Site:Feedback

This is the feedback page. The admin (User:Matthewfaulconer) watches this page. This a great place to log global problems. Don't log problems here that you could fix on your own by editing content. If you can fix something, please do.

Prioritized list of enhancements desired

1. add action=purge link (like we have on the sunday school lesson pages) to each chapter_all page.
2. Add a help icon or link by each section of the commentary page. (currently on hold due to the fact that the help icon url info shows up in the recent changes which is quite ugly. need to think through another solution.)
3. Fix two links on Special:Booksources (B&N and PriceSCAN)
4. Move the edit link above each section down a bit?--change skin?
5. Allow a user to delete any sub-page of their own user page
6. Make the recent changes page so that users by default filter out changes to user pages and user discussion pages. Add a flag so that users can include those changes in the list of pages if they desire.
7. Change look and feel to make it look less like wikipedia. See site:proposed look and feel.
8. I really like the idea of having the "questions" section, but I think its purpose could be broadened. Right now it is recommended that these be questions people have of the scriptures, that eventually someone might answer in the exegesis section and then remove the question. But I think really good questions are an excellent source for lessons and for personal studies. So, I would love to see questions here that are simply asked in order to make people think. I could read these questions and they could spark my own scripture study, or I might use them in lessons that I teach. Is there a place in this wiki to compile such questions? Could the purpose of this section simply be expanded to allow and encourage this?
9. I have five suggested enhancements to the formatting of this site. I have just uploaded exegesis to Nahum, which is manageably short, but still long enough to illustrate the benefit of some of these enhancements. These suggestions are refinements. I greatly appreciate the effort that made this platform available. I have posted materials to my own site in the past, but I am thinking of migrating it all over here. You can see some of that stuff and also email me at www.kurtelieson.com. I would be happy to spend time implementing these suggestions on a limited portion of the site where very little content from other contributors that would be affected. I could not see how to send this an email.
10. It would be better if the Questions section was moved down to follow Exegesis. I looked at First Nephi and found that you have to wade through a lot of random questions and brainstorm ideas about what might be found before you get to what anyone has in fact found or concluded. Wouldn’t it be better to start with information and then move to thoughts for application and further study? This is the format followed in both lesson manuals and scholarly articles. I am happy to make this change on pages I edit, but hesitate to do so without permission from the people who have been contributing to the project and trying to maintain a consistent look and feel.
11. Can we add pages at the beginning of each book and chapter in order to step back from the individual trees and see enough of the random forest that we realize it is in fact a carefully planned orchard? As the site is currently set up, scriptures can only be dealt with in small blocks of a few verses at a time. Starting off the entire Book of Mormon with questions specific to 1 Nephi 1:1-5 means there is no chance to deal with bigger patterns and ideas - or to find them if they are buried among the little stuff. In my uploaded material on Nahum, I start off with an overview of the entire book that pulls it all together. Frankly, I think that is the most useful thing these pages can do. Wikipedia articles start with an overview and then move to specifics. At the moment Nahum is pretty empty, so my overview material is easy to find. But Alma is much more full. I could contribute an outline of Alma 1-44 explaining how the first half deals with liberal Nehors and the second half with conservative Zoramites, both of which deny the atonement for opposite reasons, with the Lamanites and Korihor in the middle who don’t know what they believe. This would provide a contextual background for understanding the many atonement speeches in Alma, but that outline should not be crammed into the same space as a discussion of the two River Sidon battles in Alma 1-2 and 43-44, which in turn should not be crammed into the same space as a discussion of the specific words used in Alma 1:1-5. There should be a way to set up pages for dealing with these different levels of treatment. This is not something a regular contributor can do.
12. If we do add pages for books and chapters, can we also add a section within those pages for historical setting. Again, I could make this change but would hesitate to do so without permission.
13. Is it possible for administrators to change the blocks of text that are treated on each webpage? As the site is currently set up, scriptures can only be dealt with in blocks of five verses at a time. I understand the need to do something at the beginning as a default so people have some framework to which they can attach material. But as material is added you will find that the blocks of thought do not always coincide with those verse divisions. For instance, there is almost universal scholarly consensus that Malachi is divided into six speeches beginning at 1:2; 1:6; 2:10; 2:17; 3:7; 3:13. I have divided Nahum at 1:2; 1:11; 2:1; 3:1; 3:5; 3:18. This is not the kind of change a regular user can make, and I agree that you would want to carefully control the exercise of that much editing power. Is there even a mechanism to suggest that these books be redivided in this manner?
14. The formatting of the webpage would be better on my phone if the stuff on the left margin was moved to a bar across the top of the page. For most use it just eats up space on a very narrow screen. You could then move the scripture window to that left margin. That would in turn resolve issues of an outline on the right side that loses shape when it wraps around the scripture window. -- Kurt Elieson

Potential Bug

• I just realized that I never think to check the discussion portions of the commentary when I am moving along adding questions and exegesis to various passages. Is there any way to make it obvious that there is something in the discussion portion, so that users wouldn't have to remember to click on that tab to see what else might be written? Otherwise, I wonder if the discussions will fade from our memories, remain hidden from view, and become relegated to obscurity. --Sterling

Sterling, if the "discussion" tab is blue, there is content there, whereas if it is red, there is not content. Is that what you had in mind, or did you mean something else? Thanks for all your contributions! --RobertC 14:15, 21 October 2007 (CEST)

RobertC: I didn't realize that. The intent seems good, but maybe it could be improved. For instance, the "move" and "watch" tabs are also blue, even if they presumably have no user-added content. Should "move" and "watch" be red? Would this help people to catch on to the distinction between empty and non-empty tabs? --Sterling

Good idea, Sterling. Thoughts, Matthew? --RobertC 22:11, 21 October 2007 (CEST)

Hmmm...I can see why this is confusing but not sure if it will be less confusing to change it (and I'm not sure how). The idea is that a red link means a page that doesn't exist. The problem is that people seem to have different ways of thinking about whether a page already exists. In my mind (and maybe it is jsut that I have become accustomed to the convention--or maybe I just tend to think of things in a too "systems-like" way) the move and watch pages do exist--you can click on them and see the page with the functionality that is there to move or watch. In contrast a discussion page with a red link really doesn't exist yet. I get it that if you go there you'll see something (the blank page template). This is the page that shows when the page doesn't exist...eee that's confusing. In any case, I think this may be a case where it is better to stick with the existing convention than try to create a new one especially since I think no matter what convention you use, someone will be confused. Note though that this is a little extra comlicated because I created a bunch of "blank template pages" for all the commentary pages and these really could be considered pages that don't yet exist. Uck. Sorry about the confusion. If it is any solace I'm not sure how to change the color of these links to be consistent with a different definition of not existing even if I wanted to.--Matthew Faulconer 09:18, 27 October 2007 (CEST) PS sorry it took me so long to respond to this one.

That actually makes sense to me Matthew, thanks for explaining (but I've also been accused of thinking in too systems-like a way...). --RobertC 22:21, 27 October 2007 (CEST)

Notes on caching

1. Pages are cached on the server page for performance. However, once a page is edited you should no longer receive the cached copy of the older page. An exception to the rule comes into play when the edited content shows on this page because of a transclusion. In that case the page will not update until the page cache expires (about a day) and users will continue to get the old version of the page. This problem can manually be solved by forcing the cache to purge and to re-generate the page. This is done by adding "?action=purge" after the URL. If you are seeing this problem in a case unrelated to transclusion, please add it to the bug list.

Completed items

1. Add default text for all articles
2. Add verse redirects to articles
3. Create a table of contents so people don't have to search to find a scripture
4. Add table of contents to left nav
5. Add a sandbox link to the edit page
6. Add text to new user page to encourage people to login using their real name
7. Show pane with scripture in it from scriptures.lds.org site
8. Determine the copyright license to be used for things posted to this site. (Though we will want to revisit this again.)
9. Create a page of links to other on-line scripture study resources.
10. Some caching problems have been noticed. This means that you think you have the most recent version of a page, but you don't. To get the most recent version you may have to explicitly refresh the page. How this is done depends on your browser. Try both ctrl-f5 and ctrl-r. Between these two action most all browsers are covered. (This bug has been fixed. Please let Matthew Faulconer know if you continue to see problems).
11. Change all articles so that Exegesis comes after Lexical notes.
12. Change all articles. Change subheading "thought questions" to just "questions." This makes it clear that people can also post questions where they are looking for an answer under this heading.
    • Note related to the above two items: I made these changes to the commentary pages through the back-end tables. I did not add any history about this change. That means that when you compare the history of a previous item to the current commentary, it may appear that the changes I made as part of the backend were part of what that author did. Just a heads up.--Matthew Faulconer
13. Fixed "what links here" so it displays a complete list of other commentary pages and verse redirects that link to that page. (I think I added all of the links. Let User:Matthewfaulconer know if you see anything missing.)
14. Make the table of contents so that it shows a list of all articles in each chapter rather than going directly to the article for the first verses and requiring users to click "next" to get to the verse they want.
15. Add a link for chapter inclusions so a user can see the entire chapter at once.
16. Add the introductory material to the Book of Mormon content. The introduction, the testimony of eight witnesses, the testimony of three witnesses, and the testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith are all missing.
17. Add commentary pages for the Abraham Facsimiles.
18. Added Captcha for new users and edits. See Site:Captcha
19. Make some sort of quick tutorial on how to edit an article (John created tour)
20. When a user that is not logged in first clicks on the edit page prompt them with a note that says they are not logged in--would they like to login or create an account. Allow them to go ahead and edit anonymously if they prefer. (When we put in the CAPTCHA stuff, it pretty much accomplished this same thing.)
21. style sheet not consistently loading (Has anyone else noticed this problem?) The affect is that the text of the page comes up but without any formatting.

The next two issues related to caching seem to have gone away when several changes were made to address caching problem. Please re-add these bugs to the list above if they show up again.

1. cached edit pages. Previous versions of the edit pages are sometimes cached resulting in the following scenario. A) go to a page. B) go to the edit version of the page and edit it and save. C) go back to the page. D) (you decide to edit it further) go back to the edit version. (note the same copy pulled up in b, without your changes is shown--though you may not happen to notice). E) add some new edit (but don't re-apply the edit in b) and save F) note that you have the edit from E but not B.
2. the random link page has stopped working. It will give the same page over and over again--like it is being cached somewhere.