User talk:Greggacam

EDIT POLICE

Go ahead... make all of those small edits to a single wiki page. I know the server and the hardware can handle the load, but you will definitely know it irks me when I mention on your talk page how you're clogging the recent changes page! Take my advice... plan out what you wish to add to your page and do it all in one big worthwhile edit. Also, USE THE 'PREVIEW' BUTTON and make sure you have it perfect before you save. Don't give me a reason to get all 'bad cop' on you!

This notice was made by Belgrave to stop regular contributors from making so many edits in a row. Lay it off on the new kid.
                 CHiNback - [ Talk - Message - PM ]

Agreed! New wiki users have absolutely no clue what they are doing and tend to learn by trial and error. I did it, CHiNback did it, you did it! The reason why we don't use this notice with new contributors is it may end up chasing away someone who may have eventually become a major contributor. Honestly though, I actually made this notice as a joke ;-)
— Belgrave, Moderator / Sysop  Talk  Message PM 

OK I understand I didn't see he was new, next time I'll leave it to you just to be sure.
 Greggacam [Talk • Message • PM • Contributions]

Templates

To make a template, you make a new page called Template:NameofTemplate. You then put in all the necessary code for the template. If you want to include user added variables, those are put into the code by {{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, etc., or {{{parameter1name}}}, {{{parameter2name}}}, etc.. I suggest taking a look at the code used for some of the already existing templates to get an idea of how they work before you try making your own. Also, check out the guide at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates.
— Belgrave, Moderator / Sysop  Talk  Message PM 

Making a template page is just like making a regular page except you put Template: in front of the page name. Take a look at everything in Category:Templates and you will see this. Also, just so you know, my layout templates are technically not templates since you cannot transclude them onto another page the way you can with a real template.
— Belgrave, Moderator / Sysop  Talk  Message PM 

Redirection

Is it something controllable if it says redirected from Greggacam? I don't know if that's normal or if I did something wrong.  Greggacam [Talk • Message • PM • Contributions]

Personally, I don't think User:Greggacam or any other user page should be redirected to just Greggacam, but vice versa... Greggacam should redirect to User:Greggacam. My reasoning is that when you're at a user page, there are options on the side where you can view that person's contributions (and in my case logs, block user, etc). What I did was redirect Belgrave to User:Belgrave but kept Belgrave listed in Category:Players so my page can be easily found.

Now if I understand you correctly, what you want to know, is can you control what happens to Greggacam since it is redirected to from User:Greggacam. Technically, the answer is no, you have no control over anything on the wiki since everything can be freely edited, copied, changed, altered, etc. However, User pages are generally considered to be a private extension of the wiki where contributers can make pages about themselves and they are not usually edited by others.

The issue then becomes what constitutes a user page? Is it User:Greggacam or is it Greggacam? As far as I am concerned, User:Greggacam is a user page and Greggacam is not. The reason I say this is because what would I do if I used Belgrave as my user page and the game suddenly had a new creature named Belgrave (not that it's very likely to happen)? Would I defend my Belgave user page and rollback anyone's changes to make it a Belgrave creature page (which starts wiki wars) and basically be a roadblock to improvement of the wiki or would I move my stuff to User:Belgrave and use Belgrave for the creature, perhaps leaving only a small note on the page so people know there is also a player by the same name? The same goes for everyone else... you have a special page created only for you at User:YouUserName.

I'm not going to stop anyone from using Greggacam instead of User:Greggacam since so many others have already done it before anyone could set a standard policy about user pages, but I would highly discourage it. I hope this lengthy detailed dissertation answers your question... you don't have control over your pages, but there isn't too much chance of anyone making unwanted edits to them either.
— Belgrave, Moderator / Sysop  Talk  Message PM 

OK thank you I understand now, I thought there was something wrong but I guess it is supposed to happen.  Greggacam [Talk • Message • PM • Contributions]