User talk:Garman

William,

Do as you please.

Review and edit current articles?

Flesh out Earhart/Noonan stubs?

Put your own research on the wiki?

Make connections with classic pages?

Digest material from those pages in relevant articles on the wiki?

It all needs doing. You get to pick what you think is fun and worthwhile.

THANKS!

Moleski 18:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

That's all? :) Garman 21:57, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Meanwhile, Marty, going over the edit history of this wiki, I had not a clue you'd done so much work here. Wow! Garman 22:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Photo sizes

Thanks for the kind words.

I've been using MediaWiki for ... 4 weeks to the day. I did a page or two in draft on Wikipedia (not suitable for publication, I decided) and have corrected a handful of typos over the years.

I'm willing to learn from you about the right principles for photo sizing. I'm just trying to weave the classic site and the wiki together. I don't have a style sheet.

In the case of the construction photo, the thumbnail seemed too small to me. It's really relevant to the article--I never imagined that the base was so big!

The map thumbnail, on the other hand, doesn't seem as central to the article.

Nutiran has a big picture.

Sextant box found on Nikumaroro has small pictures.

Maps of Nikumaroro has big pictures.

[[Image:Example.jpg|frame|300px|center]] seems not to work. That's why I've been using centered tables to get the effect. We're using 1.13.x.x. I saw that there was a 1.14 beta RC available. It might implement all the image handling promised in the MediaWiki support pages.

Moleski 21:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I do understand! First, whatever size/way is settled on should, I would think, very likely be swayed by input from Pat and Ric along with what other TIGHAR editors think.

This said, there are reasons why one might not want to lay the "look and feel" of a static website onto a wiki. First, a wiki is "dynamically" edited, the layout is going to get shifted and nudged about quite a lot, hence simplicity can be very helpful. Second, wikis tend to be taken as more "inter-operable" than standard websites: These days, users have many and sundry display sizes. Large, centered images will often not fit onto a screen or may otherwise upset the reader's flow.

Moreover, centered images do not "wrap" the text. With careful layout, this can be ok and worthwhile, but more often, a lack of text wrapping can easily lead to a less reader-friendly page.

The standard is to "thumbnail" the image at the right of the page with this code:

• [[Image:snap.png|thumb|this is my caption]]

If there are lots of images, some can be staggered on the left like this:

• [[Image:snap.png|left|thumb|this is my caption]]

Both of these will wrap the text seamlessly.

At first, the notion of having smaller images all the same size on a page can seem unsettling to someone thinking in terms of an editorially locked website along with the strong impact and drama a big photo can have. However, users of wiki interfaces know (or very quickly learn) they have only to click on the image to see it in its full size. This isn't "more fit or more helpful" than a standard website using a more magazine like layout, which can be wonderful (I do this on my own websites), but has to do with how wikis have developed and how they are most often used. Lastly, keeping to a standard layout format on each page makes things much easier for both editors and readers and tends to draw them more deeply into the content. So, anything goes as to how a wiki might be layed out, but there are reasons why sticking to some ways of doing things can make using a wiki more rewarding.

Oh, one more thing, to stir up thinking... why try to re-weave the classic TIGHAR site, which is so cool as it is, into a "another version" of its own self on Ameliapedia, which could skirt the very benefits of having a wiki? If users want the "classic" experience (which I also like very much), it's there for them.

What do you think? Garman 22:11, 21 February 2009 (UTC)