Portal:Pensapedia

Welcome to the Community Portal. Currently this is a basic forum to discuss general issues relating to Pensapedia.

Civil service worker information

I want to gauge opinion on including certain information in the articles of civil servants, such as their addresses/telephone numbers (at least in the case of City Council/County Commission and similar) and salaries... What are some thoughts? dcosson ··· talk 11:25, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

I think salaries are fair game. Home addresses and phone numbers are a little more iffy... I know that's what some Councilmembers, etc. have on their City website pages, but I think a link to those pages would be sufficient. --Admin 12:38, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

Such is my general feeling. dcosson ··· talk 14:17, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

Salaries are fair game, but I would not publish the home address or phone numbers. If we wish to speak to our officals,,we can reach them through their office. I believe it's a bit more than 'iffy', that it could possibly be dangerous for the officals and their families. Please do not publish private information. And this is from one who is not so much a fan of our elected officals:)

Location succession box

What do you think of a "succession box" as a way to mark the different businesses that have occupied a given building or address? It may be a simpler way than creating an article for each address with lots of past tenants (though we can still do that when appropriate). For example, Trader Jon's might have the following:

Preceded by: Birgar Testman's ship chandlery	511 South Palafox Street 1953-2003	Succeeded by: Big Sexy Food

(Not the best choice as there were other tenants between Testman's chandlery and Trader Jon's, but you get the idea.) --Admin 15:02, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Awesome book

I've just received an awesome new resource, a 1946 book entitled "The Naval Air Training Bases Through World War II". FULL of pictures. Hopefully I/we can figure out a way to get them scanned. dcosson ··· talk 09:11, 21 October 2007 (CDT)

Naming conventions for persons?

Should we establish naming conventions for persons? Especially with historic figures, there are a variety of ways to present their names, i.e. F. C. Brent, Francis Brent, Francis C. Brent, or (this is how we have this article) Francis Celestino Brent... Currently we have different articles with different name formats. In the time of many of these figures, it was popular to go by your first and middle initials, i.e. F. C. Brent, A. V. Clubbs, P. K. Yonge, C. H. Turner... should we respect that?

Generally I feel like we should go with full names whenever possible, a la Francis Celestino Brent... but then what format do we fall back to if we do not know the middle name? For instance, at the moment I do not know C. H. Turner's middle name. So should it be C. H. Turner, Charles H. Turner, Charles Turner? Anyone have any input? dcosson ··· talk 09:37, 6 December 2007 (CST)

In the case you mention, the 1894 city directory calls him Charles H. Turner, which is what I think I would use. --Admin 11:09, 6 December 2007 (CST)

History kind of writes the rules for us on this. Many like you mentioned are known by the initials only. I think we can simply us ethe majority rule. It that is how it is cited by a larger margin, then we should follow it as it is usually used that way on historic markers and plaques. JHarris

Name for Spanish Pensacola, 1781-1821

What should we call this period of Spanish rule? I'd like to work on article of citizens from this time, but I'm not sure how to categorize them. "Residents of Pensacola's third Spanish period"? "Citizens of second Spanish Florida"? "Pensacolians during Spanish rule, 1781-1821"? --Admin 11:07, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

I'd prefer the latter out of those three choices. dscosson ··· talk 13:24, 17 May 2008 (CDT)

New template

I'm working on a new Mediawiki skin that will ultimately become the Pensapedia default. It will be based heavily on Monobook, the current default, with a more distinctive look and a few more spaces for advertising. I'm open to requests for design features to include, pitfalls to avoid, color palette recommendations, etc. --Admin 10:26, 16 June 2008 (CDT)

Two or Three Spanish Periods?

I've noticed that some sources refer to Pensacola's first and second Spanish periods; while others refer to the first, second and third Spanish periods. In the former, the brief French occupation is disregarded. How should we treat them? — admin • talk 14:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Eh. Good question. I would tend to be as specific as possible, i.e. include all periods no matter how short, but I will admit I Pensacola history pre-1821 is not my strongest point. — dscosson • talk 03:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

"On this day" Twitter updates

The Pensapedia Twitter account will send out a "Today in Pensacola history" update every morning at 5 a.m. with a link to that day's article, via an automatic cron script. I will try to update each of these the day beforehand, but some redundancy would be good in case I slack off. :) — admin • talk 17:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

~~How can I help? — dscosson • talk 17:13, 16 March 2009 (UTC)~~ Oh, nevermind, I figured out what you were talking about. Boy, I'm slow sometimes. — dscosson • talk 17:15, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

wikEd Gadet

I have installed the wikEd Gadget on Pensapedia. It is an optional replacement for the default editor that offers a number of formatting options, and I thought it might be some help in adding "Source:" documents to the site. You can paste formatted text (from a Word doc, perhaps, and maybe PDFs) into the text area then click the [W] button, and it will do its best to convert the formatting into wiki markup. To activate the Gadget, go you Special:Preferences, click the Gadgets tab, and activate wikEd. — admin • talk 10:19, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

I like this. — dscosson • talk 10:38, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Actually, it seems a little flaky. Specifically that I have to hard-refresh pages to see changes after editing them. Lots of really cool features there but that might be a dealbreaker for me. Really like the fullscreen mode though. — dscosson • talk 11:20, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Fair enough. I haven't noticed that; maybe it's a browser thing? It could also be related to the fact that I need to upgrade the MediaWiki installation, which I'll probably get around to this weekend. Since it's a user-specific option, you could enable it just to wikify formatted text and then go back. — admin • talk 11:28, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Well, actually, it's happening now with the gadget disabled, so maybe it is my machine. — dscosson • talk 11:29, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Still happening after clearing cache and other things. The gadget is just javascript, right, it couldn't mess this up for the site, right? — dscosson • talk 12:46, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

I'll disable the Gadget extension. Try in a few minutes and see if it's still happening. I'm using an older version (to match the older MediaWiki), so if that's the case, it might be fixed when I upgrade everything. — admin • talk 12:56, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

It looks like you've disabled it. I just made a test edit and it still happened. Weird. It's just annoying to have to do Ctrl+F5. I'll try from another machine at home, it might just be something flaky with this one. — dscosson • talk 14:50, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Aight, just lemme know. — admin • talk 15:58, 18 September 2009 (CDT)

Not happening at home. Guess it's just the work machine. Sorry to pester you about it. — dscosson • talk 10:20, 19 September 2009 (CDT)

P&A Railroad

Hey guys, I recently created a fairly decent article on the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad over at Wikipedia, thought you might want to upload it over here too (before some other editors come along and screw it up, you know how that goes). This is a cool site, I may do some more local-related stuff in future and will let you know. Textorus 02:10, 22 September 2010 (CDT)

Thanks! — dscosson • talk 10:49, 22 September 2010 (CDT)