Talk:User group meeting agenda & minutes 30 Apr 2008

Please add suggestions for the agenda here. We welcome your contributions! Please remember to add four tildes (~) at the end of your entry to "sign" it with your name. That'll help us contact you if we need clarification on the item you'd like to address in the meeting. Molliewog 16:20, 12 March 2008 (MDT)

Images and other uploaded files
We have several BMPs that have been uploaded into the Wiki. I have downloaded, converted them to JPGs (using IrfanView), uploaded the JPGs, and fixed the articles. Now, the BMPs are not referenced at all. Who has rights for deleting the BMPs? Perusing MediaWiki, etc., it appears that the default is that BMPs, PDFs, etc. may not be uploaded. Do we really want BMPs to be uploaded (only Admins? If so, who may become Admins?)? They definitely do not display nicely. I suppose PDFs may be nice in certain circumstances, but the links generally are not very friendly (at least a couple of clicks to download). Do we really want everyone to be able to upload PDFs? The number of clicks can be reduced, but will that method be guaranteed persistent file names? Thomas Lerman 15:08, 23 April 2008 (MDT)

As of the meeting, all BMPs are still not referenced. The upload page lists BMP is an acceptable format. Personally, I do not believe this should be a acceptable format. This subject will be discussed in the next meeting. Thomas Lerman 20:27, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Follow-up: Something seems broken in the Wiki (maybe when using IE?)
Something seems broken in the Wiki seems to be, at least for A Guide to Research, a very bad problem. Can we find out at least what is causing the problem and possible resolution? It may be just the size, but seems to be something more as it seems like I was having the same problem just editing a section. It was brought up at the last meeting that the file may be corrupted. I would like to find out the problem for sure. I agree that the article may be &amp; too long, but it would be nice to resolve just in case we run into this again. Thomas Lerman 15:13, 23 April 2008 (MDT) Found this wiki that may be using a slightly older versioning of the MediaWiki software. 

May be worth a look to see if they have large articles that were larger than the one that was causing the problem, and how they handled it. Its purpose is to support the main site which is at this link:

Given it's older, it also leaves the door open to there being a bug in the version we are using now. JamesAnderson 18:08, 23 April 2008 (MDT)

We were informed in the meeting that the page was, in fact, corrupted and has been rolled back to an uncorrupted version. Do we know what caused the problem to possibly help prevent this from happening when we have many more pages? Thomas Lerman 20:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't know what caused the error. Somehow the article was entirely converted to HTML instead of wiki text. I agree that we need to know what caused the error in order to prevent it in the future, however until it happens again, we cannot gain the knowledge to reproduce it. Molliewog 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Recorded User Group Meetings
At least part of the time, the last meeting was recorded. After we get the kinks taken care of with sound (better microphone (less popping), microphone more mobile, etc.), can we record the meetings so they are available through the Wiki? I think that would be great for new people watch old meetings as well as those that may miss a meeting. If I cannot go to SLC for this meeting, I may miss it. Does the remote meeting work on Linux? I have only tried on Windows. Thomas Lerman 15:54, 23 April 2008 (MDT)

There are a couple ways to do this.

One is to record the meeting audio, rip it to mp3 using readily-available and free ripping software, an hour meeting recording will take only a couple of minutes to complete ripping to mp3, and posting it as a podcast can take place soon after. That way, someone like me who is able to come to the meeting can review the content later at home or wherever I might be headed next by putting it on a player and listening to it that way again.

Not everyone has a video iPod or other player or desires a video podcast, so if video is done, there is software available to lift the audio from the video for the audio podcast.

Having a podcast will bring even more people into the wiki. By the way, a good storage place to store podcast archives is |http://www.archive.org/ and DearMYRTLE uses that to store her archives, it's apparently free. JamesAnderson 10:46, 24 April 2008 (MDT)

I do not know what format(s) Acrobat® Connect™ records in, but my vote would be for the video (what I would see on the remote screen during the meeting) to be available with the audio. Obviously, conversions may or may not be needed. Thomas Lerman 12:41, 24 April 2008 (MDT)

Very true, Thomas, the video would be necessary for those that are able to use it, by all means we should include both.

As for getting the audio from the Adobe feed, there is software available that can grab the audio from the full feed while leaving the original A/V output intact, thus creating a separate audio file for those who need that separately. As for the Adobe feed, I know of one expensive program ($100 US) that claims to be able to move things from any format to any format, even those not invented yet as of the time the software was published. That way for those that don't have Adobe, the video content generated by the Adobe feed can be ported to .flv format (same as that used by YouTube) or even .wmv to make the video more readily accessible to even more users. Then the audio can be grabbed from that, put in mp3 format, then posted for those users who are only able to use that. JamesAnderson 13:18, 24 April 2008 (MDT)

One possibility is that the Adobe recording may not need any conversion and may be useful as is (if I remember correctly, it records in FLV format).. Thomas Lerman 06:44, 26 April 2008 (MDT)

Not so fast! What about those who are deaf and hard-of-hearing? dsammy 08:43, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What about the visually impaired too? I think this would be a great thing to look into if nobody has done this yet. I checked with Mollie. . . sound is still being worked on. A/V may help next week. After the sound is better and as long as there is enough time to set up, the meetings will recorded and then made available. Thomas Lerman 20:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Parking for those attending
Where? Token? Thomas Lerman 15:54, 23 April 2008 (MDT)

Now that the malls are gone I'm not sure where, but I would think that some of the restaurants and so forth would be giving validations still.

A tip for those in Ogden and Davis County wanting to attend this particular meeting on 30 April. Frontrunner is opening and the ride to/from Salt Lake will be free that day, that day being the last of the three-day free service period to introduce everyone to it. Just drive to a station and take the train, Once you arrive downtown, TRAX downtown is free and you simply take that to City Center Station from the Intermodal Hub from Frontrunner. The trip back will be free that day too. Visit |http://www.rideuta.com/ for details. JamesAnderson 10:30, 25 April 2008 (MDT)

The parking with tokens/voucher idea has been talked about for a few weeks. That is good news for the people up North. Thomas Lerman 06:46, 26 April 2008 (MDT)

Old versus New Forum
This may have been covered in the last meeting, but I could not hear for probably most of the meeting. Is the old forum going to stay around?


 * If yes, when is it to be used versus the new one?
 * If no, will the pending issues and polls be moved to the new one? By whom? We probably should have a method for the old one to indicate that a thread is closed, does not need to be moved, or has been moved.

Thomas Lerman 16:23, 23 April 2008 (MDT)

Fran created a tread in the forum about this subject. Thomas Lerman 20:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Tidy found serious XHTML errors
&lt;!-- Tidy found serious XHTML errors --&gt; This is starting to show up yesterday afternoon. I checked and found I'm not the only one with it. So are other writers, too. dsammy 08:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

We were told in the meeting that Tidy cleans of pages, but gets confused when it sees some of the Wiki text. Chris is looking into suppressing this error or even better (in my opinion) would be if Tidy knew more about the environment and did not display this unless it really was an error. Chris mentioned that we are on the latest version of MediaWiki &amp; FCKEditor. We want to try to stay up to date with what the majority of others are using (such as Wikipedia). This will also allow us to do updates easier in the future. Thomas Lerman 20:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Before yesterday's upgrade, this error was manifest as The error is more annoying than anything. It can safely be ignored and deleted. It usually occurs when you toggle between wikitext mode and the FCK editor. This is not something unique to our wiki. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a documented remedy. Hopefully soon! Molliewog 20:46, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

That's understandable Mollie, and I also thought your explanation would have worked, but it appears not to have, in fact, it appears to be more persistent than ever. Happens almost any time a new page is created now, and the error as noted at the top of this item appears in place of, or in other words, overwrites the long number that appeared after the &lt;!-- in the description of the addition. JamesAnderson 21:20, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I've actually seen it happen when editing articles. It replaces the code that you see for a split second when opening an edit box. This tarantula does not want to move on it looks like. Sometimes it does not appear, you will see the normal code taht appears briefly then it will disappear and you can begin your edit. I'm not sure if it can be captured for reference or not, maybe on a very slow dialup connection, but it's gone before I can even think of capturing it on a 45.2kbps dialup connection even JamesAnderson 22:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)