WikiCU talk:Community portal

TSGC wiki

• WOW. Our articles are so much more well written than the TSGC wiki it's not even funny. wang 22:08, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

• organic growth from voluntary contributors instead of hackneyed student government pre-determined crap. thank michelle diamond! Absentminded 22:29, 20 March 2007 (EDT)
• eww. the "official" wiki is disgusting. i hope admin wins a medal of some sort for starting this. see how easy it is and how much can be accomplished with even just a few people? nothing makes me feel better about this place when people figure out easy ways to cut through red tape -- by doing things on their own. Adolph Lewisohn 13:50, 22 March 2007 (EDT)

• Preach on.

Photos

• I recently saw the photos that Absentminded added to the article about President's House. They really add a lot to the article, and in general I prefer reading articles with photos. So I think I'll spend an hour or two on a sunny afternoon in September walking around taking photos for various articles. Anyone willing to join me, please email wikicu@gmail.com.  − Reaganaut  06:12, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, I have quite a few. I'll see what I can add. Pacman 14:50, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

Ideas

• Textbook exchange
• Ads, personals, etc.
• Professor/course reviews

• But CULPA is already good. Would wiki reviews be any better?

• They might be able to adopt a more standard form/tone.

• They might be less extreme, more reliable. This is one context where anonymity seems to have just encouraged flaming, sorta like early all bwog posts.

Tone and objectivity

In a great number of the articles on this site are various types of personal opinions and cheeky remarks. In the spirit of a wiki, keep these out of the article. As an alternative, write it in the discussion page or create a section for your views and stories. This is the Columbia wiki, not UrbanDictionary. Thanks -- Puppyfury -- talk -- contributions 21:24, 19 March 2007 (EDT)

• I strongly disagree. I think cheeky remarks and (which soften brutal honesty) will be what makes this wiki both informative as well as entertaining. If you wanted a Columbia Encyclopedia, just read FACETS. However I do think articles should be edited for objectivity to the extent that it's an issue of usefulness. For example, I think that the "solely exists to make Wien residents feel even worse" comment on the President's House article is awesome. Of course, I spent a year in the excuse for a dorm called Wien.Absentminded 21:48, 19 March 2007 (EDT)
• What's the point of WikiCU if not to offer a real student's perspective on things. They could do a google search if they wanted non-cheeky tinged writing. wang 00:47, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

• But the point of all wikis is so that you don't need to do google searches for comprehensive information. -- Puppyfury -- talk -- contributions 17:02, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

• I think Absentminded had a better point to make, though: wikiCU shouldn't have to be what wikipedia already is in regards to comprehensiveness. The process needs time to germinate in the student body a little. But I suggest instead of tolerating poor language or remarks, invoke FCC rules and let the madding crowd run things for a bit until a couple of small "flamer" fights break out. Most especially, remove the "no-autobiography" rule. In as small a community as CU really is, I think it'll provide far more material than problems, far more quickly. If it doesn't work out, it's a simple enough process to cull. --Scrambledhelix 02:22, 16 May 2007 (EDT)

• I think the personal opinions and cheeky remarks are great. As long as they don't get rude or too misleading, we should keep them. They can easily be balanced out by following them with sentences of facts etc. Admin 07:35, 20 March 2007 (EDT)

The comments about me are defamatory. Since some of us have jobs, we don't have time to watch what immature recent college graduates do with their spare time. Please delete me from the entries. I also think you should identify yourselves if you're going to throw stones. Cheeky? No. False.

Maps for (nearly) all Columbia dorms and buildings

Can we include these GIF's on each page along with the google maps? Absentminded 23:42, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

• http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/images/maps/ (Building Highlighted on Campus Map)
• http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/images/maps-large/ (Zoomed In View of Highlighted Buiding)

What about floorplans?

Where could we get floor plans for all the buildings? Admin 06:59, 28 March 2007 (EDT)

New infoboxes for restaurants and administrative offices

Template:Infobox administration and I edited Template:Infobox restaurant a bit. Puts all the important information in one place for a quick glance.

Research projects that can be converted into credited articles

Students in Robert McCaughey's Hist of CU class created web presentations. Some are still online

• http://www.columbia.edu/~jwd2001/Social%20Columbia/index.html
• http://www.columbia.edu/~mbm2044/CUHistory/index.html
• http://www.columbia.edu/~cjs2110/index.html (great BIG picture files)
• http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/cuhis3057/raza/index.htm

These need to be mirrored soon -- those accounts will expire and the materials deleted, no? Foobar 12:39, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Columbia Spectator links replacement

The Columbia daily Spectator overhauled its website (again) and that means all the links we have here are effectively dead. They need to be updated. Please update as you find them. Absentminded 14:54, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

Top 10 contributors

• I just installed a "top 10 contributors" extension, which you can now see on the left navigation panel. Any thoughts? Do you like this feature? Or do you think I should remove it?  − Reaganaut  16:20, 5 December 2007 (EST)

Eek. It's disturbing. Now I know I waste my free time here more than anyone else. Any chance it can at least go somewhere else - other than the sidebar displayed alongside every page? Pacman 16:44, 5 December 2007 (EST)

I've relegated it to a special page. I can remove it completely if anyone wants.  − Reaganaut  18:20, 5 December 2007 (EST)

Where's the special page? I can't see it anywhere. Ttan 18:26, 5 December 2007 (EST)

AWCTopTen  − Reaganaut  19:15, 5 December 2007 (EST)

Hmm, it would be nice to link to it somewhere. Maybe this community portal page? (I've taken the liberty, but maybe we could establish some permanent links here) Pacman 19:41, 5 December 2007 (EST)

Sorry, given your earlier comment, I tried to avoid making it too easy to access the page. It's in the list of special pages available at "Special:Specialpages", and the specific special page is "Special:AWCTopTen".  − Reaganaut  20:13, 5 December 2007 (EST)

Adverts

As you can see, I've recently been playing around with inserting some Google AdSense ads. I mentioned before that I'm not bothered by the cost of hosting the site, but these ads should meet some (if not all) of my annual hosting costs. Nevertheless, I think they're too much of a distraction from WikiCU's actual content. I propose keeping just one of the two ad modules - either the ads in the side panel or the horizontal bar at the top of the page. Any thoughts?  − Reaganaut  11:12, 21 December 2007 (EST)

I think the sidebar ads are fine...I hardly notice them. The ones up top, however, are a bit distracting. Pacman 15:17, 21 December 2007 (EST)

Agreed. Sidebar good, top bad. Merry Christmas! Jiabao 00:35, 25 December 2007 (EST)

I've now removed the ads at the top. Much better.  − Reaganaut  09:33, 25 December 2007 (EST)

Well the sidebar ad has been performing miserably up to now, probably largely because it's winter break, but I decided to have my revenge anyway, eliminating it, and instead inserting a somewhat more visible skyscraper ad on the right.  − Reaganaut  21:12, 16 January 2008 (EST)

Crime policy

As the Z. Wall***ford affair indicates, publicly displaying students' arrest records, especially when related to remote misdemeanors, is problematic. We probably shouldn't do this unless the incident was a major, widely reported one, or one which occurred far enough in the distant past that it's irrelevant to the person in question. Pacman 23:33, 18 February 2008 (EST)

I agree, and in line with this recommendation, I've updated our deletion policy.  − Reaganaut  17:23, 20 February 2008 (EST)

Spec hosting WikiCU?

On the front page of Bwog right now: "Spec has recently agreed to host wiki CU after Bwog declined the offer."

Huh? I thought we were adamantly against this. Pacman 17:14, 24 February 2008 (EST)

Research Resources & Guide for New Authors

Seeing as there should be an influx of new writers sometime soon, I intend to put together a slightly more thorough guide to doing research using some of the many sources available via the internet in a few days; something more updated and proper than just this, which I dashed together in a few minutes. I also have to think about where to put resources that don't necessarily warrant their own article or fit neatly into existing lists. For example, I occasionally stumble across interesting, though somewhat incomplete finding aids like this one:

• Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library - Columbia University Buildings: Research guide
• NYPL Digital gallery: e.g. this

-Absentminded 19:51, 25 July 2010 (EDT)

Contest Idea

Not sure if anyone's going to read this (that's the problem), but I had a thought for a way to publicize WikiCU on campus. What if we sponsored a contest for the best new article on the site? Maybe we (whoever 'we' might be) could put up a bit of cash (or get the councils to do so) and give it to a student who wrote something of very high quality, a real resource for posterity. I'm thinking of something like Tao's article (link broken) on the history of Morningside campus. Plenty of the "articles to create" could use a really comprehensive, well-researched treatment, e.g. "foreign languages." Thoughts? - Jiabao 14:44, 25 October 2008 (EDT)

Better Computer

Even with the columbia discount at dell and apple, hp proved to have the best value for a performance computer. Should a note be made on the computer article? - Blouc 13:56, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

Up to you! Depends what you mean by "performance" computer, I suppose. Make the edit and we'll see. Pacman 19:02, 7 July 2009 (EDT)

3,000

Almost 3,000 articles!!! Admin 19:25, 29 December 2010 (EST)

Woooo 3,000!!! cam2171 16:55, 14 January 2011 (EST)

User Accounts

Hey, sooooo is anyone else noticing the ridiculous number of user accounts being created, almost all of which appear to be spam? -|- cam2171 -|- 13:53, 3 May 2012 (EDT)

Yup. Can we add some sort of ColumbiaCaptcha that asks some basic Columbia trvia to verify they have SOME familiarity with the university? Alternative: require @columbia.edu, @barnard.edu, @anyaffiliate email address + verification? --CLM 15:51, 3 May 2012 (EDT)