Editing RoboWikiRenovation

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== RoboWiki Renovations ==
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A few weeks ago, PEZ, Fnl, a newcomer who spawned the discussion, and I ([[Voidious]]) started some initial discussions about doing a serious overhaul of the RoboWiki. It seemed like the only logical move would be to bring that discussion to the wiki here. I think everyone would agree that the wiki could use some cleaning up. Here are some of the main points brought up so far.

* '''New Wiki Software''' - There are many more sophisticated wiki solutions out there. [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki] is the first one I'd consider, as it's used for [https://wikipedia.org Wikipedia], PEZ's [https://halowiki.net halowiki.net], and a few other nice wikis I've visited. PEZ and Fnl both have positive things to say about MediaWiki. There may be better solutions for a wiki like this, though; two of the notable features of this wiki, in my mind, are the emphasis on discussion and the posting of source code. A good view for diff's of pages and namespace / categorization abilities are important, as well. PEZ also mentioned that [https://trac.edgewall.org/ Trac] is worth considering. I'm not sure about the search feature here, but I'm sure a new wiki software could have a better one. (I usually just search with Google and ''site:robowiki.net''.)
* '''Separating Discussions From Info Pages''' - Discussion is a cornerstone of this wiki and this community, but it also works to clutter what could be very clean, simple, informative, and more polished pages on specific topics. I think many wiki platforms have much better ways of separating out discussions from topic pages. Updating existing content into this format would be a lot of work that would need to be done manually, but I think we could all just chip in and let it happen over time.
* '''Old, Stale, and/or Incorrect Content''' - Robocode's been around a while and a lot has changed over time. While I think there is a lot of value in the old discussions on this wiki, some of it could mislead a beginner or just plain be wrong. For instance, a newcomer finding a page on RobocodeGL and thinking that is the solution for Robocode debugging graphics should really be informed that there are great graphical debugging features already built into current versions of Robocode. We should be careful about ''deleting'' things altogether - though some things can surely just disappear - but marking the fact that a piece of info or a discussion is extremely dated seems like a good idea.
* '''Welcoming to Newcomers''' - As far as I know, this site simply thrives on the [[Changes]] page. But a newcomer might not know that or even think to look there for a long while. He'd probably look at the main page and click around from there - I know I did. There are plenty of pertinent links on the front page, but also plenty of paths that will lead you to stale content and never lead you to more current discussions and info on the same topics. The ''people'' of this community do a good job of welcoming newcomers, but it'd be great if the site itself was also more welcoming to newcomers...
* '''Organization and Maintenance''' - Kind of ties into several previous points, but also deserves its own bullet. We could separate pages into categories (and sub-categories) as part of the overall organization; then we might be able to have dedicated editors that are "responsible" for that section. Editors could just chip away at organizing the content there and perusing the changes made to pages within it. Fnl had an initial brainstorm for sections; I think a lot of thought could go into refining / adding to these, as well.
** News flash - section for all that is ongoing in the Robocode community &#8211; not just the game itself
** Rules and FAQ
** Descriptions of the difference between the Robot class, the AdvancedRobot class, and the JuniorRobot class.
** Howtos for basic functionality, e.g. how to make your first robot, how to deal efficiently with events, how to record enemy moves etc.
** Wellknown strategies for movement, scanning (turning radar), wave-bullets etc.
** RoboRumble, but a cleaned up version compared to the current one
** Leauges/Tournaments + news for coming tournament around the world
** Help, getting help with specific issues
** Robocode News
** Discussions
* '''Hosting of the RoboWiki and RoboRumble''' - [[PEZ]] and I have discussed the idea of me and/or Fnl taking over the primary responsibilities of running the wiki, which is something I would be quite happy to do at this point. Fnl is and would remain a valued source of input on how to run the site, but he is generally more occupied with working on Robocode itself (which he does a great job at =)). Depending on what we want for features and software for the new wiki, moving the site to a different host at the same time might be a useful thing to do, as well. [[Pulsar]] has been ''very'' gracious in hosting the RoboRumble server for so long, especially so long after he stopped really being involved in Robocode, so major thanks to him for that! If possible, though, I think it'd be great to move the RoboRumble server to the new host (or a different new host, if need be) so that we could have admin access to it, add to / update / rewrite the RoboRumble server code, and so on. Having new leagues for things like TwinDuel (or something more people are interested in =)), being able to change or update the RR protocol, rewriting the RoboRumble server to support cool new features, and being able to have a RoboRumble for Robocode 2 are all things that could be really cool down the line.

I'm sure there's so much more to talk about, so let's hear what you guys think. We've got a lot of smart and enthusiastic people around here right now, so I'm sure you've all got plenty of great comments on the above and ideas of your own. =)

-- [[Voidious]], [[PEZ]], and [[Fnl]]

Everything you list sounds like a good idea, particularly #2. I would think that there need not be a specific effort to move everything from the existing wiki; chances are that the recent content will reappear on its own on the new site. As you point out, much of the current stuff is outdated, and it is entirely possible that the new wiki will have only recent material because only recent visitors will move their posts. -- [[AaronR]]

I think it sounds great.  Especially having a better search feature (I've thought about suggesting a new search feature, but haven't gotten around to it yet).  As for hosting the site and rumble - don't shoot me here - but I think it would be great to have google ads or something like that to support the site.  I don't really know how that works ... if it ''over''supports the site we could even think about buying/renting dedicated rumble servers or something like that.  Or subsidizing [[Fnl]]'s efforts, or paying a thank-you to [[PEZ]]/[[Pulsar]].  Or flying everyone to a beautiful/tropical location to have a big lan party ... -- [[Simonton]]

My initial response is that there would be a lot of bias.  Robocode is more of an art than a science, and someone putting together a composite information page is going to take what they percieve as valuable aspects of the discussion to paint their summation.  Overall it sounds like a lot of work.  I'm not really familiar with Wiki structure in general as this is the only one I've used much, with the occasional visits to the encyclopedia one that I use so infrequently that the name escapes me.  -- Martin

Oh - and another comment I have - which is kind of prompted by martin's statement above but not entirely related - separating content from discussion sounds like a great idea, but I have a reservation or two about the idea of having dedicated editors.  Just assigning people to specific areas to make the conversion from one wiki to the other would be fine, if enough people are up to that endevor, but I think after the conversion everyone should have equal responsibility for everything.  I can't back that up with anything other than I feel like that would be better.  I, for example, would not care to be an editor, but I do care to organize a page here & there.  If that section had an editor, I would not feel like organizing it, but would just complain to myself about how unorganized *that* guy's page is. -- [[Simonton]]

I'd be all for a Forum to do actual discussions and leave the Wiki for actual knowledge archival.  And yes, it took me a while to start using the changes button for finding the actual discussion.  Too bad the Repository forums are so destroyed - that's where we used to do all the talking. --[[Miked0801]]
* I think that a forum is a better idea than a discussion page for each article. The problem with forums is that, as you mentioned, they can be extremely prone to spam unless they are constantly monitored - particularly if a popular forum package is chosen for the new site, as then spambots can hit it. -- [[AaronR]]
* Wait, would a forum mean all conversations end up on one page? -- [[Simonton]]

Trac has full Subversion capabilities in addition to its wiki and bug tracking systems. If Trac could be set up in such a way that everyone gets access to their own little Subversion repository, it would be AWESOME. -- [[AaronR]]

MediaWiki predefines a discussion page for well, discussion. --[[Chase-san]]

I agree with the discusssion separation from the actual knowledge...just the way wikipedia does it --[[Starrynte]]
* After thinking about it a little more, I have changed my mind. I now agree that MediaWiki-style discussion pages make more sense for this particular wiki, because they fulfill the same purpose as a forum while allowing easier posting of source code. -- [[AaronR]]

I am also very fund of MediaWiki, which we are using at my job, especially because you can do fixed pages and put the discussion for it seperately, which I think is benificial for our purpose. ;-) I really miss this feature in the RoboWiki. I would be cool if I could put ALL the online documentation for Robocode on the Wiki knowing that I will not be changed, unless a person with the right knowledge do it. If something is wrong with the documentations, then people can state that on the discussion part, and then the "fixed" paged could be updated the right person. --[[Fnl]]
* Yeah, protected pages would definitely be nice. I like the idea of having all of the documentation on the wiki instead of in Javadocs. -- [[AaronR]]
* Hehe.. the Javadocs "only" purpose is to document the "public" Robocode API. But it is not good for specifying all rules, how to use Robocode (GUI), how to do debugging, how to let in run from Eclipse etc. So, we should have both the Javadocs and the online help. :-) --[[Fnl]]

I'm sorry for taking so long to start contributing to this discussion. At first, I wanted to let it go a few days, because I had so many comments I wanted to make and I didn't want to just dictate the whole conversation. Then I had a couple really hectic weeks and just didn't find time to comment. Anyway, just a note to say this stuff is still gonna happen and I will comment some more soon. Some great input from everyone so far! -- [[Voidious]]

I think the [[RobocodeRepository]] is dead. The site has been down for hours with the error: <code>JspTagException (java.sql.SQLException): Access denied for user 'robocode'@'localhost' (using password: YES)</code>. Apparently their server can't access their own database. =) Anyway, this is why we need a new repository to go with the new wiki! -- [[AaronR]]
* Good idea. -- [[Simonton]]

I have a half-finished repository and RRAH server all-in-one replacement, if someone wants to help work on it. I have two versions: originally I did it with J2EE but then redid it with ruby on rails. They're both about equally complete. I figure I'll probably go forward with the RoR version, but if someone is a J2EE expert and wants to work on the J2EE version, I'm open to doing that. I also grabbed the roborumble.org domain name about a year ago, to load that software onto when it's done. So if you're interested, let me know. --[[David Alves]]

Speaking of domain names, how are we going to move the wiki setup? How about a two step process:

# First, we grab robowikirenovation.net and oldrobowiki.net. We start setting up the new wiki at robowikirenovation.net.
# When the new wiki is finished, we move the existing wiki to oldrobowiki.net, move the new wiki to the present robowiki.net, and change robowikirenovation.net to redirect to robowiki.net.

Anyone have a better idea?

-- [[AaronR]]

Why not just do robowiki.net/old or old.robowiki.net? No need for a whole other domain name... --[[David Alves]]
*I think you can also prefix your domain without needing to register a new name (e.g. renovation.robowiki.net).  You just need to configure the routing.  I'm not really an expert in that area though. Also, David Alves is correct. -- Martin
** Yes, only robowiki.net "counts" as the domain name, so prefixes are free. renovation.robowiki.net and old.robowiki.net sound good. -- [[AaronR]]
** Depending on the host, subdomains (prefixes) can be more of a hassle / cost to setup, so it might not be worth it to do it over subdirectories. Either way seems fine for a temporary URL. -- [[Voidious]]
** The "renovation" prefix would be temporary, but the "old" subdomain would presumably be permanent. It would be an archive of everything on the current wiki. -- [[AaronR]]

Here's another round of comments from me...

* '''Article bias''' - Well, Wikipedia is pretty hardcore about articles being from a completely neutral perspective, but I don't think we need to be quite so strict about it.  Of course a lot of Robocode stuff has room for subjectivity, but I think with a little politeness (something this wiki usually has a good amount of), we can be sure to present opposing viewpoints in the articles where appropriate.
* '''Ads''' - I don't have a problem with sites that use AdSense, in general, but I'd be really hesitant to let the RoboWiki turn into a money-making device for anyone.  I know we all have the right spirit here and that ads could basically be like free money to support the site, but I also feel like money has a weird way of tainting things.  Even if it seemed to anyone at all like the site was being run for profit, that would be really bad, in my opinion.  We can certainly discuss it further, but I don't think paying for it out of pocket and/or through donations is too big a deal for now.
* '''Dedicated editors''' - I think Simonton brings up some really good points here.  Let's hold off on dedicated editors for each section, for now, though I think it would still be appropriate in some sections (e.g., [[Fnl]] in the Robocode project pages).
* '''Forums''' - I wonder if we should have a separate forum, use the talk pages for discussions (e.g., [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Halo Halo's Wikipedia talk page]), or both.  I kinda like the idea of everything being under the banner of a single wiki, but since forum software is more specialized for discussions, there's a good case for that too.
* '''RobocodeRepository replacement''' - I'm glad someone brought this up, as it had slipped my mind when I first posted.  I think this is another very important piece that should be part of the new wiki project (though probably not the wiki itself, per se).  I'm not sure how far along David's replacement repository stuff is, but it would be really easy to do a basic system, anyway, to at least give registered users web space for their bots.
* '''Migration of content''' - I like the idea of manually moving the content over from the old wiki to the new wiki, basically building it up from scratch.  I dislike the idea of leaving any of the old discussions behind, but I think doing it this way would force us to keep the new wiki organized from the get go, instead of just transferring our whole big mess there and trying to clean it up afterwards.
* '''Which wiki software''' - I still haven't dug too deep on this one, but I am still leaning towards MediaWiki, myself. I've looked at Trac a bit and it seems a lot more geared towards bug tracking and actually storing source code than towards advanced wiki functions.

-- [[Voidious]]

I vote for using talk pages.  Having a forum would de-couple discussion from specific wiki pages, right?  I'm just not ready for that kind of paradigm sift :).  But other than that, I think we're ready (except for having the server?).  If you ask me, I say just set up media wiki and let's get started!  -- [[Simonton]]

(Edit conflict) Here's my opinions/responses to what you just posted:

* '''Article bias''' - Not a problem. Have you ever seen a really biased article on the present wiki? I think that, as long as most of the arguing goes on in the discussion pages/forums, there really isn't a need for a detailed neutrality policy.
* '''Ads''' - I think that having Google ads on the new wiki is a good idea, but only if the money goes exclusively to funding the wiki/repository server, internet connection, etc. and ''not'' the people involved. Unless I get to be part of Simonton's tropical island LAN party. =)
* '''Forums''' - Having the discussions completely separate from the pages is probably a bad idea, especially given the current wiki's culture. I would say that discussion pages are a better idea than forums.
* '''RobocodeRepository replacement''' - This should probably be the top priority after getting the basic wiki server running. In fact, we might even want to have this running before the renovation. The existing repository has only gotten more and more unreliable lately.
* '''Which wiki software''' - <nowiki>MediaWiki</nowiki>!

''Edit: maybe we should have a link to this page on the [[Robo Home]]? As has been pointed out, few newcomers watch the [[Changes]] page, but they make up the majority of users (and opinions!).''

-- [[AaronR]]

LEt me have a round!

* '''Article bias''' - Would be nice to have neutral purely informative pages, looking at the current page for robocode on wikipedia, seems more like people wanted to me mentioned then wanting a good article. (This has changed since I last saw it, but it used to be pretty bad).
* '''Ads''' - These always have a upside and a downside, who can say if they would be helpful or just annoying (like so much else), I am personally against as I find ads very annoying and I tend to look past them 99.9% of the time anyway.
* '''Forums''' - No, i'm sorry but adding bloat and confusion to discussions will not help, only way this is a yes is if somehow each topic has a big list of topics in there of itself.
* '''RobocodeRepository replacement''' - El Pronto! This is important, we should do this '''A'''s '''S'''oon '''A'''s '''P'''ossible.
* '''Migration of content''' - I side with Voidious completely on this topic, not much else can be said.
* '''Which wiki software''' - I have poked through many, the only truely viable solution is as stated... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki]

--[[Chase-san]]

So is the consensus basically this (please reply yes or no)?

* The wiki will run on <nowiki>MediaWiki</nowiki>. Content and discussions will be moved manually as necessary.
* The wiki will start well-organized and grow outward from there. Hopefully, with work, the wiki will stay clean and make it easy to find the up-to-date content.
* The wiki will have neutrality policies, etc., but they need not be as extensive as those of Wikipedia.
* The Robocode documentation will be posted by [[Fnl]] in a specialized wiki category. Only he and any other future Robocode admins/developers will be able to make changes to this section of the site.
* No ads will be posted on the wiki initially, but we may add them later if needed (or if we feel like it).
* No forums; discussions will be held on the discussion pages associated with each article.
* A replacement for the RobocodeRepository is a ''top'' priority.

If there are no problems, I say we get started!

-- [[AaronR]]

I say yes on all those things. I just have three things to add:
* I think we should map out some categories or otherwise plan the re-organization of content before just diving in and moving stuff.
* Migrating the RoboRumble server (and possibly modifying or rewriting it) should also be on the to-do list.
* Before we get started, we need to get a new host. =) [[PEZ]] says this one is not quite sufficient to handle MediaWiki; I'm looking into new ones as we speak. (Any suggestions are welcome, of course.)

-- [[Voidious]]

Hostgator is reliable, and they actually respond to you! (gasp). Its what we use over at tfsnewworld, they offer insane bandwidth, storage space and domains. They offer shared (which is cheap) and deticarted which is not (what did you expect?). They be here: https://www.hostgator.com

Right now for shared, swamp, 1000 gb of disk space (yes thats 1 terabyte), Unlimited bandwidth and unlimited domains all for $12.95. Heh, okay enough with horrible bad sales pitch.

At any rate its almost cheap enough I could afford it.

--[[Chase-san]]

If you need help with the annual payment for the new Wiki, I am interrested in paying some or most of it. :-) --[[Fnl]]

In case it already didn't seem urgent enough to get the repository replacement working, I just thought I should point out that the existing repository has been completely nonfunctional (not even showing the homepage) for something like two days. =( -- [[AaronR]]

A replacement will be up shortly. --[[David Alves]]

* Ah, yes, I see that roborumble.org is coming along quite nicely. I like the style, it feels clean - none of the Repository's "3000 images per page and oh let's throw some scrolling text in too" style. -- [[AaronR]]
* I'm just about to sign up, but I don't want to put my e-mail adddress in and have it displayed publicly (especially without disguising it by putting it in an image or using [at] instead of @). Any chance you could make the e-mail field optional? -- [[AaronR]]

* There's not really a point in signing up yet, but feel free =P. As for the email, it will currently be displayed. I'll change to an image-based thing later. --[[David Alves]]

Alright dudes - I've been tinkering with MediaWiki over at roborumble.org and I think I've got things setup to the point that we can all start working on migrating  (and re-organizing) content. I really like MediaWiki so far, it's great. Once we're sure that the host can handle regular usage (not that I'm too doubtful, but you never know), we can see about getting robowiki.net pointing to the new host and make it our new home. I've migrated a few things and tried to get a handle on some of the ways things can be re-arranged on the new wiki, so you can look around to get an idea of some general stuff, but there's still like 99.9% of the content to go. =)

Check it out at: [https://testwiki.roborumble.org testwiki.roborumble.org]. And ''please please please'' check out the [https://testwiki.roborumble.org/w/index.php?title=Migration Migration] page I setup. =) There's also a ton of great info at [https://mediawiki.org MediaWiki.org] about how to use the features and syntax of MediaWiki. Luckily, a lot of basic syntax from UseMod is the same as MediaWiki, but certainly not all.

-- [[Voidious]]

* Cool, it looks good! I got the first edit on the new wiki (other than Voidious' initial edits, of course). Does this mean I can say, "First post"? =) -- [[AaronR]]

I love photoshopping, if you like David I can create a bunch of flags, and assuming I can get access (I doupt it, but I am already a webmaster / sole programmer of tfsnewworld.com), depending on whether your using tomcat or php for the system I could add in the new countries aswell. however i'll leave any base functionality to you (since you programmed it and probably have things planned). Also I have a prototype of my own rumble-server working, its not online but uploading and rankings work (just no detail display yet, but thats simple enough). Server-side scripting is my true medium. --[[Chase-san]]

* As a side note, I can probably whip up a few different logo's or just clean up and vectorize the current one (ergo make it bigger and cleaner). --[[Chase-san]]

David, I have the flags for you, not every one there is of course, but a good start. [https://chase.tfsnewworld.com/flags.zip] --[[Chase-san]]

i would like to see a real reaction system, instead of this editing stuff.
and i would like just some color and style, instead of those white pages with blue links.
what about word press, and just give the default user rights to make pages and posts.
--[[pipin]]

Welcome to the wiki, pipin! I think the reason for doing a wiki instead of wordpress is that it makes it easier to explore. As long as we're good about making phrases like HeadOnTargeting link to the appropriate page, people that are new to robocode can browse from page to page, reading up on things that they don't know about easily. Also, my experience with WordPress (I made the theme for https://csclub.cs.sjsu.edu and do some moderation of posts there) has been that making posts is great and easy, but making pages and linking them together is not as smooth, and certainly not as easy as the double square bracket way of doing things in a wiki. --[[David Alves]]

Cool, I really like the initiative with roborumble.org as a replacement for the old Robocode Repository! --[[Fnl]]

Regarding the new Wiki.. where should I begin with migrating the stuff for the old [https://robocode.sourceforge.net/help/  Online Help] into the new Wiki? I will probably give it a textural face lift (update the information) for the new Wiki. ;-) --[[Fnl]]
* Feel free, Fnl. I just gotta get a little power to kick things into high gear. Hehe, I love setting up wiki's. --[[Chase-san]]

Must we keep record what pages already are migrated and being migrated, or should we more-or-less follow the 'wanted pages' on the new wiki. Not that I have much time to contribute to the migration, but every little effort helps.  -- [[GrubbmGait]]

* I was trying to avoid needing to do that, and I don't think it's really necessary. I think if we just blindly copied like 10% of the wiki and then continued to copy the 'wanted pages' (recursively) we'd get every single important page. The way I'm doing it is just doing a section of items at a time - like right now I'm doing [[Targeting]]  methods. -- [[Voidious]]

Am I doing the migrating stuff right? (migrating [[Melee]] stuff mostly for now) --[[Starrynte]]

* Well, for one thing, the credits box should go on the talk page, not the main article. This is because the main article will inevitably be edited beyond recognition. -- [[AaronR]]
* Oh. Right. And I'll also 'categorize' the discussion like on Wikipedia. Btw, does the 'table of contents' thing appear when there's a particularly long article only? --[[Starrynte]]
* I believe the TOC appears when there are more than three or so main headings. I'm not sure though. =) -- [[AaronR]]
* lol, fast reply :) anyways, you CAN rearrange the discussions/article slightly so that they could be categorized? (e.g. Talk:MeleeStrategy) --[[Starrynte]]

Found this in [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Section Help:Section] at the Wikimedia <nowiki>MetaWiki</nowiki>:

<blockquote>
For each page with more than three headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings, unless:

* (for a user) preferences are set to turn it off
* (for an article) the magic word __NOTOC__ (with two underscores on either side of the word) is added in the edit box

When either __FORCETOC__ or __TOC__ (with two underscores on either side of the word) is placed in the wikitext, a TOC is added even if the page has fewer than four headings.

With __FORCETOC__, the TOC is placed before the first section heading. With __TOC__, it is placed at the same position where this code is placed. This allows any positioning, e.g. on the right or in a table cell. In old versions of MediaWiki, it also allows multiple occurrence, e.g. in every section (However, this seems only useful if the sections are long, so that the TOCs take up only a small part of the total space.).
</blockquote>

-- [[AaronR]]

I am now putting new, active content on the new wiki, rather than here.  Is that something the whole community would like to do?  All I'm doing right now is updating my movement research and RoboResearch, not migrating any old content.  I would love to see everyone follow suit.  MediaWiki provides some nice features; in my opinion it's worth the (slight) learning curve.  The only problem is that it doesn't have enough content to really replace this wiki yet.  Did people generally give up on the migration, or is that effort just temporarily dormant?  Not that I'm asking anyone to start doing it (since I myself am not), I'm just curious.  -- [[Simonton]]

There is something called "school" which is preventing me from helping on migration at the moment...but when I am not busy with school I can hopefully help with migration --[[Starrynte]]

I was going to make the move, but then I saw the Recent Changes page was basically a giant spam-reversion log...  Is it better now?  I think that migrating everything over will be challenging, especially since many nuggets of wisdom are sprinkled in conversations throughout the current wiki.  --[[Darkcanuck]]

* I haven't seen much spam in the last few weeks.  I think I reverted 2 and saw someone else revert 2 others.  It would certainly be a long time before any attempt at organizing all those sprinkled nuggets could be completed, but I at least think it a good place to start organizing ''new'' nuggets in a less-sprinkled fashion :).  -- [[Simonton]]
* Of course, the day I say that some spam starts showing up again.  I just emailed [[Voidious]] asking him to disable anonymous edits.  He'll be taking care of it soon, so that should help a lot.  -- [[Simonton]]

I've (finally!) disabled anonymous edits at the new wiki, so we should be good to go re: wiki-spam. If nobody objects, I think we'll point robowiki.net at the new wiki sometime soon and turn this one into a read-only archive. Then we can migrate content as we see fit, and we'll also always have the old wiki intact for reference, so we can even choose not to migrate some stuff without it being lost forever. Sound good? -- [[Voidious]]

* Sounds good.  -- [[Simonton]]
* Oh, but one thing: can we still get to the edit box in the old wiki, just not submit it, for MUCH easier copy-pasting into the new wiki? -- [[Simonton]]
** Yes, very good point, I'll make sure that you can still get at the source. -- [[Voidious]]
* Can I suggest that the old wiki stay at the same address (the cgi-bin dir shouldn't conflict with Mediawiki) and add a link in the header pointing to the new wiki?  This site is well-indexed by Google, no reason to break that.  -- [[Darkcanuck]]
* Earlier you break it, earlier it'll be re-indexed. Or at least have redirects from the old addresses of the old wiki to the new addresses of the new wiki. =P -- [[Nfwu]]
** I'm not really sure what happens with the Google indexing if you break all those links, but I do think we can make the web server redirect cgi-bin requests appropriately without much trouble. I'm trying to think if there are any reasons why we couldn't or wouldn't want to leave the old wiki at the same URLs. Good thinking, though, seems we'd definitely want to leave old wiki pages at same URLs or make them redirects. -- [[Voidious]]
* Well, one thing to consider, are the RR clients. Not only do they currently point to the old wiki, but I think that their participants page parsing can deal with the new wiki yet. Do we want to make sure slightly-old but well tested versions like 1.5.4 and 1.6.0 are still working just fine, or is that not a priority? -- [[Rednaxela]]
** I tested the parsing of the participants page when we first started working on the migration and it works fine. The parsing it uses is super simple. We may just need to update our clients to point to the new participants list. (This actually makes me wonder about making old-wiki URLs redirect to the archived wiki... because we might want the old-wiki participants list to forward to the new wiki page.) -- [[Voidious]]
** Ahh, I was unaware that the new wiki participants list worked fine with it. In that case, I'd say we should make old-wiki URLs redirect to the archived wiki, with an exception to redirect the old participants page to the new one. Additionally, I think it wouldn't hurt to make a future-safe participants URL perhaps at something like https://participants.roborumble.org or something like that which would redirect to the new wiki page and could be the default participants URL in future robocode versions. -- [[Rednaxela]]
** I would recommend using [https://testwiki.roborumble.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=yaml&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&rvlimit=1&titles=RoboRumble/Participants this link] instead for the participants list, just in case the MediaWiki layout changes to use <tt><nowiki><pre></nowiki></tt>. (heh) --[[Nfwu]]
* I vote for generated pages at old wiki URLs that contain a link to the archived wiki along with "try finding it on the new wiki <u>here</u>" ... if someone knows how to do that.  Also if someone knows how we could make a lookup table that makes exceptions to the rule of how to get a new wiki URL out of an old one?  Maybe it could scan to see if the new wiki URL has content before showing that link?  Let's see how much work I can suggest for someone who knows how to do such things ... -- [[Simonton]]
** This looks like a UseMod wiki. Adding stuff where <tt>$fullHtml .= '<div class=wikitext>';</tt> is in <tt>sub BrowsePage</tt> is where one should look -- [[Nfwu]]
** Seconding this request.  Keeps content at the original url and makes new stuff easy to find.  Maybe the link to the new wiki could post a search request instead of linking directly to a page?  The home page, participants page should probably be the only ones with real redirects.  -- [[Darkcanuck]]
Was bored, and had a few free minutes, so here goes: (Based off UseMod v1.0 - the 2003 release)

Under sub BrowsePage: (note: hxxp --> http)
<pre><nowiki>
  if ($id eq 'RoboRumble/Participants') {
    print $q->redirect( -URL => "hxxp://testwiki.roborumble.org/w/api.php?action=query&format=yaml&prop=revisions&rvprop=content&rvlimit=1&titles=RoboRumble/Participants");
    exit;
  } else if ($id eq 'SomeOtherPage') {
    print $q->redirect( -URL => "hxxp://testwiki.roborumble.org/wiki/Some_Other_Page");
    exit;
  } else if ($id eq 'Changes') { # Yes, even the RC comes through here
    print $q->redirect( -URL => "hxxp://testwiki.roborumble.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges");
    exit;
  }
#Added before this:
  &OpenPage($id);
  &OpenDefaultText();
</nowiki></pre>
Under sub BrowsePage:
<pre><nowiki>
  $fullHtml .= '<div class=wikitext>';
## Added one line:
  $fullHtml .= '<hr><h3>Look for this article on the new wiki <a href="https://testwiki.roborumble.org/wiki/Special:Search/'.$id.'">here</a></h3><hr>';
  $fullHtml .= &WikiToHTML($Text{'text'});
  $fullHtml .= '</div>';
</nowiki></pre>
Under sub DoPost:
<pre><nowiki>
  if (true) { # <-- Change the condition
    &ReportError(Ts('Editing not allowed for %s.', $id));
    return;
  }
</nowiki></pre>
-- [[Nfwu]]

I think the new wiki should be placer here (At robowiki.net) and the old one put in a different subdirectory or simular with a link form the new to the old, I think this would better motivate people to update the new wiki. --[[Chase]]

Summary:
Consciousness check: 6 + 9 =
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