Wiki News (version 147)

2003-10-15

• I have tried to find an easy non-obtrusive solution to the lost board edge? problem. Diagrams now sport an additional darker rim, if the board is indeed at its edge. Feedback?
• Pageinfo now shows number of hits and distance values too. Also, it only shows the latest 50 archived versions at first. All archived versions are one click further away.
• Also, 1xN boards look better (or should I say: different) now. It's even possible to have a 1x1 board:

2003-09-30

• Generate Diagram From SGF now supports the SGF properties AB,AW,AE which is important for e.g. handicap games. Also, it is more user friendly when you enter too high a move number.
• Images of board diagrams now have the HTML width & height attributes set. Maybe this helps those IE users out there.
• The diff page sports some new links (e.g. prev/next) which should make it more user friendly. I think you will like it if you are a RecentChanges junkie and/or regular contributor.
• The "search related pages" is now twice as fast as before.

2003-09-10

• Fun: added shortcut keys

2003-09-01

• One day late, SL reopens after the system upgrade of the machine. We had to overcome some unforseen stumbling blocks. Anyway, we are back online. For the technical inclined: SL is now running on Debian Linux and MySQL4 with InnoDB tables.
• If you note anything strange then please drop me a note on GuineaPigsFeedback.
• Software patent "online demo" (aka vandalization of FrontPage) removed, altough you should keep an eye on the issue -- http://swpat.ffii.org/

2003-08-26

• I decided to have SL participate in the online demo against software patents in Europe. The frontpage will be altered for the duration of a week. I know that some might feel that I'm misusing SL's popularity, however I feel very strongly about this. As programmer and provider of free services these patents threaten not only me but threaten projects such as Sensei's Library as well. Do me a favour and visit http://swpat.ffii.org/ and take action.
• For ensuing discussion see: Off Topic - patent discussion

2003-08-25

• New SLSnapshot.

2003-08-24

• SL will be offline next weekend (30/31 August). We are doing a remote system update on the machine. I have never done this before, so keep your fingers crossed. Don't worry though, I'll make up-to-date backups before the discs are formated :o)

May I suggest using rsync to perform the remote system update? Rsync is used extensively where I work and by The FreeBSD Project among many others. Rsync copies from the source system to the target system only those sections of a file that have been modified. The first time, it must copy everything, of course. Several associates of mine and I use it to backup the critical data of our Internet connected systems to each other's homes. Please contact me if you have any questions regarding rsync. Velobici

2003-08-18

• Changed difficulty page header to: "Introductory, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert". Pages previously rated as dan & pro have been assigned "Expert" level. Other pages unchanged. If you feel compelled to change the difficulty rating of same pages, please use MinorEdit. If you would like to change ratings of many pages, then it's easier for me to do this than for you. In that case just put a list (grouped by difficulty rating) onto PageDifficultyDiscussion and I'll do the rest.

Arno, we need to update FindPage to reflect this change. Dave

2003-08-04

• Getting over the slump I have been in recently I deleted about 30 pages to boost my moral ;o)
• I fixed some bugs (see GuineaPigsFeedback), added a quicker way to reach a page's info & history than scrolling to the bottom of the page -> see footnote 5 of UserPreferences.
• Uploaded Froese?'s transparent gifs for the small inline images of moves. Thanks Froese :o)
• Uploaded Hans Wiezorke's Sensei's Library on Tour for PalmOS fans. Thanks Hans :o)
• If there are no strong objections I'm going to redo the difficulty page header to: "Introductory, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Master" which maps to current levels of "Beginner->Intro&Beginner", "Advanced->Intermediate&Advanced", "Dan&Pro->Master". Voice off at PageDifficultyDiscussion.

2003-07-17

• Cruising past page number 7000. Incidentally, it was the first edit for Stfiend, who made this page. Congratulations ! Soon we will only be celebrating at tens of thousands.

2003-07-06

• New: phrase search: you can now search for e.g. >"avalanche joseki"< as phrase (and not as single words). I.e. a page containing >joseki avalanche< will not be found.
• New: clicking on the page title takes you to a new search: related pages. See About Search Related for more information. The page info and history previously accessible through the page title link can be accessed either from the search related page or (just like before) from a link at the bottom of the page.
• New: IP addresses of users who are logged in with username and password will not be shown anymore (but are still visible to librarians & admins). Note: this is only true for new edits and not for changes in the past.
• Plus some other things I seem to have forgotten ...

2003-06-22

• I have refactored the GoWiki code. If you come across something strange or unexpected then please let me know.
• New: You can link to footnotes from outside a page. E.g. Doug's Go Blog May 2003 # 030506? (also see this page for how to name references and anchors).
• I am about to launch an NNTP (newsgroup) interface to SL - the newsgroup will basically carry the same information as RecentChanges. I need some volunteers to help me straighten out bugs, before I let it loose. Email me if you are interested.

2003-06-20

• New snapshot: 18MB, 6700 pages, >10000 diagrams. For those trying to save bandwidth (or having slow connections) there is an update to the previous snapshot available (size: 6MB).

2003-06-07

• New: links in diagrams. See description at HowDiagramsWork or original discussion at LinksInDiagrams.
• Prefix "Diag." removed from diagram title.
• New: AdvancedFindPage lets you search for a conjunction of keywords (boolean AND)

2003-06-01

• The FrontPage now features a nice rendered goban by Juha Nieminen. Thanks Juha :o)

2003-05-31

• New keywords: 'software' and 'theory'. Changed keywords: 'books & publications' instead of 'book'. Removed keywords: 'attack & defense'.
• Change in text formatting rules
  • an opening square bracket is now escaped like '![' instead of '[['. This is more consistent with the other escape mechanisms.
  • you can now have indentation with ">" as the first character of a line. Multiple ">>" allow for deeper indentation. Spaces are allowed (but not before the first ">"), so e.g. "> > >" is valid as well.

2003-05-17

• New: warning is shown on EditPage, if someone else is just editing the page as well. Warning is shown for 10 minutes, "Preview" resets the counter, "Cancel" clears the mark.
• New: you can now have links and emphasis (bold, italics) in diagram captions. Don't bother asking for linebreaks.

2003-04-27

• References ("back links") of Aliases are now shown as well (previously only links to the main page where shown on the left side).
• References are sorted by their forward ranking (see PagesByDistance) instead of most hits (see MostPopular).
• 20 instead of 10 references are shown on the left side.
• You can now bookmark 12 instead of 8 pages.

2003-04-12

• DistanceFromFrontpage recalculated. Added feature so that librarians can update the page too.
• PagesByDistance recalculated. Now using a heuristic instead of shortest total path method.

2003-03-09

• AshleyF provided nicer inline images - thanks Ashley! :o)
• Also, you can have unmarked stones with WO = and BO =

2003-03-08

• New feature: picked up idea of AshleyF: make inline images in text when referring to stones on board: any W or B followed by 1-10 is shown as little image with a stone with that number. Stones marked with a circle are done using 'C' as in BC or WC, squares are done with 'S' as in BS or WS. For coherence with diagram markup following is allowed as well: BB WW B# W# W@ B@
• as usual a '!' in front of the token disables the feature
• 
  
  

2003-03-01

• New SL snapshot: 14MB, >5600 pages, >8300 diagrams. I also fixed the filename problem on case-sensitive systems.

2003-01-19

• New: AdvancedFindPage

2002-12-08

• New: you can customize FullRecentChanges now. See SL Tips And Tricks for more.
• For librarians: click on the "librarian" text besides your username in the left hand column: you should be taken to the admin page. Not much functionality there yet, but can be extended ...
• I did some refactoring of the code as well, if you encounter anything odd then tell me about it on GuineaPigsFeedback

2002-12-03

• New SL snapshot: 11MB, >4500 pages, >6600 diagrams.

2002-11-30

• UndefinedPages: pages can now be categorized. Librarians can modify categories, as I can't think up any useful categories myself :o) Just as an example I have created a category called "People". UndefinedPages are ordered by modification date of referring page - newest on top.

Confused: A category for "Books" or "Review" would be nice too. A lot of the undefined pages come from the GoBooks page. This category could also be used for other missing product reviews like software or go-servers.

Arno: done.

2002-11-18

• I hope I am forgiven for not noticing that we reached page #4000 some days ago (see also: SL history, SL statistics). What is there to say? I am still amazed at the growth and increasing popularity of SL. I guess I speak for Morten, me, and all lurkers out there: thank you very much for your valuable contributions!! <bows till nose touches feet, then exits left>

2002-11-17

• Updated to a new PHP version - if you come across any strange behaviour, please let me know.

2002-10-20

• we have moved to a new server. Thanks to the French Go Federation for being our host for two years. SL has come a long way since then.
• If you run across any problems on the new site please let me know.
• I have restored HighOrLow. Anything else destroyed? Note: I don't follow all changes at SL closely. If you'd like to get my attention post to GuineaPigsFeedback, MetaDiscussion, MessagesToPeopleCurrentlyPresentInTheLibrary, or to ArnoHollosi or MortenPahle.

2002-09-30

• recalculated PagesByDistance and DistanceFromFrontPage. Search for your favorite pages and lower their score by linking them from more places. Wikis like the web live from hyperlinks :o)

2002-09-21

• New SLSnapshot: over 3000 pages, 5500 diagrams: get it while it's hot :o)
• PageNumber3000 - Congrats to CharlesMatthews and everyone else. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

2002-07-19

• Useless fact of the day: SL passed the mark of one million page views some days ago (since its creation in Nov 2000). Currently SL has about 5000 page hits/day and about 550 visitors/day.

2002-07-09

• Page number 2000! Congrats to unkx80 and everyone else. Party time :o)

2002-07-07

• As a fellow deshi ran into the "too many requests" limit, I changed the behaviour slightly. Someone issuing more than 35 requests/minute will be blocked for 5 minutes and a warning message appears. If the limit is exceeded within the next hour again, the IP address is blocked for 6 hours.
• If you have password-protected your UserName, then only your name is shown in RecentChanges. If you have an "unprotected" UserName, then the IP address is still shown. Note that in the version history of the page the IP number is always shown. Should make RecentChanges look cleaner. You can add a password in UserPreferences.

2002-06-09

• Implemented new archive backend - it now stores only the diff, not the complete page. The size of the archive database was reduced to 7MB (from over 50MB). If you detect something weird using the diffs in RecentChanges then let me know.
  • Note: due to this change it may become feasible to show the number of changed lines instead of the change in linecount in RecentChanges. But don't hold your breath ...
  • Useless fact of the day: RecentChanges' archive needs 1.1MB that's ~15% of the archive space.

2002-06-08

• New: diagrams can now have coordinates (basically: add a 'c' in the title line, e.g. "$$Bc title"), see HowDiagramsWork for more information.
• New PageType: OngoingGame. Changes to pages of type OngoingGame are not logged to RecentChanges, but to RecentChangesGames instead. This should help keeping RecentChanges readable. In the future, those game pages might have additional features as well.
• As the overload protection seems to work, and no user ran into the limit, I have increased the blocking time to 24 hours.

2002-05-31

• As people don't stop mirroring SL with their dumb tools, I have added an additional protection mechanism. If someone issues more than 30 requests/minute they are blocked for 12 hours. I don't know if this limit is too low so that regular users might run into it as well, so please send me an email if you got blocked by accident and I will raise the limit.
• New SLSnapshot online - 1700 pages, 4000 diagrams & SGF files, 6MB.

2002-05-02

• In order to fight spambots harvesting email addresses I have obfuscated email links, without affecting users. This obfuscation is only done to 'real' email links using 'mailto:', i.e. ahollosi@xmp.net, or Arno. Check the HTML source (not the wiki source) to see how the obfuscation works. Tested with Netscape6+, Mozilla, Lynx, Opera. Should work on IE too.

Seems to work on IE 6. Thanks! --unkx80

Yes, many thanks, Arno! :-) --Bill

2002-04-27

• new feature: GenerateDiagramFromSGF

First reaction = Great! DaveSigaty

2002-04-25

• Change of TextFormattingRules: '----' forces text below a diagram (again) and makes a horizontal line. Super line-break [%%%%] remains. There's no need to use the 4x% linebreak in front of the 4x- line anymore.

2002-04-21

• recalculated DistanceFromFrontpage and PagesByDistance. Trends: Morten lost his first place to Dieter, playing sente is more important than playing atari, and being a HikaruNoGoJunkie is more hip than being a RecentChangesJunkie.
• Previous versions from 2001-Oct-06: PagesByDistance, DistanceFromFrontpage
• Updated preview mechanism so that it does not rely on the browser's "back" function any more. This should solve all problems with "disappearing" edits.
• Added possibility to protect your username with a password. Note: be careful: there's no undo or change password feature. In case, you find your name taken by someone else, leave a note on one of the MetaDiscussion pages.
• Also, see TouchgraphWikiBrowser

2002-03-17

• added new preference for experience level: casual visitor/SL deshi. Deshis are allowed to adjust pagetitles and revive the latest version. Casual visitors lost the ability to revive the latest version.
• fixed some tiny bugs and did some clean up.

2002-02-27

• I have added a RandomPage feature. Hint: add the former link to your wiki bookmarks to jump continuously through the library :o)

2002-01-06

• Change of TextFormattingRules: '----' no longer forces text below a diagram, it just makes a simple horizontal line. Instead there's a new line-break: [%%%%] (4 x %) will cause a <br clear=all> and thus force text below the current diagram. The simple line-break [%%%] (3 x %) still works and just makes a line-break, not affecting floating text around a diagram. All pages updated accordingly. Whenever you find 4% followed by 4- you are now free to remove one of them - whichever is the effect you would like to have. Comments? -> GuineaPigsFeedback.
  • (just let me add a little rant: please don't use those line-breaks too much. I think that many of those linebreaks should either become paragraphs or lists.)
• Added "Preview" of edits. Does this work on all browsers? Please test it out.
• Added OnTheFlyDiagram which is used for preview and for missing diagrams in archived pages.
• Reworked UserPreferences - more options. To SL-librarians: admin.php no longer necessary. Type in UID/PWD right at UserPreferences.
• For librarians: added "Page rename" feature. Use with care!!

2001-11-25

• I fixed some title-related bugs. Everyone can now adjust the pagetitle when creating a page. Only librarians are allowed to adjust the pagetitle once the page is created.

2001-11-01

• WikiNames may now contain apostrophes (') as well. The title of a page is now derived from its first creation link, so choose it carefully :o)

2001-10-13

• Minor change to layout: different background pic, default font is now generic "sans-serif", and path navigation is now shown at top & bottom of the page instead of inside the left navigation bar. Comments? -> GuineaPigsFeedback
• In the spirit of OpenContent I have made a first SL Snapshot with all pages as HTML, including diagrams and SGF files. Just in case you are worried about us "owning" this content :o)

2001-10-07

• I finally added pagename aliases. Example: CaptureGame. All you need to do is write the pagename in the first line of the alias page and set the pagetype to 'Alias'. That's it. The referred page will contain "edit alias" links. (Drawback: multiple indirections such as "alias of alias of ..." are not shown).

2001-10-06

• New markup for footnotes: use [#1] to reference a footnote and [1] for the footnote itself. You can use any number^[123456].
• Recalculated PagesByDistance, added new page DistanceFromFrontpage. Pay attention to those 9999 pages (or the ones with score 6 or higher) on the latter.

2001-09-29

• Mirroring SL with dumb scripts that do not obey robots.txt continues. As a first measure every function but viewing a page needs to have a referrer information in its request. See AccessBlocked. That shields SL from resource intensive requests like pageinfo and searches. Normal users should not be affected by this protection.

2001-08-26

• Added "View" link to pageinfo available by clicking on the title link of a page. You can now view older versions of pages, not just the diff. Btw, advanced users can also create links to older versions of a page. Like this FrontPage version 38 from November 14, 2000. (see source on how to do it). Maybe this proves useful when doing WikiMasterEdits. The choice is up to you.

2001-08-23

• Added text-only mode for Lynx-users out there.
  Also, selection of font possible.
  See UserPreferences. If something breaks, please let me know.

2001-08-11

• FullRecentChanges is working now.
• changed RecentChanges to new mode (nested diff links)
• if you are a regular visitor please set your name for edits at UserPreferences. SL was moved behind a proxy which means currently everyone has the same IP address, which in turn means that SL thinks that everyone is the same user. Thus SL does not backup the previous version of the page into the archive unless you set a username. I cannot contact the admin right now (he's on holiday until 27th). I will try to find a solution as soon as possible.
• It seems that the proxy is slow sometimes. The SL server itself is as fast as ever, but sometimes connections to SL (through the proxy) are very slow. I hope that this is just during the transition phase. Sorry for the inconvenience.

2001-08-05

• Update of GoWiki engine. If you encounter problems please let me know.
• New: external links are marked with a small graphic icon so that they can be distuinguished more easily from internal links
• New: SGF files of diagrams by clicking on diagrams
• Change of RecentChanges: diff link now references exact version (necessary because of MinorEdit). This allows to keep more information in RecentChanges:
  • old behaviour: if someone edits PAGE then all entries for PAGE are removed from RecentChanges
  • new behaviour: PAGE entries stay there. E.g. if Dieter edits PAGE, then Arno edits PAGE, then Bill edits PAGE you will see all three entries in RecentChanges with the proper diff link.
  • Tell me if you like this or not in MetaDiscussion.

2001-07-29

• You have now the possibility to mark your edits as "minor edits" - such edits will not be logged to RecentChanges. This should help keeping RecentChanges tidy. Note: remember that when you have just edited a page and reedit it again, you don't need to check minor edits. This case is already taken care of automatically (if the reedit happens within 36hours).
• As newbies cannot be expected to check "minor edits" I've added a number just after the diff link in RecentChanges - it indicates how the number of lines has changed. E.g. [+4] means the page is now four lines longer than before. Watch out for things like [-40] :o) Note: the number does not indicate how many lines have been changed! Only the change in total linecount is indicated.

2001-06-08

• We now allow numbers not only at the end of a WikiName, but also in the middle - this looks like a good extension to avoid names like OngoingGameOneMovesOneHundredTwentyToOneHundredFiftyEight? which could now be written as OngoingGame1 Moves 120 To 158?
• Slightly changed behaviour for archiving pages: currently pages are put into the archive only if a new author edits the page. I've now added the following behaviour: if the same author edits the page after a period of 36 hours the previous version also gets put into the archive. This should produce more "natural" diff outputs in RecentChanges - e.g. someone edits a page and weeks later edits it again, then RecentChanges shows only the latest change in its diff.
• SL now contains over 650 pages

2001-05-07

• SL contains more than 500 pages now (doubled over 3 months) - thanks to all contributors!

2001-04-09

• updated PagesByDistance
• MostPopular now shows the 50 most popular pages (instead of 20).
• stats: currently about 100 visits/day, on average people look at 6 pages/visit. Content: 420 pages and counting - thanks to everyone!

2001-02-28

• new keyword: "Places" for every kind of location related to Go (e.g. tournament venues, go clubs, ...)

2001-02-03

• new scoring page: PagesByDistance
• SL contains already over 300 pages

2001-01-26

• new keyword: "Go term"
• SL contains more than 250 pages now - thanks to everyone!