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Welcome to the '''Village Pump'''. This page is used to discuss the technical issues, operations and guidelines of the [[FlightGear wiki]].

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Old discussion should be moved to a [[FlightGear wiki:Village pump/Archive YEAR]]. These discussions can then be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate.

== 2017 ==
=== Newsletter templates (June/2017) ===

Referring to Johan's comments at [https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=32405&start=15#p313099]:
Is there anything we can do to unify newsletters and changelogs without requiring major additions to the wiki in the form of plugins/addons ?
Specifically, I was wondering if something along these lines would be worthwhile to discuss: 

* Create a basic template-based structure to add standardized announcements/news
* These would be standardized based on category (core, aircraft, scenery, canvas, Nasal etc), inspired by recent changelogs/newsletters
* Move specific text to sub-templates, so that we can easily localize/translate those using a handful of templates
* support optional screenshots/youtube links
* support optional fields to be added/excluded in a given mode (newsletter vs. changelog)

In other words, we would review our published newsletters and changelogs and determine the common structure that could be re-implemented in the form of templates, and then come up with a handful of templates to add items in a standardized fashion, e.g. along these lines:

* category
* new/updated/removed feature
* headline
* common text
* changelog specific text
* newsletter specific text
* screenshots
* videos
* link for additional information

Something like this could be easily implemented without much wiki magic, and it could be also easily translated at the template level

Thoughts / ideas ?

-[[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]]) 06:40, 2 July 2017 (EDT)

: I will start slightly off topic with that I actually consider the current newsletter format to be slightly more complicated than it really needs to be. This is mostly due to the handcrafted table of contents replacing the automatically added one.  If we go back a few years a wiki newsletter page was done exactly as any other wiki page using the same way to add headers and with an automatically generated table of contents.

: To illustrate the above, compare the [http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=FlightGear_Newsletter_January_2010&action=edit|January 2010 newsletter] (plain article style, one template for the header), the intermediate [http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=FlightGear_Newsletter_January_2011&action=edit|January 2011 newsletter] (one additional template to move the ToC right and change the text flow) and the later [http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=FlightGear_Newsletter_January_2015&action=edit|January 2015 newsletter] (discarding the automatic ToC for a handcrafted one using a template for each main section and subsections added by hand.)  Even if that is only so much resistance, it can be what stops a contributor.

: What I was referring to with
: {{cquote|I think it would be technically possible to make templates that could simplify adding new newsletter blanks (but I have said that for years without doing anything about it :oops: ).}}
: was that one can make templates that will import a page blank prepared with regular sections and subsections (that technique have been used on English Wikipedia for adding template documentation.)

: In essence such a newsletter blank could have some of this prepared and some commented out suggestions for how to add a new section and how to add images and embedded videos etc.

: —[[User:Johan G|Johan G]] ([[User_talk:Johan_G|Talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Johan_G|contribs]]) 09:14, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

::: I found my way back to some documentation on what I mentioned above.[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Parameters_to_index.php#Edit_and_submit][https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Creating_pages_with_preloaded_text]

::: One would basically make a subpage to the template (say <tt><nowiki>{{Newsletter-new}}</nowiki></tt>) with the text to be preloaded (which is the term used) on the subpage (<tt>Template:Newsletter-new/Newsletter_blank</tt>) and link to it like this <tt><nowiki>http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=FlightGear_Newsletter_<month>_<year>&action=edit&preload=Template:Newsletter-new/Newsletter_blank</nowiki></tt>.

:::The new newsletter template could simply have a link "Click here to create the next newsletter".  It needs to be on another page than the newsletter itself though, for example on a page describing how to contribute to the newsletter.

::: —[[User:Johan G|Johan G]] ([[User_talk:Johan_G|Talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Johan_G|contribs]]) 09:43, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

:: I totally agree, while I appreciate the appearance of the new newsletter template, I always found it cumbersome/tedious to actually edit the newsletter compared to the old way. And I am all for automation. Then again, we have been suggesting/requesting certain plugins to be installed, but unfortunately to no avail so far. Speaking in general, it would be great if we could identify some of the recurring tasks on the wiki and find a way to automate most of these. For instance, being able to add contents to one page that shows up on other pages would also be useful, as this could greatly simplify writing the changelog - imagine adding stuff to the newsletter, which is then automagically added to the proper changelog. However, as usual it seems manpower is our primary constraint, Curt does not seem to have the corresponding privileges here and Gijs is basically n/a these days. What is really needed is an additional wiki admin, someone with Simon's privileges. And I would suggest we nominate bugman for that position :-)   - [[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]])

::: Yikes, this actually works: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?title=FlightGear_Newsletter_November_2020&action=edit&preload=Talk:Next_newsletter  -[[User:Hooray|Hooray]] ([[User talk:Hooray|talk]])


== Using Template:Convert ==

while looking at the [[Lockheed_Martin_F-35B_Lightning_II]], i noted the use of units that we could automatically have converted for us using the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Convert convert template] from wikipedia... i'm assuming that we can do that, right? so below is an example of how it would be used and how it would look... i've left the original entry in place for final result comparison...

<syntaxhighlight>
=== Performance Data ===
* '''Maximum Speed:''' 1,200 mph {{convert|1200|mph|kt|abbr=on}}
* '''Rate of climb:''' classified
* '''Service Ceiling:''' 60,000 ft {{convert|60000|ft|m|abbr=on}}
* '''Range:''' 1,200 mi {{convert|1200|mi|km|abbr=on}}
</syntaxhighlight>

::=== Performance Data ===
::* '''Maximum Speed:''' 1,200 mph {{convert|1200|mph|kt|abbr=on}}
::* '''Rate of climb:''' classified
::* '''Service Ceiling:''' 60,000 ft {{convert|60000|ft|m|abbr=on}}
::* '''Range:''' 1,200 mi {{convert|1200|mi|km|abbr=on}}

'''NOTE:''' i've copied this from my talk page to bring everything together here in one place as suggested on the forum by bugman...