BetaWiki:Community portal

Huh?

Last time I saved my work, the copyright warning was missing. What happened? 763004 ^{(💬 T | ⏳ S)} 14:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The copyright warning didn't appear to be missing on my end. That might be caused by new server-side changes, which could also be the cause of the mobile site becoming a bit different. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 14:59, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Something weird happened...

I went up to this website and saw the main page look wrong, when I refreshed the page, I got an error 503. What's causing this? 763004 ^{(💬 T | ⏳ S)} 18:42, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, I also encountered multiple 503 errors. Actually, someone already talked about this before (in archive 7), and an admin said that the wiki is currently targeted by denial of service (DoS) attacks. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 23:22, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Fortunately, it's not DDoS, so it's not quite dangerous. Someone (talk) 04:51, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

That was IP 212.23.130.206, he said: "In the last few days, I received multiple HTTP 502 host errors when accessing this site. Was something bad happened there?" Ryuzaki replied: "Yeah, the wiki is currently targeted by DoS attacks. Stuff like this simply happens on the Internet from time to time. We'll see what we can do but don't really worry about the downtime." 763004 ^{(💬 T | ⏳ S)} 14:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Archive 7 stuff can hardly be called "current". CloudFlare had a cockup, that's what happened. --Ryuzaki (talk | contribs) 14:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't say that the "DoS attack" is what "currently" happened. I just didn't know what was exactly causing the HTTP 503 issue, so the "DoS attack" is just a possible cause. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 15:26, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I have never heard or seen the word cockup before. 763004 ^{(💬 T | ⏳ S)} 18:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Line error

This is the example,
Before:
Line [line number]
[before title]
Line [line number]
[after title]
After:
Line [line number]
Line [line number]
[before title]
[after title]
The line error just make it worse. Why? 2001:F90:40A0:991:B9A8:1431:414A:CD3D 09:28, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

what? --Ryuzaki (talk | contribs) 17:45, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

What do you mean? NaraInsider1694 (talk) 23:45, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

what are you talking about? --User3412 (talk) 00:16, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

2001:F90:40A0:991:B9A8:1431:414A:CD3D I don't understand you. 763004 ^{(💬 T | ⏳ S)} 14:10, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I forget to mention that the second "line [line number]" on the after shouldn't place on the second place and doesn't place on the third place.2001:F90:40A0:991:B9A8:1431:414A:CD3D 01:45, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Screen resolution rule

Why should the screen resolution be 1024x768 according to the rules? ClassicMacOSGuy1067 (talk) 23:21, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

For quality purposes, as in the past we had problems with numerous screenshots in very low 800x600x16 resolution. It does not apply to certain early versions where there might not be drivers to support it (for instance, good luck getting 1024x768 resolution MS-DOS). In Mac OS terms, 7.1 should be the first version to properly support 1024x768 and above. BF10 (talk) 02:08, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Tutorial and FAQ pages

I think we should discuss this first before it's moved out of draft. This would be a rather big change to the wiki's scope, so I don't think it's a good idea to proceed without hearing everyone out first. Personally I have a couple concerns with the proposed pages:

• It concentrates information where it shouldn't be. The VM configs page is a perfect example of that. I think the foremost focus should still be on the build pages. Information that's specific to a specific build or build range should not be spread out across multiple pages.
• It duplicates content. The build FAQ is a good example of that. Again, the foremost focus should be on the builds, components or concepts pages themselves, and the guide pages would only serve as a hub. Not to mention the FAQ includes questions I haven't heard anyone ask.
• It makes the wiki unnecessarily opinionated. Different people have different preferences and I have already noticed some slight edit warring regarding the configs.
• Do we even need a general guide on how to install Windows?
• There is the whole aspect of serving stuff on a golden plate and people then asking followup questions on the wiki itself. Does it even make sense to have the guides here in this exact place? Maybe it would be better to just get a Jekyll instance or GitHub pages going and have them there.

--Ryuzaki (talk | contribs) 11:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I think that the wiki should also still remain to be newcomer friendly to people who likely haven't used betas beforehand. The Cutting Room Floor does a rather great example of providing what a well-developed guide would be like, which could attract new people to help out when they likely don't know where to start. Otherwise, if we wanted to, we could replace a good amount of the FAQ with "look it up yourself or don't use it".

TCRF's FAQ page seems to be more focused on wiki structure, such as when a page can be created and other suggestions that might otherwise be deemed trivial.

Regarding the "duplication of content", sometimes the amount of builds a specific bug covers would be largely over the top to possibly document one by one at a time. For instance, there's the WINSETUP.BIN bug from all the 15xx builds of Windows 98, the hard drive bug in all RC2 - post-RTM builds of Windows 2000, and the online time sync timebomb from Windows 10. For instance, heading straight forward to Windows 98 build 1525 (1997-06-24) or most other builds in the 15xx range outside of 1500 would state that there's no bugs despite the presence of the setup bug. A technical remedy would be to introduce a template of let's say {{Common bugs}} with a perimeter that can be passed for specifying a notable bug that will output a section of text and paste those to multiple pages at once, but that's somewhat tiring and not really necessary to list it on over tens of pages at once (like the NT 3.1/3.5 processor bug, the 2000 hard disk driver bug, etc.).

The VM configs guide is mostly to point out how to prevent numerous problems in early builds due to running on newer than expected hardware. This is perhaps a big problem with new users, who seem to sense it being best on installing Windows 9x on VMware or something along the lines. Since there isn't any topical way to put that being recommended on article pages, it's best to place it in a separate area of the wiki. How sensible would it be to put "don't use Virtual PC due to all of the security flaws and such" on the Virtual PC page? This is also why I'm not really fond of keeping the |emulator= perimeter of the Windows build infobox, as it seems more of a recommended checklist then a genuine list of what virtualizers can run the build. Likewise, I don't see the need for sections like this that insists on installing third party software/non-preinstalled software onto the system, as this wiki isn't a compatibility checklist as well.

Of course, there's going to be users who still will have additional follow ups, which is going to be the norm for a lot of wikis. Our wiki should nonetheless still remain friendly to contributing users of all kinds, with of course exceptions being blatant vandals and spammers. There has been times where users would post concerns about builds here, so our wiki is never immune to people posting concerns here. Alternatively, it's probably best to simply point out the Discord server for questions and the like, similarly to TCRF's IRC channel. This should solve more of the "golden plate" based problem since users will be more upfront towards questions related to the builds themselves over the wiki. If anything, questions targeting the wiki are those that are guideline-based and fall under Administrator's noticeboard or community portal.

Regarding the VM config "edit wars"; I have to only protect that page primarily due to an IP user adding configs that don't even work at all or even had invalid options that were never implemented in the emulator. For instance, said user attempted to change all instances of VirtualBox's PIIX3 chipset to PIIX4, which doesn't exist there. Additionally, they have used numerous options that clearly don't get proper support for display adapters and sound to run the build at an optimal state. In one case, they have insisted on having a S3 VIRGE display adapter for Windows 95 and NT 4.0, which is not even included on both versions. These are more of falling under of removing vandalism/false information over an actual edit war. As long as the configs do run properly throughout a span of multiple builds, including early/infamously unstable ones, I won't necessarily contest any modifications to the virtual machine configs shown. In fact, I'd appreciate it if someone could for instance find a config for Windows 3.0 build 14 and 33 that don't use reference disks. When the pages are moved over as proper guides, they will quite obviously be protected from unregistered users. I have yet to find any autoconfirmed user from implementing an edit war on any of the guide pages.

In general, the main purpose of the FAQ/guides are to make it easier to allow users to help out on the wiki by easing the ability to install the builds, much like some wikis have their own guides for dealing with their own scope (such as TCRF's decompilation of games). The guides still nonetheless match the scope of the wiki (being useful for setting up VMs, and perhaps having guides to find resources or changes in the operating system, such as let's say using WinMerge/a hex editor to compare two files from different builds). Otherwise, this can drive new users away from the wiki who will still be lost on what to do to install many sets of builds. In other words, this would be closing off the userbase quite significantly, make our community look more of a "computer-buff only", and make this wiki less friendly to newer or non-experienced users. Which is not really the type of image we should pass off into our community. If that were the case, we'd delete pages such as Installing Windows Server on ARM64 and remove all tutorials such as the one on Windows 1.0 Development Release 5 since these configs don't fit the topically of appearing on articles and could be represented to several other builds in the same range anyways. I find it that splitting off some pages into guides would also make some articles look cleaner as well. BF10 (talk) 15:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Adding a little on to here, there are actually guides that can be helpful for the wiki: Documenting file differences, which is used for documenting what is added or removed in builds, first bought in by gus for Windows 2000 pages and then expanded on for Windows 95 and early XP. Although doing it for builds past i386 Windows would be a stretch, I still believe a genuine use of guides that could benefit the wiki can stay. Additional guides such as help with finding differences in builds would also be sensible to create. BF10 (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

what ?

windows 11 build 22621.1105 ?? (sorry, i don't have permission to upload) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unofficesharebeta (talk • contribs)

That build is an update build, so it's not notable. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 09:47, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Corrections: only Moment beta builds are notable —— Preceding SIGNED comment added by Someone { talk • contribs • email me }

Why add a "correction" to my reply? They're mentioning a non-Moment update build, which is obviously not notable, so your "correction" is technically incorrect. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 15:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

What does "Addition of repetitive content" mean?

I see many users gets blocked by the abuse filter for "adding repetitive content". But, I still don't know how this matters and what did they do so they get blocked. Can someone explain? —— Preceding SIGNED comment added by Someone { talk • contribs • email me } | 05:21, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I can't explain this, but there are some completely normal edits that could trigger the abuse filter. A good example of this would be the NFOs that were provided by a build's leaker, since most of these NFOs contained ASCII art. NaraInsider1694 (talk) 05:51, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

So that's why there are so many false positives. Thanks. —— Preceding SIGNED comment added by Someone { talk • contribs • email me } | 11:34, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Referring sources with multiple authors

Does someone know how to deal with sources published by more than one author? - Bob2204 (talk) 00:20, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

If you're just placing a link for the citation, you can just list multiple authors in the link text by splitting them with commas. BF10 (talk) 19:58, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Removing the "emulator" perimeter for build infoboxes

I believe that we should just remove the emulator perimeter on infoboxes after seeing the current state of how it is used. In particular, it seems that the perimeter is used more of a compatibility/recommended checklist, which is highly both debatable and subjective. For instance, looking at the Windows 1.0 Development Release 5 shows that it works in the PCem family, although this can be subjective in that the build could run on other virtualizers such as VMware with some driver changes, so it seems more of a recommended checklist from this perspective. Alongside, the "works in" gives sense in that if you aren't using the hypervisor listed, the build wouldn't run when it's usually not true. The system requirements section of each operating system appears to cover over well for what is the recommended config to use, so it'll bat off the desire to list every single hypervisor that is recommended since it'll come down to common sense. As a result, I believe it isn't necessary to keep the emulator perimeter on the build infoboxes; if a certain hypervisor is recommended, it should be added to a bugs section instead. BF10 (talk) 19:57, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Question about dual-monitor images

Is an image also clarified as 'bad' when it has a resolution of 1600x600 (2x 800x600)? In this case, it is an image showing Windows Me with two monitors: Media:WindowsMe-4.9.3000-DualMonitorWatermark.png. My display (1920x1080) is too small to take a dual-monitor image in 2x 1024x768, at best one in 1024x768 and the other in 800x600. (I actually have a second display (in this case my TV) onto which I could plug my laptop in, but I don't want making the expense for this.) - Bob2204 ← Click here to begin. Or here. → Talk 20:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

We'll let it slide as long the image is properly cropped and isn't in 16 color. BF10 (talk) 21:24, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, technically the image is still "bad" in that it does not fully meet the screenshot guidelines, however, this does not necessarily mean you should face any consequences for this. This is merely a clarifier that the image is not up to the wiki's usual standards and that it should ideally be improved upon to meet them. Though personally I see a larger problem with the linked screenshot not using the default theme rather than the resolution. --Ryuzaki (talk | contribs) 22:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This was just uploaded as a stopgap, I should have somewhere an image with a clean theme. - Bob2204 ← Click here to begin. Or here. → Talk 22:49, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Reupload done. - Bob2204 Click here to begin. Or here. Talk 12:21, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Reviving "Nickel" page for 23xxx Dev builds

Since Dev Channel will receive builds starting 23403, I think we should put the builds back to the Nickel page, not the Windows 11 2022 Update page, since Microsoft said these builds are not matched to the specific release of Windows. Thanks. FinnieLoudtiago (talk) 02:06, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree. 23xxx isn't tied to any releases, and it's a full build, not an upgrade like 22xxx builds. —— Preceding SIGNED comment added by Someone { talk • contribs • email me } | 05:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Magic words

I saw an edit by Someone, which was tagged with "Magic words". What does this mean? - Bob2204 Click here to begin. Or here. Talk 12:20, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Welp, I used {{CURRENTYEAR}}, which is a variable. The abuse filter 13 discourages the use of variables in normal articles. So, "Magic words" isn't any special kind of word, it's variables. —— Preceding SIGNED comment added by Someone { talk • contribs • email me } | 13:10, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Magic words are special directives handled by the MediaWiki parser that is used to add dynamic content to pages. They are usually confined to templates, though, and there is an abuse filter to enforce that. --Ryuzaki (talk | contribs) 14:58, 24 March 2023 (UTC)