User talk:RachelGarrett

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Older Shipchart Wiki-hosted files to delete

Hey there! I was trolling the STO forums, and I found a linkback to an older version of the shipchart when I used to upload the entire file to the wiki. I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to remove the following files: http://www.stowiki.org/File:SpidermitchKDFShipChart.jpg http://www.stowiki.org/File:SpidermitchFEDShipChart.jpg If there's a way to make the pages redirect to the main chart (http://www.stowiki.org/Starship_tier_chart) that would be great too. The goal here is to make sure people that reference the charts from the Wiki get provided with the latest updated chart. This is very important in lieu of all the F2p changes.

Thanks! --Spidermitch 15:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirects are in place but do not seem to work automatically. Probably because the page is actually the container for an image file. Next step would be to delete the old charts. Are you ok with that? --RachelGarrett 23:11, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the old charts can be removed completely from STOwiki, since the current ones are linked to my hosted site. Just please do not remove the pre-generated thumbnails (File:SpidermitchFEDShipChartTHUMB.jpg and File:SpidermitchKDFShipChartTHUMB.jpg)

These are still used to avoid STOwiki trying to render the large files.

--Spidermitch 17:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Done. Regards, --RachelGarrett 17:15, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Starship Tier Chart

Rachael, I was wondering what happened to the link to the sharship charts page from the main page. The link "Starships" used to go to it, but now it goes to Starship_(classes). While I understand that you may want to change the main page from time to time, my concern is people looking for the old link may think it's been removed. It happens that a Cryptic dev asked me to move my post on their forum from "The Academy" to "Feedback > Federation Starships" around the same time I noticed you changed the link. I've had several people ask me directly how to find the newest charts, because they thought I stopped making them since they were seemingly removed from both sources. Anyway, there's two links that go to Sharship Classes on the main page (under Basics & Beginner's Section); maybe one can point to the charts? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Spidermitch (talk · contr)

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It appears I changed that back in June as part of a link restructuring. I have re-added a link to the charts page, which is definitely a valuable resource for the STO community. --MatthewM 06:07, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Glad we could resolve this so quickly :-). I can second that the ship chart is a great resource to have on the wiki, and I can only imagine the link was somehow replaced by accident. Thanks MatthewM, for fixing it --RachelGarrett 08:49, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you both for your prompt and sincere attention. I was hesitant to bring it up; didn't want to sound needy or conceded, but I’m really happy to hear that you both find the charts a valuable resource! With the new ships approaching and even more newcomers (with F2P happening soon), I strive to continue making these charts accurate (and pretty :P) and available to anyone that can use them. Spidermitch 00:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Minor Races

You should be able to get a good demographic of the friendly minor races by taging along with the various Relief Effort missions that have been collected so far. I'm pretty sure there are a few Accoladers besides myself who would let you check their 'collections', and as a bonus I don't have to yell at Matthew exclusively anymore. --Dukedom 09:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Lol, nobody is supposed to yell at Matthew anyway :-). As I wrote, it started as a little side project, only to check, if the races are reused in a consistent manner. The results so far indicate that they are, so one could think about creating articles for them. I'd be more than happy to accept any help from you guys. The difficulty lies in the fact, that exploration missions cannot be demorecorded and played back to take screen caps of the ground units. Regards, --RachelGarrett 10:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to get a bunch of Civil Authority shots from all the Relief Effort missions. Creating single article pages however sounds like quite an amount of work. If I recall correctly they are 'just' reskins though so it might be a slightly smaller mountain after all. It could be sufficient to write one 'main' article for minor races then and 'just' enter the different names/appearances there including some big !DANGER DANGER! signs besides anything wielding dual pistols and/or full auto assaults. --Dukedom 11:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I would only want to create one page per minor race, with some shots, so one can identify them. Since the mobs all use the same weapon/skill sets and starships, there would not be any point in creating a gazillion individual articles for each combat entity. The tables you suggest are exactly what I was thinking about. Regards, --RachelGarrett 11:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Template:Starship_component_nav - locked down?

Hi there - posted this in the template's talk section but thought it might be worth bringing up here. Seems it's locked out for editing? Would be fine, but I was hoping to add in the Hangar item type.

Chat?

Hey Rachel, Do you ever use global chat much? I'd like to invite you to the Accolades channel. We already have a pretty big group of STOWiki fans and Contributors there. Due to PhyerixianHero's presence lots of people come by to ask wiki related questions, it would be great to have you!

You should also consider starting an STOWiki Global Channel of your own to make collaboration between contributors easier. BrooklynKnight 02:38, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the invite and the idea for starting a dedicated Wiki channel. I'm actually subscribed to the Accolades channel, but somehow there is not much going on there in my timezone. However, starting some sort of real time support for STOWiki is a good idea. I know that we have a lot of really good ambassadors among our community, helping out with as much as they can. I'll start a discussion about creating a chat channel of our own here. Regards, --RachelGarrett 08:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Demorecord problem

Hi Cpt. Garrett.

I know this is more of a support question for the official forums, but I know you are something of an expert on demorecord. If you've any suggestions on what might be wrong, I'd be very appreciative.

I've taken some recordings of some the Deferi maps (Kelvani belt, Outpost 3, 'Out in the Cold'), but when I try to play them back, GameClient.exe complains that the map checksum doesn't match what it expected. Other maps like ESD still owrk fine. This happens both with your demo playback tool and just running from the command line.

At first I thought it might be due to dynamic patching so I turned that off in the game launcher, but I'm still getting the same error. I would like to take some pretty screenshots of Breen stuff for the wiki (just doing a pass over feature series 1), but this bug is stopping me :(

I dont suppose you've any ideas?

Thanks very much --Zutty 09:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

That's weird. Actually, the guys and gals at Cryptic might know more about the bug and why it happened than I do, but officially demorecord is a non-supported feature. I can confirm that the bug exists. I've tried both an old demo I had left from the 1-year-anniversary video and another recording I just took five minutes ago. We should try to get as many people as possible to chime in on this to get noticed, because right now, Cryptic has their hand pretty full.

I've started a thread here.

In the mean time: Here is a workaround for you: Create a Foundry mission with Breen mobs and demorecord it while you play the published mission. Regards, --RachelGarrett 10:08, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. At least its not just me! I've added my 2p to the thread. Hopefully Cryptic will find osme time to look into it. I agree we should get some more people behind it. I dont suppose starbase UGC might put their voice behind it, too? Oh and thanks for the work-around; it didnt occur to me to publish the missions! I'll try that tonight. --Zutty 10:48, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Feedback

Hello! I want to thank you for everything you have done for the Star Trek Online Wiki. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Tesla, a wiki manager for Curse. The reason I am posting on your talk page is for some feedback. I was hoping you could tell me if there was something you would like to see on the wiki or if you think there is something we could do to help improve the quality of our service to the community. If you have any ideas at all, please feel free to stop by on my talk page and leave me your thoughts. Thank you! DjTesla 10:16, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

2nd Feedback

Hello, I am Brandon Niquette, i wanted to bring this to your attention. i hope to hear from you. as Creator of Star Trek Online Information, i wanted to Feature Star Trek Online Wiki on my STOI. so i was wondering is here anything like partnership or something close to that. i'm currently in middle of making update to STOI for Season 5 information to be available here. other Sites including STO Wiki will be featured on "Featured Sites" Section in "Search STOI" and on Main page of STOI. so, that's why i wanted to ask you. Superlink1 6:17 AM, December 4th 2011 (UTC)

Hi Brandon, while I appreciate your interest in a partnership with STOWiki, I'm not sure what we can offer in return. According to our policies and guidelines, we do not currently promote or link to external sites unless they contain relevant information for an article (in that case we place a plain link at the bottom of that page). So please feel free to link to us, write kind or critical reviews, and/or reuse the information on our site (according to the corresponding licenses). However, we are currently in no position to return the favor (yet). Regards, --RachelGarrett 14:28, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Patrolling

Hello. I'd like to get your opinion on changing our settings to make the patrolling features of MediaWiki actually useful for our small wiki situation. I give specifics here. — Eyes 10:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Events and mainspace policy

Could you please take a look at User talk:Eyes#Events? I deleted a Starfleet Academy Blastapaloza page in mainspace because nearly identical pages were already present elsewhere: here and here and we've held to a policy not to promote other sites, but I don't have the history here to know why that policy is in place. (And I'm actually leaning toward supporting pages for community events, but allowing them in mainspace would be a change of course.) — Eyes 12:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, let's do a vote similar to the editing policy. Would you like to set something up, or should I? Regards, --RachelGarrett 12:54, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Icons and Naming conventions

Hello, I think we need to revisit the naming conventions for items. Following the file names as found in the game files makes it easier to find/link/redirect items to their pages, imo. Additionally I don't think we should be linking items with specific marks when multiple versions exist. IE the R0 versions I uploaded for the items main pages, and then using the R11 ones on the set page. --Ripley 21:14, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ripley. I would like to ask you to stick to the guidelines as long as they are what they are. The Wiki is certainly open to changes, and you may propose such changes on the corresponding discussion pages, so the community can vote on these kinds of issues. The reason for having the current naming convention is two-fold:

1. It makes it a lot easier to work with templates and create new ones
2. We do not want encourage people to go hack the game files and thus violate the game's terms of service.

Regards, --RachelGarrett 23:23, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

After looking over the guidelines linked above, I couldn't find a place where it didn't jive with the practices I've been following. While I will admit to being new to wiki editing, there seems to be no issue with uploading a file such as (,) and using redirects to (, ) to link them properly for templates, pages, etc. I'm not sure how this bold step would be against any guidelines or policy, nor a source of encouragement to hacking. --Ripley 01:53, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ripley, sorry, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. The relevant section of the guidelines reads:

Item icons should be named as such: in-game item name (e.g. "Disruptor Turret"); Mk level (e.g. "Mk IX"); "icon.png". For example: Disruptor Turret Mk IX icon.png.

Again, this is not the place to discuss this guideline. Although I'm the Wiki's bureaucrat, I do not decide these things or make up rules on my own. Instead, if a wiki member such as yourself believes that there is a better way of doing things, it should be discussed on the appropriate page for all other members to chime in. However, as long as no consensus is reached to change a guideline, that guideline is in effect. And members are strongly encouraged to follow them, and admins will make edits, moves and/or deletes accordingly.

So I do want you to know, that this guideline is not set in stone, and want to encourage you to start a discussion to change it, if you think we could do things differently or better. However, in the meantime, I would also encourage you to follow a guideline that has served this Wiki well for the last 2+ years.

Regards, --RachelGarrett 10:16, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Admin

Eyes told me to come to you about questions about how to become a Admin --Tuvok2409 00:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, the point is, we don't have an official policy of nominating and promoting users to become admins. Until now, I was something of an autocrat in that particular area. I think it would be time to find a more democratic and community driven way to organize this. I'll need to confer with the other Admins to figure something out.

Regards, --RachelGarrett 10:20, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Copyright

STOWiki talk:Suggestion Box#STOWIki copyright needs a check <-- It'd be easy enough to get this fixed, except I'm not sure which one we're supposed to be operating under... — Eyes 15:05, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Size Charts

I have a number of size charts of ingame ships, Klingon, Romulan, Generic, Dominion, and fighters, with more on the way. However I am unable to create an account. It asks me to click the cats and enter some details, it then tells me I have not filled something in, how do I create an account? Also why am I unable to use my wiki login here?94.168.211.98 19:09, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I honestly don't know what your problem is from the description you have given above. Please be more specific. The clicking of cats and dogs is our form of a CAPTCHA to prevent account creation by bots and other automated processes that would like to spam advertisement to the wiki. By identifying the animals, we can be sure, that you are in fact a human being :-). Best Regards, --RachelGarrett 07:57, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

After I click the cats, it then tells me I failed to enter the correct answer. 94.168.211.98 09:32, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, well maybe you have indeed failed, or the pictures were tagged incorrectly by the provider of that widget. IFAIK the pictures are pulled from an online portal were people can search for pets they want to adopt. Maybe you got a selection were a picture was not tagged correctly as cat or dog. If I remember correctly exactly half of the pets should be cats. Sorry, I can't help you more, but I would ask you to simply try again. If you are certain that you made a correct selection, please save a screenshot and contact me in-game. --RachelGarrett 15:39, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

This is the message it comes up with- Login error Incorrect or missing confirmation code. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 94.168.211.98 (talk · contr)

I'm getting it as well. The captcha also says "To help protect against automated account creation, please solve the simple sum below and enter the answer in the box (more info):

Please select all the cat photos:". Karika^Communicator 21:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Anyone with this problem please send me an in-game pm with your e-mail address so we can start sorting things out. Thanks, --RachelGarrett 21:56, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

What is your in game address? 94.168.211.98 10:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Same as the Wiki: @RachelGarrett. Regards, --RachelGarrett 11:55, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

We're having the same thing happen at GuildWiki now, which indicates an anomaly in the Asirra service itself. —Dr Ishmael 19:05, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Kingofall42 09:51, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I asked the PHP Team to take a look at this (on both STOWiki and GuildWiki) and they were unable to reproduce the problem, so no "fix" was implemented. Please keep us posted if this continues to be an issue. -- Wynthyst talk 15:57, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Size charts New

Here is the first chart, do you know where I should put it? User:Kingofall42/Size charts. Kingofall42 11:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

E.g. create a new sub-section in starship tier chart#Klingon Defense Force Graphical Ship Tier Chart. --RachelGarrett 17:41, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Updated Season 6 Doff Overlays

Im just curious who to ask about (or even just where to get) the newer Season 6 style Doff rarity boxes. I need them for a photoshop project, but dont know where to get them. Ive seen that you uploaded a bunch of the Doff related images, so I thought you might know. Apologies if Ive edited this page wrong as well. Avalon304 09:37, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

No worries, you are perfectly fine to edit this page. You can download our graphics very simply by going to the corresponding file pages (click the images to go there):

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If you need anything that's not on the Wiki, please write me an PM to @RachelGarrett in-game with your e-mail address, so we can discuss this directly. Regards, --RachelGarrett 14:17, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I know those graphics you posted are available for download (infact Ive already gotten them). But if you compare those to the ones in game now you'll notice they look different. The ones in game are solid and dont fade like those ones do. Im looking for the ones that are in game now. Avalon304 23:11, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe I have time to update them on Sunday, no promises, though ;-). Regards, --RachelGarrett 06:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I dont know how they are gotten (whether or not they are pulled from the games code or edited out of screen shots of Doffs), but I know theres also a fourth Doff rarity now (Orange). Avalon304 08:31, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I am just curious if there has been any progress on this? Thanks. Avalon304 02:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, again. Just wanted to let you know, since you were the one who uploaded the original DOff overlays, I found and uploaded the newer season 6 styles:

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Thank you a lot for sharing. And sorry that I didn't find the time to help you myself. Too many projects and too little time :-) Regards, --RachelGarrett 16:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

"Visitable" Planets

I posted on Suggestions Box to make a "Vistable Planets" page listing all the planets you can land on for general RP or DOFF missions etc. I would put any starbases too. I want to start working on this but there is no page for it yet. And it's been several weeks. Can you look into it pretty please with sugar on top? --Seraphantilles 14:38, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

What you actually want is a list of social zones. We don't use semantic wiki properties for planets and starbases, yet (an extension I'm not an expert on). However, I can try to update the templates for Planets and Starbases, so that they automatically add pages to a Social Zone category. I won't have time for this before Sunday, but no promises on the time line, I have a busy WE ahead. Rest assured, it will be done. Regards, --RachelGarrett 06:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Heads up: Won't be able to do this in Sunday, will try during the week. Regards, --RachelGarrett 21:07, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Seraphantilles on the "Visitable sites" page. Since I like roleplay and the 'sandbox' concept, I once made a navbar listing every zone, that can be accessed freely, without the need of quests. Don't know if it's of any use- maybe only for reference (I just made it for 'fun'), but I am linking to it anyway: User:Gabriel/Sandbox/01 I'd wish there were more zones like this in the game. The argument that it would divide/rarefy the player base seems invalid to me, since the game is instanced anyway, plus now there are fleet bases. -- Gabriel 20:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do on the weekend. Maybe I'll go the full nine yards to stick my head into semantic wiki. No promises though, but if I don't manage to get it done, I'll start a list article to put the social zones there. Regards, --RachelGarrett 16:03, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

I've found that we already have a category called Hubs for social zones with the sub-categories Federation hubs and Klingon hubs. Does not look up-to-date, but it's a start. You can add pages to these categories to make these collection more up-to-date (simply write e.g. [[Category: Federation hub]] at the bottom of an article to add it to the Federation hubs category).

Addition to game?

as a fleet, there are special projects to customize the interior of the fleet starbase. what about customizing the exterior? am i totally off here? i know my fleet (The 105th)would love that. example: create a construction team for tier 2 starbases that allow you to spend dilithium or ec to add custom items, colors, etc to the skin of your starbase. for every teir your starbase levels, more options become available... --76.115.15.225 18:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)Jodmos

I'm not a developer, so I have no influence whatsoever on what features will be added to the game. Please direct your suggestions to the developers on the forums. On my podcast, I've raised similar suggestions regarding the customization of starbases. Regards, --RachelGarrett 18:43, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Project:Patrollers group now set up

Didn't mean for it to take this long, but I completely forgot to put in the request for the configuration change until a few days ago. Now it's all set up, though. Promotions can begin whenever. — Eyes 19:42, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! --RachelGarrett 17:19, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you!

Curse would like to recognize the work and dedication of the wiki community administrators with a token of our thanks. To do that, we need mailing information. If you would like to participate, and receive our thank you gift email me at wynthyst@gmail.com with your username, and real world mailing information. -- Wynthyst talk 16:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Admin promtions

Technically, I can perform the actual promotions for our new admins with my Curse rights, but as the official bureaucrat, it's more your honor to do so. I will, of course, take care of it if you would like. — Eyes 06:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

How very thoughtful of you. Then let's get my sword, the three nominees shall kneel down before me :-) --RachelGarrett 06:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello Rachel and Eyes,

My name is Xean and I am a wiki contributor as well as regular gamer and avid Star Trek enthusiast. With your permission, I would like to request full Administrative access, so I may be able to add, edit and update this wiki fully. I have already taken the liberty to organize the User Hub in alphabetical order as it was straying towards the end and starting updates to the Basics guide as well as several other areas. I have fully read and fit the requirements for performance. I'm also a capable writer of skill, experienced with people, oriented in areas of importance and responsability. I would appreciate the opportunity to lend my abilities to use as ST wiki administrator for the benefit of our fellow members, with your kind permission. You are most welcome to contact me in-game at: @xtern1ty

Xean --Xean 11:35, 03 February 2013 (ET)

Hi, I do not promote individual users autocratically anymore. There is now an open and democratic community selection policy in place. The way to go is to be a steady contributer to the Wiki and get other users attention. Good work and good deeds will speak for itself :-). Regards, --RachelGarrett 16:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)