Category talk:Chapters
I really like the idea of the character/location pages which have been set up, so that it's easy to find chapters which involve them. But at the moment they're extremely difficult to find.
I was thinking maybe we could put them somewhere more accessable (under catagories maybe?), and then I'll happily try and assign the chapters to the correct character/locations.
Would this be worth doing?
-Laurelote 14 March 2006 14:44 (GMT)
- I really like the idea of the character/location pages which have been set up, so that it's easy to find chapters which involve them. But at the moment they're extremely difficult to find.
Yes, the character/location pages are difficult to find, because they have been pretty much abandoned.
The purpose of them should (could) have been to easily link together all the chapters that feature a certain place or person (if every chapter featuring Boromir would link to the Boromir page, then the Boromir page’s ‘What links here’ list would provide an index of all Boromir related chapters), but I didn't seem to be able to get that point across to the authors.
Some people enthusiastically started to enter data, but in my opinion there isn’t much point in recreating another Encyclopaedia of Arda, or similar site - there are already so many of them about. The main point was the links to and from such pages, not the background info on them, but people didn’t seem to get that. Without the links coming in from the chapters, these pages are useless. We all know who Boromir is. In fact, because of the nature of the interactive story, he can actually be someone else in different threads (if Faramir is in fact Imrahil’s son, as in Denethor is not your father, than even the most basic info like ‘Boromir is Faramir’s older brother’ becomes incorrect). So that’s why the character and location pages project has been abandoned.
- I was thinking maybe we could put them somewhere more accessable (under catagories maybe?),
Indeed. When I implemented the categories all over the wiki, months after the character and location pages had been dumped, I saw another opportunity to create a meaningful index (because I very much agree with you that some sort of themed indexing would be a very welcome addition). Instead of all chapters featuring Boromir linking to the Boromir character page, these chapters could instead belong to the Boromir Category, which would in turn belong to the characters category, and which either would or would not hold some basic info on Boromir as well, hardly relevant. It would mean lists! Lots of pretty lists!
Well, you’ve probably seen my ‘Possibilities for future development’ text on the categories page.
- Would this be worth doing?
It would be grand, but the problem persists that you need to persuade authors to put their chapter in the relevant categories, and the whole posting process is already complicated enough for most (e.g. you are the first to tackle the overview page).
And, of course, that’s after you’ve cleared up the backlog of the 80-some chapters we have now. That’s quite some work, but if you have the time for it - by all means, go right ahead! (If you sign up for a second account I can make that one into a bot, so the changes of all those chapters don’t clog up the recent changes list.)
-Iris 14 March 2006 15:33 (GMT)
- Instead of all chapters featuring Boromir linking to the Boromir character page, these chapters could instead belong to the Boromir Category, which would in turn belong to the characters category, and which either would or would not hold some basic info on Boromir as well, hardly relevant. It would mean lists! Lots of pretty lists!
I think this'll work well. I also like the idea of some basic information. Although there could be a comment at the beginning saying that relationships could change during the course of the story or some such thing.
If nothing else I think maybe we should link each page to one of the more detailed sites where people can get more infomation if they want it... I think this has been done on the Boromir page.
- It would be grand, but the problem persists that you need to persuade authors to put their chapter in the relevant categories, and the whole posting process is already complicated enough for most (e.g. you are the first to tackle the overview page).:
It's not explained very well... I'm finding my way through by clicking edit to see how other people have done various things. I'll be happy to sort through the chapters already put on, although it may take a while, and if authors don't wish to do the new chapters themselves, I'm sure it won't take long to do them myself.
I'll sign up for that second account now and we'll see how it goes.
-Laurelote 14 March 2006 16:10 (GMT)
- I also like the idea of some basic information. Although there could be a comment at the beginning saying that relationships could change during the course of the story or some such thing.
Yes, it should be very clear that whatever is said about a character, needn't be so in all chapters. Often when you draw people a box, they stop thinking outside it (as soon as you write down 'Marek is the sole heir to the throne of Harad', people stop dreaming up plots with evil, scheming brothers), and the last thing these pages should do is hamper creativity.
- It's not explained very well...
If you want to rewrite Help:Editing or any of the other help pages, go ahead.
Problem is, I'm an educator, but I normally write for a different audience. In the scientific papers I normally write, you expect your readers to read every line, every word, but on the internet people tend to browse -or better still: everything should be instantly understandable, no help pages necessary at all.
And although it's not the most user-friendly of systems, not much further explanation ought to be necessary - not much is asked from the author, with headings completely optional, as the title is the text of the option you've chosen and everyone can see who wrote what on the history tabs - so no immediate need for the author to specify either of those crucial bits of data. And what authors want to add to that, or in what format, is their own business. Some like to put their name on the top of the chapter, some sign at the bottom. Some give the chapter a subtitle. Whatever makes them happy. Bold, italics, horizontal rules are all in the buttons, and now so are the options. That's all I care about: that there are options that link to future pages. And since I've made a custom button for that, it never goes wrong anymore.
And the overview page, well, that's a left-over from the old system really. This story ran on a custom interactive story script before, and that script generated a list of chapters like the overview page. So when we switched to this wiki, we wanted to ease the transition by having this familiar element. But it is not that relevant anymore. I certainly wouldn't create such a thing if I would have started the story at the wiki to begin with.
- I'll be happy to sort through the chapters already put on, although it may take a while, and if authors don't wish to do the new chapters themselves, I'm sure it won't take long to do them myself.
As soon as people see the system in use, I'm sure they'll see the benefits of it. And if you add something like "To add you chapter to this category, place the link [[Category:Boromir]] at the end of your chapter" to all category pages, it shouldn't be too difficult, should it?
- I'm finding my way through by clicking edit to see how other people have done various things
Well, that is generally the best way to go about it. I still do that all the time over at wikipedia.
- I'll sign up for that second account now and we'll see how it goes.
Ok, give me a second and I'll turn that account into a bot.
-Iris 14 March 2006 17:06 (GMT)
- If you want to rewrite Help:Editing or any of the other help pages, go ahead.
I'll probably have a look at the help pages at some point and see what I can do... I fully understand where you are coming from with the audience thing and I'm not sure how much better I'll do because I'm a scientist too :)
-Laurelote 15 March 2006 08:28 (GMT)