User talk:Abacus

Wikipedia
When you're copying over from Wikipedia, to comply with GFDL, please add to the top of the page. Thanks Jordanhatch talk 20:16, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Copying off Wikipedia


When copying from Wikipedia, please copy only the SURFACE TEXT (the web page on top), and do NOT go into the edit page (the web page on the bottom) to copy. Copying from the edit page results in hundreds of red links and templates that have nothing to do with Microsoft. Only go into the editing page for complicated codes, including tables. After copying the surface text, add references, links and images.

Help rebuild Micropedia by cleaning pages of red links! — JuWki ¤ Home page ♦ Ξ Talk 23:22, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Promoting Windows Wiki
Hi Abacus! Thanks for the great work you've been doing here. I've got a couple of things to ask you about. First of all, I got a request today for a new "Windows" wiki, where the user wants to cover "how to get the best out of your Windows OS." Are how-to guides part of what you would like to offer? The user seemed to feel that only encyclopedic material would be welcome here.

Secondly, I would like to feature your wiki in our "Wikia Spotlights", which can be displayed on our other tech wikis in order to bring more readers and editors here. You already have 100 articles -- can you please work on meeting the other criteria at Wikia Spotlights?

The first easy thing you can do is to use the "move" tab to rename your main page from Main Page to Windows Wiki: our stats show that including your wiki's topic in the title of your main page increases search engine rankings and visitor traffic significantly! We would also like you to change your skin from the current Quartz-gaming to Monaco-gaming, which keeps the same color scheme but uses customizable menus on the left. You will probably want to update Image:Wiki.png, as this is the logo used by the new skin. (I can help you with this, if you like.)

Finally, as we announced in our site-wide talk page notice recently, Wikia needs to change our layout and ad strategy for business reasons, to continue to be able to support our free hosting. I would like to help you make some changes to the layout of the main page, as described at Help:Main page column tags. Today I will play with some possible layouts on a temp page, and you can tell me what sort of design you like best. If you're interested, I can also add some more interactive content, like embedded video or embedded RSS news feeds about Windows.

Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation -- I know ads aren't a fun thing for anyone, but we need to adapt to the changing market in order to keep our servers up and running, so that the Windows Wiki can continue to thrive and grow with the new visitors we hope to bring in! I look forward to working with you -- please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any concerns or questions about the changes. — Catherine (talk) 12:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Help
 * The ultimate aim of this Wiki was to be different to Wikipedia, to have more information of this topic. It would be good if we could have some how to pages, perhaps even make a category for them, and include links to them on the related encyclopaedic page. We really need something to differentiate us from other sources of information, and I think this kind of thing would be really good: combining the encyclopaedic style articles with information of how to do things related to them.


 * How do I change the skin of the wiki? I can change my own preferences, but I am not sure how to change the whole page. It would be great if you could help with some new content for the main page, again to try and make the wiki more interesting for people to read. I think PressPass has a RSS feed. I am currently manually updating the news from there occasionally.
 * Abacus 13:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks! With your permission, I have updated the main page format and added some new dynamic content -- I hope that this will draw your users deeper into the wiki so that they can find things to help you work on.  Feel free to add, remove or change things as you like, in the wonderful wiki way -- just please leave the "mainpage-column" tags intact so that the new ad doesn't disrupt the layout.


 * I have gone ahead and changed the skin so I could see the effects with the new layout. You can change this yourself, if you'd like to try a different Monaco color scheme, in Special:Preferences: go to the "Skin" tab and scroll to the bottom where you will see "Admin options", which will change the site's look for all your visitors.  You can learn more about customizing the menus and other portions of the Monaco interface at Help:Customizing Monaco, and of course I am happy to help if needed.


 * I would like to import several useful templates that are used in other wikis; I think this wiki was created before they were available. I hope that they will be of use to you.


 * Thank you for your kindness and patience! — Catherine (talk) 15:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Welcoming new users
Hi Abacus! Akira-otomo is the user who requested a new Windows wiki with how-to guides -- I am glad to see that he is here and starting to contribute. Please say hello on User talk:Akira-otomo and start discussing how you'd like to see the articles here evolve.

I've also seen a few other new users on Special:Recentchanges, and said hello to them. One of the most important things you can do as an admin is to welcome these new users -- watch for red "Talk" links to help you spot them, then go leave a personal message or use Template:Welcome or Template:WelcomeIP to say hello and invite them to continue contributing. (You can edit these templates if you'd like to alter their messages or looks.) It's usually best to substitute the template on a new user's talk page, by using the form YOUR_USERNAME or ~ -- this leaves more understandable text on their user talk page, rather than a cryptic code. :)

I'm really pleased to see this wiki starting to pick up. Time to start working towards 200 articles, and beyond! Thanks — Catherine (talk) 22:39, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Windows Wiki vs. Micropedia
Hi Abacus - I'm writing to you because you are an admin and you were active in the last 30 days. Your wiki is reachable via windows.wikia.com but it's named Micropedia (and has a Microsoft logo). I would propose to add the address microsoft.wikia.com as a redirect to your wiki or even switch over to microsoft.wikia.com and let windows.wikia.com forward to this address. Please think about it, talk to the other admin/bureaucrats and leave me a note if you like to do this change. Thanks. --Avatar 08:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey thanks!
Thanks, Abacus! Really helps with morale!