User talk:Mark Rust
Hello Mark Rust, my name is Zach, and I'm on the Exec Board and I'm on the bug tracking team. When you were talking about formatting issues, I haven't looked at the exact pages you're talking about, but there are 2 major issues that probably cover what you're talking about:
1) We're using WP article versions from late September or so. This means that any changes you did on Wikipedia in October or November isn't going to show up here. We're eventually planning to re-import untouched articles from Wikipedia to catch up some of those changes, but that hasn't happened yet. Alternatively, if you want to copy and paste the latest version from Wikipedia, feel free to (our pages already note automatically that the pages are at least partially derived from WP, so that's 100% legitimate if you want to do that).
2) We're not on exactly the same software platform as Wikipedia. We both use the MediaWiki software, but Wikipedia uses a hodgepodge of code modifications and extensions that we need to track down. If there's an up-to-date list of what modifications and extensions WP uses, I haven't seen it. Additionally, we use a different Database from Wikipedia (PostGRE SQL instead of MySQL (which shouldn't affect formatting)). Our tech team is three volunteers (who all have day jobs), so unfortunately, progress is not instantaneous.
As to what you can do, I would recommend worrying about the content over the formatting for the time being (if possible). If you do decide to do some formatting work and can figure out what works and what doesn't, by all means let me know.
Let me know if I can be of further help,
Zach Pruckowski
With regards to your two comments on my talk page:
1) The behavior with <sub> is actually the correct behavior. <sub> is actually an HTML tag, and you have to "close" it with the </sub> tag or else it just keeps going to the end of the page or paragraph. MediaWiki (the software we use) supports both its own specialized markup (wikitext) which traditionally has identical opening and closing tags (like [[ and ]] (links to other CZ pages) or '' and '' (italic)) and HTML/XHTML/CSS, which have slightly different opening and closing tags (generally <something> to open and </something> to close).
2) You are correct that PNG graphics are not working. There's some sort of program that needs to be installed on our end for PNG support to work. Unfortunately, our technical team (of which I'm not a member fully) is all volunteer, and rather overwhelmed (as they all have full-time jobs, as well as families), so we haven't gotten that change made yet, but we fully intend to eventually (and hopefully soon) support PNG. In the meantime, there exist a lot of free applications for every OS (Windows, Mac, and Linux) that will convert images from PNG to JPEG on your computer, so that'll have to suffice in the short term.
--ZachPruckowski 14:48, 23 December 2006 (CST)
There's not much of a consensus as to what to do about fair use images. There's been talk about it on the forums a bit, but we don't have a totally coherent policy. We definitely prefer freely licensed stuff. I'd pose the question on the forum or on the discussion list, and provide as much information as possible about the image. Happy Holidays. --ZachPruckowski 16:52, 23 December 2006 (CST)
Hi Mark, I noted that you were doing some great stuff, not my field by a long way but I have catholic interests. I can see that as you're writing you're hitting this universal problem of how much detail to include. The problem is as you fill one section with detail you'll need to fill the others similarly or the article will feel unbalanced. I think a good way, as you've indicated, is to write the first article as an introductory overview, not assuming too much technical knowledge but giving glimpses of sophistication, and then to feed into maybe short more technical articles. Again, I think the key is to ask who is going to read this and why? Whatever your answer the answer is fine, but have that clear in your mind and flag it on the Talk page. Happy christmas!Gareth Leng 14:20, 25 December 2006 (CST)