Sandbox Seed

When the WikiWikiSandbox gets trashed or overly full, it's clumsy searching through the HistoryPages for a clean version. Instead, simply copy and paste the following text into it. This will give the WikiNewbies a helpful message when entering the WikiWikiSandbox for testing. -- TimRhodes

Note to all wiki spammers: As of January 02, 2005, all changes to this wiki, either by editing or AddingNewPages, will not be picked up by SearchEngines until 10 hours have passed (a page must remain unchanged during that time). All spam on this site is usually deleted in minutes, an hour at the most, so it is pointless to try to add spam of any type to this wiki. See DelayedIndexing.

This is a WikiWiki Sandbox page, a place to try editing a WikiPage created by others.

If you're new to the wiki concept you might like to start by reading WelcomeVisitors. Then have a look at the pages listed on NewUserPages and StartingPoints. When you've read a bit and feel you are ready to contribute, TextFormattingRules shows how to format your text. Please experiment here in the sandbox before editing other pages. GoodStyle has many hints and tips on making sure your edits fit with the wiki ethos.

Please don't delete the above text. Instead, make your tests and contributions below.

Thank you.

Once you discover and appreciate the ease with which you can change things, you will probably wonder WhyNobodyDeletesWiki or WhyWikiWorks? You may also find interesting: RealNamesPlease, WikiWay, WikiZen and GoodWikiCitizen

Feel free to ask questions here, but anyone can mess with these pages and your question may not get noticed. You might prefer to use QuickQuestions instead.

SandboxSeed Discussion

Let's not wipe out the AsciiArt - it's kinda neat. There's usually plenty of trivial one-off tests to remove. For the time being, I consider the sandbox to be a sort of microcosm of the Wiki.

The sandbox recently got wiped out by a vandal. I looked at the history, but decided to set the content back to the SandboxSeed, because after all, it is a sandbox. But somebody else looked at the history and decided it was worth restoring, perhaps because of some of the Q&A towards the top. If the Q&A is valuable, perhaps it should either be moved to the WikiWikiWebFaq, or copied into here so that it is part of the seed. -- JonReid

Please don't copy it here - things should be refactored into the rest of the wiki. There are Q & A pages around just waiting for them. Some people seem not to understand that the sand box is for experiments, not conversation. Others don't seem to understand that there is a whole wiki out there waiting for their contributions. Some people just don't get it. -- Anon
- Perhaps, but new-comers need answers fast, or otherwise they do quick harm of editing other pages. Also, many get upset at the idea of anyone being able to delete or edit anything, and it kind of blows their minds. Best if they can read/edit/create and play in the WikiWikiSandbox for awhile. The other thing to consider is, that when people arrive at the WikiWikiSandbox and see lots of stuff, they are less prone to delete all, and more prone to add and edit. It works well too. It is good if many thing can be represented in the WikiWikiSandbox (things like images, hyperlinks, different types of formatting, new and already created WikiPages) this way when they click to edit, they can readily see how things are done. It is the best teacher. I go now to add a couple images to WikiWikiSandbox to give better example then what is there now. -- WikiZen
  - On the flip side, a minimal seed, as has been the tradition, is potentially less intimidating..
Selectively adding to the WikiWikiWebFaq page is a good idea.. Go for it Jon.

Actually, as I look through the sandbox, I do not see any questions worth keeping there. The first question is about downloading the source, which newbies will not do. The second asks what keeps people from deleting the whole wiki -- which I would think only encourages people to try deleting stuff. So I guess I'm in favor of occasionally "raking" the sandbox. Meaningful content and examples worth keeping should be moved elsewhere, or copied into this seed so that the sandbox always contains it. -- JonReid

Certain questions like "How do you keep others from deleting everything?" are answered in the current copy of WikiWikiSandbox, and this one answer alone, has stopped much of the damage we used to see here. Also, the current copy shows-off a lot of what wiki can do, and this inspires the imagination of new-comers. We used to get a lot of "What is this?" "This seems dumb, because it can't do anything." "How come wiki can't do HTML?" "Can I use an image?". The current copy, stops a lot of damage to wiki, and settles new-comers much faster. -- WikiZen

I have tried bringing over the more important content from the sandbox to this seed. But is the SandboxSeed unnecessary, trying to solve a problem that does not exist? I used it because it was here. If that creates more problems than the seed is trying to solve, we should get rid of the seed. -- JonReid

It happens occasionally that the sandbox gets so messed up we need to start over.. i.e. anything informative is mangled or missing, massive spam, etc. hence, a clean copy of some simple information is a handy thing. I started this page quite a while back when I could never remember the previous name for a page with a "seed" which was called CleaningTheWikiWikiSandbox. It pretty much was an idle page until the last week. I always meant to comeback and try to improve the "seed". As time went on though, I ended up thinking it was fine as is. Keeping it minimal has the advantage of allowing the sandbox to be more dynamic. A few examples on this page seems fine to me, however, personally, I wouldn't include images, since I think they should be minimally used here, and external links are more subject to change. Also, I don't think having tons of info in the sandbox makes much difference as far as keeping newcomer damage to a minimum. I feel that newcomers are minimally destructive anyway, unless they are malicious to start with, in which case more info in the sandbox won't make any difference. Thanks for your input Jon. -- RonJandrasi

I agree, images are used so infrequently here that newbies do not need them. I have trimmed the image example from the seed above. And look, somebody just (mistakenly) wiped out the sandbox. I have placed the seed in there, let's see what happens. ...There, somebody else restored the historical sandbox, even though newbies were freely playing in the re-seeded version. So is the seed moot? -- JonReid

No, today was just a typical day on the wiki.. this page is for those times when the EditCopy is messed up. That way a gnome doesn't have to go wading through the HistoryPages for something to put in the sandbox. SandboxSeed was never really intended to be a constant use thing. -- Ron

CategoryWikiMaintenance