The LDraw "Community"

[Martin James]

Help! I'm lost, confused, and not sure what to do first/next/last.

Somewhere in the great rewrite of this site I seem to have disappeared, as do most of the things I used to recognize under the umbrella of "Community". I used to have an account ("Emjay") but it doesn't work any more. I managed to create a new one, with exactly the same user name and details, to give me access to the Forums so I can at least get this far.

But my main problem is this:

My "Virtual Minibrix" parts library survived the rewrite, and now appears under "Parts" then "Other Parts Libraries". This is fine -- it is still very popular, and has a large and still-growing user base. However, somehow I need to get the entry on that page changed, as the site is moving to a new URL.

So how do the "Community" pages now get updated? And does the concept of user contributions still exist?

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Martin James

[Tim Gould]

You've got two options really.

1) Write here on the forums what you want to appear in that section, and we can change it

2) Make a page for minibrix on the wiki, and we can link to it. That's probably better as it lets you make changes easily.

Tim

[Martin James]

Here's a thought. Would it make sense to move all the entries under "Parts" - "Other Parts Libraries" into the Wiki? The link in the menu could remain, but now point to the Wiki "container" page. It could be, say, a second entry under "Repositories", with a sub page for each library. That way, (a) the library owners could, as you say, update their own material, and (b) it might encourage more contributions, in the way that the old site worked.

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Martin James

[Orion Pobursky]

Actually, we've been considering transferring all non-static content to the Wiki and, in fact, have implemented this in a few test cases.

[Roland Melkert]

Personally I think the whole wiki part is highly undocumented and therefore unknown to people who might want to use it (App authors etc).

I also would like to see the downloads section (fully) restored (using wiki or native cms pages). It would need a much better integration then the example (LDView page) floating around though, which doesn't seem to be referenced from the main site anyway.

I'm not complaining, I know the amount of work involved. Just hoping this stuff is in the pipeline somehow.

[Orion Pobursky]

Trust me, improving downloads is definitely one of the top things on the list. Things have been slow recently due to lack of time by the core website team.

[Tim Gould]

Here's a thought. Would it make sense to move all the entries under "Parts" - "Other Parts Libraries" into the Wiki? The link in the menu could remain, but now point to the Wiki "container" page. It could be, say, a second entry under "Repositories", with a sub page for each library. That way, (a) the library owners could, as you say, update their own material, and (b) it might encourage more contributions, in the way that the old site worked.

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Martin James

I was a webmaster on the old website for many years and remember very little user involvement. Maybe it happened more before my time, but I think you're looking for a technological solution to a social problem. Which will not work.

That said...

Yes the Other Parts Libraries probably should be moved to the wiki. I'm not sure why it remained, other than for historical reasons.

Given your enthusiasm, perhaps you would like to set it up?

Tim

[Martin James]

Given your enthusiasm, perhaps you would like to set it up?
Tim

Yes, I'll gladly take a shot at it. I don't know what bits of this site I can get access to -- presumably at least the Wiki if I re-establish my "member" account. When I need somebody else to tie up the loose ends I'll shout.

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Martin James

[Tim Gould]

Excellent. Cheers.

Tim

[Martin James]

It's me again. Fell at the first hurdle, I'm afraid.

Went to the wiki page, and discovered that the account I use for this forum is not the same as whatever account the wiki is expecting. So I followed the invitation to create one, filled in all the profile information, and sent it off. Got an automated email asking me to confirm I was me, which I did.

That was a week ago. Since then, absolue silence. How long should it take to get the account set up? I assumed from the nature of the screens that it was all automated. I'm now guessing it's a manual process, and I'm stuck in a queue somewhere?

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Martin James

[Orion Pobursky]

Sorry. I thought that I set up the system to automatically email me. Apparently not. I'll approve your account when I get home. As far as single sign on, that will happen but not as of yet.

[Orion Pobursky]

Ok, you're good to go! Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Martin James]

Right, I've transcribed all the information into the Wiki. What it wants now, I guess, is the menu link from "Parts / Other Parts Libraries" rerouting to point at the new location. Although there's currently only one page, I stuck a (sub)category in front of it to keep things flexible. It probably makes most sense to point the link at that category page, which is:
http://wiki.ldraw.org/index.php?title=Ca..._Libraries

I couldn't help noticing that some of the navigation in the Wiki could do with a good spring clean. There are a lot of topics that seem to depend on the "stumble upon" approach to being found. In particular, whatever creates that 2-column index on the main page could do with some tweaking to try and bring all the topic areas into one place.

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Martin James

[Orion Pobursky]

You are more than encouraged to do whatever improvements you think will better the site. If you make any drastic changes, let me know so I can have a look. I'm also going to add you to the Website Admin forum so you can discuss changes there.