Help:Editing Guidelines
Contents
Policies
New pages policy
Pending an official Alexis pronunciation, all users are hereby discouraged from creating new pages if the title is not already created. At least on the main namespace. I understand templates might be more flexible (but see upper section on those). Statement pending of official revision Scarbrow (talk) 10:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Templates/ programming / arcana policy
Pending an official Alexis pronunciation, all users are hereby asked politely to not add unnecessarily complicated wikicode / wikitext / wiki markup to the pages, until and unless Alexis has given official permission. See on Template_talk:Bestiarychart for the (always impassioned) impressions of our host about this. Statement pending of official revision Scarbrow (talk) 10:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Suggestion
Should we move this page to Help:Editing Guidelines? The Help namespace may be useful to keep these "non-wiki" instructional meta-pages collected. Namespaces in general could be very useful overall. --Shelby038 (talk) 00:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
- Let's leave this page and content here. It doesn't matter where we find it, as long as we can find it.
Templates
I've created a template for use for Bestiary stat blocks. I think templates are crucial for design as they allow quick changes in one location only, rather than needing to change every page where they are used. They are a big part of the wiki system. For example, we discussed the background color of the block. If we desired to change that color later, it can simply be done from the Template page. More than that, if later we wanted to format it more like the originals from the blog, that could be done without editing each creature's page. Check out the Alpaca page for an example of its use. I suggest this be done for any case where the same type of block is likely to be used: spells, for instance. --Shelby038 (talk) 00:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
- Sure. But I don't know how they work. I don't mind telling you, Shelby; my skill is in writing and design, NOT in html and programming; I'm learning all I can, but it isn't enough to just tell me something is good. I also need to know how it actually functions; what do I do with the template? Does cutting and pasting it to a new page ensure that a quick change affects all of them?
- In general templates are used as:
{{templatename
| parameter = value
}}
- Mediawiki finds "templatename," (in this example, Bestiarychart) and gives it the parameters and values that you've supplied. This ensures that all formatting remains the same, because Mediawiki only checks a single place for the formatting: the template source. What I will do (pending approval) is copy what I've shown on the Alpaca page, and modify it for each creature. I'd suggest to read Help:Templates but honestly it's quite dense; the "Creation" section is the only part written in half-way understandable English.
Herding cats / Meta coordination
Hi all! Since I'm new, and I don't want to step on anybody's toes, I've gone ahead, been bold and tried a coordinating effort. Alexis, you can berate me for that. All the rest, you can berate me too! I'm just a newcomer. BUT I used to be a wiki admin. It just comes second nature. Hope nobody takes offense. Please remember, to keep the flow of conversation easy to read, to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~) Scarbrow (talk) 10:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
As a further suggestion, new suggestions (that aren't by themselves suggestions of new policies) should be added as sections below this one. Policies, however, should be listed at the top. Scarbrow (talk) 10:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Suggestions
CSS
Alexis, a suggestion. The current typeface on pages seems a little small. I think it may be tweaked through MediaWiki:Common.css. Would you mind me trying it? Or else, I can just tweak the zoom on my browser. I don't know if this is an issue for anybody else. Comments? Scarbrow (talk) 10:12, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
- I've noticed the same on my browser but it only seems to be this wiki; Wikipedia looks about twice as big, as fonts go. SimonTVesper 13:50, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Category tree
Wikis can show a Category tree for the purposes of exploration. You can see it in action, for example, in my old wiki. This tree can be expanded from any branch, but it is convenient for it to have a clear "root" category.
- Would you agree, Alexis? And if yes, what should the name of the root category for this wiki be?
- Do you have any idea of a category system you plan to use? I was thinking of making one category for every "label" on the Blogspot wiki. Would that be right?
Scarbrow (talk) 10:48, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
- I've been adding Category labels in places but I've also discussed it with Alexis and he likes the format on the Index page (an inline list separated by slashes). For now we agreed to do both. However, I think it might be worthwhile to explore Dynamic Lists (I think that's the name) to generate those as well and make full use of wiki's capabilities. --Shelby038 (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Placeholder category
I'd like to remove the Placeholder category. Since all of its elements seem to be bestiary entries, I propose categorizing those pages as Category:Bestiary. Thoughts? Scarbrow (talk) 10:48, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
- Already discussed. I made the Placeholder category and now I'm going back through all the Beasts and changing it to the Bestiary category (which I also created). I've taken on the Bestiary responsibility but there is a lot to do, particularly formatting. I'm sure you've seen the discussions on the Template_talk:Bestiarychart page. --Shelby038 (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Importing maintenance templates
I know you're against unnecessarily complicated wiki code, Alexis. But many templates are very useful, very easy to use, and all of their complexity can be safely abstracted from the end user. Even more, most of them are fully optional to use, but still useful for power users. A paramount example is Template:T, but there are many others. I had a full toolbox of those in my old wiki. Others are useful for maintaining purposes, like Template:Delete (not using the Wikipedia example here, since it's much, much too complicated for our use). Other still are used for notices, like UnderConstruction. Would you oppose the creation of some of these in this wiki, Alexis? All of them would be fully documented, and none of those would be required material, so in the worst case, you can just ignore them. Scarbrow (talk) 10:48, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
