SeattleWiki:Coffee shop

The coffee shop is kind of a "lounge area" where anyone can ask questions about the site or anything else, and anyone else should feel free to respond. Here we can also discuss what SeattleWiki should be.

Dicussions moved to other pages

• SeattleWiki copyleft license discussion
• Relationship with Wikipedia - sharing articles and links between Wikipedia and Seattlewiki and vice-versa

Archived discussions

• Discussions Jun 2004 to April 2005

Ongoing discussions

Featured article wanted

It may be time to change our featured article. Any ideas? See the Featured articles wanted page!

matias 12:01, 10 May 2005 (PDT)

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List formats for categorized events?

What's the consensus on the format for lists of events under a certain category? For example, I just made some updates to the Beer festivals page, which has a list of (two so far) annual beer fests in the Seattle area. The festivals are listed first by date, then by festival name, and finally a bit about the festival location.

Do we want to list events in a page such as this by date or by event name? Seems to me if I were looking for the NWSource.com Summer Brewfest, it'd be easier to find it in a list by name than by date order.

-- Don | Talk 20:09, 15 May 2005 (PDT)

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Some changes to site organization

I've been making some changes to the way SeattleWiki is organized...

The first is that I got rid of the General resources page, and instead moved all the content to new or existing articles, all of which are part of the new general resources category page. This will hopefully encourage people to create and improve on pages rather than just adding links to that one big page.

I also got rid of the Useful websites page, instead moving all the links to the relevant pages (or creating new ones). This serves a similar purpose as above, encouraging use of individual pages rather than one big monolithic one, and hopefully reducing content duplication.

Lastly I started renaming some pages, like those of movie theaters, to indicate in the title that they are a movie theater, and also the neighborhood in parenthesis. This makes the Movie theaters category page more useful, since you can see at a glance where those theaters are. This technique can be used with other location-specific pages like restaurants, parks, etc.

On a related note, I have also recently enabled subpages. Subpages let you associate a particular page closely with another "parent" page. This is useful for creating sort of "mini wikis" for neighborhoods, with pages that may repeat between each neighborhood (for example "Eating Out" or "Parks"). Feel free to read the SeattleWiki:Location-specific pages help document for more info, and the Lake City page for some examples of using subpages.

Please feel free to comment on any of these changes and you like or dislike, either right here on on each article's talk page.

-- matias 22:58, 18 May 2005 (PDT)

Is there a high-level strategy for the use of Categories that we can adopt or that I can help implement? It's something I haven't been using for much of my edits or topic creations, but seems like something that can be incredibly useful. (i.e. some of the broad "topics" might be better suited to be category pages?)

-- Chris, aka HunkDuJour 10:15, 19 July 2005 (PDT)

I don't think there's too much written on stone about categories... In general I've been creating categories for neighborhoods (Category:Queen Anne, Category:Capitol Hill, etc), and for types of places or venues (Category:Parks, Category:Restaurants, etc). In addition there are pages that as you mention are well-suited for category pages, like Category:General resources. If you want to convert other similar pages feel free to comment on the page's talk page and anyone interested can discuss it. Otherwise feel free keep categorizing stuff!

-- matias (talk) 14:42, 19 Jul 2005 (PDT)

Which Fireworks

I notice that there are two fireworks on July 4th.... Which one is better... Ivar's or the one by WAMU?

The biggest concern I've run into with the fireworks, is not how spectacular the show is, but rather, how long I'm stuck in traffic on the way out. There are more ways to get out of lake union than the waterfront, so that's my favorite one. I *think* the Lake Union show also gets more money thrown at it, and that's the one with the coordinated radio soundtrack, but ultimately it's going to be a matter of taste. In the past, I've gone up the space needle to watch *both* shows at once, I don't know if the general public can do that anymore.

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I'd agree with the previous comment. The two shows are so similar in their content that for most people, the thing to consider is the traffic getting in and out, and which vista you'd rather see: Elliott Bay or Lake Union?

The surface roads around Lake Union and the Elliott Bay waterfront get insanely crowded in the hour or so leading up to these shows and for the two hours or so after the shows as people try to make their way in and out. If you live far enough away that vehicle transportation is required for either show, make sure you consider that in your plans.

Don | Talk - Contributions 13:51, 20 Oct 2005 (PDT)

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Date formats: Typed out versus links and wiki user prefs

It occurred to me that if we formatted dates and times as links, they'd show up according to users' preferences, and we wouldn't have to worry about misunderstandings due to such things as the order of month and day in short dates (for example, 10/07/05 could be either Oct 05 or Jul 10).

The only problem with using links for dates is we'll end up with a slew of empty pages, or we'll have to create pages for each date.

If we wanted to create pages for each date, we could use them as a historical timeline of sorts. The page linked to each date could be a brief summary of major historical events for that date in the Seattle area.

And of course we can certainly continue the way we are, which does avoid confusion because we're typing out month names. But the wiki can handle date formats for us if we use the links method.

Thoughts?

Don | Talk - Contributions 13:57, 20 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Wow, I didn't even know that mediawiki would automatically format dates like that; is that perhaps in MediaWiki 1.5? I tried this 10/21/95, but it didn't seem to work; I also couldn't find any date preferences. This wiki is still running MediaWiki 1.4.

-- matias (talk) 09:42, 21 Oct 2005 (PDT)