User talk:Elocina

Wiki version 2
Hi, Nicole! As you can see, we're having a busy afternoon. :) I'd like to introduce you to the team, and catch up on what's happening... Are you able to get onto Skype? I can introduce you to folks there. -- Danny (talk ) 01:30, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I will try to get onto Skype. Don't know how well the sound will work on my end. Am logging on now, but need to get my mic. Send me an IM before you call. Thanks! Elocina 01:33, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, we just use the text chat, so don't worry about a microphone! -- Danny (talk ) 01:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ok, well I'm logged into Skype now as "ellocina", note the two 'l's. Elocina 01:41, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Admin?
I'd like to nominate you for adminship on this wiki. DJ Ellia 02:22, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I changed my username from DJ Ellia to Ellia. But, anyway... here's your nomination. Good luck! ^.^ —Ellia • Talk to me • Please sign! 23:57, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Congrats!
You're an admin! —Ellia • Talk to me • Please sign! 02:04, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment
If you really want everyone to see the notice on the main page, maybe you should try adding it to MediaWiki:Sitenotice, since this site runs on MediaWiki. Glacier Wolf 03:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Apples
Sorry about that! BTW, would it be more appropriate to move Granny Smith to "Granny Smith apple" or "Apple (Granny Smith)"? Paul Davey 00:45, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh no, I meant "move" as in for you to rename it. i.e. move log "Granny Smith" to "Granny Smith apple" which pertains to a food. Paul Davey 01:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge Tag
I see. Well, the practicality is good in respect to the fact it doesn't have to be an imposing box template like wikiHow and Wikipedia, because this sort of wiki is different for that sort of thing. But still, I think it should stand out more. I was thinking you either make it a different colour and make the text centered so that it doesn't look like it is part of the immediate article beneath OR if possible (which I doubt) have the text aligned right parallel to the main title of the article. The latter probably wouldn't be able to be done, anyway.

But at its current state, the bold black text just above the black text of the article would go rather unnoticed I believe. Paul Davey 03:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I had a go and got it to center and change color (just change "red" to another color if necessary). It now works, and to put it on an article you type and there you have it! However, I couldn't get the name of the article after the colon to appear adjacent, and if you look on Apples you'll see what it does. Maybe you could ask how to edit the template so you can put a. I tried doing it and the name of the article will not appear so it will take some skill. Paul Davey 03:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi again!

Whilst trawling through Google Search 'pwhdavey" I stumbled upon Foodie and thought I'd pop in to see how things are going. I trust you had a good Christmas? How did it go with the merge/stub tags? Paul Davey 08:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm welcome!
I will read over the user's guide and start kicking out recipes. Is it OK to send recipes in Mastercook or Mac Gourmet format?

MA

Ooops I forgot
I am sorry and I was nervous as this was my first post here. 66.59.237.175 02:32, 4 April 2008 (UTC)MA

From Tmp, a Wikia wiki.

Quick update
I asked the engineers to add a form-based tool for new page creation (just like wikihow has) called CreatePage that I hope will be active soon. It lets you create multiple templates that users can pick from to start a new page. I'm also talking to another recipe wiki about merging with us, to get some more content and traffic quickly :-)  color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 19:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Red links enabled with the create-page form now. Try going to a red link and then clicking on the recipe button near the top of the page color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 03:02, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Not sure exactly what the problem was you were referencing. But in playing around I noticed we need a template for the infobox... is that something you could help with? color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 17:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Take the ball - and run! color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 04:43, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Interesting recipe page format
Take a look at this format for displaying recipes. http://fooddownunder.com/cgi-bin/recipe.cgi?r=10978

From Recipes Wiki, a Wikia wiki.

lots of new users
popping in from cookbookwiki. It would be great if you could welcome them as they drop by! color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 20:23, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Add A Recipe Button on Main Page?
Hi

Could we add an "Add your recipe" button on the main page. Similar to this...

To start a new recipe - just put your idea in this box and hit the button! bgcolor=#f5fffa width=20 buttonlabel=Add a Recipe

It might be a way to show newbies the possibilities as soon as they get here. Thanks, -- BillK  (talk ) 09:12, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Vegetarianism
Thanks for suggesting that I leave a comment. I looked up the category Vegetarian and found such a jumble it was not at all easy to use. Is there a vegetarian section so vegetarians can get to what they want to read easily? Proxima Centauri 16:35, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Howdy!
Hi, Nicole. I'm Shawn, a Wikia helper. I've been looking around the wiki - is there anything I can help with,either generally or specifically? Shawn ( talk ) 21:54, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Specifically, I'm looking at the mess created by making headers in articles be their own categories... seems like you could use a hand with cleaning that up? Shawn ( talk ) 00:07, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That would be a big help actually. Didn't know what to do with those, since they came in with the Cookbook Wiki content.

Also, if you have any suggestions of things to implement that are incorporated on other hobby wikis here on Wikia, I'd be welcome to your suggestions -- especially in terms of community building. Thanks! Elocina 20:17, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Logo
Hi, Nicole -- We just moved to the new version of the Monaco skin today, which uses the Wiki.png logo instead of Wiki_wide.png. Unfortunately, it looks like the only version of Wiki.png was for Cookbook Wiki... we didn't have a Recipes version. I'll ask Scott to help out with that today... -- Danny (talk ) 13:56, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. Elocina 20:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Nutrition Facts Template
It would be a great idea, I didn't know we had one. Frankly, I'd be good for using the existing template, as it seems to work properly. I might fiddle with it a bit to get percentage of recommended daily intake to appear. Also, if I could ask, what needs to be added to an article to propose it be merged or renamed? Statuary 05:17, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Moving Articles
Me again, I noticed that a lot of pages don't seem to be movable. Not sure as to why, perhaps you can shed some light on the situation, because it's making cleaning up ingredients a bit hard to do. Statuary 02:47, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Wait nevermind, it's only not allowing to move categories, which I suppose makes sense. Oh well, looks like I'll be at that cleanup for a bit longer then I thought, unless you know a way to rename an entire category. Statuary 02:49, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
Hi Elocina... thanks for the welcome on my user page. :) Johnq (talk) 04:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Melons and Monthly Project
As far as the melons are concerned, leave it be for now, pulling all the variations together is good and it helps me to clean out most of the bad articles. For example, Ogen Melon has no recipes associated with it, it's not widely available in most stores, it doesn't even warrant a placeholder.

I'd like there to be a better focus on stopping dead or vacant articles, and instead leaving red links that someone, if they feel the need to improve upon it, can do so. Even if it is an article like Corn which while not ideal, at least pays lip service to a form and has useful information. However, when there is an abundance of articles like Category:Cucumbers or Boiling Potato, that are there just for the sake of place holding, it really detracts people from editing it.

Before a monthly project, I think a more standardized format for recipes and ingredients couldn't hurt. For ingredients, I think Cantaloupe is a good example on how I'd like them to look, save that nutritional information needs to be added, and maybe a few more pictures.

However, if there was a monthly project, either a mass deletion drive, or an ingredient improvement drive, where we get a list of staple ingredients, whose ingredient pages are lacking, and we get them up to par and maybe give a single recipe for that makes use of that ingredient. Statuary 06:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!!!
Elocina, thank you SO SO MUCH for going in and fixing all those messed up category links - I've been meaning to come back and fix those since I first noticed it but it's been pretty crazy around Wikia with the new ads format. If I can I'll come in this week and give some more help! What you're doing is completely awesome, thanks again! Shawn ( talk ) 18:23, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Wookiee-Cookiees etc.
Thanks for the welcome. In response to your question, I do not have that recipe... yet. I had a question for you, though: does this wiki have a dedicated IRC channel? It occurred to me that it might be helpful to the cooking noobs (like me) who find themselves with a question in the midst of frying something up.  Gonk  ( Gonk! ) 01:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As it happens, I know my way around Freenode channel operation pretty well. I just registered #recipeswiki and I'll throw up a quick IRC page here pointing to it. Join sometime and if I'm there I'll make you (or whomever else you might name) the channel contact.  Gonk  ( Gonk! ) 22:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

MA
Hi! Elocina,

I wanted to let you know that I have started adding USDA recipes here. I've been transferring some of them from WH where I originally posted them.

If I messed your categories up, let me know, and in the future I'll be sure to edit them out, before saving the article.

Here's a good link to lots of USDA cookbooks and recipes:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/ref/USDApubs/hgb.htm#titlef

It's posted on my user page at WH, if you happen to lose the link.

Nice chatting,

MA 05:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)MA

Recipe Sections
I was just wondering how i would go about getting my recipe added to the Main Dish recipe category? http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Lemon_Pepper_poached_Chicken     Xeroz 08:50, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Category Deletion
Hey Elocina, you may notice in the following days/weeks when I can get on, I will be requesting a lot of ingredient categories for deletion. When I do this, unless the category is empty, it is typically my intention to have all of the other articles that are part of that category deleted. For example, having 5 different kinds of milk and 6 different kinds of cream in the Category:Milk and Cream is needless when maybe 4 total articles that can be put into Category:Dairy Products will do. Statuary 03:12, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Problem Reports
Hi, I'm trying to re-introduce people to a feature we have, "Problem Reports". I don't know if you've seen it, the idea is to give people another route to contact admins... especially people who don't know what the edit button is for ;) You have a few reports at Special:ProblemReports. You can click on the problem ID number to take you to a page that shows just that report. You can click "i" to get the full text of the report, and you can click the icons to mark it as "fixed", "closed" or to flag it for Wikia staff. You can also send email to the person reporting the problem, maybe a good way to draw in new contributors! I hope you'll give it a go, we really hope this will be a useful feature in helping you get in touch with your confused users. Let me know if you need help! -- Uberfuzzy 19:21, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We're just doing another round of "let people know its there" messages, just to remind people its there :) Its actually designed for use by local wiki admins to interact with their own users. Because of the scale of Wikia, it would be impossible for us (the various groups like janitors/helpers/staff that can work with reports on a global scale) to handle them all. Ones like spam and vandals, and sometimes bugs, we usually take care of quickly, but content ones... thats definatly a local thing. Well, enjoy your fooding. Keep up the good work. --Uberfuzzy 03:18, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Semantic MediaWiki available
Hi Elocina!

At Angela's suggestion, I have enabled the Semantic MediaWiki extension here, as an experiment. With just a small change in the way links are created, it allows people to find and query the recipes on the wiki in a pretty amazing way. I am still learning how to use it myself, but there are other users on Wikia who are more experienced, and who I can invite to help teach us more if you think it's a good direction to go.

I've changed the links on two articles, Apple BBQ Pork and Apple Bread, to use SMW markup. Instead of just linking to cinnamon, they use the style has-ingredient::cinnamon. Now you can use the Special:Ask page to ask for all recipes that have the ingredient cinnamon, by adding "[has-ingredient::Cinnamon" to the query box -- of course there's only the two samples on the list right now. When more articles are marked up properly, you can do more complicated queries, such as all recipes that use apples and cinnamon, or pork and apples but not cinnamon, or many other database-like options.

If done properly, this could be much easier to maintain and to browse than a category system; however, because it's so freeform, it may take some time to figure out the most effective way to use it. Could you please have a look and let us know what you think?

There are also many other things SMW can do, such as conversions from liters to quarts; I'm still exploring all the possibilities. See http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Introduction_to_Semantic_MediaWiki if you'd like to learn more yourself.

If you're interested, we may be able to have a bot go through and add the SMW markup automatically to existing recipes -- it would undoubtedly need a lot of manual cleanup, but much less work than adding it by hand in the first place. :)

Please let me know what you think!

Thanks for all your hard work — Catherine (talk) 18:28, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank You
Thanks very much for welcoming me and for the tips.

Gourmand101 17:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Welcome
Thanks for the Welcome! I really don't use this wiki, except when my mom is looking for a recipe. Good wiki overall. Cheers, Spencer 02:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

thank you for such a friendly welcome!
Hi Elocina,

I very much appreciate the friendly welcome you gave me.

Adding a recipe was completely intuitive apart from being required to attach a photo. I wanted to be able to upload a photo later. This requirement does bring a level of integrity to Wiki Recipes that I have not seen elsewhere and there have been many times when I was reading a recipe online and wanted to see a picture. I don't think the requirement needs to be changed, but it can be clearly communicated so that new recipe submitters are clear that a photo is required as part of each recipe submission.

Thanks again for having such a warm environment.

JenniferOverington 01:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

New spotlights - choc chip cookies and halloween treats
Hey Elocina. As you may have noticed, two new spotlight images were just added to the rotation - chocolate chip cookies and halloween treats. They are linking to the main page, so Danny asked me to drop by and add something to the main page linking to the CCC and halloween recipe categories. Before I did that, I wanted to give you a heads up. Feel free to tweak the edits I make. JoePlay (talk) 16:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)