Editing User talk:Crosley

This is your "user talk" or "user discussion" page, accessible by clicking the "discussion" tab from the top of your user page. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 15:43, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

==Turning stupid questions into smart articles==
Just finished working on this new article here: [[Turning questions into articles]]. Feel free to add/edit. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 21:19, 7 July 2009 (MDT)

==Spam problem==
I just framed out a [[Battling spam]] article, and will be working on that issue this week. I have a bunch of resources on this that I just need to review, and then implement some new tactics. I think we might go with captchas for unregistered users, as you had recommended. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 21:19, 7 July 2009 (MDT)
:Made some headway here; I implemented a script called [http://www.umasswiki.com/wiki/UMassWiki:Bad_Behavior_2_Extended Bad Behavior], that monitors activity for signs of bots. Looks like it's working quite well. If that doesn't do it, next step is to use CATPCHAs, which I think we should do for unregistered users only, as you had suggested. Also, the [[Battling spam]] article is pretty comprehensive now. Anyway, thanks for your help on catching the spam, hopefully the process will be more automated from now on. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 13:26, 9 July 2009 (MDT)
::The bot-monitoring script looks like it's working quite well. I've not noticed any spamming since it was implemented, although I imagine we will be tweaking our approach somewhat in the future. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 20:19, 18 July 2009 (MDT)

==Using "Talk" pages==
The software that runs this wiki is called MediaWiki. The manual for it is [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents here]. Some of it is going to be difficult to understand for anyone who's not a computer programmer, but a lot of it should be fairly easy for you. Here's the manual page on using these "Talk" pages: [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Talk_pages Talk page manual]. Basically, you can just edit these pages like a wiki page. Every article has an associated "Talk" page, accessible by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of the article. Talk pages for articles are used for discussing the article, rather than directly editing it. Every user also has a Talk page, it's analogous to the PM system used on forums, but it's not private. You can delete all the edits I've made on your Talk page as you choose, and you can also leave me messages on [[User_talk:Jon|my Talk page]], and I'll get a notification as soon as I get on the wiki. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 13:26, 9 July 2009 (MDT)

==Categorized all articles, got rid of junk==
Just finished combing through 500 or so articles. Tossed out the bad ones, and categorized every one. See the [[Crankshaft Coalition Wiki|wiki home page]] for a list of categories. I also put almost 200 articles into the [[:Category:Undeveloped articles|Undeveloped articles category]], so they're separated out from the good articles. --[[User:Jon|Jon]] 22:18, 22 August 2009 (MDT)