Difference between revisions of "Talk:Main Page"

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(Skills: new section)
m (Appears to be speculative code)
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[[Transcendent_Pneumatic_Alleviator#Skills | Where I found that thing]].  I'm reluctant to just change it to straight links wherever I see it, because I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be doing.  But I think something went horribly wrong with it, somewhere.  --[[User:Ilde|Ilde]] 20:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 
[[Transcendent_Pneumatic_Alleviator#Skills | Where I found that thing]].  I'm reluctant to just change it to straight links wherever I see it, because I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be doing.  But I think something went horribly wrong with it, somewhere.  --[[User:Ilde|Ilde]] 20:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 +
 +
:I assume it was some grand plan to create links to skills which would then reside in their own skills namespace?  Personally, I think that would be overkill.  The random code after the boxes must have been speculatively added against the day that the ParserFunctions library would be installed.
 +
 +
:Generally speaking, I've been removing these as I go along and replacing them with just plain links to skills (eg. [[magic.spells.offensive]]), as:
 +
:*(Primarily) The code leaking out looks pretty bad, and it can always be added back in later if/as/when ParserFunctions is installed.
 +
:*(Secondarily) I hate to say this, as someone clearly put time/effort into it, but the colours and boxes just look wrong in an article - they clash with the conventional formatting and make the skill unnecessarily stand out.
 +
 +
:As an aside, I encountered some naming issues when building articles with skills in:
 +
:*We don't want to use their common abbreviations (eg. 'ma.sp.of') as:
 +
:**Not everyone uses the same abbreviations (eg. 'ma.sp.off').
 +
:**There are some that are ambiguous (eg. the much cursed 'ma.me.me.ch' is either charming or channeling), and we probably want to create disambiguation pages for those.
 +
:**The article title looks a little unprofessional.
 +
:*Similarly, just using the leaf portion of the skills can also be ambiguous (eg. 'misc' or 'points').
 +
:*However, these are both the sort of things that people will enter into the search box.
 +
 +
:So far, I've been creating them with their full name, and at some point in the future I plan to add in the common abbreviations as redirects or disambiguations as required.
 +
 +
:--[[User:Chat|Chat]] 21:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Revision as of 17:33, 29 June 2009

Structure

I can see the main page getting incredibly large if it trioes to be an index to the whole site. Perhaps we need to start thinking about section level indexes? Zexium 22:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It's not really needed just yet, but will likely be required in the future, assuming we get enough development. On a related note, I suggest we post something to frog asking for contributions, and reminding people we're here. I also notice the witch wiki has merged here, we could also invite other wikis to join us. The priest wiki would be a good candidate.. Rehevkor 14:22, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I think that's a great idea, especially the ones who are currently hosted on sites that may be less than attractive (such as being supported by ads and such). I didn't want to do/suggest it myself because that has the potentiall to look an awful lot like coercion (which certainly wouldn't be the intention). Anyone who wants to merge a wiki here though is quite welcome to beaurocrat status - and I suspect it's more appealing to be one of several in a big wiki as opposed to one alone in a more fragmented wiki. Drakkos 15:29, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge "guides & advice" with "useful information"?

I can see the two sections being used for the same things, or people picking one over the other because it's at the top of the page. Wondering if they're similar enough to merge? Zexium 15:57, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Probably best at the top. Rehevkor 19:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
OK, 24 hours for objections, and then I'll do this. Zexium 10:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
Follow up - did this just now Zexium 10:34, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

"DW Mud"

The name of the wiki's a little dull, I propose we expand it a little:

  • DW Mud Wiki
  • Discworld MUD Wiki
  • Unofficial Discworld MUD Wiki
  • Discworld Mud Encyclopaedia
  • Or something
My vote is for 'Discworld MUD Wiki' (optionally with the 'unofficial' attached--but I think shorter is better, but not too short). -Taepha 01:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Then I guess 'Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler's Entirely Unauthorised Discworld MUD Wiki (With a Thousand Elephants)' wouldn't do?  :/ Drakkos 11:31, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
CMOTDEUDMW (WATE)? Works for me. Rehevkor 16:01, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
DWiki for short? Zexium 02:36, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Article naming conventions

Why do articles like the guild ones have both words captialised? It makes linking them from other articles quite inconvenient as you either have to include the capitals on the article or use one of those links where the text you click isn't actually the article you go to. Could we use the Wikipedia standard, where article names are only capitalised like that if they're proper nouns (eg. names of TV shows)? Tiggum 05:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a bit of an accident. The guilds themselves are generally the 'X' Guild' (note apostrophe and capital), *or* they're the Guild of Xs. I'd like to call them just 'Xs' (they're far more like classes than guilds now, particularly with specialisations). -Taepha 10:12, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Guilds -> Game systems

I see "Guilds" as a subset of "Game Systems" with 6 sections, each section having <number of specialisation> subsections. Guilds may even be worth a page of it's own. Zexium 10:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I created a Guilds page under Game Systems, it contains everything from the current guilds section plus links back to the guild pages on atuin (rather vthan duplicating content that's already public on atuin). Suggestion now is to delete the guilds section on the main page. Zexium 10:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
follow up - commented the guilds section out so it can be reverted if needed without losing the merge of guides and advice / useful info, but guilds is now a game system with a link to it's own page Zexium 10:36, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Pretty tables and short URLs

I propose that CSS to prettify tables be be added to /skins/common/shared.css (the CSS file shared by all themes) by ye olde wikimaster. It's how basic tables on Wikipedia appear, it matches Monobook well and it doesn't clash awfully with other themes. To use, simply use this to open your table in the Wiki markup:

{| class="wikitable"

And the CSS:

/* wikitable classes for skinning normal tables */
table.wikitable {
    margin: 1em 1em 1em 0;
    background: #f9f9f9;
    border: 1px #aaa solid;
    border-collapse: collapse;
	empty-cells: show;
}
.wikitable th, .wikitable td {
    border: 1px #aaa solid;
    padding: 0.2em;
	vertical-align: top;
	text-align: left;
}
.wikitable th {
    background: #f2f2f2;
    text-align: center;
}
.wikitable caption {
    font-weight: bold;
}

Additionally, http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL, pretty please! ;)

-Taepha 23:29, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I like to see both these implemented Rehevkor 13:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
Both of these things have now been done, and also I have enabled the String Functions Extension so as to support things like the Achievements template.
Excellent! Everything's much nicer now, cheers Drakkos! Rehevkor 15:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Notable players

Me and Aell seem to agree that the Notable players page is rather pointless, anyone can put whatever crap they like there. Delete? Rehevkor 18:12, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree Zexium 22:34, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, this section has no place here. The only valuable information (for example, Lanfear's teaching location) is negated by an overwhelming amount of personal insults and fluffing. Cyst 11:11, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleted and protected! Rehevkor 13:47, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

ParserFunctions and Cite

More feature requests. :) The ParserFunctions and Cite extensions both look very handy. ParserFunctions is similar to StringFunctions (#switch please!). Cite is a footnotes extension. FOOTNOTES. Buahahah.

-Taepha 01:12, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Seconded :) ParserFunctions in particular will let us do Navbox templates, and improve a lot of the infoboxes which are floating around. There are also several stub-ish articles lying around at the moment which appear to be using conditional syntax - as we don't have ParserFunctions installed, these are leaking out their code onto the pages in a fairly horrific-looking way... --Chat 22:09, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Thirded -- these things look really useful for templating. --B (t) 11:27, 23 June 2009 (UTC)


Research Namespace

Would standardising on a Research namespace be a good idea? (E.g. Research:Transcendant Pneumatic Alleviator would contain research on TPA.) The wikimagic required for such a thing is here - by adding it to a separate namespace I think you can do magical things later like adding a Research tab to the top of pages that goes to the related research page, like a Talk page. Or, er, we could just use the talk pages, I guess. Opinions? --B (t) 12:28, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea - especially if we can get a research tab out of it. Makes it easier for those unfamiliar with wikis to come along and add something useful, as they've got a nice friendly looking research tab to direct them. Also keeps research separate from article discussions in which it might otherwise be buried. --Chat 17:58, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Perfect solution. -Taepha 07:09, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Quoting text from the MUD

Have you ever pasted a long line of text from the MUD into your nice, pretty article using <pre>, and found to your horror that it does not word wrap nicely, but instead runs off the end of the page and creates an ugly horizontal scrollbar that looks rather like this?
Perhaps you have tried to impose your own line wrapping on the 
errant lines created by <pre>, which at least looks somewhat 
better, but is probably only going to work with browsers of at 
least a given line width (and leaves a fair amount of odd-looking 
blank white space to the right of your section in browsers with 
plenty of width).
 Well fear ye not, for this is the almighty prebox!  The prebox looks very similar to , but this time it does wrap nicely at the edge of your screen.  Try resizing your browser window, and observe its un-pre-like pleasantness!
Be thou aware, however, that the prebox is not without its quibbles.  For one, it will convert      many     spaces into one, so lookmaps will be uglified by it.

Also note ye well that it rather randomly feasts on newlines that seperateth not paragraphs.
A well inserted  will, however, deal with that.
Like this.

Last, but not least, you may need to use  if for some bizarre reason the MUD text you are quoting contains wiki markup.

--Chat 22:44, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Oh thank goodness. :O *makes a note* --Ilde 23:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Ah wait, I see, so it's not existing wiki formatting. *steals the template!*
PS: What an incredibly elegant solution to ugly, ugly formatting issues (especially for people like me who like having the browser window at less than full width). :D Brilliant and thank you. --Ilde 00:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Hanging Links

Should we insert hanging links to non existent internal pages on the basis that they should exist, or should we not insert such hanging links but instead wait until the page is actually created? I really hate seeing wikis with lots of red "page doesn't exist yet" links, it looks really sloppy to me. Zexium 06:10, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of them! I think, rather than giving a '90s-style 'under construction' image, it encourages the creation of new pages and gives some direction, particularly to potential contributors without a firm idea of what they'd like to contribute. -Taepha 07:07, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm all in favor of them, for three reasons. First, it's a "hey, we should have this page, maybe you could write it!" sign. Check out Special:WantedPages--someone looking for something to do could go through and look for ideas for pages to create. Second, if it's likely that the page will be created in the future, it's a lot easier to just make links ahead of time as you go along than it is to go through later looking for all the places there should be a link there. So, it creates infrastructure ahead of time. Third, and I admit this is rather specialized--in some cases it's very useful to see what links to a page, even if the page does not exist. For instance, going to the nonexistant Bash page and clicking on "What links here" on the sidebar will give you--more or less--a list of pages for weapons that you can bash with. Ditto for skills; even if the page for a skill doesn't exist, the "What links here" thing will give you an idea of what the skill is used in (on the priest wiki I just make every page for a skill into a redirect for its own "What links here" page, but that seems like it wouldn't work well here, since many skills already have pages. Maybe a link to the what-links-here page would be a good thing, though... hm (I'm thinking people new to the wiki may not notice the link in the sidebar, realize that's what it does (for the longest time on the priest wiki I thought it was trackbacks for the wiki itself and ignored it), or realize what it's useful for)). --Ilde 09:57, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Quests

We could add skill / bonus / additional location information for quest pages, but would this be a bad thing? Zexium 12:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Skills

What's going on with this stuff?

Template:Ma.Me.Ph.Ev

Where I found that thing. I'm reluctant to just change it to straight links wherever I see it, because I'm not really sure what it's supposed to be doing. But I think something went horribly wrong with it, somewhere. --Ilde 20:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I assume it was some grand plan to create links to skills which would then reside in their own skills namespace? Personally, I think that would be overkill. The random code after the boxes must have been speculatively added against the day that the ParserFunctions library would be installed.
Generally speaking, I've been removing these as I go along and replacing them with just plain links to skills (eg. magic.spells.offensive), as:
  • (Primarily) The code leaking out looks pretty bad, and it can always be added back in later if/as/when ParserFunctions is installed.
  • (Secondarily) I hate to say this, as someone clearly put time/effort into it, but the colours and boxes just look wrong in an article - they clash with the conventional formatting and make the skill unnecessarily stand out.
As an aside, I encountered some naming issues when building articles with skills in:
  • We don't want to use their common abbreviations (eg. 'ma.sp.of') as:
    • Not everyone uses the same abbreviations (eg. 'ma.sp.off').
    • There are some that are ambiguous (eg. the much cursed 'ma.me.me.ch' is either charming or channeling), and we probably want to create disambiguation pages for those.
    • The article title looks a little unprofessional.
  • Similarly, just using the leaf portion of the skills can also be ambiguous (eg. 'misc' or 'points').
  • However, these are both the sort of things that people will enter into the search box.
So far, I've been creating them with their full name, and at some point in the future I plan to add in the common abbreviations as redirects or disambiguations as required.
--Chat 21:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)