elanthipedia:Town Green (miscellaneous)

Town Green miscellaneous Discussion   post
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Town Green
Town Green
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New layout template RTOC

I made a new template RTOC to simplify putting a table of contents on the right side of an article:

{{RTOC}}

For examples, see Empath Healing and Elanthipedia:Projects --Farman 12:22, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

Great idea, Farman. Put a note on the news about it and in the Template help maybe?--Naeya ^(talk) 14:08, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

It's a nice template but I don't know if it's important enough to be front-page newsworthy ;) I figured this as the best place to announce or spread the word about little formatting shortcuts like this. (FYI I have slightly edited my previous comment to include a link to the new template) --Farman 18:23, 3 July 2007 (CDT)

City Stubs

I was working on the stubs and was shocked to discover that no cities I could find have any substantial information. Anyone feel like making some stubs for Cities pages?

--Kraelyst 13:00, 17 October 2007 (CDT)

Yep, that's a very good place for substantial contributions to be made. I hope someone can find the time to add to it.

FWIW this isn't really a technical question, so I moved this discussion to "Miscellaneous" --Farman 14:52, 20 October 2007 (CDT)

I have begun working on a standard city layout. I started the discussion in Talk:The Crossing. Please take a look and provide input if you like. --Kraelyst 09:41, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

Bestiary Pictures

I have noticed color pictures in the bestiary that are clearly newer and not on the Simutronics Beastiary page, such as pictures of Adan'f. I've been doing a lot of bestiary work lately and would like to include these pictures. Where can I find them? --Kraelyst 09:43, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

I'm assuming those are pictures from Stormfront. IE the ones you see when you LOOK at the creatures in game.--Naeya ^(talk) 10:03, 26 October 2007 (CDT)

News Item template

I made a simple little template for adding news items to the news panel on the front page: {{news item}}. I protected it since it's a component of the front page. --Farman 15:12, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

Template Link template

For that matter, I also whipped up a template to add a nicely-formatted link to a template article: {{tlink}}. --Farman 15:25, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

NPCs, Historical Figures, Authors, Shopkeepers

I feel like the NPCs are starting to get a little out of control. If we put every single name ever mentioned in DR into the NPC category it will render the category useless. I recommend we subdivide a little more like we already do with Category:Shopowner and keep most names out of the NPCs and associated categories.

I think specifically we should create/continue the following categories and not let these names also be in NPCs/Dead/Alive/Races/Guilds unless warranted as below:

• 1. Category:Historical Figure
• 2. Category:Author
• 3. Category:Emperor
• 4. category:Shopowner

I think we should reserve the "NPCs" category only for:

• 1. NPCs that have actually been in the game
• 2. NPCs that may potentially show up in the game (like guildleaders)
• 3. Very prominent historical figures (like Lanival, Morganae, Corik, etc...)

In fact, I'll probably go ahead and start doing this tonight as I review some of the additions from today. --Kraelyst 21:59, 27 October 2007 (CDT)

I agree it could use more organization, but I don't see a category having a huge number of members being a big problem necessarily. There's a template somewhere (I can't locate it just now) that adds more useful sorting of category pages by alphabet. Naeya, maybe you know what it's called? Anyway as long as the subcategories remain themselves members of the NPC category, I don't object.

One thing to watch out for is, there's always going to be overlap to deal with. For example, many shopowner NPC's have appeared in game as GMPC's at one time or another, whether for fests or events. Along those lines it is also impossible for us as players to say that any NPC's could be excluded from "may potentially show up in the game". --Farman 16:36, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

I'd like to echo what Farman has said so far. Intersections between the NPCs/Dead/Alive/Races/Guilds tags and the Historical/Author/Emperor/Shopowner tags can and do happen. I think that heavy use of the NPC tag is problematic only if it is the only tag we're using. But, we have a variety of tags available presently (and more are, of course, possible) to help differentiate between entries within the larger NPC category. --Basselope 22:28, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

The template you wanted Farman is {{CategoryTOC}}, if I'm understanding what you were referring to.--Naeya ^(talk) 22:45, 28 October 2007 (CDT)

yep, that's it, thanks Naeya --Farman 21:01, 31 October 2007 (CDT)

After more thought I agree with everyone here. I have deleted the "Historical Figure" category since it is useless and moved the 5 articles that used to be in that category to the NPCs category instead. --Kraelyst 08:37, 3 November 2007 (CDT)

Libraries

Can someone add the Libraries category to the Featured Content on the left side of the page. We have almost every book in the game on this site and I think that's valuable content. Also, can anyone tell me how to edit the left side of the page for future reference? --Kraelyst 08:22, 21 November 2007 (CST)

Yes, I'm interested in that as well... is that something any admin can do, or does it require super-duper levels of access? --Farman 21:07, 21 November 2007 (CST)

It is actually very easy for an admin to do it. However it is not very discoverable. MediaWiki:Sidebar is the page to edit (can also find this link under "Special Pages"->"System Messages"). I took the liberty of fixing this for you, even though I've been barely active here lately. --Callek 00:05, 22 November 2007 (CST)

Excellent, thanks Callek! Is that page actually protected? Doesn't appear to be. --Farman 01:54, 22 November 2007 (CST)

Well yes, and no. Wiki internally protects those pages that are deemed "part of the user interface" like all those pages under "System Messages" there.--Callek 18:13, 22 November 2007 (CST)

DRWiki Internal Linking

It looks like the standard for NPC article creation lists the character by its first name, such as Vorclaf. Sometimes you may want to say Prince Vorclaf to include a title, or Vorclaf Lasa'Sorvendig to include a last name. Instead of only having the first name as a link you can do **Vorclaf|Prince Vorclaf** or **Vorclaf|Vorclaf Lasa'Sorvendig**. The first part is the name of the article you want to direct to, and the second is the text you want the reader to see. His Highness Prince Vorclaf Lasa'Sorvendig, Ruler of Zoluren, Paladin of the Gladiolus is possible, but probably not preferred.

Call it being picky, but it looks cleaner. Maje 21:50, 5 December 2007 (CST)

That inspires another tip:

There's a useful way to show the raw text of wikicode without having it activate, but remain plain text. Anything enclosed between <nowiki> and </nowiki> tags will appear as raw text and not be interpreted by the wikicode parser. So for the above example, you would enter

<nowiki>[[Vorclaf|Prince Vorclaf]]</nowiki>

and it will appear on the page as [[Vorclaf|Prince Vorclaf]]. --Farman 23:09, 5 December 2007 (CST)

I actually (on a personal level) agree with you. I would also be ok/advocate in the cases where "Prince Vorclaf" like names (or first+last name) links could be expected in new articles (from people who don't know better) we could set-up wiki redirects from [[Prince Vorclaf]] or [[Lord Sorrow]] --Callek 01:07, 6 December 2007 (CST)

Horse / Horses

Anyone willing to merge the Horse and Horses pages? --Aetherie 12:38, 11 December 2007 (CST)

Heh eww, nice find. I'll take a look at it. --Naeya ^(talk) 14:34, 11 December 2007 (CST)

Ok I merged the two articles into Horses, kept most of the info intact. Thanks for finding it, Aetherie. --Naeya ^(talk) 19:03, 11 December 2007 (CST)

Elanthipedia IRC?

Hey folks. I've been tossing around an idea of setting up an IRC channel for Elanthipedia. I could be used for quick discussions on articles and such or perhaps just casual game discussion when an Elanthipedia topic isn't being addressed. Any thoughts on this? --Naeya ^(talk) 11:49, 12 December 2007 (CST)

Elanthian Materials

Just putting feelers out to the possibility of starting a Materials or something similar section. These would include descriptions of gems, metals, cloths and other materials found within Elanthia. Perhaps it would one day be a valuable resource to folks looking for inspiration for alterations. Thoughts? --Naeya ^(talk) 00:17, 14 December 2007 (CST)

I would like it (if it was more than simply a bunch of {{stub}} pages) --Callek 01:52, 14 December 2007 (CST)

Err well I just stumbled across this - Special Materials. That's pretty much what I had in mind, except perhaps with descriptions of more gems and such.--Naeya ^(talk) 12:30, 14 December 2007 (CST)

Yep that was the information that I was talking about at the meeting. Maje 23:31, 14 December 2007 (CST)

What meeting? --Naeya ^(talk) 23:45, 14 December 2007 (CST)

New Logo

Thanks to help from Mayday at Dziner Studio, we have a new logo. What does everyone think about it?--Naeya ^(talk) 12:31, 14 December 2007 (CST)

I like the brackets and the typeface for "Elanthipedia", but I'm not crazy about the map. It's a bit too finely-detailed for a logo IMO, and it spills over onto the brackets so I think it looks a little sloppy. I understand and agree with the concept, putting something that represents Elanthia in the brackets. But I think it should be something graphically simpler. What about an image of the World Dragon? --Farman 21:21, 14 December 2007 (CST)

If you can find one, let me know. --Naeya ^(talk) 21:31, 14 December 2007 (CST)

There's this one http://www.play.net/images/dr/gods/worlddragon.jpg But if the map is too detailed, that image definitely is.--Naeya ^(talk) 21:45, 14 December 2007 (CST)

If anyone has any other suggestions, or wants to take a crack at a better logo, go right ahead. Make sure it is a transparent image (.gif or .png).--Naeya ^(talk) 22:03, 14 December 2007 (CST)

I like the new logo. Maybe the brackets could be made taller so they box in the map. --Kraelyst 11:06, 15 December 2007 (CST)

Well, the brackets are supposed to be smaller, and the image is supposed to slightly overlap them. That was my instructions to the artist. I personally like it. It doesn't look sloppy at all to me. But oh well. Edit: The only problem I have with all the problems with the image that ya'll are bringing up is... it's frustrating for the artist who did it that I keep asking for tweaks. I'd do the work myself but I don't have the software capabilities. --Naeya ^(talk) 11:39, 15 December 2007 (CST)

Ok got a couple of variations (of the same image - I happen to like it sooo... File:Logo-brown.png File:Logo-blue.png

--Naeya ^(talk) 10:44, 16 December 2007 (CST)

Although the sample size is small, seems I'm outnumbered on the map ;) It's not too bad, and I'll admit frankly I'm not in a position to contribute any art myself, at least until I get back home in a few days. But ideally IMO we'd have something that could scale up and down without losing intelligibility. My fear is that it will look like a smudgy unrecognizable blob. I also think a nicely legible dragon image in the brackets would reinforce the Dragon part of being the DR wiki given that it isn't in the site name. Something with a dragon-shaped outline, for example this (courtesy a google image search on "dragon", although I think that particular image is still a little bit too finely-detailed to be ideal).

Anyway I do like it better with the map inside the brackets. I think I prefer the brown one since that would stand out more given the general bluish tone to the Monobook skin. --Farman 18:16, 16 December 2007 (CST)

Well, it's not that you're outnumbered, it's just for lack of a better image now, we're going to roll with this. A simple outline of a dragon could be cool. I have the .psd version of these files if someone wants to take a crack at the images. --Naeya ^(talk) 18:36, 16 December 2007 (CST)

Festival Shops

With these new shops appearing, it doesn't look like the full shop article template is being followed (ie, Shop templates not being used). Shouldn't they have these templates like regular shops? --Symphaena 18:36, 23 December 2007 (CST)