7 ms·
Wikipedia: Sandbox
I was learning about Wikipedia recently and thought it was interesting there was a global, public page specifically for writing random stuff to learn how to use their editor. I assumed there would be something like this on a per-user, invisible to the public level, but not a global level like this page.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- tonymet 8mo agoThere are both, every user has their own sandbox. But this one is there to encourage first time visitors and the uninitiated to make changes , so they know that anyone can contribute uninhibited.
- kemayo 8mo agoThough, just to be clear, the per-user ones are also public. They're just a convention where if you make a subpage of your user page and call it "Sandbox", nobody is going to complain about the encyclopedic value of your edits.
- tonymet 8mo agoTrue , though I just discovered category scans still hit your user sandbox. Kind of silly
- bawolff 8mo agoIf you really want something private, there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates (or of course just hit preview and dont save)
- firasd 8mo agoIt's interesting to think about how complex the wikipedia text is compared to something like github flavored markdown or even standard html tables (although I guess it eventually renders into standard html so it's not more complex than the latter when all other html elements are considered in addition to <table>) For example the swatch internet time infobox is dynamically updated {{short description|Alternate time system by watch maker Swatch}} {{Infobox | image = [[File:Swatch beat Logo.svg|200px|alt=Logo of Swatch Internet Time]] | caption = Logo of Swatch Internet Time | title = Time{{efn|at page generation }} {{purge|(update to view correct time)}} | label1 = 24-hour time (UTC) | data1 = {{nowrap|{{#time:H:i:s}}}} | label2 = 24-hour time (CET) | data2 = {{Time|CET|dst=no|df-cust=H:i:s|hide-refresh=yes}} | label3 = .beat time (BMT) | data3 = {{nowrap|@{{#expr: floor( {{#expr:{{#expr:{{#expr:{{#time:H|now + 1 hour}}3600}}+{{#expr:{{#time:i}}60}}+{{#time:s}}}}/86.4}} )}}}} }}
- stogot 8mo agoI’ve spent countless hours at employers fixing Xwiki syntax errors mixed with HTML. The parsing engine must be complex
- decimalenough 8mo agoThat's putting it lightly, since Mediawiki templates are Turing-complete. I'm not up to speed on my parsers anymore, but I believe Parsoid remains the most complete implementation, while mwlib is a reasonable compromise. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers#Known_implementations https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers#Known_imp...
- bawolff 8mo agoI always found it ironic that the table syntax is designed to resemble ascii-art type tables, and then literally nobody writes it in a way that looks like an ascii art table.
- notpushkin 8mo agoYeah, because it’s a PITA to align everything by hand. But the spaces around | make it easier to read, than, say, CSV.
- fao_ 8mo agoHonestly it continually surprises me how people forget about TSV It's the perfect format, more or less! CSV, but no difficulty around commas, and the only major risk being an editor that converts tabs to spaces
- hmry 8mo agoI agree it's great, but that risk is so major that I stopped using it. "There's a 50% chance that your editor will invisibly corrupt the data you enter, and another 30% chance to corrupt the entire file" is just not usable... Especially in Zed where the only way to switch hard tabs is buried in the settings menu, and impossible to change per buffer.
- susam 8mo agoI just went back to check whether I have a sandbox on Wikipedia. Turns out I do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Susam_Pal/sandbox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Susam_Pal/sandbox I am not a regular contributor to Wikipedia but the little time I have spent contributing there has exposed me to its very elaborate culture, with barnstars being one artefact of that culture, alongside policy acronyms everyone seems to know by heart, WikiProjects organised around every imaginable topic, userboxes that are little badges that say something about you, etc. By the way, I added a few userboxes for the Logo programming language, in case there are any Wikipedians out here who happen to love Logo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_logo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_logo
- bityard 8mo agoPretty much all wikis would have a "Sandbox" page for trying out that particular wiki's individual syntax and features.
- chungy 8mo agoI'd wager that most wikis use the MediaWiki software, which is what Wikipedia runs on. One particular thing that comes to mind though, is that Fossil (https://fossil-scm.org/ https://fossil-scm.org/) has a private local-only sandbox: https://fossil-scm.org/home/wikiedit?name=Sandbox https://fossil-scm.org/home/wikiedit?name=Sandbox. It saves to your browser's persistent storage, but never on the server.
- s5300 8mo ago[dead]
- anthonyIPH 8mo agoTried to edit on my mobile (T-Mobile - US) and got this: Your IP address has been blocked from editing Wikipedia. Blocked by Xaosflux Block will expire in 7 months Curiosity led me to Xaosflux's Wikipedia page where I see they have been active since 2005 with over 85k edits! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xaosflux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xaosflux
- pixel_popping 8mo agoI've had the desire to contribute so many times, but each time I was blocked. I don't think Wikipedia accurately measures how much contribution they lose because of the hostile treatment of new editors and what I believe are poorly implemented editing policies. Their policies likely haven't been revised since a decade or more, they should do a survey about it.
- sheept 8mo agoin most cases you should be able to create an account and edit even if your IP address or range is blocked
- reddalo 8mo agoI'm not trying to defend Wikipedia at all costs, but you should also think about how much spam and trolling would happen on their platform if they didn't have these annoying blocks for non-registered users. I run a pretty simple SaaS with a free tier and the amount of spam that I have to manage is high; I don't want to even imagine how difficult it must be to run a website where anybody can edit pretty much anything.
- clawsyndicate 8mo ago[dead]
- gbear605 8mo agoUnfortunately large IP groups like mobile phones often need to be blocked because it’s the only possible way to constraint anonymous spammers.
- ValveFan6969 8mo ago[flagged]