The WikiGullet Project

[Yajna Patni]

'cause if the peeps don't like it they can just change it. Or something.

[nakji]

'cause if the peeps don't like it they can just change it. Or something.

That is, in fact, the spirit of wiki.

[LindaK]

I have been hamstrung by wanting it to be really good. Surprisingly, despite my horrid spelling I am a lapsed academic, and the really good, and arguments that will stand up to all kinds of assault thing can make it hard to start. I will do as you say Nakji!

Same here. Though I find it a little intimidating to start a new article, it's shockingly easy to add something to an article that's already begun. Browse what's there, if you read an article that strikes you as lacking a detail or fact that you know, just add it. It's a stress-free way to get started.

[Chris Amirault]

And, those of us who are more comfy at this point: start cranking out the stubs!

[nakji]

I added more to the bento page recently. Lots of great cheese info going in, thanks to Xxchef! And Mjx added a thorough start for prosciutto. What's everyone else working on?

[Kouign Aman]

I did a bit of expanding the Meat article, but swapping between editors got it eaten up before I hit Save.

I'll go look at it again this week and see if the stubby article has been made betteh by someone (fingers crossed the answer is Yes!)

Yup, them little red links are addictive. Only thing stronger is Kettle Black Pepper and Salt potato chips. Is there an article on potato chips yet? Must go see....

[Chris Hennes]

I added a bunch of articles on charcuterie based upon their Wikipedia cousins:

• Soppressata
  
• Nduja
  
• Sobrassada
  
• Capicola
  
• Bresaola
  

I think some of the info in them is still wrong, and they aren't very well referenced.

[FoodMuse]

I'll be jumping into this pool soon. I love the idea. I'm always using Wikipedia for food research. Just yesterday I was trying to figure out the more obscure terms on my delivery sushi menu using it.

I do think a new name is needed.

WikiEats .... get it?! Play on WikiLeaks!!!! That's my fave. What do you think?

[Fat Guy]

Alas, that domain name is taken.

[Chris Hennes]

For those looking to make links to WikiGullet pages here in the forums, I added a new BBCode tag today:

[wiki=Article name]Text to link[/wiki]

So for example:

[wiki=Carrageenan]A great thickener derived from seaweed[/wiki]

would give: A great thickener derived from seaweed. Please let me know if it gives you any trouble.

[Mjx]

I did a bit of expanding the Meat article, but swapping between editors got it eaten up before I hit Save.

. . . .

I've been writing my entries in a Word document (including any coding for links/brackets), then copy/pasting the text into the wiki, and definitely recommend it. The idea of doing hours of reseach and then having the result vanish into the ether makes my blood run cold (just for variety, the blood ran hotly to my face yesterday, as I realized that the one article I had written directly online had two typos I'd overlooked).

[Kouign Aman]

Its accepting copy/paste from Word?

Good to know.

Previous experience w eGullet made me avoid Word because it would spaz out. I would use notepad back then instead, but that's no more fun than the wikieditor, so was writing directly for this.

Typos are not the end of the world. The next opinionated so&so (like me, for instance) will fix them for you. That's one of the strengths of the wiki-beast.

[Mjx]

Its accepting copy/paste from Word?

Good to know.

Previous experience w eGullet made me avoid Word because it would spaz out. I would use notepad back then instead, but that's no more fun than the wikieditor, so was writing directly for this.

Typos are not the end of the world. The next opinionated so&so (like me, for instance) will fix them for you. That's one of the strengths of the wiki-beast.

I haven't had any problems with Word copy/paste (I'm on a Mac, and using Firefox).

I know, I know... typos are nothing, really, but I'm a copyeditor, so if I screw up on spelling or punctuaation, I feel like crawling into a hole

[Chris Hennes]

We're rolling along now... article 300 ("Bread") was just started by Society member Iradubinsky. Of course, some of those article look like "Tea", which may be somewhat... inadequate. Anyone know anything about tea?

[Mjx]

We're rolling along now... article 300 ("Bread") was just started by Society member Iradubinsky. Of course, some of those article look like "Tea", which may be somewhat... inadequate. Anyone know anything about tea?

I know a bit about tea, enough to feel daunted by the idea of tackling it. So, I probably will, although I'm sorting out another article at the moment.

Which brings me to my question: How do you set up a Contents box at the top of an entry?

I flicked back and forth in the article on eggs, comparing the code and the actual page result, and I can see that putting ==at either side of the heading== has something to do with it, but when I tried it in the prosciutto article, I still didn't get a Contents box, so I've obviously screwed something up.

If there's an explanation of this on the site, please let me know, and I'll have another bash at it.

Thanks!

[Chris Hennes]

Actually, the reason you couldn't figure it out is because it's magic... MediaWiki (the software running the wiki) automatically adds the content box where there are four or more sections on the page. However! You can both force the box to appear before then, and suppress it from appearing at all: just put either __NOTOC__ or __FORCETOC__ someplace in the article. (Those are called "magic words". Yes, really. You can read more about them here.)

ETA: A "section" in this sense is anything set off by a heading or subheading, so:

== A great section ==

=== A great subsection ===

==== Not a very good sub-sub-section at all ====

== Another section ==

And that's enough to get the contents box to appear.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Chris Hennes (log)

[nakji]

I know, I know... typos are nothing, really, but I'm a copyeditor, so if I screw up on spelling or punctuaation, I feel like crawling into a hole

[Raises hand] English teacher over here.[/raises hand] How many times have I taught semi-colons? How many times will I screw them up? Please. Like KA said, someone will come along and fix them. You may even, if they're the right kind of person, bring them a small amount of joy for having made the mistake.

I know a bit about tea, too. But I'd have to get it squared in my mind first. I only really know Chinese tea, which I feel would almost have to be a sub-article.

[Chris Hennes]

I think probably each major category of tea will wind up in a subarticle. But of course we can always split stuff down the road, too. Write what you know...

[judiu]

Its accepting copy/paste from Word?

Good to know.

Previous experience w eGullet made me avoid Word because it would spaz out. I would use notepad back then instead, but that's no more fun than the wikieditor, so was writing directly for this.

Typos are not the end of the world. The next opinionated so&so (like me, for instance) will fix them for you. That's one of the strengths of the wiki-beast.

I haven't had any problems with Word copy/paste (I'm on a Mac, and using Firefox).

I know, I know... typos are nothing, really, but I'm a copyeditor, so if I screw up on spelling or punctuaation, I feel like crawling into a hole

Errm, there's only one 'a' in punctuation... (Ducks and runs away, very fast...)

[Mjx]

Actually, the reason you couldn't figure it out is because it's magic...

. . . .

And that's enough to get the contents box to appear.

Woo! Thanks

Do images need to be uploaded to the wiki's database before being used in an article? It sort of looks that way, but I may have completely misunderstood.

. . . .

Errm, there's only one 'a' in punctuation... (Ducks and runs away, very fast...)

(I see there is no emoticon indicating 'clutches at hair')

I know, I know... typos are nothing, really, but I'm a copyeditor, so if I screw up on spelling or punctuaation, I feel like crawling into a hole

[Raises hand] English teacher over here.[/raises hand] How many times have I taught semi-colons? How many times will I screw them up? Please. Like KA said, someone will come along and fix them. You may even, if they're the right kind of person, bring them a small amount of joy for having made the mistake.

. . . .

Yeah, I know, and I'm always reminding people that copyediting your own writing inevitably falls short of perfection, since you know what you expect to be there, and don't see what actually is there.

But in my own mind, I figure I'm expected to not drop the ball on these things. Ever.

[Chris Hennes]

Do images need to be uploaded to the wiki's database before being used in an article? It sort of looks that way, but I may have completely misunderstood.

Yes, more or less. You can add them to the article before they exist, if you want (by simply typing in "[[File:My great image.jpg]]" or whatever): that will show up in the article as a redlink that will take you to the image upload page. I'm not sure that's any easier. There are apparently some usability projects going on at Wikipedia that aim to address the annoying way this works, but nothing has come of it yet.

[judiu]

Actually, the reason you couldn't figure it out is because it's magic...

. . . .

And that's enough to get the contents box to appear.

Woo! Thanks

Do images need to be uploaded to the wiki's database before being used in an article? It sort of looks that way, but I may have completely misunderstood.

. . . .

Errm, there's only one 'a' in punctuation... (Ducks and runs away, very fast...)

(I see there is no emoticon indicating 'clutches at hair')

I know, I know... typos are nothing, really, but I'm a copyeditor, so if I screw up on spelling or punctuaation, I feel like crawling into a hole

[Raises hand] English teacher over here.[/raises hand] How many times have I taught semi-colons? How many times will I screw them up? Please. Like KA said, someone will come along and fix them. You may even, if they're the right kind of person, bring them a small amount of joy for having made the mistake.

. . . .

Yeah, I know, and I'm always reminding people that copyediting your own writing inevitably falls short of perfection, since you know what you expect to be there, and don't see what actually is there.

But in my own mind, I figure I'm expected to not drop the ball on these things. Ever.

Oh, thank gawd, I thought it was just me that had that problem! Glad to know that other people suffer from the same syndrome ;-)

[Chris Hennes]

I've been playing around with the Book entry form today: it will now create the article title automatically for you based on the book title and subtitle you enter. It also appends the word "(book)" to the end of the title so that it's clear. This is especially important when you have ambiguous-sounding books like "Thai Cuisine." Give it a try and see what you think:

http://wiki.egullet.org/index.php?title=Special:FormEdit/Book_article

[xxchef]

Chris-

How does the wikigullet "random page" generator work? I thought I'd take some time and just see what was being written out there but it just seemed to keep cycling through them same 20 or so pages. I think you said recently that there were over 300 pages now. Any idea what's up?

[Chris Hennes]

323, as of this moment. And the random page returned is pretty random, by computer randomness standards. The distribution is a little skewed but not enough to cause it to rotate amongst such a small percentage of the pages. I'd guess what you are seeing is just an artifact of that randomness: if you click the button 20 times, since there are only 323 entries, the odds that you will see some repeats is very high (about 45% that there will be at least one repeat, in fact).