Minecraft Wiki talk:Community portal

This is the community's main discussion page.

Talk about anything wiki-related here!

Sign your posts with, add new posts below others, and click "Add topic" above for new topics.

Note that this page is NOT for suggesting new ideas about the game. That belongs on the forums.

Using categories for Edition-specific info
I've been reading back through some of the archives here, to get a feel for how the Edition-specific information has been handled in the past. I've seen a lot of suggestions come and go over time, such as utilizing namespaces to separate out the Edition-specific info, or using sub-pages, etc. None of these ideas were meritorious, as they would have required duplicated effort &mdash; multiple copies of the same information about blocks, mobs, etc. What I haven't seen in the archives is a suggestion for using categories for this purpose instead, so I thought I'd propose it here, and see what people make of the idea. By tagging a particular page with a category, such as Category:Blocks available in Pocket Edition, or Category:Mobs available in Xbox 360 Edition we can simplify the management of lists of features that are currently available for a specific Edition. Such categories would become sub-categories under their respective headings, both under Category:Blocks and under Category:Pocket Edition, for instance.

With the establishment of the HESI Project, I am hoping that there can become a unified, standardised way of dealing with Edition-specific information on the Minecraft Wiki. Using categories is just one suggestion to assist this goal. Any input, advice, comments, opinions, and criticisms would be greatly appreciated. &mdash; Augur &#x2710; 10:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The big problem with using categories for that is that categories are per-page. There's a lot of cases where version-specific info is basically an aside in a page which is mostly general.  (For example, Blazes dropping glowstone, or the Ender Dragon's missile attack.)  There are a few version-specific pages (Nether Reactor comes to mind), but those are really the exception. --Mental Mouse 13:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * You're quite right, and I have other ideas for highlighting minor differences between the Editions on a single page. This idea was more targeted at dynamically building a list of features that are available in each Edition, rather than trying to maintain static lists. See the HESI Project for details of ways to highlight in-text information. &mdash; Augur &#x2710; 21:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with the idea. It seems very appropriate and will make things easier on people who are looking for the information thay need. PrinceCooshie101 02:45, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * My OCD agrees with this. Categories organized this way would make finding information easier to find.  Although converting everything to this format would be a challenge.
 * -Exhelah &middot; Grid Book and Quill.png Grid Diamond Pickaxe.png &middot; 23:26, 12 September 2013 (MST)

Curse sidebar crashing Firefox for Android?
If anyone else browses the wiki using Firefox on their Android phone, has anyone noticed that the curse sidebar sometimes crashes the browser? Or is it just the lousy 420MB RAM on this phone? — t  numbermaniac  c 22:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's the sidebar. It's probably the terrible JavaScript they have running to do that floating advert thing. Even on my desktop it causes my browser to slow down, so I have a script that prevents all the non-essential JavaScript from running. –ultradude25 ᐸ Talk Contribs – 07:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * That makes sense. Can I use that? — t  numbermaniac  c 08:49, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * As long as Firefox for Android supports extensions: http://userscripts.org/174505 –ultradude25 ᐸ Talk Contribs – 09:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Merging Related Projects
Over a week ago, I proposed on the talk pages of the two projects Raspberry Pi History and Minecraft Pocket Edition that they be merged under the new Highlighting Edition-Specific Information project. I have not had a reply on either talk page, so I am bringing this suggestion back to the Community Portal, to confirm this merger.

The Raspberry Pi History Project page has seen no activity since 23-Feb-2013, when it was last edited by GingerGeek, who also has not edited the Wiki at all since then. That looks to be the ONLY activity in this project.

The Minecraft Pocket Edition Project page was last edited on 24-Apr-2013 by Goandgoo, who has not edited the Wiki since 30-Apr-2013. There are 7 contributors listed for this project. Of them, only two have accounts on the Wiki, and those two (Grovyle4life and J4R3D) have beebn inactive on the Wiki since September 2012.

The reason for this merger, firstly, is that Ultradude25 has stated above that "I don't think a separate project for each edition is necessary". Secondly, having given some thought to Ultradude's comment, I can see the logic in this, and it would be easier to find all information about making the Minecraft Wiki easier to navigate for edition-specific information if it were all under a single project.

The information currently on both of these projects is essentially repeated on the HESI Project anyway, other than the contributors list. I propose that both projects be redirected to the HESI Project page for a period of 6 months, (in case the previous contributors return to actively editing the Wiki) and after that be removed entirely. &mdash; Augur &#x2710; 13:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * . — t  numbermaniac  c 21:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the support. I have added the merge tag to both of these project pages now, to indicate that a merge is pending, and that discussion is invited on the suggestion. &mdash; Augur <font size="4" color="#723a32">&#x2710; 08:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

News you've all been waiting for
Migration to Gamepedia

Let's keep all the discussion on this topic on the associated talk page! Thanks! -- Wynthyst  talk  15:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Displaytitle
Hey, would someone add the displaytitle to the wiki? It would help the translators change the title. --- Tonkku107 (User Page|Talk) 10:17, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * We won't be adding any new extensions until after the migration to Gamepedia. Remind me about it at that point. -- Wynthyst [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]] talk  10:42, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * does work, I've done it on my userpage. The problem with displaytitle is that the resulting has to be some form of the original title. — <sup style="font-weight:normal">t  numbermaniac  c 21:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Changing the setting of $wgRestrictDisplayTitle would allow displaytitle to do more than change case. Not as much work as installing an extension, but will still probably have to wait until after the migration. -- Orthotope talk 02:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Amount of English pages in the Wiki
Because of Language translation project amount of pages in English is somewhat vague. I have found no data on the topic over the wiki, so I decided to use script to count up translated pages. Besides from fact that 1212 pages are translations, it yields another interesting result: while Statistics page claims there are 2750 pages, actually there are 3116 non-redirect pages. This means that English wiki has at least 366 pages without a single wiki-link. Well, the Minecraft Wiki in English as of August, 29th has 1538-1904 pages (that are eligible to be counted in built-in statistics). The list of the biggest wikis also includes ru (2489 content pages), de (760 pages), fr (654), nl (594) and pl (560) language sections. I used here information from front pages of respective wikis. More data can be found there (this is not guaranteed to be absolutely precise though). Norrius 21:07, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a related query on this. Does anyone know of any way we can exclude translated pages from Special:Random? Same goes for most of the "storage" subpages like circuit schematics and such... but we can't just attempt to exclude subpages, because many subpages are "useful" ones, like tutorials. That said, perhaps there ought to be a Tutorial namespace to get around that? Hm. Anyway, the point is that honestly, Special:Random is almost useless because an infuriatingly large proportion of the time, you end up landing on a translated page or a "storage" page, rather than a "normal" page. Just thought I'd raise the issue -- Sorceror Nobody 16:41, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * EDIT: Indeed, it would appear that this issue has been raised before. At least, the language half. There's still the question of "storage" subpages -- Sorceror Nobody 16:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Minecraft style tooltip
Thanks to Orthotope getting me the colour values, I was able to make a pretty accurate replica of the minecraft tooltips in the inventory.

I've added a script that replaces normal tooltips with these minecraft style tooltips, primarily for the grid template (although that's disabled for now, to make sure the script isn't horribly broken), but can be added to any element with the  class.

To get the title the script will first look for a  attribute, then a normal title attribute, then a normal title attribute on the first link directly within the element. You can also add a description with the  attribute, which will also convert forward slashes  to line breaks. The description requires a title (in some form).

Both the title and the description support the standard minecraft formatting codes (except k), except using  instead of , for typing convenience (although I could easily support the section symbol too if wanted). Since the formatting codes are styled by just using classes (in the format of,   being the formatting code), these classes can be used anywhere. For example: Pink text. The styling works best in conjunction with the minecraft font.

Now, onto using the script. If you just want an unformatted title (maybe with a description), it is best to use the title attribute instead of, as at least then people will still be able to see the title with JavaScript disabled. However, if you want formatting in the title, you should use  with an unformatted title attribute. If you add formatting to the title attribute, it'll still work, but in cases where JavaScript is disabled, the formatting codes will show up in the title.

Here's some examples: (hover over them)

<span class="minetip" title="Test" data-minetip-text="This is some lengthy description/Which spans multiple lines/&dAnd supports &oformatting!"> <span class="minetip" title="Test" data-minetip-text="This is some lengthy description/Which spans multiple lines/&dAnd supports &oformatting!">

<span class="minetip" title="Not so formatted :(" data-minetip-title="I have a &bformatted&f title!" data-minetip-text="This is some lengthy description/Which spans multiple lines/&dAnd supports &oformatting!"> <span class="minetip" title="Not so formatted :(" data-minetip-title="I have a &bformatted&f title!" data-minetip-text="This is some lengthy description/Which spans multiple lines/&dAnd supports &oformatting!">

If you don't like the minecraft tooltips, or perhaps you're on a browser such as Opera which places the link URL into the tooltip, with no way to remove it without removing the link, you can add  to your userjs (or run   in your console to test it on this page), which will revert back to using the native browser tooltips, however it retains the multi-line description, so you're not missing out on information (just formatting). (FYI, I plan to create a "script options" script at some point, so things like this can be done through a menu. It'll save client-side though.)

Please test this script in your browsers, so I can enable it for the grid template. When it is, you'll still have to wait until the lua version for proper support of this script (requires additional syntax). In the meantime, you can use the title parameter of the grid template, but formatting will still look bad with JavaScript disabled.

Here's a screenshot for reference to how they should look: http://matt-russell.com/images/sharex/2013/SS_09-14_11-49-28AM.png –ultradude25 ᐸ <small style=display:inline-block;line-height:9px;vertical-align:-3px>Talk Contribs – 15:51, 12 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Examples work perfectly on my Mac, using Opera 12, Firefox 19, Safari 6, and Chrome 19. -- Orthotope talk 05:30, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The examples here work great using the latest Chrome on Windows XP. -- <sup style="font-weight:normal; color:#00E">t  numbermaniac  <sup style="color:#00E">c  22:35, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The examples work on Firefox/Linux, but they're awful big. --Mental Mouse 23:23, 13 September 2013 (UTC)


 * They're the same size as the default GUI scale in Minecraft. I could change the styling to scale around the font-size, so setting it to 8px would be the same as using the "small" GUI scale. –ultradude25 ᐸ <small style=display:inline-block;line-height:9px;vertical-align:-3px>Talk Contribs – 01:22, 14 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Which I've now done, and updated the example image. You would change the font size by styling #minetip-tooltip with a font-size. The size must be a multiple of 8px, or everything breaks.
 * Also: Here's a test grid: –ultradude25 ᐸ <small style=display:inline-block;line-height:9px;vertical-align:-3px>Talk Contribs – 02:14, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Something wrong with Minecraft Forum?
I can't seem to go onto minecraftforum.net.

It showes a SQL error. I decided to post this here since the wiki and the forum are connected. MrChrisdamonster (talk) 13:54, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * They have been having some intermittent problems, but it seems to be ok now. I just loaded and logged in fine. -- Wynthyst  [[Image:User Wynthyst sig icon.png ]]  talk  16:42, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

New logo?
Did we just get a new logo in the top left corner? -- <sup style="font-weight:normal; color:#00E">t  numbermaniac  <sup style="color:#00E">c  04:34, 25 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yep. It's been in the works for a while (see this discussion). -- Orthotopetalk 05:19, 25 September 2013 (UTC)


 * But when was it implemented? At the time of my original post I felt like it hadn't been there for 5 minutes... -- <sup style="font-weight:normal; color:#00E">t  numbermaniac  <sup style="color:#00E">c  23:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

How do I get the mobile site back?
I disabled the mobile site on my iPod and now I want it back! –Preceding unsigned comment was added by 151.229.219.44 (talk)&#32;07:39, 29 September 2013‎(UTC). Please sign your posts with


 * Click the "mobile view" link in the footer. –Matt ᐸ <small style=display:inline-block;line-height:9px;vertical-align:-3px>Talk Contribs ⎜ 07:42, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

File licensing
If someone uploaded a file without setting a license, how do you set one. The files in question are File:UFO.png and File:UFO2.png. Thanks! Lennbot (talk) 14:54, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Article of the Day/Week Idea
(Copied from User talk:Orthotope at his request --MentalMouse42 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2013 (UTC))

I noticed we don't have a random page of the day or week. Shouldn't we make it? Why? Okay, it could be automated. - Mchest83 ·  · 18:51, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The community portal is a better place for this discussion. It could be done; the trick would be getting enough user involvement to pick an article for every day. -- Orthotopetalk 19:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I, for one, think this is a good idea.  Meeples10 t ~ c 19:56, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The big thing is that the "random pages" may include a lot of chaff -- notably, the random page link in the sidebar ranges across all languages, old version pages, and so on. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm not sure there's any good way to completely automate it. Possibly add a hidden category to articles deemed suitable for featuring, and have it pick from those at random. -- Orthotopetalk 22:12, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, if you want to go with a whitelist strategy, then rather than walking the whole wiki for an entertainment feature, I'd suggest going by categories: Collect all members of the topic categories: Blocks, Items, Game mechanics (or whatever it's called), Environment and so on.  Add in the contents of Tutorials/, the "Minecraft Wiki" namespace itself (AIUI, Projects and Help are aliases for this), and any other identifiable groupings that come to mind.  (Open question: user pages?)  Sweep the above for child pages and include those.  Then prune:  Exclude any that are Ajax-loaded, were created (say) less than a week ago (to block vandal pages and such), or have "bad" tags/categories such as "delete", "wip", "obsolete", or "needs work".  Deduplicate as needed.  This process should be automated so the list can be automagically updated, say weekly.  --MentalMouse42 (talk) 23:06, 6 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I could start with the design if anybody wants me to.  Meeples10 t ~ c 01:21, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I seriously doubt there's enough interest in this to keep it going for more than a couple weeks. To gauge interest, try creating a project to nominate pages and see if people will keep adding to it after the initial interest. &mdash;munin &middot; Grid_Book_and_Quill.png Grid_Stone_Pickaxe.png &middot; 01:36, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You read my mind O-o. Use, with ARTICLE being the article of the week.  Meeples10 t ~ c 01:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Munin, I agree that a voting scheme is unworkable, for that and other reasons (*cough* Astroturf). What I've described is a setup which might allow an automatic random selection, and that doesn't depend on community participation. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 01:56, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * My template didn't work anyways. Meh.  Meeples10 t ~ c 01:58, 7 October 2013 (UTC)
 * If this is to be implemented, I think it should be one article a week. Unless it's automatic, doing it every day wouldbe rather hectic in my opinion. -- <sup style="font-weight:normal; color:#00E">t  numbermaniac  <sup style="color:#00E">c  20:46, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * (Could be databased in Category:Article of the Week) One more thing, the picture, it would be nice to have a main picture, and a picture, that would explain something interesting or important with that thing. Also, I think that unimplemented features should also be added, just of curiosity and would be interesting to visitors. - Mchest83 · Grid Book and Quill.png Grid Wooden Pickaxe.png · 11:50, 8 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Remember, we want this to be basically automated. Finding the "main picture" for pages that have one might be doable, but picking one "that would explain something interesting", definitely can't be done automatically.  The problem with including "unimplemented features" is that those pages are serious targets for abuse (and sources of confusion) already. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 19:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)


 * We could have a system that picks 10 or so pages from the category, and have an optional vote. This would look at the pages and their votes, and pick the one with the highest. If two or more have the same, or no votes are cast, it will randomly pick one of them. Again, the voting is not required for an article to be selected. I have no idea how to code this, but I think it's possible. Lennbot (talk) 16:13, 10 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems like a good idea, but that might be a little to complicated.  Meeples10 t ~ c 00:00, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Mojavatars
Back in May, I suggested that we need to clean up the pictures used by the quote template. I've been somewhat inactive for a while, but I now have a folder of Mojavatars, both the plain ones seen at http://www.mojang.com/about and their head/square versions I made. I simply got rid of the whitespace above the avatar and then cropped the bottom to a 145x145 square (the originals are 145x217). Here's a quick layout of what I have: http://i.imgur.com/WQLgxnb.png. I also think that the heads should keep the same facing as the original picture instead of flipping them to face right. My intent is not only to clean up the quotes, but I also think that all of the articles on Mojangsters should use their respective Mojavatars in the person template and leave the real-life pictures for their galleries. Any thoughts? 03:07, 7 October 2013 (UTC)</tt>


 * If you mean the person infoboxes, then I think their actual picture should stay there. Perhaps their avatar could be there too? And I do think they should face the way the picture was made. But it seems Dinnerbone's twitter pic is flipped upside down! -- <sup style="font-weight:normal; color:#00E">t  numbermaniac  <sup style="color:#00E">c  20:51, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That's really my point to standardizing at least the quote template. I don't understand why we keep updating their pictures with their random Twitter avatars when they really should stay as the official Mojang avatars here. 04:37, 8 October 2013 (UTC)</tt>


 * The twitter images (%name%-twitter)(Most of them) are for twitter posts. Every other posts uses ether the user images from that post and/or the official mojavatars.
 * -- 007a83 Talk 13:21, 9 October 2013 (UTC)