Users/GregBard

EditEdit InfoInfo TalkTalk
Search:    

Local cab driver and pontiff. Owing to my extensive field research, I have a PhD in "Chico Geography." I am a farmer of ideas and all my crops I give away.

Some people may be wondering why all the pictures I post on here suck so bad! I shrank them to about 10% of their original size. So any of them should be available larger, and in a higher quality if necessary. Also, please do not be bashful about replacing any of them with better pictures.

TTD

GregBard's Statistics

Edits  Pages Created  Files Contributed  First Edit Date  Last Edit  Last Page Edited  
5378140914412007-12-20 06:50:402009-12-01 15:07:04Bidwell Building

Comments:

dont enter into this box:

2008-01-03 11:43:51   Hi Greg! Great work today!. I was wondering: once we fill in pages for links, would it be all right to remove the street locations? Users can view the related page to get that information, and it would keep the index pages nice and clean. But while they don't have pages, they're useful. —RyanMikulovsky

2008-04-11 08:22:09   Hi Greg!
I love your idea of illustrating Dayton's smallness with an aerial view. But Google isn't quite kind enough to allow that sort of thing to be posted on websites (despite allowing use of interactive Google maps on websites..). But we can use imagery from [WWW]http://www.terraserver-usa.com so long as the caption attributes USGS. They have Dayton in all its glory but it is in grayscale. I just wanted to give a heads up on that. I might switch over to a terraserver-usa image in a few days. Thanks a ton for your contributions! This wiki is looking really good. Now if only we could convince others to contribute! —RyanMikulovsky

2008-06-18 05:19:11   I'm not sure what you're doing in the sandbox you created, but you might want to check out Wanted Pages. Things work a bit differently here on Wiki Spot than Wikipedia, and the tools to maintain structural are different as a result. The end product is still a cohesive wiki, but the methods and tools vary. Check out your bookmarking tool and wikispotHelp with Macros a bit. —JabberWokky

2008-06-22 13:24:59   Hi Greg. I'm a little uncertain about the category feature you've developed. Right now we categorize based on manual lists, and this is just about the same except someone has to know to include Category:something on the relevant page. As it is, it's sometimes difficult for people to realize that they need to add a link to the Restaurants page after creating a new restaurant. Using this category feature is kind of redundant at the moment. If the Restaurants page, and its various regional pages were to be transformed into a category page, it might work but then food type sections wouldn't work and we'd have to break out into all kinds of categories like Mexican Restaurants, Italian Restaurants, etc... It's hard for me to endorse this when wikispot doesn't use wikipedia or moinmoin style categories as a method of organization. In the future there might be "tags" which would do the trick nicely. But I've been waiting on that for ages now :-) But honestly I'm undecided on this at the moment, which is why I took so long to reply. I see its use in easily categorizing a page in multiple ways. —RyanMikulovsky

2008-06-26 00:41:40   Thanks for all your recent work!! You rock! —RyanMikulovsky

2008-07-14 15:33:23   Hi Greg! Your contributed articles have been really great, especially with the accompanying photographs. But there is a question as to whether or not they are out of copyright and thus in the public domain (they're really old photographs, so I'd hope so!) and not under copyright. I'd really appreciate if you could cite where the photos came from so that I could check into it. If they are public domain, then we can just say so in the caption, which would prevent the Creative Commons License from covering that content. I'm betting they're fine, though! Thanks Greg! —RyanMikulovsky

2008-07-17 21:45:48   Hi Greg! Of course we can use the map feature for the former buildings if that's what everyone wants. I tend to be of the mindset that the map is for places that are still in existence and can be visited or at least seen by people in Chico. Having the former address (without the macro) and/or a brief description of where it was alongside the picture, in my opinion, is enough to give someone the idea. The map is already so full of places and things that are currently in Chico (especially the downtown) that when adding in all the historical things that aren't here anymore could serve to make it so full of pins and difficult to navigate. There are so many potential historical places in Chico that could have pages made about them that I worry it will make the map less useful for someone who is looking for something in the area. I'll start a talk page off of departed businesses to discuss this further and see if anyone else has opinions. Thanks for checking in about it. And as far as prioritizing goes, just keep up the good work in whatever order works for you. It's all relevant, after all, and I've already learned so much about my hometown! —StaceyEllis

2008-08-31 21:29:44   Hmm. I think the only way using images like that on the Urban Legends page would be to have macros instead. But I don't think there's any easy way for us to add them at the moment. Thanks for trying though. It was certainly a good idea. —RyanMikulovsky

I tried!-GB

2008-10-12 10:44:50   Hey Greg. Obviously I wasn't there last night, so I just started a page where I welcome people to put up their experiences about what happened last night (that seems the best way to get the full story). Ryan put up a wanted link, I figured it was good to start the page so that someone else didn't have to. Since people will be talking about it, regardless of why it started, I feel it has a place on the wiki and I just went with the name that was on the wanted link that I found. I have no problem with the renaming of it, and I certainly didn't mean for it to sound anti-student. I am a young person and a student (have been at a couple of different universities at various times) and I know what it's like to be judged based solely on the fact that I am young and in a college. I purposely put language like "what has been described as" and "It is reported that" because I know that the media can be biased. And after what happened in the 80's, I am fairly certain there are a lot of people who would see a big gathering as something more than it might actually be. That said, there are certainly user-posted videos on YouTube of people hanging out around stuff that is lit on fire, so I would hardly say everyone was on their best behavior last night. I really didn't mean to offend or sound like I had taken a side about it, since I wasn't there and only have read the news articles and seen the YouTube postings. —StaceyEllis

2008-10-29 22:07:06   Hi Greg. Good work on the explore content. I may tweak it a bit when time permits but I think that is a nice improvement. Thanks for all your contributions! —RyanMikulovsky

2008-11-01 21:47:50   Hi Greg! Your proposed mystery pics are great! The current pic has already been guessed and hasn't been replaced yet (I haven't been to town all that recently, so I haven't gotten to find anything myself to put up). I'd recommend putting one of your proposed pics up on the Mystery Picture page to see if we can get some people guessing on them. I'm fairly certain that only you, Ryan and I watch the recent changes regularly, so anyone else who checks out the wiki occasionally probably wouldn't even know you had put them up on the "proposed" pages. They're too good to keep them off the front page... —StaceyEllis

2008-11-07 06:02:25   Hello Greg. I'm not too sure about taking a photo of a photo in a book on the wiki (Richardson Springs). Do you know how copyrights work in that regard? Because the book itself is certainly copyrighted as a whole. —RyanMikulovsky

2009-01-25 20:15:24   Hi Greg. Do you happen to have a larger version of the Christmas lights display that you just uploaded? Maybe shrink the original to 800x600 instead of uploading thumbnail sized photo would make the image more clear (I can't really see anything in it). I appreciate it! —RyanMikulovsky

2009-02-04 08:43:36   Hi Greg. While I'm not native to Chico, and not even close to a Chicoan, it is my understanding that Chicoans refer to CSU Chico as simply Chico State — so I'm trying to reflect what the larger community would expect. This is similar to the fact that Chicoans never say "Butte Community College" but simply "Butte College." Furthermore, using Chico State * is good for Google searches as it is far more descriptive than just University *. These days, websites live and die by Google. Especially when there is no large effort within the community to make a wiki a success (to my knowledge only 3 people ever flyer about the wiki so it needs all the attention it can get from Google). Using parenthesis is just confusing and likely wouldn't have the same impact. We've tried that before in order to differentiate between Butte College and Chico State. Aesthetically and practically, it did not work. Thanks for your input. —RyanMikulovsky

2009-02-04 20:19:33   Hi Greg. There are a handful of pages that use parentheticals. I'm not particularly fond of them but I suppose they have their place to help differentiate certain things. University President (CSU Chico) may work. I'd like to have a convention for using parenthesis like that, though. What would be best to indicate Chico State? You mentioned (CSUC). I don't know if that would be best search engine-wise unless you think most Chicoans put CSUC in their search queries. Anyway, we have three options if we need to use parentheticals: CSU Chico, CSUC, and Chico State. Does anyone have an opinion on which one would be best? I learn towards Chico State, though it is a bit long. Oh, my last note is, the Chico ER uses Chico State President as a formal title. Of course, it's the ER. Enough said.

Woo! I'm really happy to hear about some flyering action going on. Thank you! I've a few at Butte College right now and they're almost out of tear-offs. I agree that the flyers could use some improvement. It is too bad that none of us are marketing or media majors or have a hobby in doing these sorts of things. Most of the flyer ideas have been snatched from Davis Wiki. Stacey has done a great job creating what we have.

Links off of the blogs at norcal blogs would be huge. One of these days we need to try out those free "viral" marketing schemes... —RyanMikulovsky

2009-03-29 21:51:35   Hi Greg! I noticed that the "But this is Chico, too" NorCal blog wrote about Chico Wiki in glowing detail and had some quotes from you. Fantastic! I was very pleasantly surprised — even had a bit of an Adrenalin rush :-) Thanks!! —RyanMikulovsky

2009-03-31 15:08:15   TheChico State Associated Students page could be put as a featured page as well to further advocate for involvement in the AS elections. —RyanMikulovsky

2009-05-18 22:01:16   Sadly, it isn't very clear how to change a page that is redirecting (this problem has been seen across many wikispot wikis). I think it makes more sense to remove those obstacles. Furthermore, without a dashed link there is likely less of a chance anyone will bother. —RyanMikulovsky

2009-05-18 22:06:05   The historical names remain in the article and are begging to be written about. I don't see what the problem is? —RyanMikulovsky

2009-05-18 22:07:29   Hi Greg. The problem with how it was set up is that the links aren't really clear as wanted, since they just redirect to something else and appear to be complete. By creating a wanted link to it (I linked to the former businesses on the current businesses' pages and in Departed Businesses), someone who knows something about the place can write all about it. Ideally we can start some nice seeds even to get people going, but as they were, it was nearly impossible for a non-wiki pro to be able to create a page for the former businesses. Even I have to stop and think about how to remove a redirect to create the page anew when necessary, and I consider myself at least semi-pro at this. Because we are striving to write about all of Chico, past and present, I feel it's important that the departed businesses get their own pages, and not just a quick mention and a redirect to a business that has nothing to do with it outside sharing the location. —StaceyEllis

You are presuming that there needs to be separate articles for these things. Any information on those topics can be placed in the article to which it is redirected. If there develops enough info for a separate article, it can be spun out. -gb

Yes, I am presuming that businesses that have no relationship besides sharing a former location do deserve to have links to have their own pages. Whether anyone creates these pages, we will see, but the wanted link isn't doing any harm and leaves the option that someone who knows something about it (former employee, old-timer in town who used to hang out there, etc) can write about it. If, for instance, someone is really interested in finding out about one of these businesses and puts the name in the search bar, the new business will still come up because it does a text search. They then find the wanted link for the old business and voila, they can write about the old place. I did not remove any information at all from the page, just created a wanted link in case someone who knows about it wants to share. Like both Ryan and I have said, removing the redirect to create a new page for the content is not at all intuitive. We want to help people as much as we can, and this is the most ideal way. Also, I am not sure what criteria we would use to determine which former businesses get pages of their own and which only get redirects to the business that replaced them. It seems we should strive for consistency, and sometimes creating pages and other times creating redirects is not at all consistent. —StaceyEllis

2009-05-19 07:33:39   Hi Greg. I've given quite a lot of latitude to editors even when I disagreed fundamentally. This is a very small functional issue and I think it'd be great if you could extend the same amount of freedom to other editors. Also I should note that I started removing redirects first :-) —RyanMikulovsky

It's not my place to extend (or take away) freedom. My input to ChicoWiki is entirely advisory. If you guys want to do something different, I am not so wrapped up in it to really insist things be one way or the other. I'm sure this thing is in perfectly capable hands... However, I'M JUST SAYIN' that if here is some quirk of wikispot that is causing you to delete a whole bunch of stuff, you are probably better off asking someone to address the issue in the code, and then waiting for it to be fixed. As far as redirects are concerned, I am thinking of A) providing some link for people's reference, and B) stability of the links.

I don't know if you noticed that I have kind of dropped off a bit in my contributions, there are bigger fish to fry as a issue these days. I am not sure what to do about it frankly. I am feeling all alone on the issue. If you get a chance, you should call me at home at 891-TAXI (891-8294). You too Stacey, its complicated.

At some point I would like a little company in [WWW]this category. I hope you guys can help in that regard as well. Be well, -GB

2009-06-06 12:47:03   Thanks for taking care of the Charles Ball House. The photo of the narrow house on the Language Houses page just didn't work with the statement of it having 12 bedrooms! —RyanMikulovsky

This is a Wiki Spot wiki. Wiki Spot is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that helps communities collaborate via wikis.