User talk:Admin

Request List

This section exists to allow editors to have one central place to post requests for actions requiring Admin privileges - such as image deletions or adding new Categories to the main page.

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Discussions

(2017-06-26) Quick Menus and Page Headers

I've made a few changes to the general style of pages with the addition of Quick Menus and Page Headers. Do people think this is the way to go? I've updated all the Hobby Products, Citadel and Reaper pages in line with my initial attempts but these were with Table-of-Contents floating right and today I'm thinking left is better - and I've now updated the A and B sections of Grenadier to reflect this alternative. I find the Quick Menus useful but they do take up screen real-estate at the top of each page... that is countered by the Page Headers that now stuff much smaller versions (in most cases) of the company logo on top of the table-of-contents (and so we claw back page space there). Feedback appreciated on this. I'll be keeping the Quick Menus on my user page as they are useful to me and, in particular, I think quick access to product code lists and box set lists are very useful at the top of each page. - Cattwister 18:31, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

It looks good on the left to me. I find the quick menus useful on pages with long lists, like the RP AD&D Monster line, otherwise they are taking up space without much benefit. I don't see it as a problem though. Admin 08:24, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Yep, the loss of space is the issue. If only I could hook it into the show/hide contents menu toggle but I cant. :-( I'd also have liked to replace the "Grenadier" category link text with the grenadier logo and moved the logo out of the table-of-contents but this version of MediaWiki can't do images with links that lead to anywhere other than the image page (I think). Anyway, I've modified the Hobby Products quick menu (to be similar to Thegrouch's Template:Breadcrumbs-FantasyWarriors. e.g. here Perry Rhodan - any better or does it generate small-text fatigue? (It's difficult to judge changes like this due to simply being "used" to the old ways). - Cattwister 09:10, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I've solved the loss of space issue by using a hidden / hover div on the company logo. I think it works well. - Cattwister 12:36, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

(2017-05-15) Contact Form

The contact form for new users is on another domain. Is it currently wired up to anything? There's a chap on the Old School Miniatures Facebook page wanting to join. Glassboy (15 May 2017)

Looks like the contact form has stopped working, that's an old site, never updated. I probably put a new contact form on the MW domain. Will inform here when it's up and running. Admin 18:10, 15 May 2017 (BST)

I've moved the old contact form over to the miniatures-workshop.com domain, it's not pretty, but it works. I'll tidy it up when I have a bit more time :o) Admin 17:21, 20 May 2017 (BST)

(2017-01-20) Sub-Category Invisibility / Redirect

• Could the Grenadier Fantasy Warriors line sub-category be moved into the main Grenadier category page @ http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Category:Grenadier so that it's not a separate section? It's easy to miss that way. Grodog 13:13, 20 January 2017 (CDT)

I'm not certain about this even though I agree that, until a user realizes the sub-category section is there, it is very easy to miss... but that is just learning about how wiki categories work. I'm not a Fantasy Warriors collector - those who are might prefer the sub-category without the distraction of Grenadier's other ranges? Doing away with the sub-category would add a lot of new pages to the Grenadier category page making the list almost 100 article pages long and therefore much harder to hunt down Fantasy Warriors pages. I have, however, done exactly what you suggest for Mega Miniatures where there used to be a Monsters sub-category and a Fantasy sub-category, and I am considering doing the same for the Boxed Sets and Board Games categories currently under Citadel Miniatures - but in all those cases the sub-category was an artificial grouping that I put in place whereas Fantasy Warriors is Grenadier's own category. Other wiki editors very specifically moved away from having these on the main Grenadier category page... I'd like input some from Thegrouch, Bedoingy, Admin or Colin on this.

I don't think we can, the wiki software separates categories and subcategories. The only way around it would be to list each category from the Fantasy Warriors Line separately on the main Grenadier page, and I think that would clutter the Grenadier page to much. Admin 11:24, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Oh yeah, maybe I misunderstood :-) We can't do that without actually hacking some of the wiki engine code: it's automatic. I was thinking Grodog meant to do away with the sub-category and move all of the pages into the main Grenadier category. We can do that. I think the wiki software lists up to 200 article pages in a category before it starts adding a "next" button to the bottom of the page to see pages 201+ - Cattwister 15:39, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure as well that the difference between category and sub-category is automatic, so Fantasy Warriors can't be simply moved into the article list. Adding all those FW articles to the main category would be cumbersome, as they'd be scattered unless every one is renamed.

With Heritage, there were many sub-categories, but that made it cumbersome to drill down to find the actual articles. The sub-cat articles were merged into the main category, but by using naming conventions to keep those articles adjacent. With Grenadier, that would put a total of 33 articles under the letter F, assuming all the FW articles were renamed to put "Fantasy Warriors" first in their names.

So, it would be possible to merge the articles, but it would result in either breaking the unity of the FW articles or in making the F section unusually long. Bedoingy 18:50, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I've created a redirect to FW on the Grenadier main page, but it doesn't complete the redirect, you have to click on the link on the redirect page. I didn't have a lot of time to tinker with it, though I did find some articles suggesting that redirecting to a sub-category is not a good practice. Any ideas? Admin 18:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Fixed it. I added ":Category:" to the front of it. There used to be an article page called "Fantasy Warriors" that now redirects to the Category. Looking at the history on that page, I removed it (back in 2014) from the Grenadier category as I found it confusing as to why there were two links on the Grenadier category page to the same sub-category. It seemed wrong to have two paths to the same destination. Of course, what we could do now is uncouple the Fantasy Warriors sub-category from the Grenadier category leaving only the (new) "Fantasy Warrior (sub-category)" page that redirects to the now orphaned sub-category. But I think that would be convoluted and very confusing if you know how categories and sub-categories are meant to work on a wiki. Leave as is, is what I think - Bedoingy pointed out above some serious issues with deconstructing the category which was the other suggestion. - Cattwister 19:47, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

You're a star Cattwister. The subcategory thing had been bugging me for a long while too, I also considered removing the FW subcategory from the Grenadier main page, but as you say, it could be confusing later. Admin 12:29, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! The redirect looks like the perfect compromise to me! Grodog 15:28, 30 January 2017 CDT

(2016-10-10) Chronological View of Companies (and Ranges)?

• Do we have a view that would list companies (and eventually ranges) in chronological/founding order? Grodog 22:47, 10 October 2016 (CDT)
  

We don't at present. I think it may be possible though; Cattwister might know a way to do it. :o) Admin 08:41, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Ha! I've been working on this for some time see: Decades - this is just a data page (not pretty yet) and not linked (which it needs to be to be useful). But that's where I am at with it. I've been using the unsorted list on the Decades page to go through each company page in turn and update the formatting. I'm currently up to "Holistic Designs". It takes some time to research exactly when a company existed and the whole process is very snakes-and-ladders: e.g. last time I looked at Holistic Designs, I got distracted by their Fading Suns line which led me to Agents of Gaming and their Babylon 5 series which we didn't have on the wiki so I did that instead... you can see the problem? About half of the "unsorted list" on my Decades page is actually updated but I've just not moved them to the decade categories. It will be a useful page to have, I think, and will help you focus on companies in the 1990s (for example) if you have a figure you know is from that decade. - Cattwister 11:17, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi there. Maybe I'm being a bit simplistic but couldn't we just create two new categories called decade and catalogue and then add these to pages like we do Kickstarter? So the initial diehard kickstarter would be in the categories kickstarter, diehard and 2010. Other pages could be added to the catalogues they appeared in over the years Glassboy 20:39, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Yep. If you mean a category per decade... so a "1970s" category, for example ... and then we go in and add that category to the bottom of the landing page of every company that was active in the 1970s. That would work. My Decades page is just a working list for me to know where I'm up to. The hard part is trying to pin down exactly when a company was active with evidence: we have only been able to tie down some companies to things like "the early-1980s" - so we have fuzzy dates in a lot of cases - how would we handle those if we were using exact years? I'm pretty sure that individual ranges would be even harder to pin down (being shown in a catalog or an advert for the first time, for example, is not evidence of a release date - Ral Partha and Grenadier are both rife with just this issue). Btw, I'm up to "Modellers Nook" now in the TO DO list - so that's how far I've progressed on the companies track in 5 months - ~50 companies with ~140 to go (so not fast :-D) And we do have a Catalogs category... but I'm not sure what you mean to do with it above...? The default category pages are just simple lists that are always ordered alphabetically (I think) and so are not very versatile in how they present the data (which is just aesthetics) but they do work, even if they are ugly and not indexed. Decade category pages are definitely something to try and which only affects 300-400 company pages... the effort required to extend this to individual ranges across the board is... a lot... there are 45,000+ pages on the wiki and even with the wiki engine estimating that we have only 2800+ genuine "content" pages that is still a lot of effort and some year categories would be absolutely chock-full of ranges which leads to the issue ot under- and over-categorizing. However I might just try out the category decades for companies and see how it goes - I can always delete and revert back if it seems a crazy idea in practice. Thoughts? - Cattwister 00:00, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay. I've setup those category pages (Decades) and linked in all the non-historical companies from the main page. Interesting to see... not entirely certain how useful it will be but a fun view of the data. The companies after Mithril I haven't really looked into properly and so their dates are vague. But it looks good - and probably how categories are meant to be used. I might regret not naming the YEAR and DECADE categories in this format though "Companies Founded in YEAR" & "Companies Founded in the DECADE" instead of the short but generic YEAR and DECADE format. Okay for now though. Good idea! I think, despite my reservations. Thanks for suggesting it. - Cattwister 18:05, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

(2015-11-17) Gallery of Unknowns 'Please Remove' Overlay

• Hi, I've added a way to overlay text onto gallery images - more as an experiment to see if it can be done - but I've used it on the Gallery of Unknowns page to prompt a tidy-up: we have a few images that have been identified ages ago but are still in there. I didn't want to just go in and remove them since I can't be sure the user who posted the image has seen them yet (but I bet they have). Have a look: okay or not okay? Cattwister 16:02, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Looking good. Knowing whether the original poster has seen an identified figure is always a problem. I do go through them all every so often. We could make up some rules at the top of the page asking people to let us know if they have seen it. We could implement a time thing as well, like 30 days after a figure has been identified, I'm still thinking... Admin 11:16, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

30 days sounds about right - and then we could just move the image out of the Unknowns page and onto their user page. Unless a user ticks the "Watch this Page" box on the Unknowns page they won't realise something has been identified... Everyone, however, is automatically watching their own userpage so moving it onto there for them after a month would mean they don't miss it? Cattwister 11:51, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

(2015-10-18) Missing images

• Hi, I've found something strange with C2012a: the thumbnail of the main image looks correct but if you click on it to go to the actual file you get an empty image, and if you click on the MetalMagic-C2012a.jpg link you get "The requested URL /lostminiswiki/images/5/5a/MetalMagic-C2012a.jpg was not found on this server.". It seems to be that we have lost that image but retained the thumbnail? Weird. FYI, I guess, since if it is gone then it is gone. I did not delete this image. Same result in different browsers on the same computer. Is it just me? Cattwister 21:15, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

It's the same for me. I'm pretty sure this is a database error, hopefully an isolated case. Admin 21:09, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Found another one (starting list here) Cattwister 10:30, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Metal Magic Dunwich Detectives C2012a - Dimensional Shambler - Image:MetalMagic-C2012a.jpg

The Dimensional Shambler is no longer showing an error page now for me, it links to the correct page with file details but no image or placeholder. Admin 22:55, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• AD&D_Boxed_Sets_(TSR)#5306__D.26D_Basic_Figure_Set TSR 5206 Box Set - Lizardman - Image:Tsr-adndbox-5306j.jpg

The TSR Lizardman is working ok for me. Has it corrected for you now?

Hmmm... not so far. Just tried it in Opera (not my usual browser) and on an iPad to make sure - I still get "The requested URL /lostminiswiki/images/b/b8/Tsr-adndbox-5306j.jpg was not found on this server." when clicking the "Tsr-adndbox-5306j.jpg (39KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)" link on the image page. Curious.

Ah ok, it's the little link at the top of the page, that is returning an error for me as well.Admin 22:55, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Just for clarification, these both appear to be old files. There was a period a few years ago, when I experimented with deleting old files using a database tool, as it was much quicker, though it could be a little confusing at times, so I stopped using it. It may be the reason for these two errors, if so there shouldn't be many more of them. Admin 22:55, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

(2015-07-02) How to Create New Categories

• Is there a way for non-Admins to create new subcategories? I found a distributor catalog with listings of several additional large scale (90mm and 80mm) Superior lines, and I also have several images to upload from the lines. The other option would be to just tack them on to the Fantasy 9000 line as was done with the Elfquest miniatures, but since several of the additional lines are not "fantasy", that would be misleading. The lines include Western (WK01-05), Miscellaneous (HS01-02), and Fantasy 8000 80mm (8001-8006). Treide 11:30, 2 July 2015

Hi, I think you just need to create an article that gets added to the existing Superior category. Is that what you mean? To do so just type the name of the page that you want to create into the search box and you should be offered the option to "Create this page". Check that the spelling and capitalization is how you want it before you click the link. All good? Then click the "Create this page" link and then make sure that you add

[[Category:Superior Models]]

to the bottom of the new page. Save it and then the new article should show up in the Superior category. Similarly you can create a new category by typing category:new-category-name into the search box and it should create a category instead of an article when you click on the "Create this page" option. But I don't think you need a new category/sub-category here just a new article. Also, if you feel those Elfquest figures should be on their own page then feel free to create a new article for them as well. Note: I've created the Western (Superior) page for you to make sure this works. I don't think you need to have admin rights to do it.Cattwister 19:18, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Worked like a charm, thanks!Treide 15:32, 2 July 2015

(2015-03-16) Including Additional Images on Image Pages

• Please delete the earlier version of Image:Asgard-fmonsters-fm16.jpg - User:Coopuk has re-uploaded this as a separate file (better this way). Cattwister 13:12, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed this is a much better way of presenting catalogue images, it's just such a daunting task to swap them all over to this format, it will have to be a gradual process. Admin 09:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

No kidding. I noticed yesterday that CCM have standardised this somewhat with a template: Template:Info. I don't know if we want to go down a similar route or not? Cattwister 17:34, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, their template is a nice idea, I have no problems with anyone wanting to do something similar here. I haven't really looked into templates, but I assume it's something that would need to be introduced gradually as well. Admin 19:11, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

(2015-04-01) Image Pages

I've created a new css page at MediaWiki:sgip.css and pasted your code into it. (Not familiar with how templates or css work in mediawiki and didn't have time to research it, but hopefully that does what you need)
Admin 14:08, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

• I've had a go at a version of CCM's Template:Info. My version is here: Template:SGIP. But I need to add some styling information to the site CSS. I can't do this as inline CSS as I'm using pseudo selectors which (I've learned) can't be done as inline CSS. I also tried to nowiki tag the style information directly on the page but the wiki software is clever enough to stop that (I suspect it counts at injecting code into a page and so the nowiki input is sanitised). Can you add the following somewhere, please? You won't need the style tags (obviously) if you put the CSS into an exisitng CSS file. Cattwister 09:38, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

<style media="screen" type="text/css">
.SGIP-table { border: 0; }
.SGIP-table td { padding: 0.25em; }
.SGIP-table th { text-align:right; background-color:#DDDDDD; vertical-align: top; }
ul.SGIP-m { margin: 0; }
ul.SGIP-m li { list-style-type: none; list-style-image: none; }
ul.SGIP-m li:empty { display:none; }
.SGIP-tf::before { content: "Tab front: "; font-weight: bold; }
.SGIP-tb::before { content: "Tab back: "; font-weight: bold; }
.SGIP-b::before { content: "Base: "; font-weight: bold; }
.SGIP-be::before { content: "Base Edge: "; font-weight: bold; }
</style>

(2015-02-10) PHP Problems

• Hi, I've been trying to edit the Fantasy Armies Moulds (Prince august) page but every time I try to submit the changes (any changes - a word anywhere and try to save) it just comes back with a blank page. I press refresh and I get back to the edit screen but with no changes in it. I suspect there are some log entries saying something server related has gone wrong. I think we could just delete this page completely and see if that works? I will then recreate the page (with a properly capitalised "August"). What do you think? Cattwister 16:06, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure we encountered a similar issue on another page, only to discover that one of the character we were using caused the error. Can you remember this? If I just delete the page, we will lose the images and other details, have you saved these before I delete? Admin 14:41, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct but it was much more specific in that case. The problem here is if I change anything at all I get a blank page. The previous problem was on the Range List (Ral Partha) page for the table entry "N-xxx Days of the Empire 1803-1815", I actually wanted this to be NC-xxx but anytime I added that additional letter 'C' I got the blank page error. We got around this by me accepting my fate and not updating that table entry (I isolated the problem on an old version of my user page (July versions). On the Prince August page I can't seem to add any new information at all. I have saved the existing page, but I have an entirely new page that I want to replace it with. All the old pictures and data are still present in the new page. To be super-safe I could create the new page first under another name to make sure it is working. Then you delete the old page and rename the new page to the old one? I'll do that this evening. Cattwister 15:20, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe that unless the offending character/s or format is removed, it will return a blank page on saving/preview. This issue may have arose after a PHP version upgrade, the last edit on that Prince August page was 2012 which is before that update took place, this why it is allowed to be viewed, but not edited. Admin 17:06, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

After a bit of tinkering I found the offending code, it seems that having the parenthesised (Prince August) held within the double square brackets caused the problem, I have removed all the parenthesis and it works now, but clearly we need to change the page name to not included Prince August in parenthesis, so we can continue using the internal links. Suggest a new name for the page and I'll swap it over. Admin 17:12, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh boy! If this is the case on all pages named with parenthesis, I'm in for a heap load of editing. Admin 17:42, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay Fantasy Armies Cast seems to work and is a fair compromise. Check the code on this page - I have replaced the spaces with underscores. Note that adding "(Prince August)" just before the closing square bracket pair will cause the same issue. I think the wiki software is doing some faulty regular expression pattern matching and stumbling over spaces and parentheses. Weird but manageable as it is a very, very rare problem. When was the PHP engine updated? I've created tons of Metal Magic 'C' series pages with "(Metal Magic)" suffixes and they are extensively cross-linked from other pages with no problems. All this since April 2014 (or so). Cattwister 21:53, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure when PHP was last updated, it was done automatically by the hosting people, I think it was some time in 2013. The wikimedia version we are using is very old and may no longer be fully compatible with the latest versions of PHP. The reason I've kept the old wikimedia version running, is because newer versions handle image place-holders in a different way that is not convenient for us. Joe Thomlinson, over at CcmWiki, rewrote some of the code for their wiki to enable them to have an up to date wikimedia version, which can handle images in a similar way to the older versions. I'm not sure if I have the skills to do that, so unless worse problems arise, I'm not going to mess with it. Admin 18:33, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

(2014-06-27) Renaming Categories & Images

• Fantasy (Metal Magic) - is there an Admin way to rename this category to Fantasy 'C' (Metal Magic)? I can't do it as an ordinary user (Move option not available on categories). I want this category to match the Fantasy 'M' (Metal Magic) naming style. I could do it by creating a new category and then recategorising all the pages currently in the old category if that is preferable?--Cattwister 11:41, 27 June 2014 (BST)

Unfortunately this isn't an admin vs. non-admin issue, there just isn't any facility in the wiki software to rename categories. You have to edit all the pages to recategorize them into the new name. The same is true for images, if you need to rename an image you need to re-upload it to the new name and delete the old one (manually copying over any comments on the image page). --Thegrouch 22:11, 27 June 2014 (BST)

• An older discussion of this very point...

Do you not have the 'Delete' and 'Move' tabs at the top of the pages (up there with the 'Edit')? I didn't think that these actions were limited to admins. Assuming that you have them, you can rename pages with move, and delete does what you would expect.

Tabs: Article Discussion Edit + (Add Comment) History Move Watch

No Delete (which is probably a good thing).--Mysticat 18:30, 20 September 2010 (MST)

Sorry, been sidetracked with other things. Okay, so non-admin users can move (aka rename) but not delete. Good to know. Note that in general when you decide that a page name is wrong you should use the move facility rather than creating a new page and copying the content over since a move will retain the original page editing history. Of course, in this case, it didn't really make any difference since it was a brand new page anyway.

FYI, random notes about moving/renaming pages. Note that a 'move' does leave the old page in place, it resets its content to be a redirect to the new page. i.e. if you move 'A' to 'B' you will have a new page B with A's old content/editing history and page A will still be present with a redirect to B. In most cases, you don't really want the old page around anymore (I think it still shows up in search results) and will need to ping me or Colin to delete it. Also, links to a page won't automatically be updated by the system if that page is moved. For pages that have been around awhile, you will want to check 'What links here' before moving it and will need to go manually update those links if any. --Thegrouch 00:35, 22 September 2010 (MST)

In which case, wouldn't it just be easier to copy both the article code AND the discussion code and then reupload bothe to a new page? Then again, the history would be lost I guess. Maybe we should have a page just for editing queries linked to the official "Help" page? :S --Mysticat 04:13, 22 September 2010 (MST)

No, moving the page by hand (copy and paste approach) is more work, doesn't buy you anything, and loses the page history. For normal topic pages you should always use the move mechanism to rename pages. I may have made this seem more complicated than it is, it really is as simple as picking move and specifying a new name. Note that move will automatically move the associated talk page as well, so you don't need to handle that explicitly. The only extra work is that you would want to update old links to point at the new name, though even that isn't stricly necessary until you go to delete the orignal page (the 'stale' links still reach the desired location because the old named page is still sitting there with a redirect to the new name).

There is one case in which you have to use the copy-and-paste approach, that is category pages. For whatever reason, the wiki doesn't allow category pages to be moved/renamed. Along those same lines, you cannot renamed images either, you have to download and re-upload them into the new name.--Thegrouch 01:35, 23 September 2010 (MST)

(2014-06-09) Google Not Indexing Images

On a related side-note, I've noticed that Google doesn't index the images on the Wiki very well (almost at all) due, I think, to our file naming conventions and a lack of captions? A Google image search like "site:miniatures-workshop.com wizard" only pulls back 4 hits, "site:miniatures-workshop.com MetalMagic" pulls back 1, site:miniatures-workshop.com RalPartha" 5 hits. Whereas this: "site:solegends.com Minotaur" pulls back a ton of hits - the solegends filenames have either "Minotaur" in them or the image is close to "Minotaur" as text on the web page that Google has indexed. Likewise with "site:collecting-citadel-miniatures.com Minotaur" we get lots of hits. But the Lost Minis Wiki gets 1 hit with "site:miniatures-workshop.com Minotaur" - and it's not a Minotaur! It could also be that Google doesn't index wikis? Or that the wiki forbids image indexing (robots.txt, I think)? Obviously, what I would like to do is a Google image search like "site:miniatures-workshop.com MetalMagic" and simply scroll through all pictures on the Lost Minis Wiki that are "MetalMagic" related until I find something that matches the unknown mini in front of me.--Cattwister 11:16, 9 June 2014 (BST)

That is a good point, I never noticed that. I don't think that it is due to the filenames and/or captions, do a google image search for just "site:miniatures-workshop.com" and you only get a couple dozen results (mostly outside the wiki itself). From that I infer that they are not indexing the images on the wiki at all. Filenames and captions would be more an issue of how accurate the indexing is, at least I would think. Other wikis seem to work fine with google image search, so I don't think it is anything about wikis per-se either. So, I'm assuming it is something about how this site is configured, but I have no idea how/why that would be. --Thegrouch 02:26, 10 June 2014 (BST)

Well, I looked at the robots.txt for the site and the only thing excluded is the msnbot user-agent (which probably explain why Bing search doesn't work for the site even for regular non-image searches). ... I've got no idea why Google doesn't see any of the wiki images. --Thegrouch 08:17, 10 June 2014 (BST)

Some time last year this site was brought down by the Google bot, it was indexing the site many times a day, requesting hundreds of pages at once. I tried many ways to restrict the bots activity to something that wouldn't crash the site, but it wouldn't play fair, I even contacted Google to ask them to tame their bot, but unsurprisingly they were too busy to notice me. In the end I was forced to prevented Google from continuing to index the site. I can't remember how I did it now, I'd have to check through some setting to remember. --Admin 22:45, 13 June 2014 (BST)

OK, I've just checked through and found the robots exclusion code in the .htaccess file. Since the problems noted above, we had a hosting upgrade, which allows far more bandwidth usage than we had, so I've commented out the exclusion code. Theoretically search engine robots shouldn't be able crash the site now, but we'll see. Finger crossed. --Admin 12:49, 14 June 2014 (BST)

That seems to have done the trick. Images from the wiki are now showing up in google search. --Thegrouch 08:56, 8 July 2014 (BST)

(2014-06-17) Meta-Gallery Pages

Re: Tall Elves, and several other Meta-gallery pages like this... These are not helpful from an editor's point of view (IMO). Maintaining them properly is never going to happen as they add to the burden of uploading new images - "What Meta-galleries do I also have to hook this image in to?" They are a nice idea but pages like this need to be automatically generated (scraped from the site somehow?). I put in a request about *deleting* duplicate images and some of those duplicates are now found *only* on these meta-gallery pages. Since these pages have a disclaimer that they will not be kept up-to-date, I have not updated them - but it will still seem that these pictures are in use because of these pages. I suggest the meta-gallery pages be deleted. Excessive? Or are we okay with just leaving stale pages lying around?--Cattwister 09:40, 17 June 2014 (BST)

The Topical Gallery pages were created by the user Mysticat (Not currently an active member) The idea is that if you have a figure, but you don't know the manufacturer, you may be able to find it using the monster type alone. I like the idea and have found a few figures that I possibly wouldn't have without the Gallery. Granted some of the categories are unusually named, or unlikely to be helpful (tall elves), but with a little or a lot of editing they could become more useful.

Admin 10:44, 28 June 2014 (BST)

I really will create a forum one of these days...

Admin 10:45, 28 June 2014 (BST)

(2014-08-01) Sub-Categorisation of Sets From Different Manufacturers

I've been tweaking the Impact! Miniatures category today - and I've added the C1052 Dark Dwarves (Metal Magic) and Mega Mini's BooBarians to Impact since a few of the models in those ranges were bought (and modified) by Impact but the vast majority of the figures from those two sets were not and in the case of the BooBarians the figures were also modified before being put back into production. I'm wondering if it is wrong to clutter up the Impact! category page with these 2 sets directly and that maybe it would be better to have a "Company Purchases (Impact! Miniatures)" sub-category and move the BooBarians and Dark Dwarves in there? After all, Impact does not produce those two sets: the figures have been slotted into other Impact ranges. What do you think? We could also *not* mark those two sets as part of Impact at all... the gallery cells for the minis in question do have the "sold to Impact" text in them... This has consequences for other places I have done this: Splintered Light Miniatures, for example, contains 3 Metal Magic sets directly in this manner - an easier example, perhaps, as all the models in those Metal Magic sets were sold to Splintered Light... but then again, Splintered Light does not sell them under the Metal Magic codes (and I even think that one of the Dragons is marketed for a different *scale*). Thoughts?--Cattwister 19:03, 1 August 2014 (BST)

I think that purchased / re-sculpted figures should be listed on the wiki in the same way the present owner is offering them, though credit to the figures origin should appear somewhere. If the rights have been purchased, but are not being produced, then they should be left out, perhaps with a note on the previous owners page indicating who the rights were sold to.

It is all a bit complicated, and I don't think a strict uniform layout is necessary considering.

Admin 15:48, 4 August 2014 (BST)

"purchased / re-sculpted figures should be listed on the wiki in the same way the present owner is offering them" - that's the rule of thumb that I was looking for. I've changed the Impact stuff to refer back to the other sets and removed the direct categorisation in this case. Makes sense.--Cattwister 17:23, 4 August 2014 (BST)

Hi Colin... I'm back for a while... I posted my concerns about Rules & Conventions on the discussion page: http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Lost_Minis_Wiki_talk:Rules_and_Conventions --Mysticat 02:24, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

(2014-05-08) Lost Minis WIki Forum?

So... Who would be in favour of a Lost Minis Wiki forum?
Admin 18:29, 7 May 2014 (BST)

I would. If nothing else it would be a place to discuss formatting issues - at the moment I'm continually stumbling upon good ideas and comments in various talk pages about how to / how not to lay things out. It's all scattered about. Including on the Images page where there has been an unapproved "Administration Format Preference" since 2011. Note: I'm all for "guidelines" rather than "the-one-true-way" when it comes to this sort of thing but a forum would be a place to discuss "best practice" and iron out the copy-pasta wikicode before adding it to the guidelines pages here.--Cattwister 12:13, 8 May 2014 (BST)