable immediately.

Anyhow, we're going to do another round of language improvements this week, and Don't Panic will go away.

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Brunhilda 1257781378|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I think that Warning would be ok.

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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell

pieterh 1257787360|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Except it's not always a "Warning"… :-/ No problem, we'll look at it, and make it work better.

I appreciate the feedback. Every day, in little ways, Wikidot is getting better. Now, repeat after me…

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appliquetion 1258052570|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

How about

Please Note:

You can not edit this page. Only members of this site, site administrators and perhaps selected moderators are allowed to.

just a thought.

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last edited on 1258052649|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover by appliquetion + show more

leiger 1258066172|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Agreed. Sounds good, and is generic enough to apply to all error messages.

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— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40

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pieterh 1258113729|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I like it :-)

Nice proposal, we'll use that.

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SkyCaptain 1258667325|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Meh, I like, "Don't panic!" It reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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