Discussions/WikiContentFormatting

The process of linking in Orphans as part of the UserFriendlyCategories effort, has led me to think a bit about how some of the "category" pages are formatted (that is, those pages linked to by WikiContent). There is no real standardization (which is fine), but some pages are definitely easier it edit than others. My thinking has led down a certain path to ideas I think might be worth doing, but I'd like to hear what people think first.

Definition Lists

The first idea involves definition lists. The definition list is a little known html tag, but one that is supported by this wiki. A sample of the wiki code looks like this:

;A name of some kind:The definition of that name
;Another name:Another definition

This wiki markup renders like this:

A name of some kind

The definition of that name

Anothe name

Another definition

The html looks like this:

<dl>
<dt>A name of some kind</dt><dd>The definition of that name</dd>
<dt>Anothe name</dt><dd>Another definition</dd>
</dl>

You can see this in use on pages like TerrestrialMartialArts.

OK. So what? I'm thinking that a number of the "category" pages might benefit if they were changed to use definition lists, particularly pages for Artifacts and HearthStones. These pages are sort of close to mimicking the appearance of a definition list anyway, but do so using br tags and other oddness. Generally speaking, any time you can eliminate br tags, the better.

A better reason for this though, is that since definition lists render to specific tags, it would be possible for CSSWikiSheets to improve their appearance, in a way that works uniformly.

A counter argument is that, as presently used, the main pages that currently use definition lists (the MartialArts pages) are a bit tricky to edit. This, however, isn't because they use definition lists. It is because of the formatting embedded into the definition lists. As an example, here is one entry:

;'''''[[MartialArts/EternalMaterialStyle]]''' - [[Wordman]]'': A style based on the five magical materials that runs from terrestrial to celestial.

Which renders like this:

MartialArts/EternalMaterialStyle - Wordman

A style based on the five magical materials that runs from terrestrial to celestial.

What's freaky about this is the five quotes at the start. Three of these make what they enclose bold, two more italicize it. Just removing the italics cleans it up quite a bit:

;'''[[MartialArts/EternalMaterialStyle]]''' - [[Wordman]]: A style based on the five magical materials that runs from terrestrial to celestial.

Which renders like this:

MartialArts/EternalMaterialStyle - Wordman

A style based on the five magical materials that runs from terrestrial to celestial.

At this point, a style sheet could decide to make the name part (the dt tag) italics. I can see this being both good and bad, but on net I think it is good. You could take this a step further and eliminate all formatting from such lines, and rely on the style sheet to do the work. That might be overkill, though.

In any case, regardless of how the bold and italics are done, I think it would be a good idea to convert at least the artifact and hearthstone pages to use definition lists. I can do the work, but I'd like to hear from others first.

BTW, the style sheet that I use (see CSSWikiSheets) already adds a slight bit of space after the definition, to give a bit leading, and changes the indenting do be not so severe, if you want to see how this looks..

Order

The second idea deals with order. FrivYeti and I have both been reworking some the content pages that, due to orphans now being linked, were sort of growing out of control. In the process, it has seemed (at least to me) that the order of information on some of these pages was a little wonky. That is, the links that I was really interested in were often much further down on a page and the links on top seemed fairly useless to me. This is perhaps just my own bias talking, but it should come as no surprise that I don't find lists of authors personally useful at all, though I understand the need for them. It seems to me, instead, that a content page should start with the content rather than a list of authors. Many of the content pages have been reorganized at various times to reflect this, but some have not.

I think it would be useful to set up the content pages using something of a uniform approach, insofar as that is practical. I'm not talking about a rigid format or anything, as each page has its own quirks, but a sort of basic approach would be useful. Something like the following order is what looks good to my eye:

1. Backlinks to major pages that might have sent the user to the page
2. A few sentences about the purpose of the page
3. If appropriate, general links related to the page's topic, organized in sections if necessary. For example, on a page like Attributes links to pages about attributes in a general sense would go here.
4. If appropriate, specific links about "sub topics", organized in sections if necessary. For example, on a page like Attributes links to pages about the specific attributes would go here.
5. If appropriate, a "contributor list" section
6. A comments section.

Pages like Charms are pretty close to this idea.

There will be exceptions, of course. For example, on the various Characters pages, links to pages that detail groups of characters are probably better to come after links to individual characters (in sections organized by caste, hopefully), even though the groups are sort of "more generic" in a way.

User Names

In linking in orphans, one of the most irritating parts has been the large flurry of user names that tend to "pollute" a page, in a way. As an example, on the Sorcery page, is it really useful to have the "user page" links next to every name in the contributor list? Does the author's name next to the spell really provide anything, since the author's name will likely be in the spell page anyway? What is this adding, other than hassle?

This practice is not only irritating to maintain (and, IMO, looks horrible), but it is also inconsistent. Some of the entries in the characters pages use them, for example, but others don't. I'd be in favor of just eliminating all of them, and leave the burden on the author to sign the page to which these links lead.

Edition for Characters =

While I'm at it, would there be any use to dividing the characters pages by edition? Not necessarily new pages, but at least giving pages like Characters/Solars two main sections, one for each edition, with the current caste division in between?

Comments

Woo hoo! Evidently no one cares! It's like a license to do whatever the hell I want! - Wordman

You do that. We trust you. And if you're dividing character pages by edition, you have my unconditional support. - Han'ya