I think having a suggestions page may be a good idea
<JonF> Also, would you, oh great Wiki meister supreme and all powerful, be willing to consider giving Wiki space to variant Everways? Like those non standard backgrounds and rules variants such as the much discussed and much abhorred Supers Sci-fi or Pirate games?
<TheRunester> A: Your wish is my command. EverwayVariants have been added!
<Lxndr> Okay, I know this is probably picking nits, but a realm and a sphere are not the same thing, and a sphere in particular is generally a collection of Realms. So "Realms" shouldn't be in ListSpheres.
The Sphere of Those Above/Those Below belongs there, but the "People of Autumn/Spring/Summer" don't, since they're just Realms. The City of Three Sisters doesn't belong there, but a link to "The Sphere Which Contains The City of Three Sisters And BlessedPearl" probably deserves a link there.
As for the Realm of Fiery Procession, it could be argued that it's a whole Sphere in itself, so I can accept its presence.
Similarly, I think we should be a bit more formal on Quests. Quests aren't just places and ideas, Quests are specific... well, quests. Adventures. Putting everything that has the inkling of an adventure idea on ListQuests sort of... makes the List less useful. You know what I mean?
Anyway, just wanted to put that out there.
<TheRunester> I agree. I was uncertain when I added these lists, especially since the realm descriptions contained quest ideas. In fact, if you'd like ... why not add a note to ListQuests, ListSpheres, and ListRealms to better define what should be included?
I have no problem changing the list memberships of the content I posted, especially to keep in line with community standards.
<Lxndr> I thought about adding a note there, but I wasn't sure if doing so would cause any problems with the automated "List" stuff. Should I put the note above or below the automatic-updated entries?
<TheRunester> A: Believe it or not, you can't put it below the automated list. The list pages are a special case, the part that can be edited is at the top, and the program appends the list it generates to the bottom. So, when you click on "Edit This Page" you will not even see the list of items that later appear on that list page. Does this help?
<Lxndr> Perfectly. When I get home from work (I'm at lunch now) I'll put in my interpretations of what Quests, Spheres and Realms are.
<Lxndr>
While making the Ballflower Sea, Alec (inadvertantly?) created a list we didn't have before, ListPlaces.
So far, there's nothing else on it but the Ballflower Sea, partly because nobody knows it's around. What I want to ask is - does the Wala need this list? And if we need it, how do we want to handle it?
I mean, a "Realm" is generally a Place, right? So is a Sphere. Do we want all Realms and Spheres put on ListPlaces (which to me seems sloppy), or do we want ListPlaces to be "locations that don't correspond to the Realm/Sphere designation?" In that case, besides the Ballflower Sea, what else might go there that's already on our Wiki? My UnityCovenant, perhaps, which is a nation that spans two Realms? BlessedPearl?
Alternatively, do we need a general Places list, even for those things? I would like to see some actual discussion about this.
I had thought something similar, when I wrote about the AprilDance ... what is that? A group of people, a village, but NOT a realm or sphere ...
On the other hand, does it really need to be on a specific list if it is already on several others, such as ListB ListBreakwater, etc?
<Lxndr>
I now also noticed that the Apotheocaries is a part of ListGroups, which makes two new groups. Does anyone else (besides TheRunester) have any input on either of these?
I'm sort of leaning towards the attitude expressed by his last statement. "Does it really need to be on a specific list?" Between the list-letters, lexicon-lists, and the Big Ones (Spheres, Realms, Quests), I'm not sure that these additional lists are needed.
<Lxndr>
Two more locations have been added to ListPlaces (none more to ListGroups). Not enough to really say "unanimous", but I think that's at least some vote for keeping it. I'm still not sold on it yet. Any additional thoughts on the matter?
Also, some EverWiki suggestions, which may or may not be do-able:
1. I know this'll be tough, if you can do it at all, but... with names like "The City Of Three Sisters" and "The Sphere of Those Above and Those Below" and "The Shard Coast" and all that... Is there any way to set up the Lists so that they ignore the word "the" when attempting to alphabetize things? You'd have to ignore both "The" and "The_", but not, say, "Theurge" (but TheUrge, yeah). Anyway - difficult, sure. Too difficult? That's up to you, Runester.
2. A "preview" button while editing a page - clicking on it would create a temporary file with all the new edits, and display it without changing the actual page and/or being listed on RecentChanges. This would really cut down on a lot of the clutter that sometimes pops up on the RecentChanges page, I think.
3. Just a re-iteration: Backlinks! Are they possible in Wala?
4. The ":" currently indents. But unlike bulleted lists, multiple : don't seem to do multiple indents. Is that possible to work up?
<Lxndr>
VERY COOL on the backlinks, man. That was worth the wait. Most wikis make you click a separate link to see what the backlinks are, but you've set it up so they're always visible. Rockin'.
However, they lead me to suggest another possible DIRective, maybe two: "suppress backlinks." On some pages, they're vitally important. On others (like this one, actually) we might not need them at all.
Or, look at the BreakwaterLexicon for another example of where I'd personally want to suppress the automatic backlinks. That list will only grow.
So, my two new DIRective suggestions to add to nocomm:
1. Something that means "don't show the inbound link on this page."
2. Something that means "do not include links from this page on the Inbound Links list." (like does AprilDance really need to know that it's linked from here?)
<Kat>
I like the new font. nice and readible.
I'm not sure that the BWIndex is necessary anymore
I know that by the time I can update it again it the lex will be finished.
Agreed - I no longer have to set my font zoom to 120%. At least on my machine, it could probably be knocked down a size or so and still be OK.
<Lxndr>
My comments:
<Lxndr>
You know, it's probably WAY too difficult to do this, but I thought I'd ask:
How hard would it be to code something so that with future "Lexicon All" pages, you could just say "look at all the pages on the appropriate list (like, say, listbreakwater) and grab all the links after "See All", phantom or no?
Probably would need a directive or something. Something like "Directive: links in THIS area should be trawled by the All page." But, if something like that worked, then future lexicons would benefit. Especially if it could look at "author names" and from that, determine citation...
I'm probably dreaming, aren't I?
only if we are having the same dreams! honestly, I was thinking along the same lines. Let me see what I can do. if it does entail changing all of the entries, I can do that programatically as well.
<Lxndr>
Can we have "search links"? So it'll only find places where, say, the word "Vista" is a link, instead of just a word in the text?