[SCRIBE] Job opening: Secondary Scribe for El Lex Tables

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

Duties: Work with the beautiful tables in talossawiki.com and get past bills onto the Wiki properly

Many thanks, all - esp AD who would be perfect for such work

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

While I appreciate the thought, I have three children under 3 years old, including infant twins, as well as a full-time job and a position as a legislator here. I am already contributing the maximum amount that I can contribute right now. I wish you the best of luck, though. It's a fairly minimal task, requiring about 10 minutes per month, but there's a huge backlog since no one has been doing it for so long. I hope we can get caught up.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

Jun 25, 2019 17:02:49 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

It's a fairly minimal task, requiring about 10 minutes per month,

Can I ask the Scribe whether this assessment is accurate? It seems strange to me that the work has not already been done if it's that simple.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

It's making a page for each bill using existing templates where you just have to fill in the blanks, and then linking them from a central table with their vote totals. Making each bill page takes somewhere between 30 seconds and 1 minute, and adding them to the central table takes a few minutes. It is possible for it to take a bit longer if there are a lot of bills or if some of them are extremely complicated, of course. I imagine putting in the proposed organic law bills would take three or four minutes apiece, but that is unusual.

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

I didn't ring for you, Sir Alex, I was asking the current Scribe whether you were being accurate or not.

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

Jun 25, 2019 17:02:49 GMT -6 Sir Alexandreu Davinescu said:

While I appreciate the thought, I have three children under 3 years old, including infant twins, as well as a full-time job and a position as a legislator here. I am already contributing the maximum amount that I can contribute right now. I wish you the best of luck, though. It's a fairly minimal task, requiring about 10 minutes per month, but there's a huge backlog since no one has been doing it for so long. I hope we can get caught up.

I have no time to figure out those friggin' tables - lol.

Also, this is Talossa. We want results. Not kidscuses... ;-)

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

Jun 25, 2019 18:47:15 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

I didn't ring for you, Sir Alex, I was asking the current Scribe whether you were being accurate or not.

I'll step in here and say I'm sure AD is being 100% accurate. Knowing me, it's probably much less of a mountain than I think it is. That being said, this does sound like something an enterprising newbie-Talossan could help this Scribe-Luddite to get going again.

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

AD, where are these templates of which you speak?

[Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN]

What I'm getting from this discussion, parenthetically, is not - as the MC from the RUMP would have it - laziness or incompetence on the part of the Scribe or the Government, but lack of a proper "handover" from the previous occupant. GV should have had it explained how to do his job properly once he took over - not that I know who precisely should have explained things.

This is one thing this Government hopes to accomplish by bringing the Royal Civil Service online - more professionalism and continuity in administrative work.

[Ian Plätschisch]

I believe the previous Scribe was Epic, who was replaced because he was not around very much. Therefore, it would have been difficult for any handover to have taken place.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Jun 26, 2019 0:49:17 GMT -6 Miestrâ Schivâ, UrN said:

What I'm getting from this discussion, parenthetically, is not - as the MC from the RUMP would have it - laziness or incompetence on the part of the Scribe or the Government, but lack of a proper "handover" from the previous occupant.

I made or insinuated no such accusation. This all began because I expressed very reasonable worries:

• We rely very heavily on the database, which almost no one can understand, fix, or alter.
• There may or may not be backups of the database which we may or may not be able to use if it were to go down through some server mishap or user error.
• The more easily-accessible, interlinked version on the wiki has not been updated for years, so if the previous two problems might be fatal to our records if there is some mischance.

Unless I'm wrong, we basically just rely 100% on MPF for understanding and/or changing the database. I have been getting census emails for a month that no one can stop or turn off but him. You can pretend that's not a problem because it's inconvenient and because I am daring to point it out, but it's the truth.

[Sir Alexandreu Davinescu]

Jun 26, 2019 0:00:31 GMT -6 Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h said:

AD, where are these templates of which you speak?

Apologies for taking a bit to get back to you.

So let's look at one example:
wiki.talossa.com/Law:Budget_Typo_Clarification_Prime_Dictate

Notice it's in the Lawspace, which only users with Scribe can edit. No need to worry about anyone else messing with it, yet there's still a complete and transparent record of all edits made and the editors, plus others can link to it.

Anyway, looking at the code, we see this:

{{Decree
|name= Prime Dictate
|status= {{LawStatusActive}}
|gov= {{gov}}
|cun=
|prem= Seneschal
|premn= [[Second Da Schir Cabinet|Lüc da Schir]]
|when= April 18, 2017
|chancery=
|amm=
|law1=
|Damm= y
|Dlaw1= El Lexhatx
|judicial=
|ruling1=
}}

====50PD03, Budget Typo Clarification Prime Dictate====


'''WHEREAS''' the latest Budget had a section that concerned the amendment of a specific article of El Lexhatx; and

'''WHEREAS''' the article's title was mistakenly omitted from its number; so

'''THEREFORE''' El Lexhatx D.2.8.2.3.1 is amended in its entirety to read:

:''Current Token Design. The first issue of Talossan collectable tokens ("coins") shall have, on the obverse, the Chinese character "ben" upon a shield, with a crown above the shield; above the crown shall be the curved inscription "REGIPÄTS TALOSSÁN", and below the shield shall be the curved inscription of the year of issue (both the Common Era in Arabic numerals and the year of the Kingdom of Talossa in Roman numerals). On the reverse shall be an image to be determined by the Royal Bank and Post representative of some aspect of Talossan culture, a large "ℓ" with an amount representing the coin denomination being minted, and an inscription of the denomination of the coin in the Talossan language.

All that stuff in the brackets at the top is the template. It puts that natty little box on the page. So when this Clark came around to be put in, the Scribe just copy and pasted that template, filled in the name of the Seneschal and the date, and then copy and pasted in the text of the law. The bill number and name go as a header between quadruple equals signs, and all the rest of the formatting just goes the standard way (whereas stuff in italics, quotes indented, etc). Then the law is recorded and done!

Because you have to type so little and it's mostly just copy and pasting, it takes very little time. I used to make all of the pages for that month's laws at once in separate tabs, then go through and do each part (first all the templates, then all the titles, then all the formatting).

You can see on another bill that you just need minor changes if it's a regular law, as most will be: wiki.talossa.com/Law:The_Lannister_Act_%2B_Sense_of_the_Ziu

So anyway, once you get all the bills done, then you add them to the appropriate spot on the table on the Digest itself. It's color-coded: things that passed and are in force are in green, things that failed are in red, and things that were ephemeral (no permanent effect, like an appointment or budget) are in yellow. There's a little code to put things in there... would you like a walkthrough of that table? Not sure where you're at with this stuff, so please don't be insulted if this was too elementary. Thought it was better to explain too much rather than too little.

[Gödafrïeu Válcadác’h]

Thank you!! I've been busy with real-life, and will definitely get to this asap.