Wiki organization
Posted: Thu Sep 22, 2011 4:27 pm
Regardless of whether we get a new wiki at some unspecified future time, we need to figure out how the wiki should be organized. Right now, it's a mess, and people are having trouble finding things. People who might add things are having trouble figuring out how/where to add them. And, of course, this means there are plenty of holes that need filling in.
Can we at least agree that putting tome4 at the start of each page name is redundant and useless? Please? As far as I can tell, the reason there's a tome4 prefix on half the pages in the wiki is because there are links to ToME 1, ToME 2, ToME 3, and T-Engine from the top page of the wiki. I think we can safely assume that nobody is ever going to fill in ToME 1 or ToME 3 stuff on this wiki. ToME 2, I could possibly see happening (I believe it still has players), but only because Neil's old ToME 2 wiki broke and was never replaced. T-Engine stuff is arguably an extension of ToME 4 stuff, and in any case, there is very little of it at this time.
Namespaces
As far as I can tell, this wiki engine does not have any of the features one would normally expect in a wiki, apart from the most basic HTML markup and linking. There are no redirects, no categories, no RecentChanges page (just the last 5 pages that were changed, on the right side bar), no access control lists, and no namespaces. So it looks like some people have been trying to make their own pseudo namespaces.
It seems this is the way the community wants to go, so we might as well attempt to formalize it, and then put in the labor to bring everything into alignment. So this is my attempt to define an organizational structure for the wiki pages.
Rule 1: Each wiki page will have a one-word namespace label, followed by one or more words of the actual title.
Rule 2: The namespace labels will be chosen based on the current evolved practices.
So, instead of a page named "Archer" or a page named "tome4 classes archer" (both of which currently exist), the proposed namespace rules prescribe that there should be a single page named "classes archer", with classes being the namespace label, and archer being the actual page title.
Namespace labels taken from existing pages: t4modules, classes, talents, races.
Proposed new namespace labels, not yet known to be in use (though it's possible): quests, zones, devel.
The namespace label itself may be used as a pseudo category page, enumerating the pages known to be part of that namespace, with a brief description.
I'm sure we'll come up with more labels over time.
Non-namespace pages
The rules above only apply to information that is naturally categorizable (races, classes, quests, zones, etc.). There are plenty of pages that do not fall into categories, such as tome4 combat damage. These pages will simply have the tome4 prefix stripped, if it exists. Otherwise, the titles are free-form, except that the first word should not be a namespace label (to avoid confusion).
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So, that's my proposal. Please discuss. I won't do anything at this time -- I'd like to see some sort of consensus first.
Can we at least agree that putting tome4 at the start of each page name is redundant and useless? Please? As far as I can tell, the reason there's a tome4 prefix on half the pages in the wiki is because there are links to ToME 1, ToME 2, ToME 3, and T-Engine from the top page of the wiki. I think we can safely assume that nobody is ever going to fill in ToME 1 or ToME 3 stuff on this wiki. ToME 2, I could possibly see happening (I believe it still has players), but only because Neil's old ToME 2 wiki broke and was never replaced. T-Engine stuff is arguably an extension of ToME 4 stuff, and in any case, there is very little of it at this time.
Namespaces
As far as I can tell, this wiki engine does not have any of the features one would normally expect in a wiki, apart from the most basic HTML markup and linking. There are no redirects, no categories, no RecentChanges page (just the last 5 pages that were changed, on the right side bar), no access control lists, and no namespaces. So it looks like some people have been trying to make their own pseudo namespaces.
It seems this is the way the community wants to go, so we might as well attempt to formalize it, and then put in the labor to bring everything into alignment. So this is my attempt to define an organizational structure for the wiki pages.
Rule 1: Each wiki page will have a one-word namespace label, followed by one or more words of the actual title.
Rule 2: The namespace labels will be chosen based on the current evolved practices.
So, instead of a page named "Archer" or a page named "tome4 classes archer" (both of which currently exist), the proposed namespace rules prescribe that there should be a single page named "classes archer", with classes being the namespace label, and archer being the actual page title.
Namespace labels taken from existing pages: t4modules, classes, talents, races.
Proposed new namespace labels, not yet known to be in use (though it's possible): quests, zones, devel.
The namespace label itself may be used as a pseudo category page, enumerating the pages known to be part of that namespace, with a brief description.
I'm sure we'll come up with more labels over time.
Non-namespace pages
The rules above only apply to information that is naturally categorizable (races, classes, quests, zones, etc.). There are plenty of pages that do not fall into categories, such as tome4 combat damage. These pages will simply have the tome4 prefix stripped, if it exists. Otherwise, the titles are free-form, except that the first word should not be a namespace label (to avoid confusion).
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So, that's my proposal. Please discuss. I won't do anything at this time -- I'd like to see some sort of consensus first.