NetHackWiki:Community Portal/Archive4

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Cultural references

Is there any kind list (like in en-wiki [1]) or something else here for cultural references in NetHack? I haven't found one myself, and it would really help me with the Finnish counterpart in Wikipedia.

[2] - Wikiproject NetHack in Finnish Wikipedia

[3] - My usersite in Finnish Wikipedia

No, I don't think we have an equivalent list. But just browse the articles, they've got links to single Wikipedia articles for more background of their topics. --ZeroOne 23:08, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for information.

I just wanted to mention that the closest list we have on NetHackWiki right now is in the article for hallucinatory monster, which lists all the monsters you will see if you're hallucinating (and often these monsters are direct references to pop culture). NetHack encyclopedia should really mention some of the cultural references (or at least the literature the encyclopedia quotes from). I've added the link you provided into the NetHackWiki entry for the in-game encyclopedia. Thank you. :) —Shijun 20:31, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

NetHack sources on NetHackWiki and Special:Random

IMO, Special:Random is not very useful for most users, because there's so many source code articles, and those simply aren't interesting for the majority of people.

I talked with some admins on the #wikia irc channel, and asked if there's a way to prevent the random page-link from showing the source code articles. Answer: move the pages to another namespace. The end result was that there's now a new namespace on wikia: Source

I suggest we move all the source code to the Source -namespace. --Paxed 17:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

There are, of course, a lot of source code pages. Your idea is a good one, but we should get a bot to do the moves, to complete the task in a reasonable time and avoid flooding the Recent Changes list. --Ray Chason 22:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I made a bot-readable list of source code articles to help give this idea some impetus :-) [4] It doesn't include everything from Category:Source code, just those matching /.*\.[ch]$/ (which I think is what we want?) Let me know on User talk:GreyKnight if you want something different. --User:GreyKnight(as anon) (PS: will be back on IRC sometime soon, see y'all there!)

---

Then the problem was to find someone with a bot that would move the pages. I discussed this with Paxed in the #nethack channel. I managed to configure a pywikipediabot to use User:Kernigh bot. I tested the bot by moving User:Kernigh/sandbox to User:Kernigh/sandcastle. Then Paxed converted GreyKnight's list into a shell script of python movepages.py -from:"x" -to:"y"; sleep 30 commands [5]. Before I run these commands, I need Wikia staff to give a bot flag to User:Kernigh bot to hide the huge number of moves from recent changes.

I now propose that User:Kernigh bot receive a bot flag, run the commands, thus moving the source code pages into the Source: namespace. Is this okay, or does someone not want this to happen? --Kernigh 21:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Now when I want to learn about something random in NetHack, all I have to do is hit alt-shift-x :) Fredil Yupigo 21:55, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm obviously all for this. --Paxed 07:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

So when is this mass move going to happen? Fredil Yupigo 01:39, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

As soon as someone with a bot-flagged username runs the script through a bot... Kernigh, probably. --paxed 08:30, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I requested the bot flag (through Special:Contact, with a reference to this section of the community portal) and received the bot flag. A few hours ago, User:Kernigh bot began to move pages. The bot sleeps 30 seconds between moves. So far, the bot seems to work correctly. --Kernigh 00:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

There's also slashem sources on NetHackWiki, those should be moved too... here's a S'em 0.0.7E7F2 move script: [6] --paxed 15:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Paxed, your script has extra lines between the .h and .c moves. --Kernigh 16:22, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. --paxed 16:39, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I will have User:Kernigh bot run the script, probably at Friday 7 March. --Kernigh 15:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Special:Random still seems to choose pages in the Source-namespace. Apparently only staff can set what namespaces Special:Random chooses from (by marking them content or not-content), and if we decide to exclude Source, then it also means Source-pages will not count towards article count. I think we should ask the staff to exclude Source from Special:Random. --paxed 17:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

No objection from me. While there are a few source files with rich annotations, most of them don't deserve to be counted as real articles anyway. It will be nice to have a useful random-page feature. -- Killian 12:52, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Source-namespace has now been excluded, thanks to Uberfuzzy --paxed 06:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Monsters which are also starting races

My concern is that these are handled inconsistently. Most notably the standard dwarf (monster) h is missing altogether. I am hoping someone responsible can decide upon a suitable convention and apply it across NetHackWiki.

The dwarf (monster) todo page I created provides the relevant links. I apologise for the fact I couldn't fix it myself.--PeterGFin 14:27, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I've taken a look at this. Basically, all starting races have deeply ambiguous meanings, embracing all of the following:

• A race (obviously)
• A class (or part class) of monsters
• A monster attribute (M2_HUMAN etc.) used to determine cannibalism and own-race sacrifice
• A monster, sometimes used mainly for corpses, sometimes not.

The meaning required is determined by context, and often assumed implicitly, although this can be misleading; for example, does the phrase "human or elf" include Kops? The answer is, it depends on whether you are looking at the monster class, or the monster attributes. So @ ignore all Elbereth - they are human or elf, Kops only respect Elbereth when you stand on it - they have the human monster attribute. But "human or elf", meaning @ is usually linked as "[[human]] or [[elf]]", and none of the meanings at either page encapsulated what @ is (until I recently changed "Human", but you're still out of luck at "Elf".)

In my opinion, this means that human, elf, dwarf, gnome and orc should all be disambiguation pages delineating these various meanings and pointing enquirers in the right direction. In addition, we need a proper page for each monster class - that is, monsters who share the same symbol. Internally, NetHack uses this symbol to determine behaviour in certain cases. Classes such as human or elf, wraith and orc (includes goblin and hobgoblin) currently have no such page. All these example classes are used internally to determine game behaviour at some point.

Human comes closest currently to how I see things should be handled, although a page for @ human or elf does not currently exist (@ is essentially a disambiguation page).

--Rogerb-on-NAO 22:41, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

The problem with MR

For the MR topic, it records only the MR of the player and not of the monster. I have no idea what base MR does for monster (well, some ideas, but not enough). Someone ought to add something about that. RegalStar 18:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I saw this too and added Magic resistance (monster), and put it in Template:Otheruses at the top of Magic resistance recently. Hope it's useful.

--Rogerb-on-NAO 15:46, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Modifying NetHack

Can someone make a small guide? There's only one guide I can find, http://failsure.net:8085/root/usr/src/pub/games/nethack/vms/vmsbuild.com , but it doesn't tell you how make a new class. Also, I need to know how to use makedefs. I try to run it, but it flashes for a second saying it has invalid arguments (0). It doesn't even say how to use it. (FYI, my source and tools are installed in C:\nh343\ and C:\MinGW\)

By-the-way, here's the code I'm using:

Roles.c, under the bit about ranger:

/* START: BETA: Detective */
{	{"Detective", 0}, {
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0},
	{"Detective", 0} },
	"God", "God", "God", /* God */
	"Det", "someplace 1", "someplace 2",
	PM_RANGER, NON_PM, PM_BOMB_DOG,
	PM_ORION, PM_HUNTER, PM_SCORPIUS,
	PM_FOREST_CENTAUR, PM_SCORPION, S_CENTAUR, S_SPIDER,
	ART_LONGBOW_OF_DIANA,
	MH_HUMAN|MH_ELF|MH_GNOME|MH_ORC | ROLE_MALE|ROLE_FEMALE |
	  ROLE_NEUTRAL|ROLE_CHAOTIC,
	/* Str Int Wis Dex Con Cha */
	{  13, 13, 13,  9, 13,  7 },
	{  30, 10, 10, 20, 20, 10 },
	/* Init   Lower  Higher */
	{ 13, 0,  0, 6,  1, 0 },	/* Hit points */
	{  1, 0,  0, 1,  0, 1 },12,	/* Energy */
	10, 9, 2, 1, 10, A_INT, SPE_INVISIBILITY,   -4
},
/* END: BETA: Detective */

Roles.c, above the knight and samurai's hello thing:

	case PM_DETECTIVE:
	    return ("Here's the thing");        /* -- A. Monk */

Monst.c, under the large dog code:

/* START: BETA: BOMB DOG */
    MON("bomb dog", S_DOG,
	LVL(6, 15, 4, 0, 0), (G_GENO|1),
	A(ATTK(AT_BITE, AD_PHYS, 2, 4),
	  NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK),
	SIZ(800, 250, 0, MS_BARK, MZ_MEDIUM), 0, 0,
	M1_ANIMAL|M1_NOHANDS|M1_CARNIVORE,
	M2_STRONG|M2_DOMESTIC, M3_INFRAVISIBLE, HI_DOMESTIC),
/* END: BETA: BOMB DOG */

Monst.c, under the ranger code:

/* END: BETA: Detective */
    MON("detective", S_HUMAN,
	LVL(10, 12, 10, 2, -3), G_NOGEN,
	A(ATTK(AT_WEAP, AD_PHYS, 1, 4),
	  NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK, NO_ATTK),
	SIZ(WT_HUMAN, 400, 0, MS_HUMANOID, MZ_HUMAN), 0, 0,
	M1_HUMANOID|M1_OMNIVORE,
	M2_NOPOLY|M2_HUMAN|M2_STRONG|M2_COLLECT, M3_INFRAVISIBLE,
	HI_DOMESTIC),
/* END: BETA: Detective */

How would I make it so a class has a revolver (the archilogiest had one, or am I just thinking that Indy had one, so Archy must have one? XD) and wipes (which I'd have to program in myself).

Also, are there any really interesting points in the code? Like, I'd like to keep the game from deleting your save when you die.

TBF02 06:26, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I've played as Archeologist a few times, and to my knowledge there is no revolver, but there is a bull whip. if you dont want the save deleted, copy it to a different folder before reopening it.— Preceding unsigned comment added by NerdLord (talk • contribs)

If you want firearms, then SLASH'EM is for you. Be aware that "SLASH'EM wants you dead." And please don't come claiming an ascension if you've save scummed.--Ray Chason 22:17, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

A revolver and wipes couldn't be too hard to hack. Just give your detective a modified wand of magic missile and towel.

Weapon damages and min-max values, use template?

I saw someone added the minimum and maximum damages that Vorpal Blade and Battle-axe could do to their artifact/weapon template. I decided to write a template that could calculate those automagically given the d notation: See User:Paxed/Template:dice. Opinions, do we want to use it? (I'm obviously all for it) --paxed 15:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

paxed, that's a really cool template! I would love to see that used in the various monster infoboxes. I think this should be an official NetHackWiki template! :) —Shijun 01:45, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Monster (Pet) equipment - info box template?

I'm new to contributing: I'm not sure exactly how the info punched into the monster box on the right comes out the way it does. Take the entry for Djinni: the box at the right has an "other attributes" section that lists in bullet points that a Djinni has a head, arms, and a torso, that it can pick up weapons, etc., but in the edit section it just has some values set.

What I'd like to see is very specific information about exactly what equipment a monster can equip, especially after it has been tamed. For example, I had a pet Djinni, and it could wear a shield and gloves as well, and I believe it was equipping a cloak, but it wouldn't take any armor. I would have thought something that can wear a cloak could wear body armor. Without a wand of probing, I couldn't tell if it had something cursed on or if it simply couldn't equip it.

It'd be nice to see some consistent section on what equipment a monster will use as a pet, something like:

Centaur Can equip: Weapon Shield Helmet Gloves Amulet of Lifesaving Can use: Unicorn Horn Potion of Gain Level

Would it be possible to have the exact information on what a pet can equip converted from those values entered in the template - are these values/flags consistent, do they apply across the board? Or does every monster have it's own equipment rules?

If the latter is true, and it would be too complicated to work into the template, can anyone point to the best resource where I can find specifics on what a pet will wear and use? I'm thinking about adding an "As a Pet" section at the bottom of monster articles as I fool around with Polymorph traps. Floatingeye 04:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The monster template is at Template:Monster. But the thing you're looking at is actually an inner template, Template:Attributes. The things in that template are lifted straight from the source code. Source:Monflag.h contains all the flags. Take a look at the djinni: Monst.c#line2782. The flag "humanoid" says that your djinni has all the usual human bits, so it is a mystery why he wouldn't wear armor.

Templates are tricky, so if you want to improve them, I suggest trying to talk to Shijun or Paxed, since they've worked on them recently. #nethack on IRC is probably a good way to find people.

-Mniot 05:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Floatingeye, I think your djinni couldn't wear the armor because it didn't take off the cloak first (you always need to take off the cloak first before you can wear armor; obviously the monster AI isn't advanced enough to figure this out).

And yes, I agree with Mniot... templates are tricky (and sometimes I have trouble coding them). There could definitely be more user-friendly documentation about templates though. ;)

—Shijun 01:07, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Theme change

What the heck happened to the theme? How do I get the old look back? -- Killian 15:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Kirkburn changed it. Did he talk with the sysops/whatever of NetHackWiki about it first?! --paxed 16:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll use Special:Contact to complain about this, maybe others should do so too... --paxed 18:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

He didn't contact me at any rate. I could change it back, if there's a clear consensus for doing so. Anyway, if you're logged in, you'll see a small button marked MORE next to your name at the top right. Click that, and select "My preferences". (This link should also work.) Click the Skin tab on the resulting screen, and you can change the theme. The old look is "MonoBook" and you'll find it toward the bottom.--Ray Chason 18:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the default theme back to Slate. As the discussion should have been: is there anyone who would like to see us switch to Monaco? Eidolos 20:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I've deleted the offending setting altogether, so now the user's Skin setting will be respected whether or not s/he checks the "allow admins to override" setting. I've confirmed we're still back to MonoBook when not logged in. I've also set my own setting to Monaco Sapphire -- I rather like the new skin but the Slate theme strikes me as overly stark. Sapphire at least has similar colors to the MonoBook skin. I might try experimenting with CSS, to get a Monaco that looks reasonably close to MonoBook -- it has some features that I think are neat. Having a "Problem reports list" on my sidebar will make that feature a bit more useful.--Ray Chason 21:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

See Talk:Main Page#Monaco skin for more. Kirkburn (talk) 18:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Ray, thank you for looking into it. Sapphire could be a better fit - I went for slate due to the relatively neutral tones. Remember users can choose their own skins, this would mainly be a change for what anonymous users see - monaco has a lot of improvements for "viewers" along with editors. Kirkburn (talk) 17:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone following this topic may be interested in reading If you prefer the old theme. —Shijun 08:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Engraving and Elbereth

Almost the entire article Engraving is repeated almost verbatim in Elbereth.

The danger of this is that editors update only one page, and the info in both gets out of sync. This has happened in this case.

Clearly these should be merged; I would just go ahead with this, but I don't want to make major changes to a featured page without some discussion.

There are a few points of view I can think of here:

1. Although in principle you can engrave anything, in practice little else is ever engraved than Elbereth or 'x' when illiterate. (There is some argument for engraving other things when identifying wands that might be teleportation). Thus Engraving should be merged into Elbereth and Engraving become a redirect to Elbereth. This would leave the Elbereth page largely untouched.

2. Large sections of the Elbereth page are really about the detailed mechanics of Engraving. All these details belong there and should be moved. The Elbereth page can simply point there as necessary.

3. Engraving and Elbereth are important topics that deserve their own, unpolluted pages. However, strategy decisions during play are important. An Elbereth strategy page or section should be created that discusses the interactions and how they affect play.

No doubt there are other possible viewpoints/solutions that I haven't thought of.

Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that, although it is a featured article, Elbereth does not seem to follow the Style Guide particularly well; in particular, it merges fact and comment throughout.

Personally I favour option 3, separating the comment in the current Elbereth page into a strategy section.

What do others think?

--Rogerb-on-NAO 16:04, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Since it's been a month now with no responses I'll take it I should just go ahead and do whatever I think best. I'll do just that whenever I get round to it. --Rogerb-on-NAO 22:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation Template:for2

On Gender, I had need to disambiguate 3 links for the page itself and 2 redirects; neither Template:for nor Template:otheruses could do this. I created Template:For2 as a general purpose tool, after wikipedia:Template:for2 (documented at wikipedia:Wikipedia:Hatnotes#For (other topic)).

--Rogerb-on-NAO 23:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Long reply above

Just in case you missed it, I put in a sizeable reply to Monsters which are also starting races above.

--Rogerb-on-NAO 22:50, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Interhack

Interhack an earlier attempt at multiplayer nethack. The project was put on hold in 2001 due to time constraints. While the latest version was 1.0.5 - it could barely be called complete. In order to maintain the turn-based aspect of Nethack, the developers came up with the idea of "sureal-time". In the original algorithm, monsters were "tied" to a particular player on the level. When that player moved, those monsters also moved. Unfortunately the developers still resorted to real time movement when players were in close proximity.

Of course "sureal-time" in 2008 would work something like this:

 * Monsters are tied to the nearest player and move in conjunction with that player.
 * Objects have an "age" - as a player travels around a level, objects age. As objects get older, they disappear etc. This prevents the following scenario: Player A and B are in the same room. A is in dire need of healing. B runs off and gets a potion and returns with the bottle.
 * When a monster is attacked by a player they are not tied to, they can "react" to the other attacker.

The key problem with multiplayer was not a turn-based algorithm that would work. Multiple players introduce the need for new data structures, and effectively a complete re-write of Nethack code. Interhack was written in C++ as this was an ideal language for a world based on objects. And re-writing the code is no small task.

...

Shouldn't this wiki mention Interhack? The multiplayer nethack, I mean. I know the project got abandoned, but it still had a stable 1.0.5 release in 2001. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.121.141.24 (talk • contribs)

As it was a NetHack variant, I should think so. Now all we need is for someone to take it upon themselves to add it (looks at the anonymous OP) --Rogerb-on-NAO 19:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Interhack continues to be developed and is currently in an Alpha verion: http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=Interhack — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.129.168.15 (talk • contribs) 2009-09-19

Article Number Count

For some reason, the number suddenly jumped from what I distinctly remember to be 1750 to around 3400. Any explanation? Fredil Yupigo 23:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

The Charmed Wikia, which I also frequent and sometimes write for, doesn't seem to have experienced a similar jump. What distinguishes NetHackWiki, however, is the large number of articles in the Source code namespace. The prior article count included only articles in the main namespace that were not redirects. I suspect that either the new article count is including non-main-namespace articles, or it is including the redirects left behind from when the source code archives lived in the main namespace.--Ray Chason 17:46, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Addicted to NetHackWiki?

I think I've read all the articles, excepting the source code... when I press random article 100 times, there isn't one I haven't read... o.O Fredil Yupigo 21:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Could have been worse... [7]

Calling for help for the Civilization IV wiki

Hello people. This post does not really relate to NetHack, but I thought I'd ask for your help anyway. I recently got the Civilization IV game and subsequently (today) became an administrator of the Civ4 Wiki at Wikia. I recon NetHack and Civilization are both games of patience and long-term planning, so I think some other NetHackers might also be Civ-enthusiasts. In case anyone is willing to help, join the wiki and find something to do. For one, all but one articles about individual units are missing. You may use the Keshik page as an example and start filling data for the other units ([8] is a good source). Or create articles about resources or amend the articles about technologies. Or you may just wish me luck doing all that by myself. ;) --ZeroOne 00:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Modifying wikia default templates

We should modify at least MediaWiki:Newarticletext and MediaWiki:Edittools so they contain more NetHackWiki-related help and templates. (I put in some suggestions on the talk pages of those two templates). --paxed 16:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Handling variants

I'm taking an interest in ZAPM following the /dev/null tournament, and have added a stub entry describing the most apparent similarities and differences. I am looking for some advice on how to manage some of the big changes - e.g. BUC is now "buggy, debugged, optimized" but is this worthy of separate pages? A redirect seems like a cop out to me. Also, there is little information (and no readily-accessible source) that I can easily dig in to, so I don't even know what NetHack version it is based off! I'll do my best, but before I go an pollute the namespace, I thought I'd seek a little advice. -- Kalon 00:29, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that for now everything ZAPM-related should be kept on the single ZAPM-page, if the page does not grow to be too large. In my opinion we should only create more new articles to only the most well established variants, namely SLASH'EM and maybe SporkHack, too. There's still plenty of room for improvement in both of those categories. —ZeroOne (talk / @) 01:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikia Spotlight

I was thinking that it would be nice to get this wiki a spotlight with w:Wikia:Spotlights: "Wikia Spotlights are images that appear on each Wikia page that link to other Wikia sites." For that, the following conditions should be met:

• The wiki should have a Welcome template for logged-in users and anonymous-IPs. Every new user should get a welcome on their talk page. Spotlights bring in new contributors, and it's very important that the community welcomes these new users, and helps them to get started. There shouldn't be any red Talk links on Recent changes. This is essential for any wiki that gets spotlighted.

We have the {{welcome}} template that I have been using. Would you other guys and gals start using this too?

• The wiki should use the Monaco skin as the default.

I'm quite fond of the old MonoBook style we have, but what do you think? Have you overridden this choice and are you using the Monaco skin?

• The wiki should have at least 100 content pages, not counting stubs.

This is definitely fullfilled.

• The wiki should have a logo.

Yup, done.

• The main page of the wiki should have at least one picture, and clear links to the most important content.

No pics, but they are not really applicable to NetHack anyway... We do have clear links.

• The wiki should have a clear category structure to help readers navigate around the site. Every content page should be in a category.

I think we do have a clear category structure. Some pages might still need categorizing.

All the points above say that the wiki should do those, but it does not say that they must be fulfilled to get the spotlight. Thoughts? —ZeroOne (talk / @) 20:55, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the kind of pics that should be on NetHackWiki is screenshots. We don't really have a whole lot of them and I think they'll make some of the articles more clear. Unfortunately, I don't have free time to make some, but we could make getting screenshots a project here on NetHackWiki.

Oh, and I haven't noticed the welcome template. I'll use it when I get some free time. :) —Shijun 21:48, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I filed a request for a spotlight and just got a message in my talk page saying that the request was approved and we are in the queue. :) —ZeroOne (talk / @) 11:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I just found out that the Spotlight has been installed and can be seen in other wikis:

Pretty cool, huh? :) —ZeroOne (talk / @) 09:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes patrol

I asked for the Wikia staff to enable the Recent changes patrol feature, which they did. This helps us fight vandalism, as now every unchecked edit appears with a red "!" next to it. When you click the diff-link, there's a "Mark as patrolled" link which then removes the exclamation mark, thus signalling the other users that the edit was legitimate. Any comments? —ZeroOne (talk / @) 08:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Variant specific information

Lately I've been source diving a lot in different variants of NetHack and would like to enter some of the knowledge into NetHackWiki. Especially that concerning how the variants have tackled some shortcomings of NetHack (e.g. pudding farming or boring Gehennom).

Now it is clear to me that large texts (like Lethes Gehennom) should be incorporated into the page of its variant or maybe even get their own article.

But smaller changes like how a variant tries to prevent pudding farming should probably go into a new section. How should that section be called? Variant behaviour? Variant modification?

And should a new category be added to the article? Like Variant information? --bhaak 09:15, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• I asked around for roughly the same sort of guidance, and there isn't anything hard-and-fast, rules-wise. As a personal guide, I think that for notes within an existing page that don't have the content to warrant articles of their own, a section titled after the variant is sufficient - there are plenty of sections relating to SLASH'EM in other articles, for example. If you are covering a whole variant, a summary page with differences may be warranted - see my own (abortive) example at ZAPM. Just my 2zm, but it keeps the wiki looking "nice". Yuck, hate that word. -- Kalon 22:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• • You may have already found it, but we already do have an article about the Gehennom of the Lethe patch. Anyway, I'd start by writing a general article about the variant first. There, I'd describe the new features briefly and then I'd use the {{main}} template to link to the main articles, which would cover the topic in more detail. But that's just how I'd do it. Kalon has done great job with the ZAPM article. So far it all fits nicely into one page — breaking it into multiple pages would just hinder the readability. Of course, he has also reserved links into articles such as software engineer, where the subject can be discussed in greater detail. Now I'm just repeating what Kalon just said but for new sections, see how the Gehennom article treats SLASH'EM. If you were to add an explanation of, say, the Gehennom of Sporkhack, you should probably put the Sporkhack header and the SLASH'EM header under a Variants header. —ZeroOne (talk / @) 08:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Is NetHack Alive?

Are a lot of people still playing the game and/or visiting Nethack? What is visit rate and edit rate on here? In particular, do questions get answered in a few days or less or is the community mostly dead? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.202.87 (talk • contribs) on 2009-05-19

You can look here if you want to see the visit and edit rates on NetHackWiki. And yes, questions here do usually get answered within a few days. Look at this response for example. ;)

I'm not sure if a lot of people are still playing the game. It depends on what you mean by "a lot". I hope someone else can answer this question. —Shijun 06:00, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The /dev/null/nethack tournament 2008 had 22,812 completed games played by 1,305 players, NAO has usually more than 400 games a day, the sourceforge statistics page shows more than 150,000 hits per month for nethack.org and more than 10,000 downloads per month.

For the community, you should also look at RGRN and #nethack on freenode. I guess that's where most of the action is. This community portal is used much less than IRC or Usenet.

NetHack sure isn't dead, but it isn't WoW either. Depends on your definition if this qualifies as "a lot". And as soon as I release my übervariant of NetHack, WoW might notice that the tides have turned ;-D —bhaak 07:41, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Even the devteam, though it has not uttered a line of code since 2004, does update their online bug list. But I personally think development of Nethack in part dead, in part superseded by Slashem. -Tjr 12:59, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Superceded? The last life sign of Slash'Em development was two years ago. I'd rather say the Slash'Em DevTeam has catched up with NetHacks. :-} —bhaak 13:35, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for you responses. I am certainly not looking for WoW and have joined NetHackWiki and will contribute what I can to the community (though I have a lot to learn about formatting wikis). I have wanted to try SLASH'EM and checked out NetHackWiki's knowledge base a few months ago and found information on SLASH'EM sorely lacking... but this seems to have been remedied now so I'll try Vulture's Claw. Do you guys look down on people trying the fancy new interfaces? Anyway, nice to meet you all and thank again. DemonDoll 14:49, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I really like Vulture's, but I play tiles because I want to know the inventory letter and object description at a glance. -Tjr 15:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Slashem Namespace

As Slashem pages proliferate, we will reach a point where roughly 1/3 of all pages either have a Slashem section or a "pagename (SLASH'EM)" counterpart. I think Slashem should have its own namespace instead for cleanlyness, and there should be a template such that Slashem pages #include the vanilla page by default. Let's reach a consensus. What do you think? -Tjr 15:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I love the idea but don't know what this "namespace" business is. Is there some way to toggle whether you want to see SLASH'EM or not so that it displays either the vanilla page or SLASH page? However, if that were done, the vanilla and SLASH pages might go out of sync in terms of information so perhaps better yet would be some universal toggle like that shows or hides a "In SLASH'EM:" section at the bottom of the articles that have them. Better yet (and this might be what you mean by namespace), a WikiSLASH encyclopedia. If so, I'm all for it. DemonDoll 17:03, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Template for Encyclopedia

Perhaps we should make a template {{NethackEncyclopediaFormatting|content}} that fully formats the Nethack Encyclopedia paragraphs. I think the encyclopedia might look better black on light blue, in a script font (e. g. Apple Chancery), and with a box around it (e. g. similar to Wikipedia's {{divbox|green||<center>Content</center>}}) instead of the current typewriter font. Also, a template would/should automatically make sure appearance is consistent across pages while providing a single set of controls to fine-tune. Any opionion? Who could make such a template? -Tjr 03:55, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

I had a somewhat similar idea, except the template would hold the content in addition to the formatting (which is a bit ambitious, I have to admit, and why I never got around to making the template). A formatting template is a better idea and easier to implement. I should be able to make it in the next few days or so. Though may I ask for a shorter name such as "Encyclopedia"? —Shijun 06:55, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

I like self-documenting names. How about EncyclopediaFormat? On a second thought, a newbie is probably smart enough to figure out what Encyclopedia does. -Tjr 13:12, December 31, 2009 (UTC)

New skin

I've used the monaco skin to create a NetHackWiki styled skin - just copy and paste User:Zapwire/monaco.css to special:MyPage/monaco.css, clear cache, enjoy. Suggestions are welcome. --Zapwire (talk/blog/edits) 13:43, January 26, 2010 (UTC)

Monster pronunciation

Some people have difficultly saying monster names. Maybe we could include pronunciations for things? --Zapwire (talk/blog/edits) 16:47, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

What exactly do you have in mind? .mp3 files spoken by the DevTeam? By native speakers? A transcription in IPA alphabet? (Who understands IPA anyway?) -Tjr 17:27, February 28, 2010 (UTC)

New "Wikia" aka "Oasis" skin: Problems, legal restrictions, and tweaks

What the proposed move means in practise

New address: http://nethackwiki.com

• More Nethack content on your screen.
  • Less clutter, ads, and javascript.
  • Faster loading time.
  • Wikipedia-style skin.
• Hosted on the same server as NAO.
  • backed by Paxed, Tjr, and the other active wiki admins
• Keep your old account, password, and edits
  • Just log in with your wikia credentials if you have already edited here
  • No unified login across wikia for new editors
• Almost all Wikia features keep working
  • Rich text editor works, but not social network stuff, facebook, blogs.
• Ghost town at the old site, and Wikia will try to split the community
  • Most incoming links already point to http://nethackwiki.com. That redirects here for now.
  • Once Google ranks us above the old place, it will dry up. Expect 1-3 months.
• Respect for you, the Nethack community.
  • Prediction: Wikia will become more and more abusive in the future.

Summary of the problems

WoWWiki discusses problems we also have. Especially bad is the wasted screen space. Wiki functionality navigation and social-network-ization come second.

What we can't do

From the staff blog:

In keeping with the goals of the new look, our Terms of Use have been updated as well. Admins will no longer be able to completely remove core features for all users by using custom CSS or JavaScript. This is to protect the universal layout and functionality of every wiki on Wikia and ensure that users have access to all of the features available in the new design. Remember, these new terms only apply to the CSS of the wiki as a whole -- they don’t apply to your personal pages.

To give a few practical examples of what this means: It’s not permitted to remove the right sidebar modules, blogs, and image attribution or add a banner that shifts the entire content area down the page, or alter the fixed width. You can still personalize your wiki with different colors and themes, add large, standout images to the wiki background, create styled templates and tables within the content area. ...

Ideas and solutions

Wikia has a very poor track record of fixing things, so we are on our own. Paxed has already clawed back a lot of wasted space and changed the unreadable color for text.

• Image attribution: a solution iff permitted
• A new logo: I think our logo should be less tall, wider, should read "Nethack" instead of "Wikia", and it should have a similar graphical theme as the old one to help brand recognition. Perhaps parts could be made clickable to hack in a make-shift navbar.
• Wasted vertical space at the top.: We aren't allowed to hide the crap. Somehow rearrange widgets beside each other?
• MediaWiki:Wiki-navigation needs to be updated. See our options, [9].
• Navigation sucks: Lots of cases, e. g. try viewing the article whose talk page you are editing. Basically, the only way to get around is to type in the URL. Can we site-wide customize "my tools"?
• Eyestrain From the cited WoWWiki page: Wikia staff members (ie Sannse) have been deleting ANY post which mentions eyestrain or headaches on the community blogs. There have been several ophthalmologists from Britain who've posted that the skin has caused eyestrain to those who have dominant right eyes, and that the eyestrain could easily cause a headache. All posts were deleted with the reason being "spam".

See below for Wikia's side of the eyestrain argument.

Moving away from Wikia

"Should WoWWiki leave Wikia" is definitely worth a read. Moving is perhaps not yet justified for us. Wikia would keep the old content; at best, we'd get a split in the userbase, and a shadow wiki left behind. http://wikkii.com. I'm sure Wikia will not make any concessions if we threaten. If we're lucky, we can get a copy-paste reply (though much the larger WoWWiki got some screen space). Tjr 22:20, October 28, 2010 (UTC)

That could be handled in two ways: a) Site-wide notification that the nethack wiki has moved, or b) Just mirror the data from the nethack wiki, and resynch every N days or whatever.

I talked with dtype, and as far as he's concerned, we could run a mediawiki on the alt.org server (and mirror the nethack wiki content there or whatever). The only problem is that I've never set up mediawiki, and I doubt I have the time to do that too... --paxed 18:04, October 30, 2010 (UTC)

Friendly admin of the d20 NPCs wiki, here. I recently migrated away from Wikia with the Dungeons and Dragons wiki, and this is one of the only wikis on Wikia I still visit, and I think this content is perfect for the wiki environment, and am saddened by Wikia's insistence on moving towards a more "social networking" model. I am very familiar with MediaWiki as a wiki engine, and would be glad to help get this wiki set up with a new home, if it helps break away from Wikia. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 04:27, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

If help is needed, I also have a bit of MediaWiki experience I could contribute. (I'm User:Ilmari Karonen at mediawiki.org.) --Ilmari Karonen 19:37, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

A pragmatic solution for the visual pain is to install the add-on Stylish and using this stylesheet for NetHackWiki. That doesn't fix the underlying problems but your eyes will thank you nevertheless. --bhaak 17:22, October 31, 2010 (UTC)

Edit: the old heading said "impractical: Moving away from wikia" because I didn't want to raise undue attention. Tjr 10:56, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

Seems like this would be a lot of work, but this would be worth it in the end. Wikia has gone downhill fast in the past couple of years, with the slow page loadtimes, annoying adds, and wonky user interface changes. I would love to have a simple, clean, and fast wiki back for nethack :) I would also volunteer to help if needed. Spazm 22:17, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

Similar discussions in other wikis: Grand Theft Auto, WoWWiki, Anti-Wikia_Alliance, Slashdot about preventing Wikia from using the wiki contents, Dungeons&Dragons, outcome Tjr 17:50, November 6, 2010 (UTC)

Outcome of the vote

NetHackWiki is moving away from Wikia. Http://nethackwiki.com will point to the new wiki as soon as possible. It currently redirects here, so you can already update your bookmarks. (For Perl fans, s/nethack.wikia.com/nethackwiki.com/ is enough.)

Option	Votes	Percentage
Move	157	72%
Stay	42	19%
Undecided	19	9%
Total	218	100%

Moving forward

Quoting staff member Sarah Manley on w:c:simpsons:Forum:Moving_Forward:

... and we want to be clear that all wikiSimpsons community members are welcome to stay and participate both here and on the other wiki site. What is not welcome though is to purposely vandalize the wiki or disrupt the rest of the community, preventing them from participating here. Any user who engages in vandalizing the wiki or harassing other users here will lose admin rights, or be blocked if necessary. ... All wiki wide messages meant to push the community away from participating here will be removed. If active admins decide to leave and the remaining community decides to remove their rights and give them to others, please let me know on my talk page.

And staff member Sannse:

... all admins on this wiki are welcome to have their rights back, if they are willing to use them for the good of this wiki. That includes not setting notices that are basically an advert for their competitive site.

This means the move messages will eventually be deleted as "vandalism". (They are by no means wiki-wide.)Tjr 16:30, November 10, 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to see you moving on guys, and that we didn't see the comments here before now -- I'd have liked to have had a chance to try persuade you to stay, but there are just too many wikis for us to see it all!

On the notices: what we are asking is that you do not link to your fork on the main page of this wiki, instead, please point to this discussion or another page that explains the situation. Linking to the fork on this page (or whichever you point to) is just fine. We are also asking that you make clear that this wiki will still be here, so that anyone who wants to stay or adopt it in the future understands that they can do so. We are generally leaving notices in place for about 2 weeks, then removing them to allow the wiki a chance to revive.

One correction on the above -- just because the allegation annoys me so. We did not delete messages for mentioning eye strain, or for any other criticism (other than extreme abusiveness and threats). The allegation quoted above was from an upset contributor who was making up a lot of stuff at the time -- including those "several ophthalmologists" who he claimed told him that having a right side-rail was causing eye problems. That said, there were reports from people finding the text a strain to read at first, so we tweaked the text colour, size and spacing. That seems to have helped.

It's always very sad to see a community moving away from Wikia, but we respect your right to fork of course. I wish you well with your project in the future. -- Sannse<staff /> (help forum | blog) 23:06, November 12, 2010 (UTC)

Done. The links on the Main Page have been removed, the annoncement now states people may choose to stay here, and the opthtalmologist citation now has a pointer to your rebuttal. For the record: the annoncement is only on a minority of all pages because Wikia have asked for that on some other wiki. Tjr 14:20, November 13, 2010 (UTC)

@Sannse: I'm fine with you removing the move notice from the main page if that's what you want, but I'd like to ask if you could leave it on the other pages it has been placed on and wait for actual contributors to remove it from there. I've edited the text of the template to make it clear that anyone may do so if they wish. The way I see it, the template is not just (or even mainly) an advertisement, but rather serves to warn readers that the content is no longer actively maintained. It would seem a disservice to remove it if nobody's actually stepping forward to take over that maintenance role. --Ilmari Karonen 22:41, November 14, 2010 (UTC)

The point is that no one is going to do that, with those notices in place. The right to fork goes two ways, and this wiki should have every chance to be adopted and revived if that's its future. You wouldn't have accepted a notice like that on articles left by a departing user six months ago, and the same should apply now -- whether it's one person moving on or the whole of the currely active community. I accept that you are moving on, I hope that you will accept that you can't do that and control the wiki you are leaving. -- Sannse<staff /> (help forum | blog) 04:51, November 17, 2010 (UTC)

I have no interest in controlling this wiki (and I think that's true for most of the former community, even if I can only speak for myself), but I'd also rather not see people coming here left completely ignorant of what's happened and why the wiki is suddenly so quiet. Would making the notice say something like "This wiki has been abandoned. If you want to claim it for yourself, contact the Wikia staff. The previous administrators have moved over to nethackwiki.com." sound acceptable to you? Or would you happen to have a better suggestion yourself? --Ilmari Karonen 08:20, November 18, 2010 (UTC)

I think that regular visitors and editors will have seen the messages by now (I've left it a few extra days to allow more time for that). And I'm not asking for no mention anywhere of the split. But a permanent message on all pages is excessive and not going to allow this wiki to recover. I'm OK with a notice saying that this wiki needs new admins, but that should be here on the Community Portal and other appropriate places, not on all articles -- Sannse<staff /> (help forum | blog) 06:31, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

One week ago you said you would leave them for two weeks. --Tjr 19:56, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

I meant that we generally leave main page notices for about 2 weeks, but I see my wording was ambiguous, sorry about that. I'll leave them in place for the rest of the two weeks, and look again after that -- Sannse<staff /> (help forum | blog) 05:48, November 24, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! --Tjr 15:20, November 24, 2010 (UTC)

Or a little longer... I get distracted easily ;) I'll change the template now. I'll also remove the text from the template page: "Wikia does not want us to add a banner via CSS that moves the content area down on all pages. One other wiki wasn't even allowed to link to their new site on the main page, but others were." - it's not quite accurate and doesn't fit without the current template content. I'll remove the similar notice from the main page, but leave the newsbox as-is. thanks -- Sannse<staff /> (help forum | blog) 23:37, December 3, 2010 (UTC)