Difference between revisions of "Wordman/MartialArtsRequest"

Revision as of 20:19, 19 November 2007

As some of you know, I've taken to creating a number of pages on this wiki automatically, by applying code to the source text of other pages. I'm even willing to do this sort of thing on commission if it is not to difficult. Now, I'd like to apply this idea to the MartialArts pages. Specifically, I want to populate the MartialArtsMatrix automatically, and build alternative versions of the MartialArts/ByContributor and the MartialArts/ByFavoredWeapon pages that are built automatically.

I need some help, though. While I probably could build a natural language processor smart enough to wade through the huge variations in the martial arts pages (in spite of the existence of fomatting standards) to extract the bits tracked by the matrix, this would be a significant effort, and more than I'd like to do right now.

So, I'd like to create an opt-in process, whereby martial arts authors could embed some specifically formated text someplace in their martial arts pages (it can be tucked away at the end, or anywhere else). This is not a request to reformat pages. Rather, it is a request to embed a small block of metadata somewhere on your martial arts pages. The "contract" would be that any martial arts pages containing this description would then automatically show up in the MartialArtsMatrix and the other pages mentioned (as well as any future pages base on the same meta-data).

The data block would start with a line that contained only the words "Matrix Metadata" and formatting codes, such as ==Matrix Metadata== or Matrix Metadata. This would be immediately followed by lines containing data like so:

== Metadata ==
:Name: a "clean" name of the style
:Author: a wiki link to the page of the author of the style
:Type: terrestrial|celestial|sidereal|initiation|unusual
:Rules: E1|PC|E2
:Form Weapons: a list of the weapons used in the style, separated by commas
:Armor Allowed: none,for some charms,light,medium,all
:Shield Allowed: yes,no
:Essence Range: X-Y, where X is the lowest Essence requirement required by a charm in the style and Y the highest
:MA Range: X-Y, where X is the lowest Martial Arts requirement required by a charm in the style and Y the highest
:Total Charms: total number of charms in the style
:Forms: total number of form charms in the style (usually 1)
:Comboable Charms: total number of charms in the style that may be comboed
:Reflexive Charms: number of reflexive charms in the style
:Persistent Charms: number of charms in the style that last more than single turn

As an example, a block might look like like this, and you can see how it renders on the actual Sable Disposition of Being page.

== Metadata ==
:Name: Sable Disposition of Being
:Author: [[Wordman]]
:Type: sidereal
:Rules: E2
:Form Weapons: brushes
:Armor Allowed: none
:Shield Allowed: no
:Essence Range: 4-7
:MA Range: 4-7
:Total Charms: 15
:Forms: 1
:Comboable Charms: 11
:Reflexive Charms: 1
:Persistent Charms: 5

One note here: The "armor allowed" field doesn't work like the current MartialArtsMatrix works. The current page lists armor in a way that confuses people, so I'll be changing it when I make these new pages.

I am, frankly, not very enthusiastic that there will be any more people who opt-in than those who added their styles to the matrix already, but it's worth a shot. Would you opt-in? If not, why not? If you are not willing to add such metadata to your pages yourself, would you care if others added it for you? What other pages would you want to see built from the data? Should any other metadata be collected? Should any be eliminated (I'm not sure subtype is very useful, for example; it is only there because it is used to group styles on the CelestialMartialArts page)? Is this general metadata approach something that would be welcome/useful for other types of pages?

Comments

Seems like a good idea to me. Added your meta data block to all my MA pages.-Ambisinister