Forum:SH Archive/Preparing for the Jedi Council Forums move

Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH Archive/Preparing for the Jedi Council Forums move

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. 1358 (Talk) 19:41, July 22, 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE 01:24, March 13, 2012 (UTC): The move will begin Wednesday, March 21, exact time currently unknown. That is therefore the deadline to complete all articles on this list. —MJ— War Room Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 01:24 UTC

Hello everyone. As you may or may not be aware, the Jedi Council Forums will soon be moving from IGN's servers and board format to their own servers and XenForo software. In all likelihood, this will break the nearly 1,000 links we have to those boards. In order to be able to reconstruct the links after the move, we need as much information about each link as possible. Specifically, all links need the name of the individual board they are on, the exact current thread title, and (for links to specific posts or groups of posts within a thread) the username of the poster and the timestamp on the post. The timestamp should be in Pacific Time, which is the JCF's official time (and the time used for logged-out users). Some articles already have most of this information, but are missing the board name, which is important as otherwise it may be difficult to track down an old thread with an obscure title.

Below is an alphabetical list of all main namespace pages that contain one or more links to the Jedi Council Forums. I am asking all users to, when they have a little bit of time to do so, go through a few articles, check them for JCF links, and if necessary, add the missing information. When you have completed checking an article, strike it from the list and sign under it so we know who did it. A few things to keep in mind:

  • I have created the template {{JCFcite}} to assist us in this endeavour; instructions for use are on the template page. Feel free to use it, but make sure not to lose information already present such as access dates. If an article already uses {{Cite web}} for JCF posts with username and timestamp, it may be better (and easier) to simply add the board name to the existing citation. {{JCFcite}} can be used for both references and external links.
  • If you can't find the post in question after opening the link, it may be on a different page. Logged-out users see 15 posts per page, while logged-in users see 25 ppp by default unless they have changed that setting in their preferences. If you're logged out, try calculating what posts would show on your current page number at 25 ppp and what pages those posts would be on, then check those pages. If you still can't find it, post a comment under the article link with your problem, and a user with an account and/or better knowledge of how the URLs work can check it for you. Don't modify links to point to a different page simply because that's where it is on your ppp setting; the link's fine because it works for somebody, and they'll all be broken soon anyway. Username and timestamp can uniquely identify the post.
  • Don't blindly keep existing timestamps; they may be in the wrong timezone. Always check them against the actual post and convert to Pacific Time if necessary. This can save us a lot of headaches when the time comes to reconstruct the links by avoiding the madness of trying to figure out what time zone each timestamp is in.
  • Don't forget that some articles may contain JCF links as sources in quotes. This is especially likely in well-written OOU status articles, but can occur in any article, IU or OOU. For these, add a <!-- comment --> at the end of the source field in the quote template with all of the necessary information.
  • Many articles will have just one JCF link, but some may have many more. Don't strike and sign off on an article until you're sure you've gotten all of them. The best way to be sure is to use your browser's "Find" feature (usually accessible by hitting Ctrl+F) to search for "boards.theforce.net".

I will be working through these slowly, but I can't do them all myself, so I appreciate any and all help. Master Jonathan Jedi Council Chambers Friday, February 10, 2012, 03:53 UTC

The list

Progress as of 16:10, March 19, 2012 (UTC): 427 of 427 complete (100%)

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XYZ

Discussion

General discussion about this project belongs here.

To answer the obvious: A date has not yet been established for the move, but IGN has informed the JCF admins that they are finally ready to do the move, and the head admin is currently negotiating the exact date. At least two weeks' notice will be given before the boards go down for the move. Master Jonathan Jedi Council Chambers Friday, February 10, 2012, 03:53 UTC

  • We actually had some discussion of citing JCF posts here. Note that there is a way to avoid the "different number of posts per page" problem in our links. If you look up a post on a user's "Recent Posts" page, it will give you a URL without a page number. This URL will always (or at least, prior to the move always) take you to a page containing that post, regardless of how many posts per page you are seeing. jSarek 08:08, February 10, 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm aware that can be done, and in the past have done so, but at this point it's moot as all links will soon be broken, which is why I didn't advise doing that. Master Jonathan Training Room Friday, February 10, 2012, 18:24 UTC
      • Do we know that for certain? The database dump might retain the latter part of the URLs. jSarek 12:28, February 11, 2012 (UTC)
        • Not for certain, but I figure it's more likely than not. Even if they don't break, ideally we'll want to update all the URLs to whatever XenForo's format is, and we can point links to individual posts then. Master Jonathan (War Room) Saturday, February 11, 2012, 20:34 UTC

As of right now, 131 articles above have been checked and updated, and 288 remain. This puts us at 31.3% complete. The JCF head admin posted last night that "it's very likely that by this time next week we'll all know what the move date is going to be", so it's getting very close. I will watch for the announcement and post the date here as soon as I see it. —MJ— War Room Monday, February 20, 2012, 21:13 UTC

For ease of reference, I added a progress counter at the top of the list that I'll update periodically. —MJ— Jedi Council Chambers Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 17:23 UTC
  • If we're worried about losing access dates, why not add an accessdate parameter to JCFcite? Menkooroo 05:06, February 22, 2012 (UTC)
    • Well, duh, why didn't I think of that before? Done. —MJ— Comlink Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 05:47 UTC
      • {{Cite web}} seems to link the access date automatically. Could the same feature be added to {{JCFcite}} as well? I'd do it myself but unfortunately I don't know that much about template coding, so the chances are I'd end up screwing the whole thing. :P Tinwe(comlink) 12:07, March 5, 2012 (UTC)

The list was getting pretty big, so I thought it best to break it into subsections for easier editing. I for one had some problems editing it the way it was, even though my internet connection is pretty good. Tinwe(comlink) 14:02, February 23, 2012 (UTC)

I've updated the list to include the eight articles which have had JCF links added to them since the original list was made. This means several sections have been un-hidden because they are no longer complete. Remember that we don't know what time the boards will go down Wednesday, so we have to assume first thing in the morning to be safe. That means we have two days to finish up. Everybody's done a good job so far, so let's keep it up and get this done. —MJ— Training Room Monday, March 19, 2012, 05:11 UTC

  • I went through a few of the ones that were left, and they already seem to be handled. So far, I've only gotten to update two articles and say that others had updated the rest. :P You may wanna double-check those, make sure I did them right. Trak Nar Ramble on 06:11, March 19, 2012 (UTC)
    • They're good now; I simply removed one as unnecessary, and the other was fixed by Tinwe. —MJ— Comlink Monday, March 19, 2012, 16:11 UTC